Major Conder regards _Amman_ as the most important ruin surveyed in Palestine, as regards its antiquarian interest, and the best specimen of a Roman town that he visited, except the still more wonderful ruins of Gerasa, which yield only to Baalbec and Palmyra among Syrian capitals of the second century of our era. The Roman remains include two theatres, baths, a street of columns, and remains of what was once a very great temple on the highest part of the acropolis of the city. Several noble families must have lived in the town, as shown by the magnificent private tombs surrounding the city.
But the oldest remains visible at _Amman_ are the dolmens, of which, with other rude stone monuments, there are some twenty in all. Next to these come the old rock-cut tombs, which Conder supposes to be of the early Hebrew period. But who knows whether there be not a buried city underneath _Amman_? The whole region south of _Amman_, and also north and west of it, abounds in ruins.
_Moab._--The country south of Gilead was given to the tribe of Reuben. It was the land of the Moabites, and a land where Moabite kings continued to reign, notwithstanding the rights of Reuben. From this land came Ruth, to dwell at Bethlehem with Naomi, to marry Boaz, and be held in memory by-and-bye as the ancestress of David. Perhaps it was on account of Ruth that David found the king of Moab willing to give safe asylum to his aged parents, while he himself braved the dangers of the outlaw’s life (1 Sam. xxii. 3). Yet the time came when David fought against the Moabites and conquered them, treating the captives with a severity which makes us suspect that there had been some act of perfidy or insult. It has been conjectured that the king of Moab betrayed the trust which David reposed in him, and either killed Jesse and his wife or surrendered them to Saul. We do not know.
The strong fortress of Moab was Kir-Haraseth, or Kir-Hareseth, or Kir-Heres (2 Kings iii. 25; Isaiah xvi. 7, 11); and it was on the walls of this city that King Mesha offered his son for a burnt-offering, and by the moral effect thus produced turned the tide of battle. We have reasonable ground for identifying Kir-Heres with the modern _Kerak_, near the south-eastern part of the Dead Sea. The allied armies marched round the southern end of the Dead Sea to reach it, instead of crossing the Jordan. “No chain of evidence,” says Dr Tristram, “can be less open to cavil than that which identifies Kerak with Kir-Moab (Isaiah xv. 1) or Kir-Hareseth. It was the castle ‘Kir,’ as distinguished from the metropolis ‘Ar’ of the country, _i.e._, Rabbath Moab, the modern _Rabba_.” The Targum translates the name as “Kerakah.” The Crusaders mistook it for Petra, and gave to its bishop that title, which the Greek Church has still retained, but the name in the vernacular has continued unchanged. No wonder, as we look down from the neighbouring heights upon it, that the combined armies of Israel, Judah, and Edom could not take it, and that “in Kir-Haraseth left they the stones thereof; howbeit the archers went about it and smote it,” but to no purpose.