AMMONITES, a people of ancient Transjordania, believed to be allied to Israel, but still more closely to Moab. Their home was to the north and north-east of Moab, and their chief city, Rabbath-Ammon (later Philadelphia, the modern Amman) stood on the banks of a tributary of the Jabbok. Like the Moabites, the Ammonites seem to have combined the pastoral life with a limited amount of agriculture. Their religion was similar to that of their neighbours, but was notorious for the extent to which human sacrifice was offered to their god Milcom or Melek.
It is, of course, impossible to discuss the actual history of Ammon, but the tribe is occasionally mentioned in the annals of other peoples, especially those of Israel. Belonging to the same general Hebrew stock, they had dispossessed the aborigines, whom they called Zamzummim, and settled down before the time of the Exodus, in a district bounded to the north by the river Jabbok. Expelled by Sihon from the northern parts of their territory and driven eastwards, they had been left unmolested by the Israelites in their passage to Palestine, but, nevertheless, had remained hostile to them. They were in alliance with David, but on the death of Nahash made an effort to escape from as sociation with Israel. The country was overrun, Rabbath was captured, and the people reduced to servitude.
We hear but little of Ammon during the period of the Hebrew kingdoms, but Shalmaneser III. speaks of a small contingent (i,000 men) in the allied army which met him at Karkar (see AHAB), and a century later Tiglath-pileser III. and his successors received tribute from Ammon. They do not seem to have been concerned in the great revolt of 701, and Sennacherib was content to receive tribute from them. In 587 they supported Zedekiah at the beginning of his rebellion against Nebuchadrezzar, but, apparently, submitted; and Ammonite troops were amongst those that sacked Jerusalem. From this time onwards implacable en mity seems to have existed between Israel and Ammon. It was at the instance of a king of Ammon that Gedaliah was murdered, and the partial depopulation of Judah saw numbers of them enter ing the country. In his attempt to restore the purity of the Judaean community, Nehemiah found that a certain Tobiah, an Ammonite, was one of his bitterest opponents, and this tribe offered a strenuous resistance to the aggrandizing policy of the Maccabean princes. They still formed a large community in the days of Justin Martyr. (T. H. R.)