EDOM. The patriarch of tho Edomitcs was Esau, and they dwelt on tho Dead Sea, from which they xvere driven by an earthquake. They were a warlike, unsettled race of Arabs, whose property was in their cattle, their waggons, and what their waggons could carry. They did not cultivate the soil, nor had they any respect for a landmark. The Nabatteans were at au earlier time the tribe allied Edmnites. But they lost that name when they carried it to the southern portion of Judea, when called Idtunma ; for when the Jews regained Idumma, they called these Edomites of the desert Nebaoth or Nabatteans. The Nabatteans professed neutrality between Antigonus aud Ptolemy, the two contending powers ; but the mild temper of Ptolemy had so far gained their friendship, that the haughty Antigonus, though he did not refuse their pledges of peace, secretly made up his mind to conquer them. Petra, the city of the Nabataeans, is in a narrow valley between steep overhanging rocks.
Not more than two horsemen can ride abreast through the chasm in the rock by which it is entered from tho east, while the other entrance from the west is down a hill-side too steep for a loaded camel. Their temples and huts were cut ont of the live rock, and hence the city was by the Jews named Selah, the rock, and by the Greeks =nod Petra, from which last the country was sometimes called Arabia Petrwa. The existence of rock-cut viharas or monasteries at Petra, in the dominions of Antiochus, and of shnilar excavations at Oren°, go far to confirm and elucidate this; for, though travellers have hitherto called every excavation a tomb, there can be no doubt that many of those at Petra and Cyrene and else where were the abodes of living ascetics, and not burial-places.—Bansen's Egypt, pp. iii. 814-431 ; Sharpe's Egypt, i. pp. 250-51.