Edom was an ancient kingdom that stretched across areas in the south of present-day Israel, Jordan, and Palestine. Edom and the Edomites appear in several written sources relating to the late Bronze Age and to the Iron Age in the Levant, including the list of the Egyptian pharaoh Seti I from c. 1215 BC as well as in the chronicle of a campaign by Ramesses III (r. 1186–1155 BC), and the Hebrew Bible.
Archaeological investigation has shown that the nation flourished between the 13th and the 8th centuries BC and was destroyed after a period of decline in the 6th century BC by the Babylonians. After the fall of the kingdom of Edom, the Edomites were pushed westward towards southern Judah by nomadic tribes coming from the east; among them were the Nabataeans, who first appeared in the historical annals of the 4th century BC and had already established their own kingdom in what used to be Edom by the first half of the 2nd century BC. More recent excavations show that the process of Edomite settlement in the southern parts of Judah and parts of the Negev down to Timna had started already before the destruction of the kingdom by Nebuchadnezzar II in 587/86 BC, both by peaceful penetration and by military means and taking advantage of the already-weakened state of Judah.
Once pushed out of their territory, the Edomites settled during the Persian period in an area comprising the southern hills of Judea down to the area north of Be'er Sheva. The people appear under a Greek form of their old name, as Idumeans or Idumaeans, and their new territory was called Idumea or Idumaea (Greek: Ἰδουμαία, Idoumaía; Latin: Idūmaea), a term that was used in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, also mentioned in the New Testament. During the 2nd century BC Hasmoneans, the Edomites either began or resumed following Jewish law and were subsumed into the larger Jewish population; Herod the Great was of Edomite origin. Whether this conversion was voluntary or forced is a matter of debate among scholars, as is the relationship between Edomite religion and Judaism, which were closely related.
Edom and Idumea are two related but distinct terms; they relate to a historically-contiguous population but to two separate, though adjacent, territories which the Edomites/Idumeans occupied in different periods of their history. The Edomites first established a kingdom ("Edom") in the southern area of modern-day Jordan and later migrated into the southern parts of the Kingdom of Judah ("Idumea", modern-day Mount Hebron) when Judah was first weakened and then destroyed by the Babylonians in the 6th century BC.
Name
The Semitic root of Edom is 'dm meaning "man" (whence "Adam") and "red". Its semantic extensions include "earth" (adam-at) and "deserts".
The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh writes of Esau, the elder son of the Hebrew patriarch Isaac, that he was born "red all over". As a young adult, he sold his birthright to his brother Jacob for a portion of "red pottage". The Bible describes the Edomites as descendants of Esau: Genesis 36:1 reads "Now this is the genealogy of Esau, who is Edom", and Genesis 36:9 reads "And this is the genealogy of Esau the father of the Edomites ...".
Ancient history
Edom
The Edomites may have been connected with the Shasu and Shutu, nomadic raiders mentioned in Egyptian sources. Indeed, a letter from an Egyptian scribe at a border fortress in the Wadi Tumilat during the reign of Merneptah reports movement of nomadic "shasu-tribes of Edom" to watering holes in Egyptian territory. The earliest Iron Age settlements—possibly copper mining camps—date to the 11th century BC. Settlement intensified by the late 8th century BC, and the main sites so far excavated have been dated between the 8th and 6th centuries BC. The last unambiguous reference to Edom is an Assyrian inscription of 667 BC. Edom ceased to exist as a state when it was conquered by Nabonidus in the 6th century BC.
Edom is mentioned in Assyrian cuneiform inscriptions in the form 𒌑𒁺𒈪 Údumi and 𒌑𒁺𒈬 Údumu; three of its kings are known from the same source: Kaus-malaka at the time of Tiglath-pileser III (c. 745 BC), Aya-ramu at the time of Sennacherib (c. 705 BC), and Kaus-gabri at the time of Esarhaddon (c. 680 BC). According to the Egyptian inscriptions, the "Aduma" at times extended their possessions to the borders of Egypt.
The existence of the Kingdom of Edom was asserted by archaeologists led by Ezra Ben-Yosef and Tom Levy, by using a methodology called the punctuated equilibrium model in 2019. Archaeologists mainly took copper samples from Timna Valley and Faynan in Jordan's Arava valley dated to 1300–800 BC. According to the results of the analysis, the researchers thought that Pharaoh Shoshenk I of Egypt (the Biblical "Shishak"), who attacked Jerusalem in the 10th century BC, encouraged the trade and production of copper instead of destroying the region. Tel Aviv University professor Ben Yosef stated "Our new findings contradict the view of many archaeologists that the Arava was populated by a loose alliance of tribes, and they're consistent with the biblical story that there was an Edomite kingdom here."
Khirbat en-Nahas is a large-scale copper-mining site excavated by archaeologist Thomas Levy in what is now southern Jordan. The scale of mining on the site is regarded as evidence of a strong, centralized 10th century BC Edomite kingdom.
Idumaea
After the conquest of Judah by the Babylonians, Edomites settled in the region of Hebron. They prospered in this new country, called by the Greeks and Romans "Idumaea" or "Idumea", for more than four centuries. Strabo, writing around the time of Jesus, held that the Idumaeans, whom he identified as of Nabataean origin, constituted the majority of the population of western Judea, where they commingled with the Judaeans and adopted their customs, a view shared by some modern scholarly works, which consider these Idumaeans as of Arab, possibly Nabataean, stock. This claim has been challenged by historians, however, as many also argue the Edomites not Arab through various different markers, most notably in how the Edomite language was most similar to Biblical Hebrew and Moabite than Classical or Nabataean Arabic, with the Nabataean Arabs having displaced rather than absorbed or originated the Edomites. The Idumean onomasticon catalogued in ostraca found in southern Palestine and dated to the 4th century BCE reveals a preponderance of Arabic names ending in waw and characterized as "proto-Nabataean".
Classical Idumaea
Persian period
In the late 5th century BC, the Qedarite confederacy, headed by Geshem the Arab, were prominent players in the administration of the territory of southern Judea and Transjordan. Compared to the neighboring Moabites and Ammonites, the name "Edom" completely disappeared from the area east of Arabah. The Qedarite king of the Arabs had allied with Egyptian forces during their campaign into Palestine and Phoenicia in 387, challenging Persian dominance in the region. A Persian counterattack launched in 385 ended with the dissolution of the Qedarite kingdom and the creation of truncated province of Idumea by 365.
According to ostraca from sites in Idumaea (i.e. southern Judah after the fall of the kingdom to the Babylonians, dating mainly to the 4th century BCE), a diverse population of Arabs, Edomites as well as Judeans and Phoenicians inhabited the area during the late Persian period. Strabo identifies Idumeans with the Nabateans who were expelled to southern Judea after committing sedition. However, there is evidence for cultural continuity between the Iron Age Edom and Idumea, based on settlement patterns and religious practices.
Hellenistic period
The first mention of Idumea in extra-biblical sources comes from Diodorus who describes it alternately as an eparchy and a satrapy while chronicling the campaigns of Antigonus' forces against the Nabateans in 312/311 BC. The region they inhabit in this period is described as being centered around the Dead Sea, to the west of Wadi Arabah and south of Judah, with Israel's Negev lying to the south.
During the Hellenistic period, both Jews and Idumeans spoke Aramaic and used it for literary and legal documents. An Idumean marriage contract from Maresha, dating from 176 BCE, closely resembles the ketubbot used by Jews. However, despite these cultural similarities, some Jews maintained a distinct boundary between themselves and the Idumeans. This is evident in Ben Sira 50:25–26, which expresses disdain for three "nations," including "the inhabitants of Se'ir", referring to the Edomites/Idumeans.
During the revolt of the Maccabees against the Seleucid kingdom (early 2nd century BCE), II Maccabees refers to a Seleucid general named Gorgias as "governor of Idumaea"; whether he was a Greek or a Hellenized Idumean is unknown. Some scholars maintain that the reference to Idumaea in that passage is an error altogether.
According to Josephus, the Judeans under Judas Maccabeus first defeated the Idumaeans in the two Idumaean border towns of Hebron and Marisa and plundered them around 163 BC. About 50 years later, Judeans under John Hyrcanus I again attacked Marisa and the nearby Adoraim: according to Josephus and Ammonius Grammaticus, Hyrcanus conquered the cities of Marisa and Adoraim, forcibly converted all Idumaeans to Judaism and incorporated them into the Jewish nation:
Hyrcanus also captured the Idumean cities of Adora and Marisa and after subduing all the Idumeans, permitted them to remain in their country as long as they had themselves circumcised and were willing to observe the laws of the Jews. And so, out of attachment to the land of their fathers, they submitted to circumcision and to make their manner of life conform in all other respects to that of the Jews. And from that time onward they have continued to be Jews.
Jewish nationalist historians, starting with Heinrich Graetz in the 19th century, have been uneasy with the forced conversion of Idumaea. Since the late 1980s, some scholars have questioned the traditional account of Idumaea's conquest and forced conversion by the Hasmoneans. Several reasons have been proposed for this skepticism. As a result, historians have toned down the Hasmonean history of Idumaea as recounted by Josephus in several ways. Most historians still maintain that the events happened largely as Josephus describes.
This view was first moderated by the assumption that only Maresha and Adoraim, located on Idumaea's northern border, were actually conquered, while other Idumeans voluntarily aligned themselves with the Judeans. The reports of forced conversions, in this view, are either anti-Hasmonean propaganda or, conversely, Hasmonean propaganda, which Josephus (mistakenly) incorporated into his historical work. Atkinson takes this further by considering the entire account of the conquest to be fictional.He also believes that "many Idumeans [...] never fully embraced Judaism."
However, while Atkinson still maintains that archaeology suggests "the region south of Judea [including Maresha] was annexed without any significant conflict," Berlin and Kosmin now argue that even the annexation of Idumea and the Idumeans into the Judean state is fictional, noting that, as corroborated by archaeology, after most Idumaeans left Idumaea, Judeans did not settle in this abandoned area. In line with this interpretation, it is now often assumed that Idumaea was not annexed by the Hasmoneans at all. Instead, the remaining Idumeans may have entered into an alliance with the Judeans, within which the Idumaean religion could continue to be practiced.
This reinterpretation leaves the prior depopulation of Idumaea as an open question, comparable to the simultaneous depopulation of Galilee and Philistia.
Herodian dynasty
Antipater the Idumaean, the progenitor of the Herodian dynasty along with Judean progenitors that ruled Judea after the Roman conquest, was of Idumean origin. Under Herod the Great, the Idumaea province was ruled for him by a series of governors, among whom were his brother Joseph ben Antipater and his brother-in-law Costobarus.
Overall, Herodian influence on Judea, Jerusalem and the Temple was significant. However, this was obfuscated by later variants of Second Temple Judaism and Rabbinic Judaism. For example, a minority of contemporary Jews argued Herod could not be Jewish because of his genealogical origins. These beliefs were promoted by works such as Jubilees and 4QMMT, which were of Essene, Hasidean or Sadducee origin. These Jews did not openly express their views because Herod violently suppressed critics. Evie Gassner believed the sages disparaged Herod because he supported the Sadducees, who opposed the Pharisees.
By 66 CE, during the First Jewish–Roman War, the Zealot leader Simon bar Giora attacked the Jewish converts of Upper Idumaea and brought near complete destruction to the surrounding villages and countryside in that region. It was part of his wider plan to attack Jerusalem and seize authority for himself. According to Josephus, during the siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE by Titus, 20,000 Idumaeans, under the leadership of John, Simon, Phinehas, and Jacob, joined the Zealots as they besieged the Temple. Idumean zealotry arguably reflected their attempts to 'prove' their Jewishness. After the Jewish–Roman wars, the Idumaean people disappear from written history, though the geographical region of "Idumea" is still referred to at the time of Jerome.
In some Jewish traditions stemming from the Talmud, the descendants of Esau are the Romans (and to a larger extent, all Europeans).
Written records
Hebrew Bible
Esau is described as "the father of the Edomites". The Edomites' original country, according to the Hebrew Bible, stretched from the Sinai Peninsula as far as Kadesh Barnea. It reached as far south as Eilat, the seaport of Edom. On the north of Edom was the territory of Moab.
The boundary between Moab and Edom was the Zered, now called Wadi al-Hasa. The ancient capital of Edom was Bozrah, now Busaira, Jordan. According to the Book of Genesis, Esau's descendants settled in the land after they had displaced the Horites. It was also called the land of Seir; Mount Seir appears to have been strongly identified with them and may have been a cultic site. According to biblical narrative, at the time of King Amaziah of Judah (796–769 BC), Selah was its principal stronghold, Eilat and Ezion-Geber its seaports.
Genesis 36:31–43 lists the kings of Edom "before any Israelite king reigned":