Hard Power: The Stone Statues of Ammon

Ammon was the northernmost of the Transjordanian kingdoms, formed at the beginning of the tenth century BCE in the highlands east of the Jordan Valley. To the south lay Ammon’s sister kingdoms, Moab and Edom. Far to the north was the kingdom of Aram-Damascus. Israel and Judah lay to the west of the Jordan Valley and the Dead Sea. Throughout much of the Iron Age II (c. 1000–539 BCE in Transjordan), these southern Levantine kingdoms were integrated into the Assyrian Empire, the great Mesopotamian power that controlled most of the ancient Near East at the time. Assyrian domination meant that […]