Egypt, having recovered from the Hyksos invasion, attempts to regain control of Syria, but its claim to hegemony there is contested by the empire-building Hittites from Anatolia (the central region of modern Turkey).

The prolonged conflict between these two great powers during the fifteenth to thirteenth centuries BCE bypasses the East Bank of the Jordan, allowing for the development of a string of small tribal kingdoms with names familiar from the Old Testament: Edom, Moab, Bashan, Gilead, and Ammon, whose capital is the biblical Rabbath Ammon (modern Amman).

Although the economy of the countryside is essentially pastoral, its inhabitants adapt well to agriculture and are skilled in metallurgy.

The Edomites work the substantial deposits of iron and copper found in their country, while the land to the north is famous for its oak wood, livestock, resins, and medicinal balms.

The towns profit from the trade routes crisscrossing the region that connect Egypt and the Mediterranean ports with the southern reaches of the Arabian Peninsula and the Persian Gulf.

Moses is said in the Bible to have led the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt midway through the thirteenth century BCE and to have governed them during their forty-year sojourn in the Sinai Peninsula.

Barred by the Edomites from entering Canaan from the south, the Israelites marched north toward Moab.

Under Joshua, they crossed west over the Jordan River.

...the Ammonites on the edge of the Syrian Desert east of Gilead.

This common Late Bronze culture collapses at the end of the Late Bronze period.

The collapse is gradual rather than sudden, extending over a century or so between 1250 and 1150 BCE.

Many, but not all, of the Canaanite cities are destroyed, international trade collapses, and the Egyptians withdraw.

The conquest of Canaan by the Israelite tribes is completed between 1220 and 1190 BCE.

The tribes of Gad and Reuben and half of the tribe of Manasseh are allocated conquered land on the East Bank of the Jordan.

At about this time the Philistines, sea peoples who originate from Mycenae and who ravage the eastern Mediterranean invade the coast of Canaan and confront the Israelites in the interior.

It is from the Philistines that Palestine derives its name, preserved intact in the modern Arabic word falastin.

The Hebrew tribes submit to the rule of the warrior-king Saul late in the eleventh century BCE.

Under his successor David (ca. 1000-965 or 961 BCE), Israel consolidates its holdings west of the Jordan River, contains the Philistines on the coast, and expands beyond the old tribal lands on the East Bank.

Ancient Israel reaches the peak of its political influence under David's son, Solomon (965-928 BCE or 961-922 BCE), who extends the borders of his realm from the upper Euphrates in Syria to the Gulf of Aqaba in the south.

Israel falls in 722 BCE to the Assyrian king Shalmaneser, ruler of a mighty military empire centered on the upper Tigris River.

As a result, the Israelites are deported from their country.

Judah preserves its political independence as a tributary of Assyria, while the rest of the Jordan region is divided into Assyrian-controlled provinces that serve as a buffer to contain the desert tribes—a function that will be assigned to the area by a succession of foreign rulers.

Assyria is conquered in 612 BCE and its empire is absorbed by the Neo-Babylonian Empire in Mesopotamia.

Judah is taken by Nebuchadnezzar, who destroys Jerusalem in 586 BCE and carries off most of the Jewish population to Babylon.

Within fifty years, however, Babylon is conquered by the Persian Cyrus II.

The Jews are allowed to return to their homeland, which, with the rest of the Jordan region, becomes part of the Achaemenid Empire.

Three peoples—Jews, Greeks, and Nabataeans—decisively affect the history of Jordan between the third century BCE and the first century CE.

Jews, many of whom are returnees from exile in Babylonia, settle in southern Gilead.

Along with Jews from the western side of the Jordan and Jews who had remained in the area, they establish closely settled communities in what will later become known in Greek as the Perea.

The Greeks are mainly veterans of Alexander's military campaigns who fight one another for regional hegemony.

The Nabataeans are Arabs who had wandered from the desert into Edom in the seventh century BCE.

Shrewd merchants, they monopolize the spice trade between Arabia and the Mediterranean.

By necessity experts at water conservation, they also prove to be accomplished potters, metal- workers, stone masons, and architects.

They adopt the use of Aramaic, the Semitic lingua franca in Syria and Palestine, and belong entirely to the cultural world of the Mediterranean.

The Jordan region comes under the control of the Ptolemies in 301 BCE.

Greek settlers found new cities and revive old ones as centers of Hellenistic culture.

Amman is renamed Philadelphia in honor of the pharaoh Ptolemy Philadelphus.

Urban centers assume a distinctly Greek character, easily identified in their architecture, and prospered from their trade links with Egypt.

The East Bank is also a frontier against the rival dynasty of the Seleucids, who in 198 BCE displace the Ptolemies throughout Palestine.

Hostilities between the Ptolemies and Seleucids enable the Nabataeans to extend their kingdom northward from their capital at Petra (biblical Sela) and to increase their prosperity based on the caravan trade with Syria and Arabia.