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 highest part of the acropolis of the city. Several noble families must have lived in the town, as shown by the magnificent private tombs surrounding the city.

But the oldest remains visible at Amman are the dolmens, of which, with other rude stone monuments, there are some twenty in all. Next to these come the old rock-cut tombs, which Conder supposes to be of the early Hebrew period. But who knows whether there be not a buried city underneath Amman? The whole region south of Amman, and also north and west of it, abounds in ruins.

Moab.—The country south of Gilead was given to the tribe of Reuben. It was the land of the Moabites, and a land where Moabite kings continued to reign, notwithstanding the rights of Reuben. From this land came Ruth, to dwell at Bethlehem with Naomi, to marry Boaz, and be held in memory by-and-bye as the ancestress of David. Perhaps it was on account of Ruth that David found the king of Moab willing to give safe asylum to his aged parents, while he himself braved the dangers of the outlaw's life (1 Sam. xxii. 3). Yet the time came when David fought against the Moabites and conquered them, treating the captives with a severity which makes us suspect that there had been some act of perfidy or insult. It has been conjectured that the king of Moab betrayed the trust which David reposed in him, and either killed Jesse and his wife or surrendered them to Saul. We do not know.

The strong fortress of Moab was Kir-Haraseth, or Kir-Hareseth, or Kir-Heres (2 Kings iii. 25; Isaiah xvi. 7, 11); and it was on the walls of this city that King Mesha offered his son for a burnt-offering, and by the moral effect thus produced turned the tide of battle. We have reasonable ground for identifying Kir-Heres with the modern Kerak, near the south-eastern part of the Dead Sea. The allied armies marched round the southern end of the Dead Sea to