to be tribal kingdoms rather than states. Ammon was located in the Amman plateau, and its capital was Rabbath Ammon; Moab was located in the highlands east of the Dead Sea with the capital at Kir of Moab (Kerak); and Edom in the area around Wadi Araba in the south, with the capital at Bozrah. The northwestern region of the Transjordan, known then as Gilead, was inhabited by the Israelites. According to the Bible, the Transjordan was home to the Israelite tribes of Reuben, Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh. The Transjordanian kingdoms of Ammon, Edom and Moab continually clashed with the neighboring Hebrew kingdoms of Israel and Judah, centered west of the Jordan River. One record of this is the Mesha Stele, erected by the Moabite king Mesha in 840 BC; on it he lauds himself for the building projects that he initiated in Moab and commemorates his glory and victory against the Israelites. The stele, found in Dhiban in 1868, constitutes one of the most important archeological parallels of accounts recorded in the Bible; the biblical narrative of the war is recorded in 2 Kings . At the same time, Israel and the Kingdom of Aram-Damascus competed for control of the Gilead. Around 720 BC Israel & Aram Damascus were conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire. The kingdoms of Ammon, Edom & Moab benefited from trade between Syria and Arabia when the Assyrians increasingly controlled the Levant. Babylonians took over the Assyrians' empire after its disintegration in 627 BC. Although the kingdoms supported the Babylonians against Judah in the 597 BC sack of Jerusalem, they rebelled against Babylon a decade later. The kingdoms were reduced to vassals, a status they retained under the Persian and Hellenic Empires. By the beginning of Roman rule around 63 BC, the kingdoms of Ammon, Edom and Moab had lost their distinct identities, and were assimilated into the Roman culture. Some Edomites survived longer - driven by the Nabataeans, they had migrated to southern Judea, which became known as Idumaea; They were later converted to Judaism by the Hasmoneans. Classical period Alexander the Great's conquest of the Persian Empire in 332 BC introduced Hellenistic culture to the Middle East. After Alexander's death in 323 BC, the empire split among his generals, and in the end much of Transjordan was disputed between the Ptolemies based in Egypt and the Seleucids based in Syria. By the