Moabite

Moabite refers to the ancient kingdom of Moab and its people, who inhabited the region east of the Dead Sea in what is today Jordan. The Moabites are described in biblical and extra-biblical sources as a Northwest Semitic-speaking population with its own royal capital and cultural traditions. Archaeological remains and inscriptions indicate a fully developed state in the early Iron Age, with centers at sites such as Dhiban (Nebo-Dibon) and surrounding settlements.

The Moabite language is a Northwest Semitic language closely related to Biblical Hebrew and Phoenician. It is known primarily from the Mesha Stele, a royal inscription dated to the 9th century BCE, which records King Mesha’s victories and claims. Additional shorter inscriptions and pottery texts from Moab provide a broader though fragmentary picture. Moabite scripts use a variant of the Phoenician alphabet, and the language shows typical Canaanite features with some archaisms and distinctive vocabulary.

Historically, Moab and Israel alternated between alliance and conflict. The kingdom's fortunes declined after the late Iron Age, with the Moabite state eventually absorbed into larger empires during the first centuries BCE. The term Moabite in ancient texts thus covers both the people and the language, with the former identifying themselves as descendants of Moab, son of Lot, in biblical genealogies.

In modern scholarship, Moabite is treated as a distinct but closely related language within the Northwest Semitic family. The study of Moabite helps illuminate the linguistic landscape of the ancient Levant and the development of the Hebrew and Phoenician scripts.