Edom

Edom was the byname given to Esau after he traded his birthright for red stew, and it became the name of the mountainous territory his descendants settled southeast of the Dead Sea, stretching from the Gulf of Aqabah north toward Moab. Its old capital was Bozrah, and its rock cut stronghold Sela, later called Petra by the Greeks, still stands. The Edomites refused Israel passage during the exodus and remained hostile neighbors for centuries, eventually assisting Babylon's sack of Jerusalem, an act the prophets condemned at length. Excavations at the copper smelting site of Khirbet en Nahas and at Busayra, ancient Bozrah, have revealed an organized Edomite kingdom emerging by the tenth and ninth centuries BC, broadly consistent with the biblical timeline for Edom's rise.