to the south, and in 733 B. C. his Annals (Layard, Inscriptions, pls. 66, 72 b; Rost, Keilschrifttexte, Vol. 2, pls. 23, 18), lines 218—226, 240 (see also Rost, op. cit., Vol. 1, pp. 36, 38, 40, 70), record that from the tribe of Mas’a, the city of Têma, and the tribes of Saba, Ḫajappa, Badana, Ḫatti, and Idiba’il dwelling in the regions of the lands of the west in distant settlements, he received as tribute gold, silver, male and female camels, and spices of various kinds. He appointed Idibi’il of the land of Arubu as resident (kêpu) to keep him informed about Egypt. He separated fifteen settlements in the neighborhood of Askalon from the land of Askalon and gave them to Idibi’il.
In this account we meet with names which are familiar to us also from the Bible. The tribe Mas’a is probably identical with the Biblical tribe Massa (Gen., 25: 13—14). According to various reports this tribe had its encampments to the east or southeast of Moab and did not belong to the tribes of the Madianites but to the Ishmaelites.
By the town of Têma the Assyrian annals mean the oasis of Tejma, which, according to the Bible (Gen., 25: 13 f.; Septuagint, 25: 3), belonged either to the Ishmaelite clans or else to the descendants of Abraham by Keturah. The inhabitants of Tejma were engaged in trading by caravan (Job, 6: 19), and they therefore had to send gifts to Tiglath Pileser IV, who had control of the trade route leading to the Mediterranean harbors.
Šeba’ or Saba: the Sabaeans
The Saba are identical with the Biblical Šeba’, whose caravans together with the caravans of Tejma are referred to in Job, 6: 19. This tribe must therefore be located near the oasis of Tejma. To the west of Tejma the great transport route leads from southern Arabia to Syria and Egypt. This route was at times in the possession of the Sabaeans and at times in that of their kinsmen the Minaeans, who shared with them the supremacy in southwestern Arabia and thus also the predominance in the regions through which their caravans journeyed. In all the oases on this great transport route the rulers of southwestern Arabia had their garrisons and trading centers. These posts were a source of gain to the native settlers and tribes camping in the vicinity, to whom they supplied both clothing and food and over whom they exercised some sort of supremacy. As the home of these important traders was in southwestern Arabia, whence they had frequent relations with Kushite Africa, many Kushites settled among them; thus the Bible is able to attribute both them and their settlements on the route in northwestern Arabia partly to the descendants of Abraham by Keturah and partly to the descendants of Kush. I regard their colonies in northwestern Arabia as having been Dajdân, or the Biblical Dedan near the modern oasis of al-ʻEla’, and also the oasis of Maʻôn, or the modern Maʻân.
The center of the authority of the Sabaeans in northwestern Arabia was the oasis of Dajdân, and it is there that I locate the headquarters of their governor, kebîr, Chief It’amara of the land of Saba, who before 707 B. C. sent his tribute to King Sargon II (Great inscription of Khorsabad [Botta and Flandin, Monument, Vol. 4, pl. 1452, line 3; Winckler, Die Keilschrifttexte Sargon’s, Vol. 2, pl. 65, line 27; see also Winckler,