supposed aboriginal race called Ḥorites. Though remnants of this population survived only in Se'ir, there are a few traces of its former existence in Palestine; and it is possible that it had once been co-extensive with the wide region known to the Egyptians as Ḥaru (p. 433).—(2) Within historic times the country was occupied by a body of nomads closely akin to the southern tribes of Judah, who amalgamated with the Ḥorites and formed the nation of Edom.—(3) The date of this invasion cannot be determined. Se'irites and Edomites appear almost contemporaneously in Egyptian documents, the former under Ramses III. as a nomadic people whom the king attacked and plundered; and the latter about 50 years earlier under Merneptah, as a band of Bedouin who were granted admission to the pastures of Wādī Ṭumīlāt within the Egyptian frontier (Pap. Harris and Anastasi: see Müller, AE, 135 f.; cf. Mey. INS, 337 f.). Since both are described as Bedouin, it would seem that the Edomites were still an unsettled people at the beginning of the 12th cent. The land of Šêri, however, is mentioned in the TA Tablets (KAT3, 201) more than two centuries earlier.—(4) The list of kings shows that Edom attained a political organisation much sooner than Israel: hence in the legends Esau is the elder brother of Jacob. The interval between Ramses III. and David is sufficient for a line of eight kings; but the institution of the monarchy must have followed within a few decades the expedition of Ramses referred to above. It is probable (though not certain) that the last king Hadad II. was the one subdued by David, and that the Hadad who fled to Egypt and afterwards returned to trouble Solomon (1 Ki. 1114ff.) was of his family.—(5) The genealogies furnish evidence of the consanguinity of Edomite and Judæan tribes. In several instances we have found the same name amongst the descendants of Esau or Se'ir and amongst those of Judah (see the notes pass.). This might be explained by assuming that a clan had been split up, one part adhering to Edom, and another attaching itself to Judah; but a consideration of the actual circumstances suggests a more comprehensive theory. The consolidation of the tribe of Judah was a process of political segregation: the desert tribes that had pushed their way northwards towards the Judæan highlands, were welded together by the strong hand of the Davidic monarchy, and were reckoned as constituents of the dominant southern tribe. Thus it would happen that a Ḥorite or Edomite clan which had belonged to the empire of Edom was drawn into Judah, and had to find a place in the artificial genealogies which expressed the political unity resulting from the incorporation of diverse ethnological groups in the tribal system. If Meyer be right in holding that the genealogies of the Chronicler reflect the conditions of the late post-Exilic age, when a wholesale conversion of Kalebite and Yeraḥmeelite families to Judaism had taken place (INS, 300 f.; Entst. d. Jud. 114 ff., 130 ff.), a comparison with Gn. 36 yields a striking testimony to the persistency of the minor clan-groups of the early Ḥorites through all vicissitudes of political and religious condition.
