This article deals with the West Semitic nomadic tribe of the Rabbeans
who at the time of the Mart archives belonged to the Benjaminite con
federation and controlled one of the mixed urbantribal states on the
upper Middle Euphrates. It traces the history of the tribe to the end of
the Late Bronze and examins its role in the struggle of the contem
poraneous great powers. Then, after a long historical, it shows the
descendants of the Rabbeans re-emerge, under the same name, in the same
area, and in a very similar political role, during the struggle for
Syria in the first century B.C.