TEMA te’ mə (תֵּימָ֔א, south country). The name of one of the twelve sons of Ishmael (Gen 25:15; 1 Chron 1:30), of a people descended from him (Jer 25:23), and of the locality they inhabited (Job 6:19; Isa 21:14).

The place is the same as the modern Teima in N Arabia, a large oasis about halfway between Damascus and Mecca, and between Babylonia and Egypt. It is on the ancient caravan road connecting the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Aqaba. It is one of the most attractive oases in Arabia and is still one of the most important trade centers in the land.

Two references in the Bible tell of the metropolitan position of Tema in the transdesert trade: Isaiah 21:13ff., where the inhabitants of Tema are asked to offer refuge and hospitality to Dedanite caravans fleeing from a pursuing army—possibly of either Nebuchadnezzar or Nabonidus; and Job 6:19, which in a description of the desert mentions “the caravans of Tema.” Jeremiah (25:23) prophesied that great trouble would come upon Tema and nearby tribes. This may refer to Nebuchadnezzar’s campaign against that region.

An Akkad. inscr., which was published under the title, “A Persian Verse Account of Nabonidus,” relates that Nabonidus, the last king of the Neo-Babylonian, or Chaldean, empire (556-539 b.c.), divided his power with his eldest son Belshazzar and entrusted the kingship to him. He did this that he might proceed with an army against Tema. He conquered the city, slaughtered its inhabitants, rebuilt it so that it recalled the glory of Babylon, and made it the capital of the western part of his empire. Another inscr., the Nabonidus Chronicle, gives an annual diary of the reign of Nabonidus for seventeen years, and records that for years he lived at Tema and therefore did not attend the New Year festival in Babylonia. An inscribed early Aram. monument, the Teima Stele, possibly dated in the 6th cent. b.c., records the grant of specified palm lands and perpetual right in the priesthood of the local god, Salm, to a certain priest Salm-shezeb. All surviving monuments and inscrs. of Tema show that for some years it enjoyed the rank of ancient Petra and Palmyra.

About 540 b.c., Cyrus, king of Persia, conquered all that region of Arabia, and Babylon itself fell a year later. Nabonidus was kindly treated by Cyrus, who gave him Carmania (in S Persia) to rule, or more prob. as a place of abode in a new land (Jos. Apion I. 20); and there he died.

Bibliography R. P. Doughtery, Nabonidus and Belshazzar (1919), 105-124; S. Smith, Babylonian Historical Texts (1924), 98-123; C. M. Doughty, Arabia Deserta, I (1925) 285-300; J. A. Montgomery, Arabia and the Bible (1934), 58-68; J. Finegan, Light from the Ancient Past (1959), 227, 228.