But civilisation had raised a barrier against him which he was ever on the watch to break through.

He never lost the opportunity of raiding the inhabitants of the cultivated lands, and escaping again into the desert with his booty before he could be overtaken and punished.

The desert between Palestine and Egypt was his chief camping-ground.

He had occupied the wadis of Mount Seir before the Edomites had entered them, and a part of the later population of the country traced its descent from a mixture of the Bedawi with the Edomite.

The Egyptians had many names for the Bedawin hordes.