Moab (/ˈmoʊæb/) was an ancient Levantine kingdom whose territory is today located in southern Jordan. The land is mountainous and lies alongside much of the eastern shore of the Dead Sea. The existence of the Kingdom of Moab is attested to by numerous archaeological findings, most notably the Mesha Stele, which describes the Moabite victory over an unnamed son of King Omri of Israel, an episode also noted in 2 Kings 3. The Moabite capital was Dibon. According to the Hebrew Bible, Moab was often in conflict with its Israelite neighbours to the west.

The etymology of the word Moab is uncertain. The earliest gloss is found in the Koine Greek Septuagint (Genesis 19:37) which explains the name, in obvious allusion to the account of Moab's parentage, as ἐκ τοῦ πατρός μου ("from my father"). Other etymologies which have been proposed regard it as a corruption of "seed of a father", or as a participial form from "to desire", thus connoting "the desirable (land)".

Rashi explains the word Mo'ab to mean "from the father", since ab in Hebrew and Arabic and other Semitic languages means "father". He writes that as a result of the immodesty of Moab's name, God did not command the Israelites to refrain from inflicting pain upon the Moabites in the manner in which he did with regard to the Ammonites. Fritz Hommel regards Moab as an abbreviation of Immo-ab = "his mother is his father".

The existence of the Kingdom of Moab prior to the rise of the Israelite state has been deduced from a colossal statue erected at Luxor by pharaoh Ramesses II, in the 13th century BCE. The statue lists Mu'ab among a series of nations conquered during a campaign. The nucleus of the early Moabite state appears to have been located in several settlements between Wadi el-Wale and Wadi Mojib which originated in the Late Bronze Age.

Four inscriptions from the time of Ramesses II mention Mw-i-bw as a rebellious place that refuses to recognize Egypt's control over Canaan and, together with the Shasu of Mount Seir, conducted raids in Egypt. Pharaoh sent troops to the area and suppressed the rebellion - in the inscriptions of Ramesses II, the inhabitants are shown as having hairstyles identical to those of neighboring Canaanites (long hair collected and arranged) and not a braided hairstyle like the Shasu from later reliefs that contained the name Moab; a possible explanation is that Mw-i-bw, if it was indeed the land of Moab, was at that time inhabited by a pre-Moabite population, whereas the historical Moabites settled in the area only in the 12th century BCE. Na'aman argued, however, that the identification of Mw-i-bw with the biblical land of Moab can no longer be upheld; the former was more likely well to the north. Kenneth Kitchen later responded to Na'aman, reasserting the identification of Mw-i-bw with Moab.

The 9th century BCE Mesha Stele recounts that King Mesha built up an open sanctuary in Qeriho (cultic area of Dibon), conquered the Israelite territory north of Wadi el-Wale with the cities of Medeba, Ataroth and Nebo as well as Jahaz (east of Moab) and rebuilt the towns of Baal-meon, Kirjaton, Aroer, Beth-bamoth, Bezer, Medeba, Diblaton and his hometown Dibon.

An 8th-century BCE inscription seems to indicate that the Kingdom of Moab expanded into the eastern part of the Jordan Valley after a successful campaign against the Ammonites.

In the Nimrud clay inscription of Tiglath-pileser III (r. 745–727 BCE), the Moabite king Salmanu (perhaps the Shalman who sacked Beth-arbel in Hosea 10:14) is mentioned as tributary to Assyria. Sargon II mentions on a clay prism a revolt against him by Moab together with Philistia, Judah, and Edom; but on the Taylor prism, which recounts the expedition against Hezekiah, Kammusu-Nadbi (Chemosh-nadab), King of Moab, brings tribute to Sargon as his suzerain.