The name survived into the Roman period as Aela, adopted into Byzantine Greek as Aila and into Arabic as Aylah (the Arab settlement was built outside the ruins of the ancient city), later becoming Aqabat Aylah ("Aylah Ascent"), eventually shortened down to Aqaba.
The modern Israeli town of Eilat, established in 1951, is named for the ancient city.
Name
The name derives from the West Semitic word *'ayl 'ram' with the feminine suffix -at. A Phoenician variant of the name אֵלוֹת is mentioned once in the Hebrew Bible in I Kings 9.26 reflecting the Phoenician vowel shift.[7]
When King David conquered Edom,[citation needed] which up to then had shared a common border with Midian, he took over Eilat, the border city shared by them as well. The commercial port city and copper based industrial center were maintained by Egypt until reportedly rebuilt by Solomon at a location known as Ezion-Geber (I Kings 9:26). In 2 Kings 14:21–22, many decades later, "All the people of Judah took Uzziah, who was sixteen years old, and made him king in the room of his father Amaziah. He rebuilt Elath, and restored it to Judah, after his father's death." Later, in 2 Kings 16:6, during the reign of King Ahaz: "At that time the king of Edom recovered Elath for Edom, and drove out the people of Judah and sent Edomites to live there, as they do to this day."
According to the Bible (2 Kings 14:22),[9] one of the earliest and most significant of King Uzziah's achievements, unless it has to be attributed to his predecessor Amaziah, was the recovery of Elath, which was later lost by Ahaz[10] - all three 8th-century BCE kings of Judah.
The same Uzziah regained for Judah that command of the trade route of the Red Sea which Solomon had held,[11] but which has subsequently been lost.[12]