The Evolution of the Arameans' Relations with Their Neighbors

Although we know something — or scarcely know anything — about the Syria contemporaneous with the Old Babylonian Empire, we can nevertheless assert that, so long as Phoenicia was subject to that empire, Syria too must have been influenced by it and thus received its share of the Semitic Babylonian and Canaanite migrations. As for what kind of peoples invaded — or attempted to invade — from the north, where the Hittites were likewise advancing, that is a matter still in need of much illumination; for although the Babylonian invasion in the latter days of the First Babylonian Dynasty points to Hittite movements toward the south, we can, alongside this and behind it, also determine — from what the Amarna letters and the remains of Boghazköy record — that we may cast some light on the course of events at this stage, since they indicate that a non-Semitic people pushed its way forward and that elements of the same race were pressing from behind.

From this stage the history of Syria begins to bring its features into relief:

The Hittites differ from the Semites in racial characteristics, dress, ways of life, writing, and so on. Hittite civilization was brought to Syria from outside; the invaders brought it, especially the "Hatti." But when did this occur? Before the invasion, the Hatti had been settling in Cappadocia (northeast Asia Minor), most probably the cradle of their civilization. Future research may cast some light on the relations of the Hittites with the pre-Aryan population in the west, so that they may be compared with the Etruscans, the Iberians, and others who move within the fabric of the mist of primeval history. For now we can only suppose that the inhabitants of Asia Minor in the second millennium — indeed even before it — were Hittites, though it is impossible to furnish proof of the connections and kinships among the various nationalities. When the problem of Hittite hieroglyphics is solved, we may be able to discern the differences between the various dialects in the various regions from the texts found in Syria, especially at Hama, Aleppo, Carchemish, Marash, and Cilicia. The Hittites, when we first come to know them, were pushing their way into Syria, Mesopotamia, and northern Babylonia. A text in the British Museum — reckoned the oldest we know of them — indicates that they succeeded in seizing and plundering Babylon at the end of the First Babylonian Dynasty, before the Kassite invasion. In the fifteenth century, "Mitanni" held sway over Mesopotamia and northern Syria, especially in the tract extending as far as the Taurus; and the empire of "Hatti" must have had an existence in this period, though we cannot define its political borders. Mitanni was subjected to Hatti's pressure thereafter until it was destroyed, thanks to the advance of the Hittite king Suppiluliuma and his successors Mursili and Muwatalli. The history of Egypt at this stage is replete with recorded events from which the extent of the Hittites' strength and violence may be gauged, indicating that they were no newcomers to the political stage. And although Hatti was able to extend its influence for a time in Syria, it could not enjoy the fruits of this penetration, nor the intrigues by which it stirred up [?] the princes, the friends and helpers of Egypt; for the Assyrians soon intervened, undid what the Hittites were contriving, and put an end to their influence there. Perhaps the oldest Hittite inscriptions found in Syrian lands were those discovered in the excavations of Sinjirli and the Amuq, dating to the pre-Assyrian age, the oldest of which we can date to the second millennium. At "Sinjirli" we witness the heritage of an ancient Hittite people coming from Hatti. . . As for the Arameans, they pushed their way there afterward. They did not migrate to Syria directly at first, but they gained the upper hand after they had spread through Babylonia and Mesopotamia. The reason for this is that the Hittite migrations were able to advance so long as they met nothing to hinder them: the Mitannians and Kassites had already advanced from two directions, and the first waves of the Hittites had profited from the weakness of Babylon and Assyria. With this current — at the same time — the wave of Aramean migration spread from the south over the Euphrates valley and Syria, and met no resistance from the Kassites settled on the banks of the river; rather it pushed its way through to fight Hatti in Syria. Accordingly, the regions that appear to us in later ages as though wholly Aramean were not in fact so until a late period. Damascus, Aleppo, and the cities of northern Syria became Aramean when Aramaic overran Mesopotamia and Babylonia alike. "Pethor" on the Euphrates remained Hittite — like Carchemish — and the Arameans did not occupy it until "Ashur-rabi" appeared; Carchemish itself continued to resist them for a long time. As for the outlying regions in the north of "Syria," such as Commagene, the Arameans could not invade them; rather they remained — until they submitted to Assyria — under the authority of the Hittite princes, a fact that cannot in any case dispel the notion that Aramean elements might have advanced toward them nonetheless.

As for the picture that Syria can present to us of the Aramean migrations before and after the fifteenth century, it is as follows: The Hittites were able to expel or subjugate the ancient Canaanites, and the Arameans were advancing toward the Hittites. But since the Hittites' influence extended in the twelfth century over Syria and the Beqaa as far as Kadesh, the Arameans' advance in Syria did not link them directly with the interior Syrian lands by way of occupying certain important sites such as Damascus, Hama, and Aleppo. Rather, they advanced first eastward along the Euphrates. And when they seized Mesopotamia, they crossed the Euphrates and advanced westward into central Syria. Tiglath-Pileser I drove the Arameans back at Carchemish across the river, and upon their retreat they managed to settle in stations on the right bank; but they could not occupy the Hittite cities in Syria — except Damascus — until late. Accordingly, the Arameans did not uproot the ancient Canaanite language until the Assyrian period. The Aramean migration in the north was bound up with the last wave of the Hittites, known under the name "Kummuh," who hindered the Arameans from advancing, just as the Arameans in turn prevented the "Kummuh" from advancing into the interior regions of Syria and the Beqaa. Tiglath-Pileser I's advance to the shores of the Mediterranean was not followed by any expansion of Assyria's authority westward, for he was soon recalled to the east to repel an attack launched by the Babylonian king "Marduk-nadin-ahhe," who seized "Ekallate" and carried off to Babylon the images [?] of "Adad" and "Shala," the two gods of the city (which could not be returned until the reign of Sennacherib). Tiglath-Pileser took swift steps of revenge: he defeated the Babylonians at the Lower Zab and advanced, sweeping onward until he seized Babylon, Sippar, Opis, and other cities. These were successive blows to the Babylonians and a quashing of what stirred in their minds — the possibility of curtailing Assyria's sovereignty and restoring it to the rule of its former mistress. Soon the throne of Babylon was occupied by dynasties that left no trace in history, until the throne passed to the Elamite usurper from the eastern hills, named "Mar-biti-apla-usur"; and the rule of these weak dynasties lasted a century, during which they killed one another and were all exposed to the raids of the Aramean tribes from the desert side. The Arameans first appeared in Babylon during the reign of "Adad-apla-iddina," the subsequent (though not the immediate) successor of "Marduk-nadin-ahhe." As for Assyria, weakness befell it as well, for the throne passed after Tiglath-Pileser to his two sons "Ashur-bel-kala I" and then "Shamshi-Adad," who sought the peaceful life they longed for by binding themselves to Babylon with ties of amity and concord. Then shadows fell upon Assyria, and darkness soon settled over it as it had settled over Babylon for a century or more. This was the chance of a lifetime for the rise of a new power in Syria and Palestine: these central lands had — since antiquity — been a meeting place, a battleground, and an arena of strife between Egypt, Babylon, and the Hittites, as we know. And now that paralysis had struck Egypt, Babylon, and Hatti all together, the opportunity was without doubt favorable to whoever could exploit it. Assyria had been able to clip the claws of Hatti and sap its strength. . . only to drink from the same cup a little later. As for Egypt and Babylon, they were stricken with feebleness after old age had crept into their limbs, until Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Anatolia all became a wasteland of powers. As for the land between them — Syria — it sensed freedom and began to catch its breath after the long exhaustion of the struggle among those who coveted it. Toward this land, which had begun to feel the delight of freedom, advanced three elements, all seeking to settle in it, exploit it, and expel its people: the Amorites and the Canaanite Phoenicians, most likely. . . . Two branches among these three elements advanced from the south, the Philistines and the Israelites, while the Arameans marched down from the north. As for the Arameans and the Israelites, they were Semites: at some point they were able to mingle with the Canaanite and Amorite populations in the lands through which they passed or which they subdued. The Philistines, however, could not do so, for they were not Semites but Aegeans — most likely Cretans — uncircumcised (and so they did not mingle with the Semites). Nevertheless, the long struggle between the Philistines and the Israelites did not lead — despite the Israelites' attempts — to the elimination of the Philistines, who gave the tract of land on which they settled their name; and perhaps the Israelites, after they had tested their mettle, were content to keep away from them and to merge with the Canaanites and dwell among them, once they had adopted from them their customs and their ways of life and worship.

The entry of the Philistines preceded the entry of the Hebrews and the Arameans, and perhaps the Arameans' entry into Syria took the form of a slow, chronic infiltration rather than of a genuine military invasion accomplished in a single stage. For the Aramean tribes had begun to develop on the banks of the Middle Euphrates after they had come out of their original homelands in the Arabian Peninsula, in the form of nomadic groups seeking to possess the notable lands surrounding them — the lands of the Babylonians on one side and of the Syrians on the other. Their great settlement in the land of "Ubi" (whose ancient capital was Damascus) perhaps occurred during or after the turmoil that arose because of the Palestinian revolt against Egypt in the latter days of Akhenaten, then the Hittite raid on Mitanni and the undermining of the pillars of its kingdom, and likewise at the advance of the Hebrews toward Palestine. Thus Damascus was transformed into the center of an Aramean statelet, and the Arameans soon began to absorb the Amorite and Hittite elements in the Orontes valley and northern Syria. The border between the Hebrews and the Arameans on the side of Transjordan was the Yarmuk; on the western side it lay to the north in the upper Jordan valley up to the mountains, where the district of "Asher" adjoined the Phoenician coast. There were, most likely, no clear distinctions between the Arameans and the Hebrews as to the origin or source from which they came, and it is probable that the two races mingled at the border from the very beginning, so much so that northern tribes such as "Naphtali" were able to turn from Israelite into Syrian. And we can trace, at the very heart of the Hebrew nation, a clear Aramean inclination in the story of Abraham and his household (who came from Aramean Harran — so they say — long before Damascus was Aramean), if we accept that the story indeed goes back to the age of the first migration of the ancestors of the Hebrews from northern Mesopotamia to Canaan before their entry into Egypt, and that the Aramean connections attributed to Abraham, the ancestor of the Israelites, are an echo of what ran through the mind of Josiah and his contemporaries. As for the genealogy of the sons of Nahor, it preserves an ancient heritage of the land that the Arameans inhabited before they occupied southern Syria and Damascus. It is noteworthy that the offspring of Nahor are the ancestors of the true Arameans, while his illegitimate sons by concubines are the possessors of the cities of the cultivated lands, such as Tahash (Tahsi in the Egyptian texts — seven of whose princes Amenhotep II hung by their feet from the prow of his ship in the victory procession to Thebes upon his return from it triumphant) — before it became Aramean, by a century. In fact, the recording of the name Tahash and the omission of any mention of "Damascus" and "Harran" indicate that the list was set down before the year 1300 BC, and there is no reason to suppose that in the reign of Amenhotep II "Tahash" (Tahsi) was any more Aramean than Damascus. . . In sum, we meet the Arameans, as we have said — with certainty — at Harran in the reign of Tiglath-Pileser I (around 1100 BC), and not long after that we meet the two kingdoms of Zobah and Damascus in their wars against David. Since they must have taken some period to settle and become capable of resistance, it is probable that the Arameans seized Damascus and Harran during the thirteenth century. It is probable that Damascus became Aramean after the invasion of the northerners coming from Asia Minor, who shook and undermined the authority of the Hittites, just as they destroyed the Amorites and annihilated [?] them. Perhaps the intervention of the Assyrians explains our not encountering Aramean provinces or statelets of sometimes decisive influence, for we scarcely meet with any thereafter save Damascus. Perhaps the reason for this is that it was the farthest of the centers of civilization from the arm of Assyria, and perhaps — for that very reason — it was the last of them to fall under Assyrian authority.