Page 193 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

CHAPTER II
ARAMAEANS AND PHOENICIANS
IN SYRIA

North Syrian Art (850-650 b.c.)

Introduction

The twelfth century brought disaster to the Levant. Barbarian peoples swarmed into
Greece and Asia Minor. The Hittite empire was overrun, its cities pillaged and burned.
The populations so affected went in search of new lands and swelled the masses already
in process of migration. A horde containing the most divergent elements gathered round
Carchemish, and from there advanced on Egypt, the warriors on foot, their women,
children, and possessions loaded on ox-carts. Others went along die coast in ships.
Ramses III gathered all his forces and succeeded in beating back the migrating masses m
a battle in which both his fleet and his army were engaged. The movement of recoil
brought the Philistines, Etruscans, and Sardinians to the countries named after them,
while the Phrygians occupied central Anatolia and the Dorians Greece. Ramses III also
mentions the Danunians among the ‘Peoples of the Sea* whom he defeated; they are
now known to have lived round Adana in south-western Anatolia during the nindi to
seventh centuries b.c. They are probably related to Homer’s Danaoi,1 but the nature of
that relationship cannot, as yet, be properly understood.
Direct evidence regarding the migration is confined to the account of Ramses, and
this is natural enough, since all other powers in its path were overrun and destroyed.
Consequently the actual events in Syria and Anatolia remain obscure. Excavators ob­
serve traces of fire and destruction on all the sites mentioned in the two preceding chap­
ters, but the centuries from 1200 to 900 b.c. are truly a dark age, not only in Greece but
also in the Levant. Sparse rays of light are shed by the Assyrian inscriptions; for instance,
Tiglathpilesar I reached and mentioned Malatya just before 1100 b.c.
The Assyrian texts reveal also that Bedouins from the desert - as always in times of
disorder - penetrated into the settled lands of Syria. They were, on this occasion, the
Aramaeans, speaking a language which was closely akin to Hebrew and Phoenician and
destined to become the medium used for trade and other intercourse throughout the
Persian empire. But this tongue was not put into writing before 800 b.c., though the
people who spoke it began to settle in Syria and southern Mesopotamia soon after 1000
B c and acquired actual power in several of the Syrian principalities, as the names o
their rulers show. Successive kings of Assyria barred their entry into no^mMeso-
;a The Aramaeans, like the Amorites before them, accepted the established o
^°r. Jigenous culture wherever they went, and the Assyrians included them among ie
° m h > wh0> they said, inhabited north Syria.
‘Hittites
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