Arameans

History

Origins

Although proving the origins of the ancient Arameans has been problematic in the past, scholars have come to a consensus that their homeland was the deserts of Syria and upper Mesopotamia. Nomadic pastoralists have long played a prominent role in the history and economy of the Middle East, but their numbers seem to vary according to climatic conditions and the force of neighbouring states inducing permanent settlement. The Late Bronze Age seems to coincide with increasing aridity, which weakened neighbouring states and induced transhumance pastoralists to spend longer and longer periods with their flocks. Urban settlements (hitherto largely inhabited by Amorite, Canaanite, Hittite, and Ugarite peoples) in the Levant diminished in size until fully-nomadic pastoralist lifestyles came to dominate much of the region. The highly mobile competitive tribesmen, with their sudden raids, continually threatened long-distance trade and interfered with the collection of taxes and tribute.

The people who had long been the prominent population in what is now Syria (called the Land of the Amurru during their tenure) were the Amorites, a Northwest Semitic-speaking people who had appeared during the 25th century BC, destroyed the hitherto dominant state of Ebla, founded the powerful state of Mari in the Levant and during the 19th century BC also Babylonia, in southern Mesopotamia. However, they seem to have been displaced or wholly absorbed by the appearance of a people called the Ahlamu by the 13th century BC and disappear from history. Ahlamû appears to be a generic term for Semitic wanderers and nomads of varying origins who appeared during the 13th century BC across the ancient Near East, the Arabian Peninsula, Asia Minor, and Egypt.

The Arameans would appear to be one part of the larger generic Ahlamû group rather than synonymous with the Ahlamu. The presence of the Ahlamû is attested during the Middle Assyrian Empire (1365–1020 BC), which already ruled many of the lands in which the Ahlamû arose in the Babylonian city of Nippur and even at Dilmun. Shalmaneser I (1274–1245 BC) is recorded as having defeated Shattuara, King of the Mitanni and his Hittite and Ahlamû mercenaries. In the next century, the Ahlamû cut the road from Babylon to Hattusas. Also, Tukulti-Ninurta I (1244–1208 BC) conquered Mari, Hanigalbat and Rapiqum on the Euphrates and "the mountain of the Ahlamû", apparently the region of Jebel Bishri in northern Syria.

Aramean states

The emergence of the Arameans occurred during the Bronze Age collapse (1200–900 BC), which saw great upheavals and mass movements of peoples across the Middle East, Asia Minor, the Caucasus, the East Mediterranean, North Africa, Ancient Iran, Ancient Greece and the Balkans and led to the genesis of new peoples and polities across those regions. The Middle Assyrian Empire (1365–1050 BC), which had dominated the Near East and Asia Minor since the first half of the 14th century BC, began to shrink rapidly after the death of Ashur-bel-kala, its last great ruler in 1056 BC. The Assyrian withdrawal allowed the Arameans and others to gain independence and take firm control of Eber-Nari in the late 11th century BC.

Some of the major Aramean-speaking city states included Aram-Damascus, Hamath, Bet-Adini, Bet-Bagyan, Bit-Hadipe, Aram-Bet Rehob, Aram-Zobah, Bet-Zamani, Bet-Halupe, and Aram-Ma'akah, as well as the Aramean tribal polities of the Gambulu, Litau and Puqudu. Akkermans and Schwartz note that in assessing Luwian and Aramean states in ancient Syria, the existing information on the ethnic composition of the regional states in ancient Syria primarily concerns the rulers and so the ethnolingustic situation of the majority of the population of the states is unclear. They, and other scholars, suggest that the material culture shows no distinctions between states dominated by the Luwians or the Arameans.

Aramean tribal groups were identified by family names that often began with the Semitic prefix Bit, meaning "house of", such as "Bit Adini". This naming convention was influenced by the writing system used by the coastal Phoenicians. Each tribe's name signified the house or ancestral lineage to which it belonged. The term "Aram" sometimes referred only to a part and other times to the whole of the Syrian region during the Iron Age. The expressions "All Aram" and "Upper and Lower Aram" in Sefire treaty inscriptions have been variously interpreted, but can suggest a degree of political and cultural unity among some of the polities in the area. In earlier Assyrian sources from the late 2nd millennium BC references are made to "the land of the Arameans", while in 1st millennium BC references, "Aram" became a topographical term. Aram extended eastward from the Anti-Lebanon Mountains to past the Euphrates.

Biblical sources tell that Saul, David and Solomon (late 11th to 10th centuries BC) fought against the small Aramean states ranged across the northern frontier of Israel: Aram-Sôvah in the Beqaa, Aram-Bêt-Rehob (Rehov) and Aram-Ma'akah around Mount Hermon, Geshur in the Hauran, and Aram-Damascus. An Aramean king's account dating at least two centuries later, the Tel Dan stele, was discovered in northern Israel and is famous for being perhaps the earliest non-Israelite extra-biblical historical reference to the Israelite royal dynasty, the House of David. In the early 11th century BC, much of Israel came under foreign rule for eight years according to the Book of Judges until Othniel defeated the forces led by Cushan-Rishathaim, who was titled in the Bible as ruler of Aram-Naharaim.

Further north, the Arameans gained possession of Neo-Hittite Hamath on the Orontes River and became strong enough to dissociate with the Indo-European-speaking Neo-Hittite states. The Arameans, together with the Edomites and the Ammonites, attacked Israel in the early 11th century BC, but were defeated.

During the 11th and the 10th centuries BC, the Arameans conquered Sam'al and renamed it Bît-Agushi. They also conquered Til Barsip, which became the chief town of Bît-Adini, also known as Beth Eden. North of Sam'al was the Aramean state of Bit Gabbari, which was sandwiched between the Luwian states of Carchemish, Gurgum, Khattina, Unqi and Tabal. One of their earliest semi-independent kingdoms in northern Mesopotamia was Bît-Bahiâni (Tell Halaf).

Under Neo-Assyrian rule

The first certain reference to the Arameans appears in an Assyrian inscription of Tiglath-Pileser I, designating them as the 'Ahlamu of the land Armaya.' Shortly afterward, the Ahlamû disappear from Assyrian annals and are replaced by the Arameans (Aramu, Arimi). That indicates that the Arameans had risen to dominance amongst the nomads. Among scholars, the relationship between the Akhlame and the Arameans is a matter of conjecture. By the late 12th century BC, the Arameans had been firmly established in Syria; however, they were conquered by the Middle Assyrian Empire.

Assyrian annals from the end of the Middle Assyrian Empire c. 1050 BC and the rise of the Neo-Assyrian Empire in 911 BC contain numerous descriptions of battles between Arameans and the Assyrian army. The Assyrians launched repeated raids into Aramean lands, Babylonia, Ancient Iran, Elam, Asia Minor, and even as far as the Mediterranean to keep its trade routes open. The Aramean city-states, like much of the Near East and Asia Minor, were subjugated by the Neo-Assyrian Empire from the reign of Adad-nirari II in 911 BC, who cleared Arameans and other tribal peoples from the borders of Assyria and began to expand in all directions. The process was continued by Ashurnasirpal II and his son Shalmaneser III, who destroyed many of the small Aramean tribes and conquered Aramean lands for the Assyrians.

In 732 BC, Aram-Damascus fell and was conquered by Assyrian King Tiglath-Pileser III. The Assyrians named their Aramean colonies Eber Nari, but still used the term "Aramean" to describe many of its peoples. The Assyrians conducted forced deportations of hundreds of thousands of Arameans to both Assyria and Babylonia, where a migrant population already existed. Conversely, the Aramaic language was adopted as the lingua franca of the Neo-Assyrian Empire in the 8th century BC, and the native Assyrians and Babylonians began to make a gradual language shift towards Aramaic as the most common language of public life and administration.

The Neo-Assyrian Empire descended into a series of brutal internal wars from 626 BC that weakened it greatly. That allowed a coalition of many its former subject peoples (Babylonians, Chaldeans, Medes, Persians, Parthians, Scythians, Sagartians and Cimmerians) to attack Assyria in 616 BC, sack Nineveh in 612 BC and finally defeat it between 605 and 599 BC. During the war against Assyria, hordes of horse-borne Scythian and Cimmerian marauders ravaged through the Levant and all the way into Egypt.

As a result of migratory processes, various Aramean groups were settled throughout the ancient Near East, and their presence is recorded in the regions of Assyria, Babylonia, Anatolia, Phoenicia, Palestine, Egypt and Northern Arabia. Population transfers, conducted during the Neo-Assyrian Empire and followed by the gradual linguistic Aramaization of non-Aramean populations, created a specific situation in the regions of Assyria proper among ancient Assyrians, who originally spoke the ancient Assyrian language, a dialect of Akkadian, but later accepted Aramaic.

Neo-Babylonian Empire

Eber-Nari was then ruled by the succeeding Neo-Babylonian Empire, which was initially headed by a short-lived Chaldean dynasty. The Aramean regions became a battleground between the Babylonians and the 26th Dynasty of Egypt, which had been installed by the Assyrians as vassals after they had defeated and ejected the previous Nubian-ruled 25th Dynasty. The Egyptians, having entered the region in a belated attempt to aid their former Assyrian masters, fought the Babylonians, initially with the help of remnants of the Assyrian army, in the region for decades before they were finally vanquished.

The Babylonians remained masters of the Aramean lands only until 539 BC, when the Persian Achaemenid Empire overthrew Nabonidus, the Assyrian-born last king of Babylon, who had himself overthrown the Chaldean dynasty in 556 BC.

Under Achaemenid and Hellenistic rule

The Arameans were later conquered by the Achaemenid Empire (539–332 BC). However, little changed from the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian times, as the Persians, seeing themselves as successors of previous empires, maintained Imperial Aramaic as the main language of public life and administration. Provincial administrative structures also remained the same, and the name Eber Nari still applied to the region.

The conquests of Alexander the Great marked the beginning of a new era in the history of the entire Near East, including the regions inhabited by Arameans. By the late 4th century BC, two newly created Hellenistic states emerged as main pretenders for regional supremacy: the Seleucid Empire (305–64 BC) and the Ptolemaic Empire (305–30 BC). Since earlier times, ancient Greeks commonly used "Syrian" labels as designations for Arameans and heir lands, but it was during the Hellenistic (Seleucid–Ptolemaic) period that the term "Syria" was finally defined to designate the regions west of the Euphrates, as opposed to the term "Assyria", which designated the regions further east.

In the 3rd century BC, various narratives related to the history of earlier Aramean states became accessible to wider audiences after the translation of the Hebrew Bible into the Greek language. Known as Septuagint, the translation was created in Alexandria, the capital of Ptolemaic Egypt that was the most important city of the Hellenistic world and was one of the main centres of Hellenization. Influenced by Greek terminology, translators decided to adopt ancient Greek custom of using "Syrian" labels as designations for Arameans and their lands and thus abandon the endonymic (native) terms that were used in the Hebrew Bible. In Septuagint, the region of Aram was commonly labelled as "Syria", and the Arameans were labelled as "Syrians". When reflecting on traditional influences of Greek terminology on English translations of the Septuagint, American orientalist Robert W. Rogers noted in 1921 that it was unfortunate that the change also affected later English versions. In Greek sources, two writers spoke particularly clearly on the Arameans. Posidonius, born in Apamea, as quoted by Strabo, writes: "Those people whom we Greeks call Syrioi, call themselves Aramaioi". Further, Josephus, who was born in Jerusalem, defines the regions of "Aram's sons" as the Tranchonitis, Damascus "midway between Palestine and Coelo-Syria", Armenia, Bactria, and the Mesene around Spasini Charax.

Early Christianity and Arab conquest

The ancient Arameans maintained close relationships with other societies in the region. Throughout much of their history, they were heavily influenced by the cuneiform culture of Mesopotamia and the surrounding areas. Bilingual texts in Aramaic and Late Assyrian are among the earliest examples of Aramaic writing. In the western regions, Aramean states had close contact with Phoenicia, the Kingdom of Israel, Kingdom of Judah, and northern Arabia. The Phoenician god Baʿalšamem was even incorporated.

Identifying distinct elements of the Aramean heritage in later periods is challenging. For example, the earliest Syriac legal documents contain legal formulae that could be considered Aramean, but they could also as Neo-Assyrian or Neo-Babylonian.

After the establishment of Roman Syria in the 1st century BC, historically Aramean lands became the frontier region between two empires, Roman and Parthian, and later between their successor states, the Byzantine and Sasanid Empires. Several minor states also existed in frontier regions, most notably the Kingdom of Osroene, centred in the city of Edessa, known in Aramaic as Urhay. However, it is not easy to trace Aramean elements in Edessan culture in either the pre-Christian or the Christian periods.

During Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, the Greek custom of using Syrian terms for Aramaic speakers and their languages gained acceptance among Aramaic-speaking literary and ecclesiastical elites. The practice of using Syrian labels as designations for Aramaic-speakers and their language was very common among ancient Greeks, and under their influence, the practice also became common among the Romans and Byzantines.

An Arabization process was initiated after the early Muslim conquests in the 7th century. In the religious sphere of life, Aramaic-speaking Christians such as the Melkites in Palestine were Islamised, which created a base for gradual acceptance of the Arabic language, not only as the dominant language of Islamic prayer and worship, but also as a common language of public and domestic life. The acceptance of Arabic became the main vessel of the gradual Arabization of Aramaic-speaking communities throughout the Near East and ultimately resulted in their fragmentation and acculturation. Those processes affected not only Islamized Aramaic speakers, but also some of those who remained Christians, creating local communities of Arabic-speaking Christians of Syriac Christian origin who spoke Arabic in their public and domestic life while continuing to belong to churches that used liturgical Syriac.

In the 10th century, the Byzantine Empire gradually reconquered much of northern Syria and upper Mesopotamia, including the cities of Melitene (934) and Antioch (969) and thus liberated local Aramaic-speaking Christian communities from the Muslim rule. Byzantines favoured Eastern Orthodoxy, but the leadership of the Antiochian Oriental Orthodox Patriarchate succeeded in reaching agreement with the Byzantine authorities and thus secured religious tolerance. The Byzantines extended their rule up to Edessa (1031), but were forced into a general retreat from Syria during the course of the 11th century and were pushed back by the newly-arrived Seljuk Turks, who took Antioch (1084). The later establishment of Crusader states (1098), the Principality of Antioch and the County of Edessa, created new challenges for local Aramaic-speaking Christians, both Oriental Orthodox and Eastern Orthodox.

Culture

The Iron Age culture of Syria is a topic of interest among scholars, but is never referred to simply as "Aramean". Scholars have difficulty in identifying and isolating characteristic Aramean elements in the culture. Even in North Syria, where more substantial evidence is available, scholars still find it difficult to identify what is genuinely Aramean from what is borrowed from other cultures. Widespread scholarly opinion still maintains that since several ethnic groups, such as Luwians and Aramaeans, interacted in the region, one material culture with "mixed" elements resulted. The material culture appears to be so homogeneous that it "shows no clear distinctions between states dominated by Luwians or Aramaeans".

Language

Arameans were mostly defined by their use of the West Semitic Old Aramaic language (1100 BC – 200 AD), which was first written using the Phoenician alphabet, but over time modified to a specifically-Aramaic alphabet. Aramaic first appeared in history during the opening centuries of the Iron Age, when several newly-emerging chiefdoms decided to use it as a written language. The process coincided with a change from syllabic cuneiform to alphabetic scribal culture and the rise of a novel style of public epigraphy, which was formerly unattested in Syria-Palestine. The language is considered a sister branch of the idiom used in the Bronze-Age city-state of Ugarit, on the one hand, and Canaanite, which comprises languages further south in the speech area such as Hebrew, Phoenician, and Moabite, on the other hand. All three branches can be subsumed under the more general rubric Northwest Semitic and thus share a common origin. The earliest direct witnesses of Aramaic, which were composed between the 10th and 8th centuries BC, are unanimously subsumed under the term "Old Aramaic". The early writings exhibit variation and anticipate the enormous linguistic diversity within the Aramaic language group. Despite the variation, they are connected by common literary forms and formulaic expressions.

The language had no linguistic similarities to the Akkadian dialect spoken in Babylonia or Assyria. As early as the 8th century BC, Aramaic competed with the East Semitic Akkadian language and script in Assyria and Babylonia and then spread throughout the Near East in various dialects. By around 800 BC, Aramaic had become the lingua franca of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, which continued during the Achaemenid period as Imperial Aramaic. Although it was marginalized by Greek during the Hellenistic period, Aramaic in its varying dialects remained unchallenged as the common language of all Semitic peoples of the region until the Arabs' Islamic conquest of Mesopotamia in the 7th century AD, when the language became gradually superseded by Arabic.

The vernacular dialects of Eastern Old Aramaic, spoken during the Neo-Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian, and Achaemenid Persian empires, developed into various Eastern Middle Aramaic dialects. Among these were the Aramaic dialects of the ancient region of Osrhoene, one of which later became the liturgical language of Syriac Christianity. In the first centuries AD, the Christian Bible was translated into Aramaic and by the 4th century, the local Aramaic dialect of Edessa (Syriac: Urhay) had evolved into a literary language known as Edessan Aramaic (Syriac: Urhaya). Since Edessan Aramaic (Urhaya) was the primary liturgical language of Aramaic Christianity, it also became known as Edessan Syriac and was later defined by Western scholars as Classical Syriac. This laid the foundation for the term Syriac Christianity. The Eastern Orthodox patriarchates were dominated by Greek episcopate and Greek linguistic and cultural traditions. The use of the Aramaic language in liturgical and literary life among Melkites of Jewish descent persisted throughout the Middle Ages until the 14th century, as exemplified in the use of a specific regional dialect known as Christian Palestinian Aramaic or Palestinian Syriac in the Palestine region, Transjordan and Sinai.

Descendant Neo-Aramaic languages of the Eastern Aramaic branch continue to serve as the spoken and written languages of the Assyrians, Mandeans and Mizrahi Jews. These languages are primarily found in Iraq, northwestern Iran, southeastern Turkey and northeastern Syria, and to a lesser extent, in migrant communities in Armenia, Georgia, Russia, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan and Azerbaijan, as well as in Assyrian diaspora communities in the West, particularly in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Sweden, Australia and Germany.

Western Neo-Aramaic, the only surviving modern variety of the Western branch, is now spoken by Muslims and Christians solely in Maaloula and Jubb'adin in the Qalamoun mountains of southwestern Syria.

During the early modern period, the study of the Aramaic language, both ancient and modern, was initiated among Western scholars. This led to the formation of Aramaic studies as a broader multidisciplinary field, encompassing the study of the cultural and historical heritage of Aramaic. The linguistic and historical aspects of Aramaic studies have been further expanded since the 19th century through archaeological excavations of ancient sites in the Near East.

Religion

What is known of the religion of the Aramean groups is derived from excavated objects and temples and by Aramaic literary sources, as well as the names they had. Their religion did not feature any particular deity that could be called an Aramean god or goddess. It appears from their inscriptions and their names that the Arameans worshipped Canaanite and Mesopotamian gods such as Hadad, Sin, Ishtar (whom they called Astarte), Shamash, Tammuz, Bel and Nergal, and Canaaite–Phoenecian deities such as the storm-god, El, the supreme deity of Canaan, in addition to Anat ('Atta) and others.

The Arameans who lived outside their homelands apparently followed the traditions of the countries in which they settled. The King of Damascus, for instance, employed Phoenician sculptors and ivory-carvers. In Tell Halaf-Guzana, the palace of Kapara, an Aramean ruler (9th century BC) was decorated with orthostates and with statues that display a mixture of Mesopotamian, Hittite and Hurrian influences.

Legacy

The legacy of ancient Arameans became of particular interest for scholars during the early modern period and resulted in the emergence of Aramaic studies as a distinctive field, dedicated to the study of the Aramaic language. By the 19th century, the Aramean question was formulated, and several scholarly theses were proposed regarding the development of the language and the history of the Arameans.

Modern identity

In modern times, an Aramean identity is held mainly by a number of Syriac Christian groups, predominantly from southeastern Turkey and parts of Syria. Aramean identity is most predominant among Syriac Christians, and as such, is most often used in the diaspora, especially in Germany and Sweden. However, other groups such as Maronites, Arab Christians, and the Arameans of Maaloula and Jubb'adin may also identify strongly under the label.

In 2014, Israel officially recognised Arameans as a distinctive minority. Questions related to the minority rights of Arameans in some other countries were also brought to international attention.