The Hittites developed the manufacture of iron artefacts during the fourteenth century BC, but because iron was so rare the Hittite weapons were made of bronze. The conquest of Cyprus and its copper mines by the Sea People therefore proved disastrous for the economic and military viability of a Hittite Empire exhausted by centuries of unrelenting struggle for dominance of the Fertile Crescent. After the collapse of the Hittite Empire the Sea People turned southwards along the Mediterranean coast destroying city-states, such as Alalakh and Ugarit, on their way to Egypt. Egypt was able to hold its borders but could not force the Sea People to move from its northern frontier. An accommodation was reached and the Philistines settled in the southern coastal region of Palestine as a buffer state between Egypt and West Asia.
The Philistines attempted to expand their control to all the coastal plain of Palestine. This brought them into contact with the Israelites who were in the process of establishing their own state in the area. At the same time other elements of the Sea People settled farther north along the coast and assimilated with the Phoenicians.
Aramaeans (c.1200-c.700 BC)
The original speakers of Aramaic were nomads who began to settle on the fringes of the Syrian Desert during the third quarter of the second millennium BC. They then took advantage of the collapse of the Hittite and Egyptian empires, followed by dynastic struggles within the Assyrian Empire, to push westward into Syria and eastward into the valleys of the Euphrates and its tributaries.
The first mention of the Aramaeans is by Tiglath-pileser-I (r.c.1115-c.1076 BC). In his fourth year he launched a simultaneous attack on Aramaean settlements in different parts of the Euphrates Valley. In a later undated inscription he claims to have crossed the Euphrates for the twenty-eighth time to attack the Aramaeans. Ashur-bel-kala (r.c.1074-c.1056 BC) appears to have held the Aramaeans at the middle Euphrates but by the time of Ashur-rabi II (r.c.1013-c.972 BC) they had crossed the Euphrates and established autonomous kingdoms that began to encroach on the Assyrian heartland. By the reign of Tiglath-pileser II (r.c.967-c.935 BC) the Aramaeans reached Nisibis, and within a few decades they had settled throughout the Jazira and controlled a zone that stretched from the Mediterranean to the Zagros.
The recovery began under Ashur-dan II (r.c.935-c.912 BC), who mentions campaigns against the Aramaeans in the west and southeast of Assyria. His son Adad-nirari II (r.911-891 BC) drove the Aramaeans out of the Tigris Valley and seized control of the Khabur region. His son, Tukulti-Ninurta II (r.891-884 BC) consolidated these successes; but his grandson, Ashurnasirpal II (r.884-859 BC), launched campaigns of calculated brutality. He forced tribute on the Aramaean kingdoms of the Jazira and reached the Mediterranean.
Shalmaneser III (r.859-824 BC) defeated a coalition of Neo-Hittite and Aramaean states. In his sixth year he was held by a coalition at Qarqar. This coalition eventually broke up and Shalmaneser was able to triumph over them, receiving tribute from its members. His reign ended with Assyria plunged into civil war. This disorder must have relieved Assyrian pressure on the states west of the Euphrates.
After a lull during the reign of Shamshi-Adad V (r.824-811 BC), Assyrian campaigns against Syria were resumed by Adad-nirari III (r.811-783 BC). Having laid siege to Damascus he received tribute from Ben-Hadad III (r.c796-c.792 BC), and after rescuing Samaria besieged by the Aramaeans he took tribute from Jehoash (r.c.798-c.782 BC), king of Israel. When Adad-nirari died his three sons ruled successively. During their rule the kingdom of Urartu annexed Kummuh and became the overlord of the Aramaean and Neo-Hittite states of southwest Anatolia and northern Syria.
In 743 BC Tiglath-pileser III (r.745-727 BC) defeated a coalition led by the Urartian king Sarduri II (r.753-735 BC), and moved on to Arpad. His capture of Arpad after a three-year siege led to the surrender of most of the other states in northern and central Syria, including Hamath. In 733 BC he put down an insurgency led by Rezin of Damascus (r.740-732 BC) and supported by Tyre, Samaria and some Arabs. Damascus fell in 732 BC. Almost nothing is known of the reign of Shalmaneser V (r.727-722 BC). In 720 BC Sargon II (r.722-705 BC) annexed Hamath. In 612 BC the Babylonians captured Nineveh and took over Assyria’s possessions in the west.
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