Chaldea was a small country that existed between the late 10th or early 9th and mid-6th centuries BCE, after which the country and its people were absorbed and assimilated into the indigenous population Babylonia. Semitic-speaking, it was located in the marshy land of the far southeastern corner of Mesopotamia and briefly came to rule Babylon. The Hebrew Bible uses the term כשדים (Kaśdim) and this is translated as Chaldaeans in the Greek Old Testament, although there is some dispute as to whether Kasdim in fact means Chaldean or refers to the south Mesopotamian Kaldu.
The Arameans were an ancient Semitic-speaking people in the Near East, first recorded in historical sources from the late 12th century BCE. The Aramean homeland was known as the land of Aram, encompassing central regions of modern Syria. At the beginning of the 1st millennium BCE, a number of Aramean states were established throughout the western regions of the ancient Near East. The most notable among them was the Kingdom of Aram-Damascus, that reached its height in the second half of the 9th century BCE, during the reign of king Hazael. A distinctive Aramaic alphabet was also developed and used for writing in the Old Aramaic language.
Tiglath-Pileser I was a king of Assyria during the Middle Assyrian period. According to Georges Roux, Tiglath-Pileser was "one of the two or three great Assyrian monarchs since the days of Shamshi-Adad I". He was known for his "wide-ranging military campaigns, his enthusiasm for building projects, and his interest in cuneiform tablet collections". Under him, Assyria became the leading power of the Ancient Near East, a position the kingdom largely maintained for the next five hundred years. He expanded Assyrian control into Anatolia and Syria, and to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. From his surviving inscriptions, he seems to have carefully cultivated a fear of himself in his subjects and in his enemies alike.
Aram, also known as Aramea, was a historical region including several Aramean kingdoms covering much of the present-day Syria, southeastern Turkey, and parts of Lebanon and Iraq. At its height, Aram stretched from the Mount Lebanon range eastward across the Euphrates, including parts of the Khabur River valley in northwestern Mesopotamia on the border of modern Iraq. The rise of the Aramean states throughout the Middle East even caused a language shift. The Aramaic language eventually replaced Akkadian as the lingua franca of the entire region and became the administrative and commercial language of several empires such as the Achaemenid Empire and the Neo-Babylonian Empire.
Tell Ta'yinat is a low-lying ancient tell on the east bank at the bend of the Orontes River where it flows through the Amuq valley, in the Hatay province of southeastern Turkey about 25 kilometers south east of Antakya. It lies near Tell Atchana, the site of the ancient city of Alalakh and has been proposed as the site of Kinalua, the capital city of an Iron Age Neo-Hittite kingdom.
The Kingdom of Aram-Damascus was an Aramean state around Damascus in Syria, from the late 12th century BC to 732 BC.
Samʼal, also Yaʼdiya or Zincirli Höyük, is an archaeological site located in the Anti-Taurus Mountains of modern Turkey's Gaziantep Province. It was founded at least as far back as the Early Bronze Age and thrived between 3000 and 2000 BC, and on the highest part of the upper mound was found a walled citadel of the Middle Bronze Age. New excavations revealed a monumental complex in the Middle Bronze Age II, and another complex that was destroyed in the mid to late 17th century BC, maybe by Hititte king Hattusili I. It was largely abandoned during the Hittite and Mitanni periods but flourished again in the Iron Age, initially under Luwian-speaking Neo-Hittites, and by 920 B.C. had become a kingdom. In the 9th and 8th century BC it came under control of the Neo-Assyrian Empire and by the 7th century BC had become a directly ruled Assyrian province.
The states that are called Syro-Hittite, Neo-Hittite, or Luwian-Aramean, were Luwian and Aramean regional polities of the Iron Age, situated in southeastern parts of modern Turkey and northwestern parts of modern Syria, known in ancient times as lands of Hatti and Aram. They arose following the collapse of the Hittite New Kingdom in the 12th century BCE, and lasted until they were subdued by the Assyrian Empire in the 8th century BCE. They are grouped together by scholars, on the basis of several cultural criteria, that are recognized as similar and mutually shared between both societies, northern (Luwian) and southern (Aramean). Cultural exchange between those societies is seen as a specific regional phenomena, particularly in light of significant linguistic distinctions between two main regional languages, with Luwian belonging to the Anatolian group of Indo-European languages, and Aramaic belonging to the Northwest Semitic group of Semitic languages. Several questions that are related to regional grouping of Luwian and Aramaean states are viewed differently among scholars, including some views that are critical towards such grouping in general.
The Luwians were a group of Anatolian peoples who lived in central, western, and southern Anatolia, in present-day Turkey, during the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. They spoke the Luwian language, an Indo-European language of the Anatolian sub-family, which was written in cuneiform imported from Mesopotamia, and a unique native hieroglyphic script, which was sometimes used by the linguistically-related Hittites as well.
The Neo-Assyrian Empire was an Iron Age Mesopotamian empire, in existence between 911 and 609 BC, and became the largest empire of the world up until that time. Many of the early imperial techniques perfected by the Assyrians became standard in later empires. Iron weapons were first used by Assyrians, and their troops employed advanced military tactics that were highly effective.
Sangara or Sangar was a king of Carchemish, who until recently was known only from Assyrian sources, but who in 2015 was also identified in Hieroglyphic Luwian by the Turco-Italian Archaeological Expedition at Karkemish. He is documented for 870 to 848 BC.
King Kapara was an Aramean king of Bit Bahiani, one of the Post-Hittite states, centered in Guzana. He ruled sometime in the 10th or 9th century BCE, according to some estimations ca. 950-875 BCE. He built Bit-hilani, a monumental palace in Post-Hittite style, discovered by Max von Oppenheim in 1911, with a rich decoration of statues and relief orthostats.
The ancient Near East was the home of early civilizations within a region roughly corresponding to the modern Middle East: Mesopotamia, ancient Egypt, ancient Iran, Anatolia/Asia Minor and the Armenian Highlands, the Levant, Cyprus and the Arabian Peninsula. The ancient Near East is studied in the fields of Ancient Near East studies, Near Eastern archaeology and ancient history.
The Assyrian conquest of Aram concerns the series of conquests of largely Aramean, Phoenician, Sutean and Neo-Hittite states in the Levant by the Neo-Assyrian Empire. This region was known as Eber-Nari and Aramea during the Middle Assyrian Empire and the Neo-Assyrian Empire.
Luhuti, Lukhuti or Lu'ash, was an Iron Age Syro-Hittite Aramean region during the early 1st millennium BC located in northern Syria, in an area that used to be called Nuhašše.
Bit Agusi or Bit Agushi was an ancient Aramaean Syro-Hittite state, established by Gusi of Yakhan at the beginning of the 9th century BC. It had included the cities of Arpad, Nampigi (Nampigu) and later on Aleppo. Arpad was the capital of the state-kingdom. Bit Agusi stretched from the A'zaz area in the north to Hamath in the south.
Urshu, Warsuwa or Urshum was a Hurrian-Amorite city-state in southern Turkey, probably located on the west bank of the Euphrates, and north of Carchemish.
Zakkur was the ancient king of Hamath and Luhuti in Syria. He ruled around 785 BC. Most of the information about him comes from his basalt stele, known as the Stele of Zakkur.
The timeline of the Assyrian Empire can be broken down into three eras: Old Assyrian Empire, Middle Assyrian Empire, and Neo-Assyrian Empire.
