During years of Babylonian dominance, Syria fell to the share of Babylonian kings. "The land of the setting sun," as they called it, was named with their possessions.
When Thutmose III. led his armies into Asia to avenge the insult done Egyptian honor when the Hyksos kings ruled the valley of the Nile, he established a certain supremacy over Syria which lasted for perhaps two centuries. He established several royal cities, or "halting places"—so called because his majesty tarried in them and directed the construction of fortifications. Tribute was exacted and was paid with some regularity until the time of Amenhotep IV. He was too occupied with religious reformation and the exaltation of the Solar Disk faith to give attention to his foreign possessions. The Tell-el-Amarna letters in many instances portray the condition of Syria when Egypt's name was no longer a protection and incoming tribes were plundering right and left.[2]
The spirit of unrest was again abroad among the nations and the Hittites now invaded Western Asia. Who they were and from whence they came has never been satisfactorily settled. Certain it is they were not Semitic. They belonged to the great white race, but their history is still to be written. Part of the natives sided with them; part remained loyal to Egypt, and the rest attempted to establish their own independence. Commerce was interrupted, caravans were plundered, and civil strife was general throughout the land. In a brief time the Hittites made themselves supreme in Syria, which became known as the Land of the Hittites.
About 1200 B.C. a fresh invasion brought several new tribes, among others, the Philistines. They again were probably not Semitics but of the Aryan race. The Hittite nation was now broken up into several small states, none of which became as powerful as the original nation. With the weakening of Hittite strength, opportunity arose for petty states to develop. The great powers left the country in peace for three or four hundred years, and Syrian states prospered and grew strong.
The era of the Judges in Israel fell into this period, and between the Hebrews and certain Syrian tribes there was intermittent war.
With the reign of Tiglath-Pileser I. Assyria launched forth on her career of conquest. In a westward march made by this conqueror, northern Syria yielded to Assyrian arms and offered tribute. Damascus alone was left undisturbed, for opposition was sure to be strong on the part of this ancient city. With some intervening years during which tribute could not be collected and when allegiance to Nineveh was denied, Assyrian influence dominated Syria, and frequently vigorous rule was enforced. When Assyria fell, the New Babylonian empire kept guard over the west. With the end of Babylonian rule, and the ascendency of Persia, Semitic dominance came to an end. Under Persia, and later under Greece, new states came into existence and Aryan rule began.
In the ages with which we are at present concerned, however, Syria remained to the portion of Semitic tribes. We have found Arabia the original home of this race. Providing at best but a scanty living for her children, when tribes multiplied rapidly Arabia seems to have cast out a portion of her inhabitants to make room for the rest. Chaldea—later Babylonia—was peopled by such an outpouring, while at the same time tribes spread into Syria and settled spots which promised adequate food and pasturage. Later comers were compelled to journey past these occupied lands and seek lands farther west, or to overcome the natives and supplant them. Some one has aptly said that different tribes fitted themselves into the "shelves and corners of Syria," and that is just what they did. It would have been as impossible for Syria, with its irregular surfaces, to have produced one united nation as for Greece or Switzerland to have contained a people whose national concerns outweighed their local interests. Highland and lowland, plateau and plain, mountain range and valley—these at length were occupied by little clans or more numerous tribes, while the more exposed regions were open to the nomads who came like birds for a season, or tarried a few brief years and penetrated farther west, or who perhaps merely loitered on their way to Egypt—the land of water and abundant grain.
"Syria is the northern and most fertile end of the great Semitic home—the peninsula of Arabia. But the Semitic home is distinguished by its central position in geography—between Asia and Africa, and between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean, which is Europe; and the role in history of the Semitic race has been also intermediary. The Semitics have been the great middlemen of the world. Not second-rate in war, they have risen to the first rank in commerce and religion. They have been the carriers between East and West, they have stood between the great ancient civilizations and those which go to make up the modern world; while by a higher gift, for which their conditions neither in place nor in time fully account, they have been mediary between God and man, and proved the religious teachers of the world, through whom have come its three highest faiths, its only universal religions. Syria's history is her share in this great function of intermedium, which has endured from the earliest times to the present day."[3]
"The head of Syria is Damascus," wrote Isaiah two thousand years ago. So it has since continued to be, with short periods of change. The venerable city, made possible and beautiful by the waters of the Abana, has survived many sacks and slaughters. It is sometimes called the oldest city in the world, meaning of course, the one of greatest age yet standing. Still it has few relics of antiquity. Old material has constantly been utilized in the construction of new buildings and monuments. Its position has often been commented upon. "It is an astonishing site for what is said to be the oldest, and is certainly the most enduring, city of the world. For it is utterly incapable of defence; it is remote from the sea and the great natural lines of commerce. From the coast of Syria it is double barred by those ranges of snow-capped mountains whose populations enjoy more tempting prospects to the north and west. But look east and you understand Damascus.
"You would as soon think of questioning the site of New York or of San Francisco. Damascus is a great harbour of refuge upon the earliest sea man ever learned to navigate. It is because there is nothing but desert beyond, or immediately behind this site; because this river, the Abana, instead of wasting her waters on a slight extension of the fringe of fertile Syria, saves them in her narrow gorge till she can fling them well out upon the desert, and there, instead of slowly expending them on the doubtful possibilities of a province, lavishes all her life at once in the creation of a single great city, and straightway dies in face of the desert—it is because of all this that Damascus, so remote and so defenceless, has endured throughout human history, and must endure. Nineveh, Babylon and Memphis easily conquered her—she probably preceded them, and she has outlived them. She has been twice supplanted—by Antioch, and she has seen Antioch decay, by Baghdad, and Baghdad is forgotten. She has been many times sacked, and twice at least the effective classes of her population have been swept into captivity, but this has not broken the chain of her history. She was once capital of the world from the Atlantic to the Bay of Bengal, but the vast empire went from her and the city continued to flourish as before. Standing on the utmost edge of fertility, on the shore of the much-voyaged desert, Damascus is indispensable alike to civilization and to the nomads. Moreover, she is the city of the Mediterranean world which lies nearest to the far East, and Islam has made her the western port of Mecca."[4]