* The Yarmuk does not occur in the Bible, but we meet with
its name in the Talmud, and the Greeks adopted it under the
form Hieromax.
** Gen. xxxii. 22; Numb, xxi. 24. The name has been
Grecized under the forms lôbacchos, labacchos, Iambykes. It
is the present Nahr Zerqa.
*** Numb. xxi. 13-26; Beut. ii. 24; the present Wady
Môjib. [Shephelah = “low country,” plain (Josh. xi. 16).
With the article it means the plain along the Mediterranean
from Joppa to Gaza.—Te.]
The whole of this district forms a little world in itself, whose inhabitants, half shepherds, half bandits, live a life of isolation, with no ambition to take part in general history. West of the Jordan, a confused mass of hills rises into sight, their sparsely covered slopes affording an impoverished soil for the cultivation of corn, vines, and olives. One ridge—Mount Carmel—detached from the principal chain near the southern end of the Lake of Genesareth, runs obliquely to the north-west, and finally projects into the sea. North of this range extends Galilee, abounding in refreshing streams and fertile fields; while to the south, the country falls naturally into three parallel zones—the littoral, composed alternately of dunes and marshes—an expanse of plain, a “Shephelah,” dotted about with woods and watered by intermittent rivers,—and finally the mountains. The region of dunes is not necessarily barren, and the towns situated in it—Gaza, Jaffa, Ashdod, and Ascalon—are surrounded by flourishing orchards and gardens. The plain yields plentiful harvests every year, the ground needing no manure and very little labour. The higher ground and the hill-tops are sometimes covered with verdure, but as they advance southwards, they become denuded and burnt by the sun. The valleys, too, are watered only by springs, which are dried up for the most part during the summer, and the soil, parched by the continuous heat, can scarcely be distinguished from the desert. In fact, till the Sinaitic Peninsula and the frontiers of Egypt are reached, the eye merely encounters desolate and almost uninhabited solitudes, devastated by winter torrents, and overshadowed by the volcanic summits of Mount Seir. The spring rains, however, cause an early crop of vegetation to spring up, which for a few weeks furnishes the flocks of the nomad tribes with food.
We may summarise the physical characteristics of Syria by saying that Nature has divided the country into five or six regions of unequal area, isolated by rivers and mountains, each one of which, however, is admirably suited to become the seat of a separate independent state. In the north, we have the country of the two rivers—the Naharaim—extending from the Orontes to the Euphrates and the Balikh, or even as far as the Khabur:* in the centre, between the two ranges of the Lebanon, lie Coele-Syria and its two unequal neighbours, Aram of Damascus and Phoenicia; while to the south is the varied collection of provinces bordering the valley of the Jordan.
* The Naharaim of the Egyptians was first identified with
Mesopotamia; it was located between the Orontes and the
Balikh or the Euphrates by Maspero. This opinion is now
adopted by the majority of Egyptologists, with slight
differences in detail. Ed. Meyer has accurately compared the
Egyptian Naharaim with the Parapotamia of the administration
of the Seleucidæ.
It is impossible at the present day to assert, with any approach to accuracy, what peoples inhabited these different regions towards the fourth millennium before our era. Wherever excavations are made, relics are brought to light of a very ancient semi-civilization, in which we find stone weapons and implements, besides pottery, often elegant in contour, but for the most part coarse in texture and execution. These remains, however, are not accompanied by any monument of definite characteristics, and they yield no information with regard to the origin or affinities of the tribes who fashioned them.* The study of the geographical nomenclature in use about the XVIth century B.C. reveals the existence, at all events at that period, of several peoples and several languages. The mountains, rivers, towns, and fortresses in Palestine and Coele-Syria are designated by words of Semitic origin: it is easy to detect, even in the hieroglyphic disguise which they bear on the Egyptian geographical lists, names familiar to us in Hebrew or Assyrian.
* Researches with regard to the primitive inhabitants of
Syria and their remains have not as yet been prosecuted to
any extent. The caves noticed by Hedenborg at Ant-Elias,
near Tripoli, and by Botta at Nahr el-Kelb, and at Adlun by
the Duc de Luynes, have been successively explored by
Lartet, Tristram, Lortet, and Dawson. The grottoes of
Palestine proper, at Bethzur, at Gilgal near Jericho, and at
Tibneh, have been the subject of keen controversy ever since
their discovery. The Abbé Richard desired to identify the
flints of Gilgal and Tibneh with the stone knives used by
Joshua for the circumcision of the Israelites after the
passage of the Jordan (Josh. v- 2-9), some of which might
have been buried in that hero’s tomb.
But once across the Orontes, other forms present themselves which reveal no affinities to these languages, but are apparently connected with one or other of the dialects of Asia Minor.* The tenacity with which the place-names, once given, cling to the soil, leads us to believe that a certain number at least of those we know in Syria were in use there long before they were noted down by the Egyptians, and that they must have been heirlooms from very early peoples. As they take a Semitic or non-Semitic form according to their geographical position, we may conclude that the centre and south were colonized by Semites, and the north by the immigrant tribes from beyond the Taurus. Facts are not wanting to support this conclusion, and they prove that it is not so entirely arbitrary as we might be inclined to believe. The Asiatic visitors who, under a king of the XIIth dynasty, came to offer gifts to Khnûmhotpû, the Lord of Beni-Hasan, are completely Semitic in type, and closely resemble the Bedouins of the present day. Their chief—Abisha—bears a Semitic name,** as too does the Sheikh Ammianshi, with whom Sinûhit took refuge.***
* The non-Semitic origin of the names of a number of towns
in Northern Syria preserved in the Egyptian lists, is
admitted by the majority of scholars who have studied the
question.
** His name has been shown to be cognate with the Hebrew
Abishai (1 Sam. xxvi. 6-9; 2 Sam. ii. 18, 24; xxi. 17) and
with the Chaldæo-Assyrian Abeshukh.
*** The name Ammianshi at once recalls those of Ammisatana,
Ammiza-dugga, and perhaps Ammurabi, or Khammurabi, of one of
the Babylonian dynasties; it contains, with the element
Ammi, a final anshi. Chabas connects it with two Hebrew
words Am-nesh, which he does not translate.
Ammianshi himself reigned over the province of Kadimâ, a word which in Semitic denotes the East. Finally, the only one of their gods known to us, Hadad, was a Semite deity, who presided over the atmosphere, and whom we find later on ruling over the destinies of Damascus. Peoples of Semitic speech and religion must, indeed, have already occupied the greater part of that region on the shores of the Mediterranean which we find still in their possession many centuries later, at the time of the Egyptian conquest.