Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/34

 22 EARLY PEOPLES AND EMPIRES Aramaeans was about to begin. Not that there was any one great Aramaean state, at least to begin with ; but the numerous small states joined each other in insurrections, and occasionally got help from Babylon — refusing tribute when opportunity offered, and submitting when resistance looked unpromising. Thus it would seem that during the greater part of the eleventh and tenth centuries, all the great powers were leaving the whole Syrian region without much interference. This no doubt facili- tated the rise of the Hebrew kingdom, and allowed the maritime . . advancement of the Phoenician cities north of Phoenicia. Canaan. The Phoenicians were one of the Canaanitic Semite groups, who gave themselves, unlike most other Semites, vigorously to the development of maritime com- merce. They never formed an empire or a powerful military state ; but they sent out a colony to Carthage, half way down the Mediterranean, and acquired a monopoly of the sea-borne carrying trade. Of the five principal cities Tyre achieved the pre-eminence, and its king Hiram figures as the friend and ally of Solomon, whose sovereignty may have been vaguely recognised far beyond the borders of the real Hebrew kingdom. The whole coast region had passed entirely out of the Assyrian dominion : and when Jeroboam divided the Hebrew kingdom, the superior power to whom tribute was paid was Sheshonk or Shishak, King of Egypt. Assyria renewed its activity under Ashurnasirpal, who died in 858, after a reign spent in campaigns chiefly on the north and east, but extended latterly to Phoenicia. Meanwhile the strong Syria and city of Damascus had become the chief, and the Assyria. outpost, of the Aramaean states in Syria. Here Ashurnasirpal did not venture an attack. His son Shalmaneser, however, a statesman as well as a soldier, made the attempt ; recognising that Damascus was really the gate of Syria and the south. He defeated the confederation of southern kings headed by Ben-hadad, but was obliged to retire. A little later, when Hazael had succeeded Ben-hadad and Jehu had supplanted Ahab in Israel, he tried again, but failed in his siege of Damascus. After this, in spite of later Assyrian attacks,