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Rh down to Alexander's conquest in 333 B.C. None of the external invaders had made much of an ethnic impression on the Semitic population, but a new wave of Semitic invaders from Arabia—the Aramaeans and Israelites—had permanently affected the ethnic and cultural patterns of Syria.

The Aramaeans were originally Arabian nomads who had moved northward and settled along the middle Euphrates before 1500 B.C. There they developed a distinct nationality and language, and gradually spread eastward into Mesopotamia and westward throughout Syria. When the Hittites destroyed Mitanni about 1450 B.C. the Aramaeans filled the vacuum, concentrating around Harran in north-eastern Syria and near Carchemish on the Euphrates. They also found their way to Babylonia, with their close kinsmen and fellow-migrants the Chaldaeans. During the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries the Aramaeans multiplied and absorbed the remaining Amorites, Hurrians and Hittites of the Orontes valley. Mount Lebanon blocked this westward movement, and Hittite and Amorite communities continued to flourish there, while on the maritime plain the Canaanite settlements remained untouched. Damascus was peopled by Aramaeans before 1200 B.C. Gradually the newcomers assimilated the culture of the Amorites and Canaanites among whom they settled, but they retained their own language. Similarly in northern Syria they adopted Hittite and Assyrian cultural traits instead of originating a distinctive Aramaean culture.

By 1200 B.C. the Aramaean movement had been concluded, and they were settled in their new homes. The principal Aramaean states were one in north-eastern Syria which endured until wiped out by the Assyrians in the ninth century, a smaller version of this with its centre at Harran, and a south-western kingdom, with its capital first on the Litani and then at Damascus. This state expanded north and east until it encroached on Assyrian territory, and Rh