Aram Damascus
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Aram Damascus was an Aramean state centered around Damascus in Syria, from the late 12th century BCE to 734 BCE.
Sources for this state come from texts that can be divided into three categories: Assyrian annals, Aramean texts, and the Hebrew Bible.
The greatest portion of the textual sources come from Assyria. There are, however, often several copies of the same texts so the material of the texts is rather limited. Most of the texts are annals from the Assyrian kings Shalmaneser III, Adad-Nirari III, and Tiglath-Pileser III. The texts mention Aram-Damascus from an Assyrian perspective, but are in many ways informative of the strength of the state, and give us several names of its rulers.
Aramean royal inscriptions are rare, and only one royal stele from Aram-Damascus proper has been identified, the stele from Tel Dan. Among other sources in Aramaic that shed light on the history of Aram-Damascus are two “booty inscriptions” from Eritrea and Samos, and the Zakkur stele.
The Hebrew Bible gives more detailed accounts of Aram-Damascus' history, mainly in its interaction with Israel. The accounts, in their present form, are much more readable than the Aramaic and Assyrian ones. However, the texts in Hebrew Bible are much later and even more ideologically colored then the other texts. Through penetrating the texts’ ideological purposes, it is, however, possible to glimpse at some relatively reliable historical information about Aram-Damascus.
The sources for the early history of Aram-Damascus are almost non-existent. In an annal dating to Tiglath-Pileser I we learn that Aramean people have begun settling in the southern half of Syria. The texts of the Hebrew Bible mentioning David's battles against Arameans are not very reliable, although we can assume that there were Arameans in southern Syria in the 10th century BCE.
The first reliable data can be found in the 9th century BCE when Aramean, Assyrian, and Hebrew texts all mention a state with its capital in Damascus. The state seems to have reached its peak in the late 9th century BCE under Hazael, who, according to Assyrian texts fought against the Assyrians, and according to Aramean texts had some influence over the north Syrian state Unqi, and according to Hebrew texts conquered all of Israel.
Archaeological evidence of Aram-Damascus is close to nothing. Excavations in Damascus are hard to perform due to the continuous settlement of the city. Other cities of Aram-Damascus have not been positively identified from textual sources, and excavations of Iron Age sites around Damascus are almost non-existent. The material culture at sites farther south (e.g. Tell-Ashtara, Tell er-Rumeith, et-Tell, Tel-Dan, Tell el-Oreme, to name but a few) do not show many features distinguishing from the material culture from northern Israel.
