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CHAPTER IV
ARAMAIC BRANCH
THE ARAMAEANS
The Aramæans, a main branch of the "Third Semitic migration," are mentioned in Biblical sources and in cuneiform inscriptions. The Biblical Aram applies to an ethnical group and also to the territory occupied by this group. In the "Table of the Nations" (Gen., ch. 10), Aram, the "ancestor" of the Aramans, is described as a son of Shem, while Gen. xxii, 21, makes him a grandson of Nahor, Abraham's brother. Jacob is termed "a wandering Aramaan," his mother and his wives are also represented as Aramans.
Apart from an obscure term A-ra-am in an Accadian inscription of the second half of the third millennium B.C., the earliest cuneiform sources which mention the Aramans are the Amarna Tablets (of the fifteenth and fourteenth centuries B.C.), which refer to them as Akhlame or Akhlamu ("members of the federation" ?), who have been considered as identical with the Akhlame Armaya mentioned in sources belonging to the end of the twelfth century B.C., while in the Assyrian sources they are called Arumu or Aramu (pl. Arimi). The etymological connection with the Eremboi and Arimoi of the Homeric poems, which until about twenty years ago was held as possible, is now considered as improbable.
"Syria" and "Syrians" were the Greek terms for "Aram" and "Aramæans." In the rabbinic literature, where the term "Aramaan" is equivalent to "heathen," because the heathen neighbours of the Jews spoke Aramaic, the Jews preferred to use the Greek term "Syriac" to designate their Aramaic speech. The terms "Syria" and "Syrians" are usually explained as abbreviations of "Assyria" and "Assyrians"-Herodotus (VII, 63) regarded the term" Assyrians" as the barbarian form for the Greek spelling "Syrians"-but the recent suggestion of the German scholar Winckler to consider the term "Syria" as a derivation from Suri of the cuneiform inscriptions, the Babylonian designation for "the west," including the regions inhabited by the Aramæans, seems to be more acceptable.
On the other hand, according to Thureau-Dangin, the reading ri (in Su-ri) is mistaken for-bir (Shu-bar, Subartu). More recently, Forrer suggested a derivation from "sur, Taurus," which in his opinion seems to be denoted by an ox-head in Hittite hieroglyphic writing. Finally, Tkatsch holds that "Syria" may be a local form (not connected with the name of Assyria) of uncertain etymological origin.
The original home of the Aramæans is unknown. In the Amarna Tablets, mentioned above, they are described as invading wandering hordes. It is generally held that they moved from north-eastern Arabia into Syria on one side and into Mesopotamia on the other. When, towards the close of the thirteenth century B.C., the Hittites and the Mitanni ceased to control the land, minor Aramaan states made their appearance in north-western and south-western Mesopotamia.
The period of the ultimate settlement of the great Aramaan wave of migration which flowed into northern Syria in the twelfth and eleventh centuries B.C. witnessed a great revolution in the distribution of political power. The reign of Rameses III (1198-1167 B.c.) marks the beginning of the decline of Egyptian
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