ARAMEANS. - A people who dwelt in Aram. In an el-Amarna letter (14th century B.C.) the term *aḥlamē* occurs, which was understood as designating the A. But since in the prism of Tiglath-pileser I (1000 B.C.) and in the stela of Ashurnasirpal II (11th century B.C.) *aḥlamē* recurs with the qualification *armāja* ("Arameans"), *aḥlamē* cannot mean A., but perhaps signifies "allies, confederates." Others have identified the A. with the Eremboi and Arimoi of Homer, but this identification is not proven.
In the 11th century B.C., Assyrian documents, narratives of military exploits, provide information about the A. and some of their states. They present them as residing in three main directions: one centered at the mouth of the Ḥābūr River into the Euphrates, one looking toward the territories of Babylonia, and one moving in northern Mesopotamia and northern Syria. While the tribes that turned toward Babylonia entered peacefully, adapted to the life of the population, and often allowed themselves to be absorbed—though not without clashes with the Babylonians, who sought to maintain order among the turbulent or unruly newcomers—the A. of the other two centers had to endure hard and prolonged struggles against the Assyrians. Here are the main ones.
Toward the end of the 12th century B.C., the A. on the right bank of the Euphrates crossed the river at the confluence of the Ḥābūr and at other points further south, infiltrating Assyrian territory. Tiglath-pileser I marched against them in 1112 B.C. and drove them back across the river, where he occupied six of their centers located at the foot of the Bišri mountains; but he achieved nothing definitive, indeed he had to march against them 27 more times, succeeding in defeating them along the Euphrates, from the great bend where the river enters the plain down to the borders of Babylonia. Around the beginning of the 10th century B.C., however, the Aramaic tribes occupied the entire valley of the Tāliḥ and also that of the Ḥābūr. In this territory between the middle Tigris and the Euphrates, various principalities arose, named after the chiefs of the various tribes. The most important of these, Bit-Bahiani, called by the ancient Mitannian name Hanigalbat, on the middle and upper course of the Tigris, exercised a kind of overlordship over the others.
The Aramaic tribes of the west occupied a large part of the territory of Karkemish (Jerablus), from the Sagura River south of the city to the border of the territory of Ḥamāt, thus a large part of northern Syria. Their kingdom is called Bit-Adini in Assyrian documents, with its capital at Til-Barsip; among the Greeks it is known as Syria. From there, in the 10th century B.C., they began to expand their territory, annexing to the west Sam'al (Zincirli), to the east the territories on the left bank of the Euphrates as far as the Balih tributary, and to the north as far as Kummuḫ. Other small Aramaean states, also mentioned in the Bible, arose in the Anti-Lebanon; the most important of these was Damascus.
Unlike their kindred peoples, the Assyrians or Babylonians, the A. failed to found a great unified state or to organize it solidly; rather, they created a multitude of states, now moderately extensive, now tiny. The latter were not unitary states but rather like a constellation in which various satellites moved around a principal nucleus that served as the pivot and gave its name to the state. The individual satellites enjoyed a certain independence, which allowed them to conclude treaties with the components of the state and with the principal nucleus on equal terms. Such a constitution was a cause of weakness in the face of powerful neighbors, who found it easy to attempt to dismember their structure. Moreover, in the various Aramaean states the A. were far from constituting the majority of the population; thus, for example, among the provinces into which Syria was divided after the Assyrian conquest, only Mansuate, Soba, and Damascus were predominantly Aramaean.
The Assyrian conquest was fatal to the A. Adad-nirari II attacked the kingdom of Hanigalbat in 900 B.C., defeating one prince after another; his work was continued by Ashurnasirpal II and Shalmaneser III, so that by 799 B.C. the last of the Mesopotamian petty states had ceased to exist. Then it was the turn of the Syrian states from Thapsacus southward. These, without outside help and hemmed in by the Assyrians, who aspired to reach the Mediterranean, were subdued. The strongest fortresses were Hamat and Damascus; but they fell after struggles that lasted about a century and were waged with varying fortunes by Shalmaneser III and Adad-nirari III, until Tiglath-pileser III, after various clashes with Rezin of Damascus, conquered this last bastion of the A. in 732 B.C.
The progressive penetration of Assyrian territory into Syria can be seen from the provinces that the Assyrians established there: in 740 B.C., Arpad and Unqi; in 738 B.C., Kullani (Calah), Hatarikka, Hamat; in 732 B.C., Mansuate, Supite (Soba), Damascus, Qarnini, Haurina.
On the relations and clashes between A. and Israelites, V. SIRIA.