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Updated: June 11, 2025
Phoenicia did not await his arrival to do him homage: the kings of Tyre, Sidon, Gebal, and Arvad, 'which is in the midst of the sea, sent him presents. The Assyrians employed their time in cutting down cedar trees in Lebanon and Amanus, together with pines and cypresses, which they transported to Nineveh to be used in the construction of a temple to Ishtar."
So soon as the land-level of northern Syria attains a mean altitude of 2500 feet, the Arab tongue is chilled to silence. We shall never find Assyrian armies, therefore, going far or staying long beyond Taurus. But we shall find them going constantly, and as a matter of course, into Cilicia, notwithstanding the high mountain wall of Amanus which divides it from Syria.
She held Southern Armenia, from Lake Van to the sources of the Tigris; she possessed all Upper Syria, including Commagene and Amanus she had tributaries even on the further side of that mountain range; she bore sway over the whole Syrian coast from Issus to Gaza; her authority was acknowledged, probably, by all the tribes and kingdoms between the coast and the desert, certainly by the Phoenicians, the Hamathites, the Patena, the Hittites, the Syrians of Damascus, the people of Israel, and the Idumaeans, or people of Edom.
Some of these traversed the Cilician passes, crossed the Amanus and Taurus into the plateau of Asia Minor, and ended at the coasts of the Ægæan and the Euxine; others passed through Assyria into Media, and through the Caspian passes up to the central plateau of Asia and into distant Bactria, whence easy passes led down into the upper valley of the Indus.
In the interval the governors of Cilicia had to fight constantly with the mountain-tribes of the Amanus and those of Syria with the hordes of the desert, and in the latter war against the Bedouins especially many Roman troops were destroyed; but these movements had no farther significance. More remarkable was the obstinate resistance, which the tough Jewish nation opposed to the conquerors.
From the same motive he dwells on the table of the descendants of Noah, identifying the various families mentioned in the Bible with peoples known to the Greek world. The sons of Noah inhabited first the mountains Taurus and Amanus, and proceeded along Asia to the river Tanais, and along Europe to Cadiz, giving their names to nations in the lands they inhabited.
Having already crossed the Amanus mountains seven times, he was in Tarsus in his twenty-sixth summer; Damascus was attacked again and again in the middle of his reign; and even Jehu of Samaria paid his blackmail in the year 842. Assyria in the ninth century must have seemed by far the strongest as well as the most oppressive power that the East had known.
Pompey having now by his forces under the command of Afranius, subdued the Arabians about the mountain Amanus, himself entered Syria, and finding it destitute of any natural and lawful prince, reduced it into the form of a province, as a possession of the people of Rome. He conquered also Judaea, and took its king, Aristobulus, captive.
A certain Assurirba seems to have crossed Northern Syria, and, following in the footsteps of his great ancestor, to have penetrated as far as the Mediterranean; on the rocks of Mount Amanus, facing the sea, he left a triumphal inscription in which he set forth the mighty deeds he had accomplished. His good fortune soon forsook him.
Between the two parallel ranges lies the "Hollow Syria," a long and broadish valley, watered by the two streams of the Orontes and the "Litany" which, rising at no great distance from one another, flow in opposite directions, one hurrying northwards nearly to the flanks of Amanus, the other southwards to the hills of Galilee.
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