Syrian people

Egypt’s links with Phoenicia and Syria are strengthened during the brief period of Hyksos rule by the presence of Hyksos aristocracies throughout the region.

Ugarit, like Byblos, is apparently under the control of new tribes related to the Hyksos, who mutilate the earlier Egyptian monuments.

The city's main deities during the eighteenth and seventeenth centuries, typically Canaanite, are El, his wife Asherah of the Sea, and Baal.

The so-called Old Hittite Kingdom maintains internal strength and military security for the first century and a half of its existence, achieving the enduring political unification of Anatolia.

Whereas the earlier Hittite kings had based their court at Neša, Labarna II is the first king of the Hittites to reign from Hattusa, the modern Bogazkale, where he builds a hilltop citadel and takes the throne name of Hattusilis.

Under his rule, the Hittites have penetrated south to the plains of northern Syria near Antioch and southwest in Anatolia through Cilicia, incurring the enmity of the Syrians of Aleppo and the Hurrians also: his “Annals” tell of the king’s penetrations into that region and eastward across the Euphates River to Mesopotamia Cilicia, having come under Hurrian control about 1660, had, with help from Aleppo, been reacquired about 1556 in a battle that proves fatal to Hattusilis.

His military capital, Hattusa, remains the principal Hittite administrative center.

His adopted son and heir ascends the Hittite throne as Mursilis I, and soon launching a series of forays down the Euphrates Valley.

The Hittite conquest of Yamhad, an Amorite kingdom centered at Hala (Aleppo) in northern Syria, the weak middle Assyrian kings, and the internal strivings of the Hittites had created a power vacuum in upper Mesopotamia, where a substantial Hurrian population had also settled, their culture influencing the area.

It is believed that the warring Hurrian tribes and city states had become united under one dynasty after the collapse of Babylon due to the Hittite sack by Mursili I and the Kassite invasion.

This leads to the formation of the kingdom of Mitanni, or Hanigalbat, around 1500 by a legendary king called Kirta.

Berytus, present-day Beirut, originally named Bêrut, "The Wells" by the Phoenicians, located on a promontory extending seaward from the Lebanon Mountains, about midway along the country's Mediterranean coastline, is settled by the fifteenth century BCE.

Several Canaanite and Syrian cities—including Berytus, Byblos, Ugarit, Arvad, Sidon, and Tyre—achieve preeminence as seaports, vigorously trading in purple dyes and dyestuffs, glass, cedar wood, wine, weapons, and metal and ivory artifacts.

The costly, strong dye later known as Tyrian purple, a dye produced from certain varieties of crushed sea snails, associated in the fourteenth century with the Phoenician cities of Sidon and Tyre, had been produced elsewhere, in the opinion of some scholars, as early as 1500.

There is little to set the Phoenicians apart as markedly different from other cultures of Canaan.

As Canaanites, they are unique in their remarkable seafaring achievements.

In the Amarna tablets of the fourteenth century BCE, they call themselves Kenaani or Kinaani (Canaanites), although these letters predate the invasion of the Sea Peoples by over a century.

Egyptian seafaring expeditions had already been made to Byblos to bring back "cedars of Lebanon" as early as the third millennium BCE.

Herodotus's account (written in about 440 BCE) refers to the Io and Europa myths. (History, I:1).

“According to the Persians best informed in history, the Phoenicians began the quarrel.

These people, who had formerly dwelt on the shores of the Erythraean Sea [modern Yemen] having migrated to the Mediterranean and settled in the parts which they now inhabit, began at once, they say, to adventure on long voyages, freighting their vessels with the wares of Egypt and Assyria…”

The territory of Mitanni, or Hanigalbat, extends from the region of Kirkuk in the east westward through Syria to the Mediterranean Sea by the early fifteenth century BCE.

The erection of the Mittani kingdom prompts Egypt to wage war.

A successful military campaign regains control of Palestine and enters northern Syria.

Egyptian forces reach as far as the east bank of the Euphrates to temporarily defeat Mitanni, but fail to wrest domination of Syria from the rival power.

The Hurrians, who have established several commercial centers in northwestern Mesopotamia, have expanded westward and southward to dominate eastern Anatolia and northern Syria.

Yet, the Hurrian heartland during this period is northern Mesopotamia, the country known at this time as Hurri, where the political units are dominated by dynasts of Indo-Iranian origin.

The Hittite conquest of Aleppo (Yamhad), the weakened Assyrian kings, and the internal strife among the Hittites had created a power vacuum in upper Mesopotamia.

This had led to the formation of the kingdom of Mitanni, thought to have been a feudal state led by a ruling Indo-Iranian noble class.

This group, called maryannu, had moved rapidly into Northern Mesopotamia with the aid of the chariot and united the warring Hurrian tribes and city states under one dynasty in a loosely organized Hurrian-speaking state with its capital at Washshukanni, near modern Urfa.

King Barattarna of Mitanni has expanded the kingdom west to Halab (Aleppo) and made a vassal of Idrimi, the vigorous ruler of the city-state of Alalakh.

The Luwian-Hurrian state of Kizzuwatna in the west, whose king, Pilliya, had signed a treaty with Idrimi, has also shifted its allegiance to Mitanni.

Barattarna may have been the Mitannian king the Egyptian Pharaoh Thutmose III encountered by the river Euphrates in his campaign of year 1447 BCE.

This can however only be deduced by comparing the chronology of ancient Egypt and Mitanni at a later date and working back the figures.

Thutmose III, widely considered a military genius by historians, and an active expansionist ruler who is sometimes called Egypt's greatest conqueror or "the Napoleon of Egypt," has personally led several victorious campaigns in Syria, Palestine, and Phoenicia in the twenty years since Hatshepsut’s death.

Thutmose reaches as far as the east bank of the Euphrates to temporarily defeat the powerful Mitanni kingdom, Egypt’s chief rival for control of the Near East, but fails in his attempt to wrest domination of Syria from Mitanni.

Having spent the latter part of his half-century-plus kingship creating the largest empire Egypt has ever seen, Thutmose III has consolidated imperial power from north Syria to the fourth cataract of the Nile in Nubia.

Shaushtatar is the son of Parshatatar.

By the time he ascends the throne at some time in the fifteenth century BCE, his father has installed Hurrian client kings in a number of cities, making it easier for Shaushtatar to make Mittani a Mesopotamian power.

Now freed from the constant threat undergone by Mitanni of the Egyptians, Shaushtatar turns his attention toward Assyria.

In a treaty made more than a century later, Shaushtatar is told to have sacked Assur, the Assyrian capital.

He is reputed to have brought the golden doors of the palace to his own capital of Washshukanni, making vassal states of Assyria and Arrapha.

After his invasion of Assyria, Shaushtatar turns his army westward across the Euphrates, along the way gathering beneath his sway all the northern Syrian states as he brings his army to the Mediterranean coast.

He is looking to extend Mitanni's power further south, perhaps into Palestine.

However, much of southern Syria still lies within the Egyptian sphere of influence, which has long been a threat to Mitanni.