THE BACKGROUND

It is necessary at the beginning of this chapter to define what we mean by the geographical term ‘Syria’, which includes in a single area regions which were seldom in ancient times united under one rule, and were already inhabited, it seems, during the third millennium b.c. by peoples of greatly differing ways of life, of different racial affinities and separate tongues. Yet in spite of the diversity of its peoples through the ages and the varied climatic zones into which it can be divided, the region known today as Syria and the Lebanon may be said to form a geographical entity with natural boundaries. On the north and north-west it is hedged about by the Amanus and Antitaurus mountains of Anatolia and by the Upper Euphrates bend; on the west it is bounded by the Mediterranean, and on the east by the Syrian desert, the northward extension of the great Nefūd, the arid desert of Arabia. To the south it merges with Palestine, and the natural boundary of both is the Wilderness of Sin, the desert stretch which separates Egypt from Palestine, Africa from Asia. We shall see that there were close cultural links between Syria and Palestine, though the archaeology of the latter is somewhat apart and has been treated for this period in an earlier chapter.

In the simplest analysis, the land of Syria falls into three distinct zones: the coastal fringe, later called Phoenicia, with its temperate climate, fertile soil and heavy winter rains; the steppeland, separated from the coast by a high, double mountain chain which cleaves it from north to south, and experiencing a wide seasonal variation of temperature and consequently a specialized vegetation to which the name Irano-Turanian has been given.