ABSTRACT
Damascus first emerges as a power on the international scene at the beginning of the first millennium BC. As a result of the two centuries of immense change and disruption in the Middle East, the centralised Hittite Empire based on Anatolia had gone and Egypt was focused on recovery at home. The fragmentation of political structures in northern Syria saw several small kingdoms emerge to control much of the countryside. These local principalities only loosely reflected the Hittite heritage they sought to emulate. The largest of the kingdoms included Hamath (Hama) and Carchemish (on the Euphrates, just as it crosses from Turkey into Syria). In parallel with the waning of the power of Egypt, the great empires to the east either, like Babylon, foundered entirely or, like Assyria, were for the moment confined to limited territory by the disruption provoked by the cascading population movements.
