ABSTRACT
Besides Egypt and the Philistine cities, the kingdom of Damascus occupies a prominent place in the Bible.1 e Assyrian records also reveal the importance of Aram-Damascus on the regional scale. Scholars interested in the history of Israel and of the ancient Near East have long been aware that Hazael’s reign marked the apex of Aram-Damascus but it is only in the past two decades that historians realized that Hazael’s power far exceeded the connes of the Aramean kingdoms that preceded Hazael’s consolidation of Aram-Damascus.
