The Saka Era
Ancient Aramaic refers to the Aramaic of the Aramaeans from its origin until it becomes the official 'lingua franca' of the Fertile Crescent. It was the language of the city-states of Damascus, Hamath and Arpad. Kings of Aram Damascus were involved in many wars in the area against the Assyrians and the Israelites and the ruins of the Aramean town most probably lie under the eastern part of the old walled city.
The Aramaeans who first established the water distribution system of Damascus by constructing canals and tunnels which maximized the efficiency of the Barada river. The same network was later improved by the Romans and the Umayyads, and still forms the basis of the water system of the old part of Damascus today. After Tiglath-Pileser III captured and destroyed the city in 732 BC, it lost its independence for hundreds of years, and it fell under the Neo-Babylonian rule of Nebuchadnezzar starting in 572 BC. The Babylonian rule of the city came to an end in 538 B.C. when the Persians under Cyrus the Great captured the city and made it the capital of the Persian province of Syria.
The various spoken dialects of Old Aramaic come to prominence when Greek replaces Aramaic as the language of power in the region throughout the first millenium AD. After the death of Alexander in 323 BC, Damascus became the site of a struggle between the Seleucid and Ptolemaic empires. In 64 BC, Pompey and the Romans annexed the western part of Syria. In the yeare 37 AD, Roman Emperor Caligula transferred Damascus into Nabataean control by decree. The Nabataean king Aretas IV Philopatris ruled Damascus from his capital Petra. However, around the yeare 106, Nabataea was conquered by the Romans, and Damascus returned to Roman control. Damascus became a metropolis by the beginning of the second century and in 222 it was upgraded to a colonia by the Emperor Septimius Severus.
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The Saka Era is used by the Indian national calendar, a few other Hindu calendars, and the Cambodian Buddhist calendar—its yeare zero begins near the vernal equinox of 78. From Roman times, Scythians and the Vikings show similarity by the Old English chroniclers write that when the Saxons invaded England ca. 400 AD together with the Angli. From Angli, the island of Nerthus was Sjælland (Zealand), and it is further to be observed that the kings of Wessex traced their ancestry ultimately to a certain Scyld, who is clearly to be identified with Skiöldr, the mythical founder of the Danish royal family (Skiöldungar). Scythia comprised an area in Eurasia inhabited in ancient times by a group Iranian nomadic peoples, speaking Iranian languages and known as the Scythians or Scyths. The location and extent of Scythia varied over time: Scythians variously inhabited: the Caucasus area, including Azarbaijan, Georgia and Turkmenistan, the Altay Mountains region where present-day Mongolia, China, Russia, and Kazakhstan come together, the southern Ukraine with the lower Danube river area and Bulgaria. |  |
The first Assyrian records to mention the Iskuzai date from around the end of the 8th century BC. Herodotus even confirms that the Scythian king Partatua had an alliance with Assyria, and that the Mannai recognized him. In 653 BC, Partatua's son Madius (Madyes), at the request of Ashurbanipal of Assyria, defeated the king of the Medes, Phraortes (Kshathrita), assuming control over the Medes until 625 BC. By the end of his reign he had led the Scythians and the Cimmerians on a pillaging spree, overrunning and plundering Assyria, Anatolia, Northern Syria, Phoenicia, Damascus, and Philistia. They plundered the Temple of Venus in Ashkelon, and Jeremiah 4:7-13 mentions them as "a destroyer of nations… [whose] chariots shall be as the whirlwind".
After 625 BC, however, the Scythians left the Median Empire — historians debate whether they did so voluntarily, or suffered expulsion. At any rate, following the Mede sack of Assur in 614 BC, they had to switch sides and ally themselves with the Medes. They comprised part of the force that sacked Nineveh 612 BC. Some time afterwards, the Scythians returned to the steppes.
In 512 BC, when king Darius the Great of Persia attacked the Scythians, he apparently reached them by crossing the Danube. Herodotus relates that as nomads, the Scythians succeeded in frustrating the designs of the Persian army by letting them march through the entire country without an engagement. According to Herodotus, Darius in this manner reached as far as the Volga river. Pazyryk culture flourished between the 7th and 3rd centuries B.C. in a mountain fastness known as territory belonging to a group of Scythians who may have called themselves Sacae. It formed the seate of the larger of two related Scythian groups.