Assyria (Damascus)
Aramaeans are mostly defined by their use of the Aramaic language, first written using the Phoenician alphabet slightly modified. As early as the 8th century BC, Aramaic language and writing competed with the Akkadian language and script (cuneiform) in Assyria, and thereafter it spread throughout the Orient. Around 500 BC, when the Achaemenid monarchs looked for a tongue that could be understood by all their subjects, they chose Aramaic, which became the lingua franca of their vast empire. It was not until Greek emerged several centuries later that Aramaic lost its prestige as the most sophisticated language; but it remained unchallenged as the common dialect of all peoples of the Near East and was to remain so until the Arab invasion (7th century AD).
The Kings of Aram Damascus were involved in many wars in the area against the Assyrians and the Israelites. One of the Kings, Ben-Hadad II, fought Shalmaneser III at the Battle of Karkar. The ruins of the Aramean town most probably lie under the eastern part of the old walled city. 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 captured the city and made it the capital of the Persian province of Syria. Soon Babylon was conquered by Cyrus the Great, defeating Nabonidus.
The "Iberian" in the family name refers to Caucasian Iberia — a kingdom centered in Eastern Georgia which lasted from the 4th century B.C. to the 5th century AD, and is not related to the Iberian Peninsula. In the fifth century BCE Herodotus, in his review of the troops opposing the Greeks, he wrote that “the Armenians were armed like the Phrygians, being Phrygian settlers (refugees). The Bible tells us that Saul, David and Solomon (late 11th to 10th centuries) fought against the Aramaeans kingdoms across the northern frontier of Israel: Aram-Sôvah in the Beq’a, Aram-Bęt-Rehob and Aram-Ma’akah around Mount Hermon, Geshur in the Hauran, and Damascus. Farther north, the Aramaeans were in possession of Hamath on the Orontes and were soon to become strong enough to dissociate with the Neo-Hittite block.
SYRIA from the Fertile Crescent and Argos was occupied successively by Canaanites, Hebrews, Arameans, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Armenians, Romans, Nabataeans, Byzantines, Arabs, and, in part, Crusaders before finally coming under the control of the Ottoman Turks. Syria is significant in the history of Christianity; Paul was converted on the Road to Damascus and established the first organized Christian Church at Antioch in ancient Syria (now in Turkey), from which he left on many of his missionary journeys. Armenia lies in the highlands of among the earliest sites of human civilization surrounding the Biblical mountains of Ararat, upon which, as Judeo-Christian theology states, Noah's Ark came to rest after the flood. (Gen. 8:4). The territory of Armenia is also one of the candidates for the legendary Aratta, mentioned in Sumerian records. In the Bronze Age, several states flourished in the area of Greater Armenia, including the Hittite Empire and the site of the Biblical Garden of Eden.
After the fall of the Armenian kingdom in 428 CE, most of Armenia was incorporated as a marzpanate within the Sassanid Empire, ruled by a marzpan. Following an Armenian rebellion in 451 CE, Christian Armenians maintained their religious freedom, while Armenia gained autonomy and the right to be ruled by an Armenian marzpan, whereas other imperial territories were ruled exclusively by Persians.