On the southern frontier of the Patina lay the important Phoenician cities, Arvad, Arka, and Sina; and on the south-east, the fortresses belonging to Hamath and Damascus.  The characteristics of the country remained unchanged.  Fortified towns abounded on all sides, as well as large walled villages of conical huts, like those whose strange outlines on the horizon are familiar to the traveller at the present-day.  The manners and civilisation of Chaldaea pervaded even more than formerly the petty courts, but the artists clung persistently to Asianic tradition, and the bas-reliefs which adorned the palaces and temples were similar in character to those we find scattered throughout Asia Minor; there is the same inaccurate drawing, the same rough execution, the same tentative and awkward composition.

[Illustration:  053.jpg JIBRIN, A VILLAGE OF CONICAL HUTS, ON THE PLATEAU OF ALEPPO]

     Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph reproduced in Peters.

The scribes from force of custom still employed the cuneiform syllabary in certain official religious or royal inscriptions, but, as it was difficult to manipulate and limited in application, the speech of the Aramaean immigrants and the Phoenician alphabet gradually superseded the ancient language and mode of writing.*

* There is no monument bearing an inscription in this alphabet which can be referred with any certainty to the time of Assur-nazir-pal, but the inscriptions of the kings of Samalla date back to a period not more than a century and a half later than his reign; we may therefore consider the Aramaean alphabet as being in current use in Northern Syria at the beginning of the ninth century, some forty years before the date of Mesha’s inscription (i.e. the Moabite stone).

Thus these Northern Syrians became by degrees assimilated to the people of Babylon and Nineveh, much as the inhabitants of a remote province nowadays adapt their dress, their architecture, their implements of husbandry and handicraft, their military equipment and organisation, to the fashions of the capital.*

* One can judge of their social condition from the enumeration of the objects which formed their tribute, or the spoil which the Assyrian kings carried off from their country.

[Illustration:  054.jpg THE WAR-CHARIOT OF THE KHATI OP THE NINTH CENTURY]

     Drawn by Boudier, from a bas-relief.

Their armies were modelled on similar lines, and consisted of archers, plkemen, slingers, and those troops of horsemen which accompanied the chariotry on flying raids; the chariots, moreover, closely followed the Assyrian type, even down to the padded bar with embroidered hangings which connected the body of the chariot with the end of the pole.

[Illustration:  055.jpg THE ASSYRIAN WAR-CHARIOT OF THE NINTH CENTURY B.C.]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bronze bas-relief on the
     gates of Balawat.