Damascus History Unfolded

Carbon-14 dating analysis carried out at Tell Ramad, situated near Damascus, suggests that the site could have been populated since the latter part of the seventh millennium BC, around 6300 BC.

As per the accounts of the first-century historian Joseph ben Matityahu, the establishment of Damascus is attributed to Uz, a son of Aram, who is in turn the son of Shem, descended from Noah.

The earliest reference to the town's name, 'ta-ms-qu,' is discovered on a wall at the Karnak Temple in Luxor, inscribed during the reign of Thutmose II. This same spelling is also evident in a fourteenth-century list attributed to Amenophis II.

The names 'Dimaski' or 'Dimasqa' later appear in the Tell al-Amarna tablets on three occasions. Around 1260 BC, the Damascus region, like the rest of Syria, became a battleground between the Hittites from the north and the Egyptians from the south.

During the era of Alexander the Great, Damascus occupied a pivotal position as the most significant city in Syria and, remarkably, managed to largely avoid the ravages of war.

In the second and first millennia BC, Damascus emerged as a major city within a series of kingdoms.

In 635 AD, Damascus fell under the conquest of the formidable Muslim-Arab general Khalid ibn al-Walid. Twenty-seven years after the city's capture, Muawiyah, the first khalifah of the Umayyad, designated it as the seat of his government and the capital of the Arab-Muslim Empire from 661 to 750.
Damascus History Unfolded

Ancient city of Arad

Arad, Arath, Adraa or Adra was a city of southern Palestine, about nineteen mile south of Hebron. It is named after the biblical Canaanite town located at Tel Arad. The territory of Arad included the desert of Sin.

It was a fort built in the late eleventh or early tenth century BC as an administrative and military outpost.

It was an ancient city on whose inhabitants drove back the Israelites as they attempted to penetrate from Kadesh into Canaan, but were eventually subdued, along with the other southern Canaanites.

The king of this city early distinguished himself as a bitter and powerful enemy of the Israelite. It was first mentioned in Num 21:1-3 which reports that the Canaanite king of Arad resisted Israel’s passage through his territory.

The fortress of Arad was built on top of a small settlement in the ninth century BC. The fortress was destroyed and rebuilt five times before finally being destroyed early in the sixth century BC with the destruction of the kingdom Judah by the Babylonians.
Ancient city of Arad 

History of ancient city Corcyra

Corcyra is a Greek Island in the Ionian Sea close to the west shore of Epirus province. It is now called Corfu; was first peopled by a colony for Colchis, 1349 BC and afterward by a colony from Corinth.

Corinth people with their chef Chersicrates, came to settle there, on being vanished for their native city 703 years before the Christian Era. Homer call them Phaeacians

Corcyra is said to have been first known by the name of Drepane, perhaps from its resemblance in shape to a scythe.

To this name succeeded that Scheria, always used by Homer and by which it was known in his time.

From the Odyssey, it was written that the island inhabited by Phaeacians, a people who, even at that early period, has acquired considerable skill in nautical affairs, and possessed extensive commercial relations, since they traded with the Phoenicians and also with Euboea and other countries.

Corcyra was established by Corinthians. It was one of the earliest Greek colonies, founded in 734 BC by settlers from Corinth.

Corcyra rapidly rose to be one of the first maritime powers in Greece. Corcyra’s naval station was one of the first to be constructed in the Mediterranean at the end of the archaic period and the beginning of the fifth century BC, in order to house a spectacular navy of c. 200 triremes.

Corcyra enjoyed local trade with the Illyrians, who supplied silver ore, timber, slaves, tin and wildflowers.
Unlike most Greek colonies, Corcyra rebelled violently against its mother city. Later the Corinthians compensated for a Corcyrean rebellion by creating new northwestern colonies, including Ambracia, Apollonia and Leucas (630-600 BC).

The city was occupied variously by Macedonians, Syracusans, Epirotes and Illyrians before passing to the empire of Rome in 229 BC, and serve many years as a Roman naval base.
History of ancient city Corcyra

The island of Delos, Greece

It is the smallest islands called Cyclades 0n the Aegean Sea, lay in the strait between Rhenea and Myconus. Delos was the site of the earliest and largest Roman-Italian commercial community in the Greek world.

Delos was once the ‘source of Apollonian light’ where, on the conical 386 foot high Mount Cynthos, Leto was said to give birth to Apollo under the shade of a date palm.

It was also called, in earlier times, Asteria, Ortygia and Chlamydia. It has been inhabited since the 3rd millennium BC.

Thucydides identifies the original inhabitants was piratical Carians who were eventually expelled by King Minos of Crete. The first traces of occupation on Delos date from the second half of the third millennium on Mont Cynthos.

During 1000 BC, Delos was peopled by Ionians, for whom it was the chief center of political and religious union in the time of Homer.

By the year 700 BC Delos had emerged as an important center of worship. Delos was also on its way to becoming a commercial port, as pilgrims from all over were drawn to its shores.

After the Persian wars the island became the natural meeting-ground for the Delian League, founded in 478 BC, the congresses being held in the temple.

By the year 314 BC, Delos had grown to become a flourishing religious center in an island alliance under the protection of the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt; the year 250 saw it under the guardianship of the Macedonian kings.

The Romans made Delos a free port in 167 BC. This brought even greater prosperity, due largely to a lucrative slave market that sold up to 10 000 people a day. By the 3rd century AD there was only a small Christian settlement on the island,
The island of Delos, Greece