Terra Cotta Ram, Syrian, 1st Millennium B.C. Comes on a opaque Lucite base with a plaque that carries this information. 

Provenance: Arte Primitivo Gallery, New York City. 

Size: 5 X 2 3/8 X 2 1/2 in. 

#3950 . 

By 1100 B.C. Aramaean tribes throughout northern and western Syria had formed competing kingdoms. On the coast seafaring Canaanites, known to the Greeks as Phoenicians, reestablished maritime trade with Egypt and the eastern Aegean. Further south the Philistine coastal cities maintained close contact with Cyprus. In the interior highlands, small kingdoms emerged including Israel, Judah, Amon, Moab, and Edom. From the middle of the 9th through the end of the 7th Century B.C. the armies of Assyria, in their quest for treasure and tribute, repeatedly attacked the Levantine cities. The Assyrian Empire eventually incorporated territory as far south as Israel and the Philistine cities. The Egyptians, keen to maintain their influence in the region, unsuccessfully clashed with the Assyrians, who then swarmed south and extended their control into the Nile Valley. However, a series of tactical errors and civil disputes led to the swift fall of the Assyrian Empire at the end of the 7th Century B.C., when the Neo-Babylonian Empire claimed the region. After only fifty years of rule by the Babylonians, though, the region was again conquered, this time by the vast Achaemenid Persian Empire, which held the territories for two centuries. Following the death of Alexander of Macedon, who overthrew the Persian Empire in 331 B.C., the south was reclaimed by the new Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt, while Syria was incorporated into the Seleucid Empire. During the 1st Century B.C., Rome’s aggressive expansionist policies eventually led to its control over the entire region, creating one of the largest Mediterranean Empires in human history.