ARAMEAN RELIGION. When the Arameans first appeared in the ancient Near East is not known. The early attestations of Aram as a place-name—in an inscription of Naram-Sin of Akkad at the end of the third millennium BCE, in the Mari texts of the eighteenth century BCE, and at Ugarit in the fourteenth century BCE—cannot be taken as a proof of the early existence of an independent ethnic group, even though during the first millennium some of the Aramean kings styled themselves "king of Aram." The Arameans are characterized by their names and their dialects, the novelty of which strikes the historian as he compares them with the preexistent Akkadian names and language used in Mesopotamia.

In the second half of the eleventh century the Arameans are known to have gained control of large areas of the Syrian desert and thus of its caravan routes...