The confederacy of feudal chiefs, which had been brought momentarily together by Sapalulu and his successors, was shattered by the violence of the shock, and the elements of which it was composed were engaged henceforward in struggles with each other. At this time the entire plain between the Amanus and the Euphrates was covered with rich cities, of which the sites are represented to-day by only a few wretched villages or by heaps of ruins. Arabian and Byzantine remains sometimes crown the summit of the latter, but as soon as we reach the lower strata we find in more or less abundance the ruins of buildings of the Greek or Persian period, and beneath these those belonging to a still earlier time. The history of Syria lies buried in such sites, and is waiting only for a patient and wealthy explorer to bring it to light.* The Khâti proper were settled to the south of the Taurus in the basin of the Sajur, but they were divided into several petty states, of which that which possessed Carchemish was the most important, and exercised a practical hegemony over the others. Its chiefs alone had the right to call themselves kings of the Khâti. The Patinu, who were their immediate neighbours on the west, stretched right up to the Mediterranean above the plains of Naharairn and beyond the Orontes; they had absorbed, it would seem, the provinces of the ancient Alasia. Aramaeans occupied the region to the south of the Patinu between the two Lebanon ranges, embracing the districts of Hamath and Qobah.** * The results of the excavations at Zinjirli are evidence of what historical material we may hope to find in these tumuli. See the account of the earlier results in P. von Luschan, _Ausgrabungen in Sendschirli_, 1893. ** The Aramaeans are mentioned by Tiglath-pileser I. as situated between the Balikh, the Euphrates, and the Sajur. The valleys of the Amanus and the southern slopes of the Taurus included within them some half-dozen badly defined principalities--Samalla on the Kara-Su,* Gurgum** around Marqasi, the Qui*** and Khilakku**** in the classical Cilicia, and the Kasku^ and Kummukh^^ in a bend of the Euphrates to the north and north-east of the Khâti. * The country of Samalla, in Egyptian Samalûa, extended around the Tell of Zinjirli, at the foot of the Amanus, in the valley of Marash of the Arab historians.