principalities[945] lay in the valley of the Orontes,[946] with Hamath doubtless as their capital. Lastly, the Hatti themselves seem to be represented by the powerful kingdom of Carchemish on the Euphrates,[947] the boundaries of which were indefinite, but reached at any rate to the Khabour River on the south. [Illustration: THE HITTITE STATES after the Revival of the Xth Century B.C.] On the outskirts of the Hittite kingdoms there were already present most of the elements of the powers that later were to submerge them. In the immediate West we place the Muski-Phrygians, but the mutual boundary is indefinable and probably varied constantly.[948] East of the Euphrates, Mitanni was no more, and Assyria was recruiting; while from the south and south-east there had already begun the steady infiltration of Aramæan peoples, who now occupied most of the tongue of land between the Orontes and the Euphrates.[949] Damascus was their centre, and within the Hittite-Assyrian sphere they had already planted strong settlements in the plains westward of the Euphrates. Even the kings of Samalla are early found with Semitic names,[950] a fact which corresponds with the character of a whole series of its monuments.[951] We may suspect from the name in like manner the Aramæan extraction of the dynasty of Bit Adini, which ruled over a broad and numerously peopled Hittite tract extending from south of Carchemish even across the Euphrates, including probably the site of Tell-Ahmar. Shugab lay also on both banks of the river, somewhat further north. In the north-east a new and formidable power akin to the earlier Hittites was gathering strength in the vicinity of Lake Van, by name Urartu; but the Cimmerian hordes had not as yet appeared in the north.