The province is also mentioned extensively in the Biblical books of Ezra and Nehemiah as עבר הנהר Evver Hanahar. Additionally, sharing the same root meaning, Eber was also a character in the Hebrew Bible from which the term Hebrew was widely believed to have been derived, thus the Hebrews were inferred to have been the people who crossed into Canaan across the river.
History
The term was established during the Neo-Assyrian Empire in reference to its Levantine colonies, and the toponym appears in an inscription of the 7th century BCAssyrian king Esarhaddon. The region remained an integral part of the Assyrian empire until its fall in 612 BC, with some northern regions remaining in the hands of the remnants of the Assyrian army and administration until at least 605 BC, and possibly as late as 599 BC. Subsequent to this Eber-Nari was fought over by the Neo-Babylonian Empire and Egypt, the latter of which had entered the region in a belated attempt to aid its former Assyrian overlords. The Babylonians and their allies eventually defeated the Egyptians and assumed control of the region, which they continued to call Eber-Nari. The Babylonians were overthrown by the Persian Achaemenid Empire, and the Persians assumed control of the region. Having themselves spent centuries under Assyrian rule, the Achaemenid Persians retained the Imperial Aramaic and Imperial organisational structures of their Assyrian predecessors. In 535 BC the Persian kingCyrus the Great organized some of the newly conquered territories of the former Neo-Babylonian Empire as a single satrapy; "Babylonia and Eber-Nari", encompassing southern Mesopotamia and the bulk of the Levant. Northern Mesopotamia, the north east of modern Syria and south east Anatolia remaining as Athura . of Persepolis The satrap of Eber-Nari resided in Babylon and there were subgovernors in Eber-Nari, one of which was Tattenai, mentioned in both the Bible and Babylonian cuneiform documents. This organization remained untouched until at least 486 BC, but before c. 450 BC the "mega-satrapy" was split into two—Babylonia and Eber-Nari. Herodotus' description of the Achaemenid tax districtnumber V fits with Eber-Nari. It comprised Aramea, Phoenicia, and Cyprus. Herodotus did not include in the tax list the Arabian tribes of the Arabian peninsula, identified with the Qedarites, that did not pay taxes but contributed with a tax-like gift of frankincense. Eber-Nari was dissolved during the GreekSeleucid Empire, the Greeks incorporating both this region and Assyria in Upper Mesopotamia into Seleucid Syria during the 3rd century BC. Syria was originally a 9th-century Indo-Anatolian derivation of Assyria and was used for centuries only in specific reference to Assyria and the Assyrians, a land which in modern terms actually encompassed only the northern half of Iraq, north east Syria and south eastTurkey and not the bulk of Greco-Roman, Byzantine or modern nation of Syria. However, from this point the terms Syrian and Syriac were used generically and often without distinction to describe both Assyria proper and Eber-Nari/Aram, and their respective Assyrian and Aramean/Phoenician populations.
