Bit Agusi or Bit Agushi (also written Bet Agus) was an ancient Aramaean Syro-Hittite state, established by Gusi of Yakhan at the beginning of the 9th century BC. It had included the cities of Arpad, Nampigi (Nampigu) and later on Aleppo[1] Arpad was the capital of the state-kingdom.[2] Bit Agusi stretched from the A'zaz area in the north to Hamath in the south.[3]
According to Dan'el Kahn, there were seven stages of Bit Agusi history in Northern Syria in the ninth and eighth centuries BC.[4]
The identity of Bar-Gayah, King of KTK is not entirely clear. Land of "KTK" may have been the large confederation known at the time as "All Aram".[5]
Nevertheless, according to Gerard Gertoux, Bar-Ga’yah, the King of KTK, was an Assyrian ruler who was not the official king but only a powerful royal co-regent based, after 856 BC, at Til Barsip, which became then the military capital of the Assyrian kingdom of Bit Adini. As Mati’-El (Mati-ilu) was a vassal of Bar-Gayah, the latter was more powerful than the king of Arpad.[6]
Arpad later became a major vassal city of the Kingdom of Urartu. In 743 BC, during the Urartu-Assyria War, the Neo-Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser III laid siege to Arpad following the defeat of the Urartian army of Sarduri II at Samsat. But the city of Arpad did not surrender easily. It took Tiglath-Pileser three years of siege to conquer Arpad, whereupon he massacred its inhabitants and destroyed the city.[7] Afterward Arpad served a provincial capital.[8] The remains of Arpad's walls are still preserved in Tell Rifaat to the height of 8 meters.[9] A coalition of princes which had been allied to the city was also defeated, including the kings of Kummuh, Quwê, Carchemish and Gurgum. Bit Agusi was never repopulated.