Sampsiceramus I was the founding Priest-King of the Emesani dynasty who lived in the 1st century BC and was a tribal chieftain or Phylarch. The ancestors of Sampsiceramus I were Bedouins[1] who had travelled the Syrian terrain, before deciding to settle in the Orontes Valley[1] and South of the Apamea region. Sampsiceramus I, his family and his ancestors in Syria had lived under the Greek rule of the Seleucid Empire.