Assyrian Continuity, Assyrian Language
By Ashur Giwargis – Beirut
May 7, 2005
Useless-Knowledge.com
May 7 2005
I was not surprised to read an article dated May/03/2005, by Mr.
Thomas Keyes where he said that the Assyrians were “nearly annihilated
by Persians and Medes”, and that the language they use today is
“quite a different of the old Assyrian”.
Many sophisms and confusing theories have been caused by the
demographic and political changes through the history of the Middle
East, especially before the historians discovered the remains of the
ancient Assyrian Empire, thus many historians assured that the Assyrian
people didn’t disappear and one of them is George Maspero, “Ancient
History of the Peoples of the East”, 1903 – Maspero is mentioning that
the Assyrians came back to Assyria following the fall of Babylon to
the Persians, they re-built the Temple of the God Ashur, and were the
only ones who worshipped him, and those rituals were also practiced
during the 2nd century B.C (P: 167, 170,177).Those who fled Assyria
after the fall of Nineveh have returned back after Cyrus liberated
them, and they continued living from commerce and agriculture (P: 676)
Another historian: George Roux, saying about the Assyrians after the
fall of their Empire: “We don’t have a lot of information about that
era, but it’s well known that Assyrian levies were fighting in the
Persian army and they helped Persia against Egypt” (1)
Other important discoveries proved that the Assyrians kept their
customs long time after the fall of Nineveh, for example the Greek
King Antioch I (280-262 B.C) is saying that he would be proud to be
the highest priest of the Easagila (Mardukh temple), which means that
the Assyrian God was still worshipped (2) .
What we have today are inscriptions and old sayings that assure the
continuity of the Assyrians and this is approved by their Assyrian
pride despite the religious domination on the Middle Eastern mentality
during the past centuries, and below, we’ll find some examples (only
some of them) which prove the continuity of the Assyrian identity.
1- 5th century B.C: Herodotus, a Greek historian and traveler who
lived in Assyria after the fall of Babylon to the Persians, he was
born in Halicarnassus (Greece) at 490 B.C is describing the Assyrian
Battalions that served in the Persian army saying: “The Assyrians
were equipped with bronze helmets made in a complicated barbarian
way which is hard to describe, shields, spears, daggers, wooden clubs
studded with iron, and linen corselets”(3)
2- 2nd century B.C: The Greek historian Arian in his book “The life of
the Great Alexander” (“Anabasis” -Xenophon also wrote a book under the
same title). He says that during the time of Alexander and exactly in
325 B.C, 10.000 Assyrian workers built water conduits during 3 months.
3- 1st century A.D: Titian of Adiabine: He died in 130 B.C, the
first who introduced the trinity ideology to the New Testament
explanation, and was rejected by the church, later his students
Clement of Alexandria and Oregon of Alexandria proposed the idea
again and was also rejected by Pope Dionysius (3rd century BC) who
asked them about their doctrine, and they answered that they adopted
it from their teacher, Tatian the “Assyrian” (4)
4- 2nd century A.D: The Assyrian Theologist and philosopher Bar-Daisan
who was born in Urhey (Edessa) in 154 B.C wrote a poem calling his
compatriots by saying:
Look for the key,
Raise the falling people,
And don’t walk before you know the distance
O Assyrians, have mercy on Assyrians …
5- 4th century A.D: “Athur” Kingdom (“Athur” from the Persian “Athura”
which meant “Ashur” – A.G) was a governorate under the ruling of
the Persians, its King was Sin-Harib(Sennacherib) (In old Assyrian,
“Sin-Kharu” meant “The chosen by the moon”, and this was the name of
the Assyrian king in the 9th century B.C – A.G). Sin-Harib B.C is
the father of St.Behnam and St.Sarah. (5)
6- 6th century A.D: The Jacobite bishop, John of Ephesus (505-585 B.C)
says about the capture of the “Dara” city (between Nessibis & Mardin –
Ashur) by the King Anastasius in 556 B.C: “…And thus he spoiled the
city of a vast and incalculable prey, and took the people captive, and
emptied it of its inhabitants, and left in it a garrison of his own,
and returned to his land with an immense 385 booty of the silver and
gold taken from the inhabitants, and the churches, and every where
else. Its capture, and deliverance into the hands of the ASSYRIANS,
took place seventy-two years, more or less, after the time of it’s
first being founded by king Anastasius” (6)
7- 10th century A.D: The Assyriologue Simo Parpula (Helsinki) is
saying: “Classical sources attest to the continuity of Assyrian
cults in other Syrian cities until late antiquity; in Harran, the
cults of Sin, Nikkal, Bel, Nabu, Tammuz and other Assyrian gods
persisted until the 10th century AD and are still referred to in
Islamic sources. Typically Assyrian priests with their distinctive
long conical hats and tunics are depicted on several Graeco-Roman
monuments from Northern Syria and East Anatolia”.
8- 16th century A.D: The Kurdish historian Sharaf Khan Al-Bedlissi says
in his book “Sharafnameh”: “During the time of Hassan Beg Aq-Qwinlo
(the 15th century) there were Christians in Zur district (Hakkari –
Ashur) who were known as “Asuri” (7)
9- 19th century A.D: Horatio Southgate (1830s) talking about the
Syrian Orthodox Church followers in northern Assyria (south-east of
today’s Turkey), he says: “The people informed me that there were
about one hundred families of them in the town of Kharpout, and a
village inhabited by them on the plain. I observed that the Armenians
did not know them under the name which I used, SYRIANI; but called them
ASSOURI, which struck me the more at the moment from its resemblance to
our English name ASSYRIANS, from whom they claim their origin, being
sons of Assour”(8) And the Assyrian historian Hermis Abouna mentions
this by Southgate: “I was wondering how the Syrians are distributed
in a big surface far from other Christians in Mesopotamia and Syria,
but later I knew that they are only a continuity for the same race
in the eastern regions (He means Nestorians of Hakkari – A.G), and
their Armenian Neighbors never called them “Syrians”, but “Assyrians”
(“ASORI” – Ashur) (9)
As for the language used today by the Assyrians, it’s not
different than the old one as Mr. Keyes suggested, and there are
thousands of Acadian words used today and here are some examples:
The Language used today by the Assyrians is erroneously called
“Aramaic” because the real Aramaic is indeed still used in many
villages in the west of Syria, while the so-called Aramaic used by
Assyrians is a mix of the Acadian (Old Assyrian) with the real Aramaic
(which is already a mix of Canaanite and Acadian), so it’s not that
fair to call the Neo-Assyrian as “Aramaic” or to say that Neo-Assyrian
has no ties to Acadian.
Whereas the historical belonging depends on the language, traditions,
and geographic locations, thus we as Assyrians are practicing our
Assyrianism continuously and we are proud of our Assyrian origin, and
be sure, Mr.Keyes, that the people who say that they are Assyrians,
they know what they are talking about.
For more information about the Assyrians, their history, current
political issues and Cause:
References:
1- “Ancient Iraq”, P: 370, the Arabic Edition.
2- “The Missing Era is the Assyrian History” – Zayya Kanon , Arabic
edition, P: 46.
3- “The Histories”, Book VII, P: 396 – Penguin Classics edition,
translated from Greek by Prof. Aubrey De Selincourt, 1996.
4- Clement of Alexandria, Strom. III 12.81
5- “The Guide to The Land of Civilizations”, [Arabic], 1962, Taha
Baqer & Fouad Safar, P: 33.
6- “Ecclesiastical History”, by John Bishop of Ephesus, Book III Part
VI – In English by Jessie Payne Margoliouth.
7- “Sharafnameh”, translated by Jamil Rozbeyati, Al-Najah Publishing
house, Baghdad – 1953
8- Horatio Southgate, “Narrative of a Visit to the Syrian Church”,
1844 P: 80
9- “Assyrians after the fall of Nineveh”, Vol.V, P: 60
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About the author: Ashur Giwargis is an Assyrian researcher who writes
about the history of the Assyrians and their contemporary political
situation, he has many articles in Arab and Assyrian newspapers.