The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> Herodotus

Herodotus
Posted by pancho (Moderator) - Sunday, December 15 2013, 17:14:17 (UTC)
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...I decided to read the guy instead of read about him. It's hard to think of this as any kind of actual history, as we think of it...but for that time it was the beginning of what we understand today as history. He included legends, myths and tall tales...and he took things at second-hand and twenty-hand.

..with all that he does mention the Assyrians.....but then, he also mentions Chaldeans....so, if you're an assyrian nationalist who wants to use part of Herodotus wrote to justify your existence, you have to also accept as fact that Chaldeans also existed back then..you can't say they are an "invention", unless Herodotus invented them in which case he could also have invented assyrians. You can see why assyrian nationalists don;t read anything but Aprim.


“.....he (Cyrus) made war on Assyria.” P. 76

In a footnote the editor says ...”Herodotus includes Babylon in Assyria”

...he also believed that "Assyria" meant lots of other places.

On page 78, Vol. I....Herodotus mentions “Chaldeans” over six times.

For those who say Herodotus calls the Assyrians Syrians also, that both names refer to the same people and place, I say I found the section in Herodotus which Joseph references to show the error in supposing this.....listing the nations, by districts, which must bring tribute to Darius, the Persian king....

Syria is listed separately....”All Phoenicia, Palestine Syria, and Cyprus, were herein contained. This was the fifth satrapy.” p. 203

“From Babylonia, and the rest of Assyria....This was the ninth satrapy”. p. 204

...now why would the people back then have two names for the same place and people? The answer is, they didn't. Clearly Syria was one place and Assyria was another...Like York is in one country and New York is in another.

On page 413....”The Assyrians went to war (as part of Xerxes army against the Greeks) with helmets upon their heads made of brass, and plaited in a strange fashion.....This people, whom the Greeks call Syrians, are called Assyrians by the barbarians. The Chaldeans served in their ranks.....”

This is interesting. By “barbarians” the ancient world meant any non-Greek...this would include the Assyrians themselves, as barbarians, but not the Greeks. So, the Greeks used the term “Syrian” to refer to Assyrians. But we can be sure the other barbarians, including the Assyrians, didn't use that term...they called themselves, as other barbarians knew them, as Assyrians, not Syrians.

Here again we have a similar situation as was revealed in the recently discovered and infamous tablet which resulted in so may hard-ons in assyria. Here too we have a people, different from the Assyrians and with a different language and grammar, as was the case with the Greeks, who used a different word (Syria) to refer to people who called THEMSELVES Assyrians. What no one has ever shown is that the Assyrians THEMSELVES called themselves “Syrians”.ut we haven't

In the modern era, after WW I, we claim we always meant both, that they are interchangeable....but we have no evidence that ancient Assyrians called THEMSELVES Syrians as well....we just say that WE "always" have...but we haven't "always"....since anyone can remember, after we stopped being Nestorians, we called ourselves Syrians, Suraye, not Ashuraye...I can understand that the French have a different way of saying, and spelling, "American", and that both words mean the same...what I can't grasp is why we Americans would have adopted the French word, "les Americains" for ourselves, and let go of "Americans", which is what we always called ourselves. No assyrian nationalist has been able to explain this....why did we adopt the Greek or Cinekoy word for us...why would we have done that...and then "rediscovered" it in 1915?

In several languages today there are a variety of names for “Americans”....les Americaines, Amerkanski, Amerikonski, Ameritootsie and on and on...what does this prove except that in different languages people have DIFFERENT WORDS for the same thing? However, this means nothing more than that...if we found that Americans used any one of these other names to refer to themselves, then we could conclude that to Americans, any one of those foreign words would do just as well.

And why would our ancestors have begun to call themselves by a name used by another, and insignificant people? Why would they toss out Assyrian in favor of Syrian...why?

And, since Syria and Assyria were two separate land masses with their own people...how could they be the "same"? If they were one and the same thing why does Herodotus and many others, speak of an "Assyria" and a "Syria" as two different entities? And why WOULD there be two separate names for what is supposedly the same place and people, when they are clearly marked on ancient maps as two different places.

It's like saying Arizona and New Mexico mean the same place and people when we can plainly see on a map that they are not...if the ancient world had maps which designated the same land mass and people as sometimes "Syria" and other times "Assyria", then we could say they meant the exact same place and people...but that's not the case, on any map anywhere.



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