The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> In Conclusion....

In Conclusion....
Posted by pancho (Moderator) - Sunday, March 15 2009, 21:14:44 (CET)
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In the late 13th century Marco Polo traveled through the great empire of Kublai Khan from Mosul through China and India, Java, Sumatra, Burma etc and met everywhere with Nestorians and Jacobites, Armenians and Kurds...but no Assyrians. Neither did he call Mosul “Assyria” or even know the name “Nineveh”. At that time the Jews he met knew their history and in fact were telling Nestorians and Jacobites of THEIR supposed Assyrian history....all contained in the bible....which was all of “Assyria” that was remembered.

There was no consciousness of anyone’s being Assyrian...the language was gone, the history, outside what was contained in the bible, completely forgotten. Did that mean that every last Assyrian had “disappeared”? of course not. No more than every last Babylonian or Sumerian had disappeared. Their genetic strains survived, mixed with and improved by several newer ones...but their conscious knowledge and even their interest in being “Assyrian” was gone long before.

Xenophon, who passed by Nineveh 200 years after its fall saw no Assyrians either....he called the people Medes, perhaps because they had been conquered and occupied by those people, or that was how they defined themselves by then...having intermarried long since or moved on...either forcibly or by choice, leaving a majority of Medes in possession.

No one has ever said Assyrians disappeared physically and totally from the face of the earth. That is a straw argument the nationalists concocted so they could then show how “silly” were such statements and the Assyriologists they attributed them to. This bit of chicanery was intended to mask the real issue...what the Assyriologists and Anthropologists really said concerning the ancient Assyrians. This was best expressed by Georges Roux who said the Assyrians only “disappeared” in the sense that their consciousness of who they had been was forgotten by them with their forgotten language..and that he who forgets his language soon forgets who he is...and this is the same statement which the nationalists themselves make when they warn that for our children to “forget their language” today, will mean they will forget who they are i.e., Assyrians. Once again we see that the argument made by nationalists can be used to destroy their own position. For if it is true today, as they claim, that our children MUST not forget their language for fear of forgetting who they are...then it was equally true 2000 years ago when the original Akkadian language of the Assyrians was forgotten...along with their sense of who they were. It is only in this sense that the Assyrians “disappeared”.

If it is a true statement today, when made by our nationalists regarding our children...then it is a true statement when made by Assyriologists when regarding the children of the ancient Assyrians. We don’t yet know if we will forget the language eventually...but we do know that the ancients forgot theirs...and along with it any memory of having been Assyrians. If they remembered any Assyrian history at all it was what was handed down to them through the bible...which is also why many so-called Assyrians have such negative views of the ancients...a people they not only didn’t identify with but scorned and vilified....only finding one thing which redeemed them; that they had converted to Christianity and seen the error of their ways!

If we are going to admit that strains of the Assyrian genes remained, however diluted, and that it is valid to “remember” your forgotten past...then that still leaves the odious argument our Christians make that they and ONLY they can “remember being Assyrian” today. Since ancient Assyrians adopted a new language and religion and even though they forget who they were for two thousand years, and yet claim that now they are true Assyrians...then Muslims are Assyrians by the same argument...for they too adopted a new religion and language and they forgot for many centuries...and today they too remember and claim their ancient heritage....and while our nationalists make a big deal out of “talking-a-lot” about being Assyrians and their pride and what they will do....Muslim Assyrians do precious little talking but instead fight and defend the land once known as Assyria....a land and heritage they revere through ACTION and not talking a lot.

Who is the better guardian of the Assyrian heritage...those who live in Europe, America and Australia and beg and pay for the war against Iraq..or those who remain in BetNahrain against all odds and fight with their own bodies, if they have to, to drive out the invader? The American forces, backed by the American Assyrians will be driven out...as defeated as need be, especially considering the disparity in weapons and numbers. It was the Muslim Assyrians who fought this war...and it was American Assyrians who backed it.

And they now want “protection” from the United Nations..or Obama? Who protected Iraqi children, 30,000 of them Christian, from attacks by the most powerful Christian nations on earth? Who if not Iraqis?



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