The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> Read... (Not that it will fix your obsession)

Read... (Not that it will fix your obsession)

Posted by Mancho (Guest) - Tuesday, October 30 2007, 22:51:54 (CET) from 121.217.54.114 - CPE-121-217-54-114.nsw.bigpond.net.au Australia - Windows XP - Internet Explorer Website: Website title:

Assyrians after Assyria Simo Parpola (1) In 612 BC, after a prolonged civil war, Assyria's two former vassals, the Babylonians and the Medes, conquered and destroyed Nineveh, the capital of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. The great city went up in flames, never to regain its former status. Three years later the same rebels razed Assyria's western metropolis, Harran, crushing the last-ditch resistance of Assyria's last king, Ashur-uballit II. This event sealed the fate of the Assyrian Empire, and that is where the story of Assyria usually ends in history books. What happened to the Assyrians after the fall of Assyria? This question is not easy to answer for two reasons. First, the issue has hardly been discussed by Assyriologists.1 Most seem to tacitly agree with the idea of a more or less total disappearance, as suggested by Sidney Smith in 1925: "The disappearance of the Assyrian people will always remain a unique and striking phenomenon in ancient history. Other similar kingdoms and empires have indeed passed away but the people have lived on. No other land seems to have been sacked and pillaged as completely as was Assyria."2 Second, in contrast to the abundance of information from the imperial period, information on post-empire Assyria and Assyrians is scant and scattered. The dearth of information about Assyria itself would seem to support the idea of a genocide and ancient eyewitness testimonies. When the Greek historian Xenophon some 200 years after the fall of Nineveh passed through the Assyrian heartland and visited the sites of two great Assyrian cities, he found nothing but ruin and could not retrieve much about them from the nearby villagers. The territory where ------------------------------------ * Paper presented at the 66th Assyrian National Convention in Los Angeles, September 4, 1999.1 wish to extend my thanks to the Assyrian Academic Society, particularly Ms. Nadia Joseph, President, and Dr. Norman Solhkhah, Director of the Mesopotamian Museum, Chicago, for inviting me to this memorable event. 1 Recent exceptions are the articles by S. Dalley, "Nineveh after 612 BC," Altorientalische Forschungen 20 (1993), 134-47, A. Kuhrt, "The Assyrian Heartland in the Achaemenid Period," PALLAS 43 (1995), 239-54, and M. Dandamayev, "Assyrian Traditions during Achaemenid Times," Assyria 1995, ed. S. Parpola and R. M. Whiting (Helsinki, 1997), 41-48. 2 Cambridge Ancient History (Cambridge, 1925), p. 130. (2) these deserted cities lay was now Median, and the Greeks assumed that their former inhabitants had likewise been Medes.3 Yet it is clear that no such thing as a large scale massacre of all Assyrians ever happened. It is true that some of the great cities of Assyria were utterly destroyed and looted-archaeology confirms this-some deportations were certainly carried out, and a good part of the Assyrian aristocracy was certainly massacred by the conquerors.4 However, Assyria was a vast and densely populated country, and outside the few destroyed urban centers life went on as usual. This is proven by a recently discovered post-imperial archive from the Assyrian provincial capital Dur-Katlimmu, on the Chabur river, which contains business documents drawn up in Assyrian cuneiform more than a decade after the fall of Nineveh. Apart from the fact that these documents are dated by the years of a Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar n, nothing in their formulation or external appearance would suggest that they were not written under the Assyrian Empire.5 Another small archive discovered in Assur, written in a previously unknown, presumably Mannean variety of cuneiform, proves that Assyrian goldsmiths still worked in the city in post-empire times, though now under Median command.6 Moreover, over one hundred Assyrians with distinctively Assyrian names have recently been identified in economic documents from many Babylonian sites dated between 625 and 404 BC, and many more Assyrians undoubtedly remain to be identified in such documents. We do not know whether these people were deportees or immigrants from Assyria; their families may have settled in Babylonia already under the Assyrian rule. In any case, they unequivocally prove the survival of many Assyrians after the empire and the continuity of Assyrian identity, religion and culture in post-empire times. Many of these names contain the divine name Ashur, and some of the individuals concerned occupied quite high positions: one Pan-Ashur-lumur was the secretary of the crown prince Cambyses under Cyrus II in 530 BC.7 --------------------------------- 3 Xenophon, Anabasis II 4.27 ff and III 4.7-12. 4 A. K. Grayson, Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles (Locust Valley, 1975), pp. 94-95. 5 See State Archives of Assyria Bulletin 7/2 (Padua, 1993). 6 See K. Radner, Ein neuassyrisches Privatarchiv der Tempelgoldschmiede van Assur (Saarbrücken, 1999), pp. 197-205. 7 See R. Zadok, "Assyrians in Chaldean and Achaemenian Babylonia," Assur 4 (Malibu, 1984), pp. 71-98, esp. p. 76. (3) Distinctively Assyrians names are also found in later Aramaic and Greek texts from Assur, Hatra, Dura-Europus and Palmyra, and continue to be attested until the beginning of the Sasanian period. These names are recognizable from the Assyrian divine names invoked in them; but whereas earlier the other name elements were predominantly Akkadian, they now are exclusively Aramaic. This coupled with the Aramaic script and language of the texts shows that the Assyrians of these later times no longer spoke Akkadian as their mother tongue. In all other respects, however, -they continued the traditions of the imperial period. For example, the gods Ashur, Sherua, Istar, Nanaya, Bel, Nabu and Nergal continued to be worshiped in Assur at least until the early 3rd century AD; the local cultic calendar was that of the imperial period; and the temple of Ashur was restored in the second century AD; and the stelae of the local rulers resemble those of Assyrian kings in the imperial period.8 It is also worth pointing out that many of the Aramaic names occurring in the post-empire inscriptions and graffiti from Assur are already attested in imperial texts from the same site that are 800 years older.9 Assur was by no means the only city where Assyrian religion and cults survived the fall of the empire. The temple of Sin, the great moon god of Harran, was restored by the Babylonian king Nabonidus in the mid-sixth century BC.10 and the Persian king Cyrus claims to have returned Ishtar to her temple in Nineveh." Classical sources attest to the continuity of Assyrian cults in other Syrian cities until late antiquity;12 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.13 Typically Assyrian priests with their distinctive long conical ------------------------------------ 8 B. Aggoula, Inscriptions et graffites arameens d'Assour (Istituto Universitario Orientale, Supplemento n. 43, Naples, 1995). 9 See The Propopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, ed. K. Radner (Helsinki, 1998- ), under respective names. 10 S. Langdon, Die neubabylonischen Königsinschriften (Vorderasiatiche Bibliothek 4, Leipzig 1912), pp. 219-223. 11 P.-R. Berger, "Der Kyros-Zylinder mit dem Zusatzfragment BIN II Nr. 32," Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 64 (1975), 199 and 215, line 30, and cf. Dalley, "Nineveh" (above, n. 1), 137. 12 E.g., Lucian of Samosata, De dea Syria, 1-16 and 30-60 (2nd cent. AD); see further J. B. Segal, Edessa: 'The Blessed City' (Oxford, 1970), 41-61. 13 T. M. Green, The city of the Moon God: Religious Traditions of Harran (Leiden: Brill, 1992). (4) hats and tunics are depicted on several Graeco-Roman monuments from Northern Syria and East Anatolia.14 We know little of the political status of Assyria in the decades following its fall, but it seems that the western part of the Empire as far as the Tigris River fell into the hands of the Babylonians, while the eastern Transtigridian areas, including the Assyrian heartland north of Assur, came under Median rule.15 Under the Achaemenid Empire, the western areas annexed to Babylonia formed a satrapy called Athura (a loanword from Imperial Aramaic Athur, "Assyria"), while the Assyrian heartland remained incorporated in the satrapy of Mada (Old Persian for "Media").16 Both satrapies paid yearly tribute and contributed men for the military campaigns and building projects of the Persian kings. Assyrian soldiers participated in the expedition of Xerxes against Greece (480 BC) according to Herodotus. 17 and Assyrians from both Athura and Mada participated in the construction of the palace of Darius at Susa (500-490 BC). 18 ----------------------------------- 14 F. Millar, The Roman Near East 31 BC - AD 337 (Harvard University Press, 1993), pp. 248-49. 15 See M. San Nicol6, Historische Zeitschrift 156 (1937) 563; I. M. Diakonoff, Istorija Midii (Moscow-Leningrad, 1956), pp. 298-306; P. Garelli, Nouvelle Clio 2 (Paris, 1974), p. 147; M. Dandamayev and V. Lukonin, The Culture and Social Institutions of Ancient Iran (Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 58; P. Calmeyer, "Die sogenannte fünfte Satrapie und die achaimenidischenDokumente," Transeupratene 2 (1990), 111. Recently Zadok (Assur 4 [1984], pp. 71 and 83) and Kuhrt, "Assyrian Heartland" (above, n. 1), have questioned this view arguing that at least the southeastern part of Assyria proper, i.e. the regions around Assur and Nineveh, would have been under Neo-Babylonian control until 539 BC. However, the recently published Median/Mannean goldsmith archive from Assur (above, n. 5) now conclusively proves that this was not the case. Since the Assyrian heartland certainly belonged to the satrapy of Mada under the Achaemenids (see n. 16), it is reasonable to assume that it had been incorporated into the Median empire from the very beginning. See also S. Zawadzki, The Fall of Assyria and Median-Babylonian Relations in Light of the Nabopolassar Chronicle (Poznan, 1988), p. 150, and Dandamayev, "Assyrian Traditions" (above, n. 1), p. 41. 16 See F. W. Müller, Der Burgbau zu Susa nacn aem Bauberichte des Königs Dareios I (Mitteilungen der Vorderasiatisch-Aegyptischen Gesellschaft 35/1, Leipzig 1930), pp. 4-5; Xenophon, Anabasis III 4.7-10. 17 Herodotus VII 63. 18 Müller, Burgbau (n. 16). Hundreds of workers identified as Assyrians are mentioned as recipients of food rations in Achaemenid administrative documents from Persepolis, see R. T. Hallock, Persepolis Fortification Tablets (Chicago, 1969), p. 671. (5) Interestingly, it was the "Median" Assyrians who executed the gold works and glazing of this palace, whereas the Assyrians from the satrapy of Athura provided the timber for the palace from Mt. Lebanon. In the Babylonian version of the Persian inscription, the name Athura is at this point rendered Eber nari, "land across the river (Euphrates)."19 This shows that the Western, originally Aramean, half of the Assyrian Empire was already at this time firmly identified with Assyria proper, an important issue to which we shall return later on. We thus see that by Achaemenid times, Assyria, though split in two, had re-emerged as a political entity of considerable military and economic strength. In 520 BC, both Athura and Mada joined the revolt against Darius, trying to regain their independence.20 This revolt was a failure, but in a sense the Assyrian Empire had already been re-established long before. In the final analysis, it had never been destroyed at all but had just changed ownership: first to Babylonian and Median dynasties, and then to a Persian one. Contemporaries and later Greek historians did not make a big distinction between the Assyrian Empire and its successors: in their eyes, the "monarchy" or "universal hegemony" first held by the Assyrians had simply passed to or been usurped by other nations. For example, Ctesias of Cnidus writes: "It was under [Sardanapallos] that the empire (hegemonia) of the Assyrians fell to the Medes, after it had lasted more than thirteen hundred years."21 The Babylonian king Nabonidus, who reigned sixty years after the fall of Nineveh and actually originated from an Assyrian city, Harran, refers to Ashurbanipal and Esarhaddon as his "royal forefathers."22 His predecessor Nebuchadnezzar and the Persian kings Cyrus and Artaxerxes are correspondingly ----------------------------------------- 19 Eber nari as a designation of the Transeuphratean regions dates from the time of the Assyrian Empire and is well attested in Assyrian imperial texts. Neo-Babylonian texts written under the Chaldaean rule took over this usage and distinguish between Eber nari and the rest of Assyria (mat Assur), while to the Persians all the Levantine territories west of the Tigris (including Babylonia) were simply "Athura." On the Achaemenid province of Athura see M. Stolper, "BelSunu the Satrap," Language, Literature and History: Philological and Historical Studies Presented to Erica Reiner, ed. Francesca Rochberg-Halton (American Oriental Series 67, New Haven, 1987), p. 396. 20 F. H. Weissbach, Die Keilinschriften der Achdmeniden (Vorderasiatische Bibliothek 3, Leipzig, 1911), pp. 27-39. 21 Diodorus II 21.1 citing Ctesias. 22 Langdon, Die neubabylonischen Kdnigsinschriften (above, n. 10), p. 221, lines 27-29. Cyrus, too, in a cylinder inscription composed at the beginning of his reign, refers to Assurbanipal as his royal predecessor; see Berger, "Kyros-Zylinder" (above, n. 11), p. 203. (6) referred to as "Kings of Assyria" (or "Kings of Babylonia") in Greek historical tradition and in the Bible.23 Strabo, writing at the time of the birth of Christ, tells us that "the customs of the Persians are like those of the Assyrians," and calls Babylon a "metropolis of Assyria" (which in fact was completely destroyed and rebuilt by the Assyrians in the early 7th century BC).24 The Babylonian, Median and Persian empires should thus be seen (as they were seen in antiquity) as successive versions of the same multinational power structure, each resulting from an internal power struggle within this structure. In other words, the Empire was each time reborn under a new leadership, with political power shifting from one nation to another. Of course, the Empire changed with each change of leadership. On the whole, however, the changes were relatively slight, one could almost say cosmetic only. The language of the ruling elite changed, of course, first from Assyrian to Babylonian, Median, and Persian, and finally to Greek. In its dress the elite likewise followed its national customs, and it naturally venerated its own gods, from whom its power derived. Thus Ashur was replaced as imperial god first by the Babylonian Marduk, and then by the Iranian Ahura Mazda, Greek Zeus, etc. On the whole, however, the old structures of the Empire prevailed or in the long run gained the upper hand. Cuneiform writing (now in its Babylonian, Elamite and Old Persian forms) continued to be used for monumental inscriptions. Aramaic retained the status of imperial lingua franca which it had attained under the Assyrian Empire. The gods of the new elites gradually became assimilated to Assyrian gods. The supreme god of the Persians, Ahura Mazda, was now represented by the winged disk of Ashur; the Iranian goddess Anahita acquired features of the goddess Ishtar and finally became to all practical purposes fully assimilated to her. The same happened to the god Mithra, who was transformed into the Iranian equivalent of the Assyrian savior gods Nabu and Ninurta. The list could be made much longer. The Assyrian calendar and month names remained in use in the whole Near East, as they still do today. So did other imperial standards and measures, the taxation and conscription system, royal ideology in general, the symbolism of imperial art, organization of the court, court ceremony, diplomatic practices, and so on. The continuity of Assyrian imperial culture was certainly aided by the fact that the Babylonians and Medes had for centuries been vassals of Assyria, while the Persians, as former vassals of the --------------------------------- 23 E.g., Judith 2:4-5 (Nebuchadnezzar), Nehemiah 13:6 (Artaxerxes), Ezra 1: If, 3:7 (Cyrus), 6:22 (Darius); Diodorus II 10.1 (Nebuchadnezzar). The anonymous king and crown prince of Assyria referred to in Xenephon, Cyropaedia I 5.2, IV 6.2-3, etc., can be identified as Nabonidus and Belshazzar respectively. 24 Strabo XVI 1.16. (7) Elamites and the Medes, had long been subjected to Assyrian cultural influence.25 Both conquerors of Nineveh, the Babylonian Nabopolassar and Median Kyaxares, had previously served'as Assyrian governors in their respective countries.26 Thus, the Assyrian Empire continued to live on despite the fact that the Assyrians themselves were no longer in control of it. However, they still contributed to its government and expansion. From an analysis of the inscriptions of Nabonidus we know that this Babylonian king employed scribes who had been trained in Assyria and were familiar with its literary traditions.27 later on, the same scribes served the Persian king, Cyrus.28 The role of Assyrian artists in the construction of Susa and Persepolis has already been referred to. The governorship of the Persian satrapy Athura seems to have been often in the hands of Assyrians. The Book of Nehemiah (ca. 450 BC) refers to a governor of Samaria with the name Sanballat (Akkadian Sin-ballit),29 and the Greek historian Xenophon writing in 400 BC mentions a governor of Syria named Belesys (Akkadian Belsunu).30 ----------------------------------- 25 Cf. Dandamayev, "Assyrian Traditions" (above, n. 1), pp. 43-45. 26 Thus according to Diodorus II 28.1 (where "Belesys" is a corruption of [Nabo]polassar); see also Stanley M. Burstain, The Babyloniaca of Berossus (Sources from the Ancient Near East 1/5, Malibu 1978), p. 25, and cf. J. Scurlock, "Berossus and the Fall of the Assyrian Empire," Revue d'Assyriologie 77 (1983), 95-96. 27 See H. Tadmor, "The Inscriptions of Nabunaid: Historical Arrangement,"Studies in Honor of Benno Landsberger, ed. H. G. Guterbock and T. Jacobsen (Assyriological Studies 16, Chicago 1965), pp. 352-53. 28 See S. Zawadski, The Fall of Assyria (above, n. 15), p. 56, with previous literature. Cf. also n. 7, above. 29 Nehemiah 2:10-19, 3:33, etc. Note Josephus, Antiquities XI7, according to which "one Sanballat... sent by Darius to Samaria ... was Cuthaean by birth." 30 Belesys/BelSunu held the governorship of Athura under two Persian kings, Darius II and Artaxerxes II, from 407 through 401 BC; earlier (422-415 BC) he had been the district governor of Babylon, see Stolper, "BelSunu" (above, n. 19). A man with the same name, quite possibly his grandson, was the governor of Syria in 344 BC according to Diodorus (XVI 42.1); yet another BelSunu had been the governor of the Euphratian province Hindanu under the Assyrian Empire (648 BC). hi addition, a local governor of Phoenicia with the Aramaic name Abrocomas is mentioned several times in Xenophon's Anabasis (I 3-7); Josephus (Antiquities of the Jews XI4) refers to "Sanabassar [Akkadian Sin-aba-usur], the governor and president of Syria and Phoenicia" under Cyrus. As pointed out by Stolper, such non-Iranian governors of Athura constituted an 'anomaly1 within the imperial system: Almost all known Achaemenid governors of major provinces had Iranian names and many were allied to the royal house by blood or marriage" (Stolper, "BelSunu," p. 395). (8) The Greek historian Thucydides reports that during the Peloponnesian wars (ca. 410 BC), the Athenians intercepted a Persian named Artaphernes, was carrying a message from the Great King to Sparta. The man was taken prisoner, brought to Athens, and the letters he was carrying were translated "from the Assyrian language."31 The language in question of course was Aramaic, which, as already noted, continued as the lingua franca in the Achaemenid Empire, as it had in Assyria. We thus see that two hundred years after its fall, the Empire created by the Assyrians and its language was still prominently associated with Assyria, with a markedly Aramaic tint. This state of affairs continued under the Macedonian rulers of the Seleucid Empire. The area of the Seleucid kingdom initially largely covered that of the Assyrian Empire, and its capital soon moved from Babylonia to Syria/Assyria. Despite the heavily Greek orientation of the ruling elite and the imposition of Greek as the official language, the Seleucid kings were commonly referred to in Greek sources as "kings of Syria," a designation that still retained a strong association with Assyria.32 The Greek word Syria and the adjectives Syrios and Syros derived from it are originally simple phonetic variants of Assyria and Assyrios, with aphaeresis of the unstressed first syllable.33 The dropping of the first syllable is already attested ---------------------------------------- The special status of Athura finds an explanation in an anecdote related in Xenophon's Cyropaedia (IV 6.1-10), according to which Cyrus let Gobryas, "the governor of Assyria" keep his "castle, [his] province and the power which [he] had before" as a reward for his turning against "the king of Assyria" [Belshazzar] on Cyrus' side. Since Cyrus did appoint a Gobryas/Gubaru governor over all Babylonia after its conquest (see Zawadzki, Fall of Assyria [above, n. 15], p. 62), this anecdote may well be historically true; certainly, it reflected the situation at Xenophon's time (ca. 400 BC). Since, furthermore, Gubaru is an Iranian, not a Babylonian name, and since a person named Gubaru is attested in as the governor of Babylon in 417 BC, in the middle of the tenure of office of Belshunu/Belesys (see Stolper, "BelSunu," p. 396-97), it is not excluded that Gubaru and Belshunu actually were one and the same person, Gubaru being his assumed Iranian, BelSunu his actual Babylonian name. If so, the governorship of Athura would have became a hereditary prerogative of Belgium's family at the fall of Babylon. 31 Thucydides IV 50. Cf. R. C. Steiner, "Why the Aramaic Script Was Called 'Assyrian' in Hebrew, Greek, and Demotic," Orientalia n.s. 62 (1993), 80-82. 32 In a fragment from Qumran dating to the first century BC, (4Q246), the Seleucid Empire is referred to as Assyria (Ashur), see J. J. Collins, The Scepter and the Star (New York, 1995), pp. 154-67. Note also "Ashur is Seleucia," baraitha cited in the Talmud, Yoma 10a and Ketubbot 10b. 33 See Th. NSldeke, "ASSYRIOS SYRIOS SYROS," Zeitschrift fur klassische Philologie 5 (1871), 443-68; R. N. Frye, "Assyria and Syria: Synonyms," Journal of Near Eastern (9) in Imperial Aramaic spellings of Ashur, and the variation in Greek is thus likely to derive from corresponding variation in Aramaic.34 In Greek texts, both variants are usually freely interchangeable and can refer to both the Persian province Athura and the Assyrian Empire.35 For example, Strabo writes that "the city of Ninus was wiped out immediately after the overthrow of the Syrians,"36 while his older contemporary Diodorus, quoting Herodotus, writes that "after the Assyrians had ruled Asia for five hundred years they were conquered by the Medes."37 Only in Roman times, do the two forms start to acquire the distinct meanings that Assyria and Syria have today. Syria and Assyria are still interchangeable and refer to the Assyrian Empire in the Geography of Strabo (time of the birth of Christ), who however makes a distinction between Assyrians at large and the Assyrian homeland on the Tigris, to which he refers to as Aturia/Assyria: The country of the Assyrians borders on Persis and Susiana. This name is given to Babylonia and to much of the country all around, which ------------------------------------ Studies 51(1992), 281-85, reprinted with a postscript in Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies 11 (1997), 30-36. The critical review of Frye's article by J. Joseph in the same issue of JAAS (pp. 37-43; cf. JAAS 12 [1998] 70-76) misses the point in stressing the obvious, namely that "Assyria" and "Syria" started to develop into different concepts already in antiquity and were not used as simply synonyms by some classical writers. 34 Note, e.g., srslmh as a variant to 'srslmh (ASSur-Sallim-ahhe) in Aramaic legal documents from Assur (in each case referring to the same person), see V. Hug, Altaramaische Grammatik der Texte des 7. und 6. Jh.s v.Chr. (Heidelberger Studien zum Alten Orient 4, Heidelberg, 1993), p. 54. Note further the alphabetic spelling srgrnr of the eponym ASSur-garu'a-nere (635 BC) on an Aramaic clay tablet of unknown provenance, most recently edited and discussed by F. M. Fales, Aramaic Epigraphs on Clay Tablets of the Neo-. Assyrian Period (Rome, 1986), pp. 253-258. Aphaeresis of an unstressed initial vowel was a prominent feature of Neo-Assyrian and many examples can be found e.g. in S. Parpola, "Likalka ittatakku: Two notes on the morphology of the verb alaku in Neo-Assyrian," Studio Orientalia 55 (1984), pp. 9 and 21-22; see also S. Parpola, "The Neo-Assyrian Word for Queen," State Archives of Assyria Bulletin 2 (1988), 75-76. 35 E.g., Herodotus VII63: "The Assyrians [joining the expedition of Xerxes against Greece] had bronze helmets... They are called Syrians by the Hellenes, but from the barbarians they have received the name Assyrians." In Xenophon's Cyropaedia, Assyria and Syria are carefully distinguished and can occur side by side, the former referring to the Neo-Babylonian Empire, the latter both to the Assyrian Empire and its (post-empire) western half annexed by the Babylonians, i.e. the later province of Athura/Syria (e.g., I 5.2: "At that time the king of Assyria had subjugated all Syria, a very large nation"; II1.5, "the Assyrians, both those from Babylon and the rest of Assyria"). This distinction also largely applies to Herodotus but not to later Greek writers. 36 Strabo XVI 1. 3. 37 Diodorus II 32.2. (11) long been controlled by the Seleucid Empire. At the time when the Seleucid state was annexed to the Roman Empire, 64 BC, its area had however shrunken to encompass only the Transeuphratian part of Assyria/Syria, which now became the Roman province of Syria. As the remnant of the Seleucid Empire, this area still was strongly identified with Assyria; there was no need to distinguish it from ancient Assyria.42 Only later, when the Roman Empire expanded further eastward, did there arise a need for further distinctions. The name Syria now became established for the Roman province, while Assyria was reserved for the Transtigridian Aturia/Adiabene and eventually for ancient Assyria as well. It is likely that this distinction reflects linguistic realities, the Aramaic words for Assyria having lost the initial syllable in the west but retained it in the eastern dialects. To sum up the long discussion: whatever their later meanings, in Greek and Latin usage, Syria and Assyria originally both referred to the Assyrian Empire, while speakers of Aramaic were identified as Assyrians and the script they used as Assyrian script. How, when and why did this intrinsic association of Assyria and Assyrians with Arameans and Aramaic come about? The Empire extended beyond the Euphrates already in the 12th century BC and from that point on Arameans constituted the majority of its population. In the 9th century BC, Assyrian kings initiated an active policy of assimilation and integration, the goal of which was to put a definite end to the endless revolts that had vexed the Empire in the past. The results of this new policy were soon to be seen. Rebel countries were now annexed to the Empire as new provinces, whereby hundreds of thousands of people were deported to other parts of the Empire and the annexed country was totally reorganized in Assyrian fashion.43 This involved imposition of a uniform taxation and conscription system, uniform standards, weights and measures, the conversion of the local royal city into an Assyrian administrative center, and, above all, the imposition of a single universal language and script, Aramaic.44 ------------------------------------- 42 See n. 32 above. 43 See B. Oded, Mass Deportations and Deportees in the Neo-Assyrian Empire (Wiesbaden, 1979), especially chapters IV and V, "Aims and Objectives of Mass Deportation" and "Observations on the Position of the Deportees." 44 See H. Tadmor, "The Aramaization of Assyria: Aspects of Western Impact": Mesopotamien und seine Nachbarn, ed. H.-J. Nissen and J. Renger (Berliner Beitrage zum Vorderen Orient 1, Berlin 1982), pp. 449-70. Passages in royal inscriptions describing the reorganization of a province often contain the phrase pa eda suSkunu, lit. "to impose one mouth/accord." I take this phrase, attested since the early 9th century BC but especially since the reign of Sargon II (late 8th century), to refer not only to the cultural and (12) By the end of the 8th century BC, the provincial system covered the entire Levant from Palestine to central Iran, and it was further expanded in the seventh century. At this time Aramaic was already spoken all over the Empire and Assyrian imperial culture had been dominant everywhere for centuries. The Aramaization of Assyria was calculated policy aimed at creating national unity and identity of a kind that could never have been achieved, had the Empire remained a loose conglomeration of a plethora of different nations and languages. And it did pay off. Even though Akkadian retained its position as the language of the ruling elite and cuneiform script continued to be used for prestige purposes, Aramaic soon also became part and parcel of the imperial administration. It was by no means the only language of the subjected peoples but equal in status with Akkadian, and eventually it became the language of the ruling class as well. Men with Aramaic names are found in high state offices from the 9™ century on, and by the 8th century, every official document was drawn up both in Akkadian and Aramaic.45 By the beginning of the 7th century the whole ruling class was certainly fully bilingual, for most of the administrative correspondence of the Empire was now carried out in Aramaic.46 Many scribes who wrote in cuneiform appear to have spoken Aramaic as their first language. For example, the scribe who wrote a beautiful copy of the first tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh for the library of Ashurbanipal, made a mistake which only a speaker of Aramaic could have made: he used the cuneiform sign for "lord" for writing the word "son," Aramaic mara' "lord" being homophonic with Akkadian mara' "son."47 --------------------------------------- ideological unification of the Empire, but above all to the imposition of a single, unifying language. Note that pu, "mouth/speech," and lisanu, "tongue/language," were largely synonymous in Akkadian. 45 See H. Tadmor, "Assyria and the West. The Ninth Century and Its Aftermath," in Unity and Diversity, ed. H. Goedicke and J. J. M. Roberts (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975), pp. 36-47, and "On the Role of Aramaic in the Assyrian Empire": Near Eastern Studies Dedicated to H.I.H. Prince Takahito Mikasa, ed. M. Mori (Bulletin of the Middle Eastern Culture Center in Japan 5, Wiesbaden 1991), pp. 419-23. 46 See S. Parpola, "Assyrian Royal Inscriptions and Neo-Assyrian Letters," in Assyrian Royal Inscriptions: New Horizons in Literary, Ideological and Historical Analysis, ed. F. M. Fales (Rome, 1981), pp. 122-23. 47 S. Parpola, The Standard Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh (State Archives of Assyria Cuneiform Texts 1, Helsinki, 1997), p. 74, lines 242-43; cf. lines 265-66. A similar case is j found in a letter from the reign of Sargon, where the sign for "son" stands for "lord," see S.| Parpola, The Correspondence of Sargon II, Part I: Letters from Assyria and the West (St Archives of Assyria 1, Helsinki, 1987), no. 220. Cf. also H. Tadmor, "Towards the Early History of Qatalu": Jewish Quarterly Review 76 (1985) 51-54. (13) It is certain that by the end of the 7* century BC, Aramaic language and imperial culture had become essential parts of Assyrian identity. While Aramaic was the unifying language of the Empire, it was not spoken outside of it. The same also applies to the imperial culture and religion. While local gods continued to be worshipped in different parts of the Empire, the whole Empire shared the belief in a single omnipotent god and his earthly representative, the Assyrian king.48 All these features survived the fall of the Assyrian Empire and helped give its successors their specifically Assyrian stamp, despite the alien customs and cultural elements introduced by the new overlords. It can even be surmised that the foreign habits of the new rulers may rather have strengthened the Assyrian identity of the masses. This will have been the case especially in the areas longest attached to Assyria, that is, the later Achaemenid/Roman province of Athura/Syria and, of course, the Assyrian heartland itself. It goes without saying that in the centuries following Assyria's fall, Assyrian imperial culture underwent significant changes. This is natural; even under Assyrian rule; it had constantly absorbed new impulses from all sides. The successive periods of Persian, Macedonian, Roman, Byzantine, Sasanian, and finally Arab and Turkish rule each left their lasting traces in the Assyrian cultural heritage, which now is significantly different from what it was 3,000 years ago. But the same evolution has happened elsewhere, too; the Greek culture of today, is not the same as it was in antiquity, nor are the modern Greeks. The essential point is that the Assyrians still preserved their ethnic, cultural and linguistic identity in spite of their loss of political power and the heavy persecutions they have experienced especially in the Christian Era. Not even the thousand years of Greek rule under the Seleucids, Romans and Byzantium were able to annihilate Aramaic as a language and Assyrian cultural identity from the Near East. On the contrary, the Seleucid Empire soon became "Syro-Macedonian."49 The Roman historian Livy, quoting two second century BC testimonies, Manlius and Titus Flaminius, observed that "the ------------------------------------------- 48 See S. Parpola, "Monotheism in Ancient Assyria," in One God or Many? Concepts of Divinity in the Ancient World, ed. B. N. Porter (Transactions of the Casco Bay Assyriological Institute, Vol. 1, University of Maryland Press, 1999). 49 Cf. P. Crone and M. Cook, Hagarism. The Making of the Islamic World (Cambridge, 1977), p. 64. Note that the nicknames of some of the later Seleucids (Balas, Sidetes, Zabinas) are Aramaic. (14) Macedonians of Seleuceia and Babylonia have degenerated info Syrians [and] into Parthians ... The armies of Antiochus III [222-187 BC] were all Syrians."50 Several writers and philosophers of late antiquity born in Roman Syria identify themselves as Assyrians in their writings, for example the second-century bellestrist Lucian of Samosata, who introduces himself as "an Assyrian ... still barbarous in speech and almost wearing a jacket in the Assyrian style."51 Another second century writer, a certain lamblichus who wrote a novel set in Babylonia, "was a Syrian by race on both his father's and mother's side, a Syrian not in the sense of the Greeks who have settled in Syria, but of the native ones, familiar with the Syrian language and living by their customs."52 The famous namesake of this writer, the Neoplatonian philosopher lamblichus also originated from Syria.53 The name lamblichus is a Greek version of the Aramaic name la-milki, which already attested in Assyrian imperial sources.54 All these self-professed Assyrians were well-versed in Greek culture b at the same time perfectly aware of the greater antiquity and value of their own cultural heritage. The second-century Church Father Tatian, in his Oratio adversus Graecos, describes himself as "he who philosophises in the manner of barbarians, born in the land of the [Assyrians], first educated on your principles, secondly, in what I now profess," and then goes on to reject Greek culture as not worth having.55 I take such expressions of Assyrian identity seriously, despite communis opinio of classicists which sees in them simply references to the writers' linguistic background and doubts the persistence of Assyrian cultural traditions in the Hellenized Near East. Yet how could such traditions not have persisted, when we know that Greeks and Romans from Plato until late antiquity kept learning ------------------------------------------- 50 Livy XXXVIII 17.10 and XXXV 49.8. 51 De dea Syria, 1, etc.; cf. Millar, The Roman Near East, pp. 454-55. 52 See In detail Millar, The Roman Near East, pp. 454-55. 53 From Chalchis ad Belum (Qinnesrin), to the north-east of Apamea 54 The Propopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (above, n. 9), Vol. 1/1, p. 91 55 Patrologia Graeca, Vol. VI, cols. 868 and 888; cf. Millar, The Roman Near East, pp. 227 and 460. Despite Millar, the name Tatian is not "in origin Latin" but a Grecized form of Aramaic Tat!, well attested already in Assyrian imperial sources; see K. Tallqvist, Assyrian Personal Names (Helsinki, 1914), p. 231. Similarly, the name Lucian can also be^ traced back to Aramaic Luqu (ibid., p. 122), not necessarily to Latin Lucius! (P - 15) spirituality and science from the Assyrians and Babylonians?56 The cursive nature of the Syriac script alone, from its first attestations, implies the existence of an extensive Aramean literary corpus in the post-Assyrian centuries. As noted by Fergus Millar, "the Syriac-speaking inhabitants of what had been ancient Assyria apparently did not suffer from historical 'amnesia'... [T]he Syriac Chronicle of Karka de bet Selok (present-day Kirkuk), written in about the 6th or 7th century, begins with the foundation of the city by an Assyrian king, mentions further building by Seleucus and goes on to speak of martyrdoms under the Sasanids."57 Such historical details would not have been possible without written records reaching back to Assyrian times. Since Late Antiquity, Christianity in its Syriac elaboration has constituted an essential part of Assyrian identity. As I have tried to show elsewhere, conversion to Christianity was easy for the Assyrians, for many of the teachings of the early Church were consonant with the tenets of Assyrian imperial religion.58 In fact, it can be argued that many features and dogmas of early Christianity were based on practices and ideas already central to Assyrian imperial ideology and religion. Such features include the central role of ascetisism in Syriac Christianity, the cult of the Mother of the god, the Holy Virgin, and belief in God the Father, his Son and the Holy Spirit, formalized in the doctrine of the Trinity of God. The Trinitarian doctrine enters Christian theology only in the third century AD. As late as in AD 260, Pope Dionysios of Rome could still be shocked by the ---------------------------------------- 56 Note, e.g., Hippolytus, Refutatio V 7.9, "the Assyrians are the first who have held that the soul is divided in three, also one," and Pausanias, Description of Greece (ed. W. H. S. Jones, Loeb Classical Library, 1918), Messenia, XXXII4: "I know that the Chaldaeans and Indian sages were the first to say that the soul of man is immortal, and have been followed by some Greeks, particularly by Plato the son of Ariston." On the Mesopotamian origin of the Chaldaean (or Assyrian) Oracles and their immense influence on Neoplatonism, see E. des Places, Oracles chaldaiques avec un choix de commentaires anciens (Paris, 1989), pp. 7-52. 57 Miller,The Roman Near East, P. 494. 58 See my book Assyrian Prophecies (State Archives of Assyria 9, Helsinki, 1997) and my articles "The Assyrian Tree of Life: Tracing the Origins of Jewish Monotheism and Greek Philosophy," Journal of Near Eastern Studies 52 (1993), 161-208; "The Assyrian Cabinet," in Vom Alien Orient zum Alien Testament. Festschrift fur Wolfram Freiherrn van Soden, ed. M. Dietrich and O. Loretz (Alter Orient und Altes Testament 240, Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1995), pp. 3 79-401; "The Concept of the Saviour and Belief in Resurrection in Ancient Mesopotamia," Academia Scientiarum Fennica, Year Book, 1997 (Helsinki, 1998), 51-58; and "Monotheism in Ancient Assyria" (above, n. 48). (P - 16) idea of three hypostases proposed by Origen.59 Where did Origen get his ideas from? His teacher was Clement of Alexandria, who in turn had been taught by an Assyrian, Tatian.60 We do not know exactly what part of Assyria/Syria Tatian came from, but we do know that he was an Assyrian and as such part of a religious tradition in which Trinitarian ideas had been current for centuries. I would submit there is a great likelihood that he is the ultimate source of Origen's Trinity. For an outsider who does not know the facts it will be difficult recognize the link between imperial Assyria and the oppressed and persecuted. Aramaic-speaking Christian Assyrians of today. And if this recognition is lacking; it will be all the more difficult for the Assyrians to regain their lost place among sovereign nations. For this reason it is imperative that the facts establishing the link be systematically collected and presented in a way that will settle the issue definitely. To make this possible, the State Archives of Assyria Centre of Excellence of the University of Helsinki has initiated a long-term project called MELAMMU, "divine splendor," which aims at systematically documenting the continuity ; transformation of Assyrian culture and ethnic identity in post-empire times until the present day. A central objective of MELAMMU is to create an electro database bringing together all the relevant evidence and make it available worldwide on the Internet. The project has an international steering committee and a board of consultants representing several different branches of study, from Assyriology to classical, Iranian and religious studies. With the support Assyrians in the United States and Sweden, we hope to have the database re; and operational within a few years.61 I am convinced that, once completed, MELAMMU will not only greatly boost research in Assyrian and Babylonian cultural heritage but also significantly help modern Assyrians in their struggle for a brighter future. I particularly hope that MELAMMU will become a source of inspiration for young computer- generation Assyrians and inspire them to work for the future of their nation. For they have plenty of reasons to do so with pride. They are descendants of a great nation which has given much to the culture of mankind and spread Christian farther than any other people in antiquity. ---------------------------------------- 59 J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (5th ed., London, 1977), p. 134. 60 Clement of Alexandria, Strom. III 12.81. 61 For a detailed, albeit still preliminary, description of the MELAMMU Project see the URL http://www.helsinki.fi/science/saa/melammu.html. ****************** Published - Journal of The Assyrian Academic Society Vol. 12, No. 2, 2000 --------------------- - BACK TO INDEX - REPLY - QUOTE - EDIT - DELETE -

The full topic: Read... (Not that it will fix your obsession) Mancho - Tuesday, October 30 2007, 22:51:54 (CET) thank you...I will pancho - 10/31 20:58 done pancho - 11/01 00:29 Re: done Mancho - 11/01 10:00 Re: done pancho - 11/01 20:04 Re: done Mancho - 11/01 22:01 Re: done pancho - 11/02 19:23

Content-length: 47700 Content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded Accept: image/gif, image/x-xbitmap, image/jpeg, image/pjpeg, application/x-shockwave-flash, application/vnd.ms-excel, applicatio... Accept-encoding: gzip, deflate Accept-language: en-us Cache-control: no-cache Connection: Keep-Alive Cookie: *hidded* Host: www.insideassyria.com Referer: http://www.insideassyria.com/rkvsf5/rkvsf_core.php?.4cdv. Ua-cpu: x86 User-agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; InfoPath.2)

Powered by RedKernel V.S. Forum 1.2.b9