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.
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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.
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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).
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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).
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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
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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!
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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).
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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.
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Published - Journal of The Assyrian Academic Society
Vol. 12, No. 2, 2000 |
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