ASSYRIAN FRAUD

This site asks the question; Do modern-day Assyrians really exist and where did
this notion come from? I should point out at the beginning that I was born into
this community and raised to believe that I was, indeed, directly descended from
the ancient Assyrians...though the idea always struck me as preposterous becaus
e of the unlikelihood of any such direct link being maintained over 2500 years,
since the fall of the Assyrian empire. I only recently found the evidence to sup
port my doubts, oddly enough from a relative, a professor and author whose resea
rch on this topic will be highlighted here.

One more piece of personal information, just to expose myself, as it were. My gr
andfather, Dr. Baba Parhad, a medical doctor born and trained in the Middle East
, along with Dr. Freydoun Aturaya, who died in a Soviet prison in the 20s, toget
her formulated the first Assyrian nationalistic creed and started the movement f
or an independent Assyrian homeland, though my grandfather later disavowed such
efforts. And, to further outline my odd relationship to this supposed ethnic ide
ntity, I am the sculptor of the first Assyrian public monument, a 15 foot tall s
tatue of Ashurbanipal, created anywhere in the world in the last 2500 years, ins
talled in San Francisco in 1988. In addition I have made and sold over one milli
on dollars worth of Assyrian sculpture to people in the modern Assyrian communit
y. It was not pleasant for me to have to admit that it was all a mistake, at lea
st the part of it that sustained the notion of a direct link between ourselves a
nd the ancients...although I do respect and admire the ancient Assyrians as much
as I ever did. With that disclosure, let us begin on the far more fascinating h
istory of just how a Christian sect was led, and then came, to believe that it,
and it alone, constitutes the modern-day, direct, descendants of the ancient Ass
yrians.


Modern Assyrians: Fact or Fraud?

This article relies on one, primary, source first published in 1961 by Princeton
University Press, revised and published in 1999 by Brill, titled The Modern Assy
rians of the Middle East, ''Encounters with Western Christian Missions, Archaeol
ogists, and Colonial Powers written by Dr. John Joseph, Louis Audenreid Professor
of History, Emeritus, who retired recently after thirty years of teaching Middl
e Eastern history at Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster Pennsylvania. Dr.
Joseph graduated with a doctorate in Middle Eastern history from Princeton Unive
rsity, and was recently honored with a new International Studies Building at Fra
nklin and Marshall College being named after him.

What prompted Dr. Joseph's specialized research into the claimed existence of mo
dern Assyrians is his own affiliation with the community of Middle Eastern Chris
tian Nestorians who are primarily responsible for advancing this notion. Dr. Jos
eph was born in Iraq to a Chaldean family and is one of very few who has approache
d this topic as a scholar, a trained academic, professor, a fully qualified hist
orian and published author.


From the preface to the revised edition, published by Brill, Dr. Joseph writes;

More than ever before, members of the new Assyrian generation realize that they h
ave to be knowledgeable about the past as well as the present, and that a partis
an history of their people, in the words of one Assyrian author, is paid little r
espect and eventually is undermined by trained historians.


Dr. Joseph explains;

The people who today call themselves Assyrians are, strictly speaking, members of
a cultural and religious group, molded together into a minority by ties of a co
mmon language and, until the nineteenth century, a common church membership whic
h, until the birth of the modern nation-state in the Middle East, was the strong
est tie among people. p 32

Throughout his book Dr. Joseph calls the modern advocates of these ancient ident
ities by the names they use to refer to themselves, that is; Chaldeans and Assyr
ians. However, the evidence and thrust of his book shows that they are mistaken;
misled at first by Western missionaries beginning in the 16th century, and then
by European government agents and explorers in the 19th century who then went o
n, after World War I, to adopt these ancient names for themselves for political
reasons.

This article is not concerned with the ancient Assyrian Empire, as such. Indeed
Dr. Joseph is not an Assyriologist and spends no time in his book retelling the
history of that magnificent people. His focus, and area of expertise, is the bas
isfor claims by a Christian sect that they, and they alone, are the descendants
of the ancient Assyrians. The main questions addressed by Dr. Joseph are; what h
appened to the ancient Assyrians? Were they indeed wiped out, down to the last l
iving one, or did something else take place? How likely is it that there are any
modern descendants who can trace their ancestry back 2500 years to the ancient
Assyrians? And, finally, what is their evidence for such a claim.

Dr. Joseph;

The use of these terms, Nestorians, Chaldeans, Syrians, Arameans, and Assyrians,
in reference to the same Christian minority, depending on the user's preferred t
erm, has continued to cause confusion. p. 1

The story of what happened to the ancient Assyrians after the fall of their empi
re in 612 B.C. Must take into account the Aramean people of Aram, modern-day Syr
ia, and the pervasive influence of their Aramaic language and its adoption by th
e Assyrians in place of their own, Akkadian, language.


Arameans:

From their humble beginnings as wandering tribesmen, the Arameans emerged by the
end of the second millennium B.C. as an important factor in the cultural, politi
cal and economic life of southwestern Asia. During the early period, Wayne T. Pi
tard refers to the Arameans as one of the most important ethnic groups in the Nea
r East. Aramean tribes attained great power in the large areas of both sides of t
he Syrian desert, eventually succeeding in settling and establishing ruling dyna
sties there. The most important Aramean kingdom, centered in Damascus, described
as the strongest and most influential power in the western fertile crescent, and
one of the most significant states in the whole of the Levant. (See Benjamin Mazar
, Aramean Empire and its relations with Israel, Biblical Archaeologist , 25 (Decem
ber, 1962), 101-102, 112-117.). The kingdom enjoyed a central position in the po
litical life of the Near East, dominating the regions main international trade ro
utes; it used the Aramaic idiom of Damascus as the administrative language in al
l of its provinces, as well as the language of diplomacy and commerce beyond its
borders. p. 10

By the end of the 10th century B.C. and the beginning of the 9th, Assyrian inscri
ptions for the first time inform us of Aramean political units in northern Mesop
otamia, while in the southern parts of that country their confederacies remained
a chronic menace to the Assyrians until their very downfall. It was in the 9th a
nd 8th centuries B.C. when the Arameans were defeated; in 720 B.C. Sargon II fin
ally brought to an end the Aramean kingdoms of the west; their territories were
incorporated into the Neo-Assyrian provincial system, a century and a decade bef
ore Assyria itself was overthrown. pp 10-11.


Even before its western expansion beyond the Euphrates river, the Assyrian empire
had found it necessary to use the Aramaic dialect of geographical Syria as its
official language, a move dictated by the wide expanse of Aramaic and the conven
ience of its alphabet and script. p. 11.

This process of gradual replacement of Akkadian, the language of the Assyrians,
by Aramaic, the language of the Arameans of Syria would prove to have disastrous
consequences for Assyrian self-awareness. Joseph writes;

With a much larger Aramean population now under its rule, far removed from the As
syria homebase, the smaller, ethnically-Assyrian, population could not resist ar
amization, a process that gradually transformed the cultural face of the empire,
leading to the Assyrians being out-lived and absorbed'." p 11

Before too long Aramaic had displaced Akkadian even as the language of everyday s
peech within Assyria itself. According to H.W.F Saggs, the cities of Assyria pro
per had become so cosmopolitan and polyglot, that the people of actual Assyrian
descent were possibly a minority within those cities. pp. 12-13.

Under the Iranians, Aramaic was also used for all aspects of written communicatio
n and records, emerging by about the sixth century B.C. as the lingua franca of
Western Asia, and by the beginning of the fifth century, as the common dialect o
f all the peoples of the region. In his article Aramaic in the Achaemenian Empire,
J.C. Greenfield speaks of ethnic groups of varied cultural backgrounds throughou
t the vast expanse of the Persian realm who used Aramaic language and writing. pp.
12-13
.
Explaining a crucial difference between the Persian and Assyrian adoption of Ara
maic Joseph states;

Unlike the Assyrians the Persians did not forget their own mother tongue; they ma
intained their national-linguistic identity, largely because their own Aramaic-s
peaking subjects did not predominate from within Persia as they did in the core
region of Assyria, later known as Bait Aramaye; home of the Arameans. (With the
advent of Islam, centuries after the Achaemenids, Sasanian Persians were also ab
le to resist arabization; they liberally borrowed from the Arabic vocabulary and
even adopted the Arabic script, but they were able to Persianize what they borr
owed. In the case of the Assyrians and other ethnicities aramization was total j
ust as the absorption of the various other peoples would be, centuries later, th
rough aribization.). p. 13.

After the fall of their empire, the Assyrians survived under far reduced circums
tances. The Medes , Babylonians, Greeks , Parthian and Sasanian Persians conquer
ed and controlled the region. Forgetting their own Akkadian language, the remain
ing Assyrians adopted the language and, with it, the culture of the Arameans, as
would many of the peoples of that region. Thus, by the 2nd century A.D., Aramai
c had become the language of the people living within the Persian empire includi
ng lands, and peoples, which once made up the Assyrian heartland.


The Arameans Become Syrians:

The designations Syria and Syrian were derived from Greek usage long before Chris
tianity. When the Greeks became better acquainted with the Near East, especially
after Alexander the Great overthrew the Achaemenian empire in the 4th century B
.C., they restricted the name Syria to the lands west of the Euphrates. During t
he 3rd century B.C., when the Hebrew Bible was translated by Jewish scholars int
o the Greek Septuagint for the use of the Hellenized Jews of Alexandria, the ter
ms for Aramean and Aramaic in the Hebrew Bible, were translated into Syrian and the Syr
ian tongue respectively. p. 9

Syriac, the major Eastern dialect...was the Aramaic dialect of Edessa; it gradual
ly became the new unofficial koine for all the various Christian sects. Even bef
ore the Christian period, the Edessan dialect had become the literary language i
n and around Edessa, but it attained special prominence there in the 2nd century
A.D., when it gradually became the literary language of what Noldeke called Aram
ean Christendom. Its importance increased with the expansion of Christianity in M
esopotamia from the beginning of the 3rd century on. As the language into which
the Bible was translated, it became the venerable language of the Aramaic-speaki
ng Christians of Mesopotamia and Persia, then both under Parthian rule. As the l
anguage of the Church and its liturgy, Syriac also became the language of litera
ture and correspondence, the way Quranic Arabic, a dialect of Mecca, became the c
lassical language of Arabic literature and written communication from the seventh
century on. p. 14.



A footnote appears;

The Authorized Version of the Bible continued to use the same terms that the Sept
uagint had adopted. In 1970, the New English Bible, published by Oxford and Camb
ridge University presses, and translated by biblical scholars drawn from various
British universities, went back to the original Hebrew terms, using Aram and Ar
ameans for Syria and Syrians respectively. p. 9

Returning to the text;

"In Palestine itself, according to Noldeke, the Jews and later the Christians th
ere referred to their dialect of Aramaic as Syriac; in Babylon, both Greeks and
Persians called the Arameans Syrians. p. 10

A footnote;

See T. Noldeke, Semitic Languages, in Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th ed. P. 625). T
he second-century B.C. Greek historian Posidonius, a native of Syria, noted that
the people we [Greeks] call Syrians were called by the Syrians themselves Aramea
ns.for the people in Syria are Arameans. (See J.G. Kidd, Posidonius (Cambridge Classi
cal Texts and Commentaries, 1988), vol. 2 , pt. 2, pp. 955-956.) p.10


Aramean/Syrians Become Christians:

It can never be known with any certainty how or when Christianity began to be ad
opted by non-Jewish residents of Mesopotamia. At the time of Jesus, six hundred
years after the fall of Nineveh, the people living in the lands of the Assyrians
, conquerors, migrants, and those of the old stock, had developed new identities
centering around an Aramean/Syrian core transmitted by a shared Aramaic/Syriac
language.

One, great, appeal of Christianity, which is imbedded in its evangelical core, i
s the idea that its message is not for a select group, or tribe alone, but for a
ll people everywhere. The various ethnic groups living under foreign domination
in the heartland of the Assyrian homeland saw themselves, as Christian converts,
to have been transformed into a greater, universal brotherhood whose parts were
far less than its whole. Their dominant identity became Christian.

Evidence shows that Christianity reached these distant regions early. The majorit
y of the very early converts to Christianity in lands east of the Euphrates were
Jews(Morony, p. 306). In and around the site of ancient Nineveh was a Jewish co
mmunity that had been there several centuries before the advent of Christianity.
P. 36.

Christianity began in an Aramaic environment; Jesus preached his message in an Ar
amaic dialect. Among the converts to the new faith were Jews and Gentiles of all
ethnic backgrounds. The Church and the new religion served as a melting pot; as
members of a new dispensation, the converts tended to lay aside former distinct
ions and prejudices and became in the character of Christians one homogenous peo
ple devoted to the Lord, not unlike the Islamic umma of the 7th century A.D. Wri
ting in the third century, Bardesanes, the eminent Edessan known as the founder
of Syriac literature, did not feel himself to be the leader of a sect but rather
to belong unquestionably to the universal Church. 'What shall we say about ours
elves, the new race of Christians whom Christ has caused to be raised in all cou
ntries as a consequence of his own coming? We are all Christians by the one name
of Christ wherever we may be found'. He then proceeds to speak of the brethren
in Gaul, Parthia, India, Persia and Mesopotamia without making any distinction. p
p 30-31

Peoples core identity became Christian. Conquered or incorporated into larger na
tion-states and empires people did not adopt new nationalities. The idea of nati
onality would not be born for many centuries. Instead people identified with the
ir religion and churches and this identity was expressed and taught in Aramaic/S
yriac.


Aramean/Syrian/Christians Become Nestorians:

Christians were also joined in large numbers by co-religionists from Byzantine te
rritory; they were brought as captives or came as refugees escaping religious pe
rsecution. Until Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity in the fourth cen
tury, all Christians were persecuted; those who escaped to Persian territory wer
e notat the timeconsidered politically suspect by the authorities there. p. 38

When the Byzantine empire became Christian with the conversion of Constantine, th
e Persians began to question the loyalty of their Christian subjects. Relations b
etween Byzantium and Persia deteriorated when Christianity became the state reli
gion of Persias enemy. p. 38.

As a result of controversies over the nature of Jesus, the first split occurred
between Western and Eastern Christianity which would lead to the Christians of t
he Persian Empire adopting the name Nestorians for themselves.

In the fourth and fifth centuries, questions raised about the humanity and divini
ty of Jesus were debated and settled in church councils convened by Byzantine em
perors themselves. At the Third Ecumenical Council, held in Ephesus (431), conve
ned by the emperor Theodosius II at the request of Nestorius, the Patriarch of C
onstantinople, a theological controversy dealing with the issue of the relations
hip of Christs humanity to his divinity led to the first schism between the East
and the West. p. 40

At question was the nature of Christ: Was he purely divine, of one nature, or wa
s he human and divine; two natures.

Diodorus of Tarsusemphasized the distinction between the divine and human natures o
f Christ to the point of undermining their unity. The most prominent exponent of
these controversial views in the fifth century was NestoriusThe Nestorian controve
rsy was condemned as heretical at Ephesus. After the Council of Ephesus, those wh
o adhered to the teachings of Nestorius organized their own church, establishing
themselves first in Edessa. They were driven out of there soon after the Counci
l of Chalcedon, forced to move further east in the direction of Mesopotamia and
Persia. pp. 40-41.

Joseph goes on to write that Nestorius, and others, were convinced that for the
Christian communities within the Persian empire to secure confidence in their lo
yalty to the government of the Shah, it

would be best for the authorities if all the Christians of his realm were made to
accept the doctrines opposed by the Western church (J.M. Sauget, Barsauma of Ni
sibis, in Encyclopedia of the Early Church, I, p. 112.). p. 42

Mainly for political reasons, the Church of the East convinced itself of the right
ness of the Nestorian position and through centuries repeated its formulas and rhet
oric. p. 42

Thus from about the sixth century on, the Christians within the Persian empire,
which included the land and peoples of ancient Assyria, whod collectively referre
d to themselves as members of The Church of the East till then, added the name Ne
storian, as a way of confirming their loyalty to the Persians since their enemies
, the Byzantines, were actively persecuting all followers of Nestorius. (There w
ould be one further change, also for political reasons, when, in 1976, the word A
ssyrian was added, making it the Assyrian Church of the East thereby bolstering the
claim of its members to being Assyrians.).

It is clear that religion played the greater part in identity. The Christians li
ving in the Persian Empire did not see themselves, and were not seen by the Pers
ians, as Persian nationals. They were seen as Christians, living within the Pers
ian Empire. It was their Christian faith alone that made them suspect, when that
same faith was adopted by the Romans, Persia's arch-enemy. Their best way to pr
ove loyalty to the Shah was to adopt a Roman heresy. They never became Persian, bu
t always remained Christians and as Nestorian Christians, felt more secure.


Aramean/Syrian/Christian/Nestorians Become Catholic and Protestant:

The evangelical awakening of the eighteenth century in Great Britain and the quicke
ning of religious life in Protestant circles in that country and America gave ri
se in the nineteenth century to the greatest missionary movement in the history
of the Christian Church since apostolic timesIn the field of foreign gospel conque
st the Roman Catholic Church had started a few centuries ahead of the Protestant
churches...Catholic missionaries were able to encourage a schism within the Nest
orian Church as early as the sixteenth century, and they had established contact
s with other Eastern Christians three centuries prior to thatThere were new terri
tories to conquer and to make up for those lost to the Faith in Europe. p 65.

Aramean/Syrian/Christian/Nestorian/Catholic/Protestants Become Chaldean:

The usage and origin of the name Chaldean has also been the subject of much acrim
onious debate. While this term is generally accepted today as referring to the R
oman Catholic off-shoot of the Nestorian Church, it has in the past been used as
a national name in reference to both branches. Nineteenth-century European writ
ers, in order to distinguish between the two churches, have referred to them as
Nestorian Chaldeans and Catholic Chaldeans. p. 3

In 1840, Ainsworth, one of the first few non-Catholics to visit the Nestorians, r
eported that these people considered themselves Chaldeans and descendants of the
ancient Chaldeans of Assyria, Mesopotamia and Babylon. p 4

Horatio Southgate, who was touring the region in the early 1830s, wrote that the
Nestorians call themselves, as they seem always to have done, Chaldeans; indeed Cha
ldean was their national name, he stressed. p 5

In the late 17th century, French Biblical critic Richard Simon spoke of the many
Christian sects of the East who bear the name Chaldean or Syrian and mentioned tha
t most of the Chaldeans are those whom we call Nestorians. (Richard Simon, Histoire
critique de la creance et des coutumes des nations levant, Frankford, Holland, 1
684, p 83.). pp 5-6.

Pope Paul V (1605-1621) wrote to Patriarch Elias that A great part of the East was
infected by this heresy [Nestorianism], especially the Chaldeans, who for this
reason have been called Nestorians. As far back as 1445 the Nestorians of the See
of Cyprus were called Chaldeans upon their reconciliation with the Church of Ro
me. p 6.

Assemani, the scholar most probably responsible for the propagation of the term C
haldean, had explained simply, and rightly, that the Nestorians are generally cal
led Chaldaic Christians, because their principal, or head church, is in ancient
Chaldeait was because of the geographical location of their patriarchate, and not
because of their ethnic origin, that the East Syrians (Nestorians) were called C
haldeans. p. 6


Aramean/Syrian/Christian/Nestorian/Catholic/Protestant/Chaldeans, Become Assyria
n:

It was in 1843 when the French Consular agent at Mosul, Paul Emile Botta, began h
is diggings at Khorsabad, about 12 miles north of Mosul, and uncovered the ruins
of the magnificent palace of Sargon II, King of Assyria (722-705 B.C.). That sa
me year the British excavations, under Austin Henry Layard, discovered the majes
tic palace of Shalmaneser I (ca. 884-860 B.C.) with its winged bulls, followed l
ater by that of Ashurbanipal (668-ca. 626 B.C.), with his librarys vast collectio
n of cuneiform tablets.Before too long, in one of the greatest triumphs of human
ingenuity, the cuneiform writing impressed on clay tablets or chiseled in stone,
was deciphered. Assyrian texts, in the Akkadian language, were soon read with t
he same certainty as Hebrew and Syriac.The Bible-reading public was well familiar
with these Assyrian names and events; they had been part of British and America
n cultural consciousness, wrote the Assyriologist H.W.F. Saggs. The history of t
he ancient Hebrew kingdoms of Israel and Judeh, noted Saggs, was a living thing,
as generally known as British history. To the Jews and the Western Christians of
the nineteenth century, the most important thing about the newly-discovered tabl
ets and monuments was that they had proven the Hebrew Bible to be right. The gen
eral public in England began to view the Assyrian sources as a weapon to be used
primarily against Biblical Higher Criticism as then applied to the Old Testament.
p 16.

The Nestorians and Chaldeans, but not Muslims, living in proximity to these discov
eries were quickly proclaimed, by the Europeans, to be the remnants of Nineveh a
nd Assyria. Writes Joseph;

When the Assyrian excavations revealed the remains of Nineveh to the wondering ey
es of the world, the Nestorians and their Chaldean brethren in the environs of the
ancient Assyrian capital and beyond attracted special attention. The hero of th
ese excavations, Austen Henry Layard, hastened to proclaim these historic, lingu
istic, and religious minorities to be as much the remains of Nineveh and Assyria
as the rude heaps and ruined palaces. In the midst of this excitement, J.P. Fletc
her wrote that the Chaldeans and the Nestorians are the only surviving human memori
al of Assyria and Babylonia. p. 17

While the name Chaldeans was already, as we have seen, appropriated by those Nest
orians who had embraced Roman Catholicism, the illustrious twin name of Assyrians
was eventually adopted by the (remaining) Nestorians as a name for themselves. p.
17


But not everyone agreed;

Coakley notes a dispute that Rassam had with Arthur J. Maclean of the Anglican mi
ssion in Qochanis in 1889 over the names Syrians and Assyrians when Maclean argued a
gainst the term AssyriansWhy should we invent a name when we have such a very conven
ient one, used for centuries, at our hand? It was understandable, he agreed, that
someone living so close to the ruins of Nineveh, should have a fit of enthusiasm
of Old Assyria, but is it common sense to cast aside the name used by the people
themselves [Suraye] and to invent another for them of very doubtful applicabilit
y? Rassams position was that Syrian was wrong; the correct form was Assyrian, but pref
erred Chaldean. Layard always referred to the Nestorians as Chaldeans or as Nestorian
Chaldeans in order to distinguish them from those united with Rome. pp 17-18


Prior to World War I, the Anglican mission to the Nestorians gave the Assyrian no
menclature a new impetus. Formally known as The Archbishop of Canterburys Assyrian
Mission, it re-enforced, no matter how unintentionally, the linkage between the
Nestorians and the ancient Assyrians. Assyrian Christians, which originally had on
ly meant The Christians of geographical Assyria, soon became Christian Assyrians. p.
18

In a footnote Joseph adds;

An appeal by Archbishop Tait published in 1870, was entitled Appeal on behalf of t
he Christians of Assyria, commonly called the Nestorians. The text of the appeal
spoke of this request from the Assyrians and From that moment Assyrian replaced Nes
torian in the formal Anglican vocabulary, writes Coakley, the historian of that m
ission. p 18

Returning to the text;

Throughout the nineteenth century the Nestorians were also referred to as Syrians
by European travelers and writers. Indeed Syrians (Suraye, Suroyo) was a name by
which the Nestorians and Jacobites called themselves until the post-World War I peri
od; thereafter Suraye was gradually replaced among the Nestorians by Aturaye, the
name of the ancient Assyrians in Syriac. The Jacobites continue to call themselv
es Suryoyo."

By the late nineteenth century, a few of the educated and politically conscious a
mong the Nestorians, especially those who had emigrated to America, began using At
uraye [Assyrians] in their writings. p 18

And in another footnote;

Daniel P. Wolks recent research shows that even the Urmiyah (in Iran, mine) Christ
ians in America, in their own language, continued until after World War I to ref
er to themselves as Suryaye (Syrians, mine). In his reading of some of their maj
or publications from 1907 to 1920, Wolk found that the first ethno-nationalist o
rganization established in Urmiyah, Khuyada, Unity, was a Suryeta organization.
Chicagos newspaper Mashk-hiddana Suryaya, Suryaya Herald, first published in 1915
, changed to Mashkhiddana Aturaya only in 1920, when the nationalist discourse h
ad come of age; the title in English was Assyrian American Herald, most probably
because Syrian in the United States stood for the more numerous Arab Christians f
rom geographical Syria. See Wolks The Emergence of Assyrian Ethnonationalism: Disc
ourse Against the Hachaqogue (Theives of the Cross), paper presented at the Middl
e East Studies Association Conference (MESA), Chicago, December 6, 1998. For the
growth of Assyrian nationalism quickened during the war years, and the presence
of an Assyrian American delegation at the Peace Conference in Paris, see below,
pp 156-157." p. 18

Back to the text;

The assumption that the Nestorians were the descendants of the ancient Assyrians
found a great advocate in the Anglican missionary W.A. Wigram, who, in his post-
World War I books, The Assyrians and their Neighbors , and Our Smallest Ally , p
opularized the name Assyrian and familiarized the world with the tragedy that had
befallen these descendants of Shalmaneser. p 19.

And in another footnote;

Maclean and Browne, p. 6. See also Coakley, p. 147 where he quotes Maclean saying
there is really as far as I know no proof that they [the Syrian Christians] had an
y connection with the Old Assyrians. One of the few Anglicans who did use the te
rm Assyrian was the Archbishop of Canterbury Benson, but that is a fad of His Grace
, as no one else does, wrote one of the missionaries quoted by Coakley. Se also F
iey (1965), pp 149-151." p. 19

Returning to the text;

During the interlude between the two world wars, the world heard a great deal abo
ut these modern Assyrians through newspapers and from the forum of the League of
Nations. In their own language, the people gradually began, vocally, to call the
mselves Aturaye (Assyrians) during the inter-war years; until then it was as natur
al for them to speak of themselves as Suraye as it still is for the Syrian Ortho
dox to call themselves by that name, Suroyo p 19


What Happened to the Assyrians After The Fall of Their Empire?

Modern Assyrian writers usually cite a statement that assyriologist Sidney Smith
allegedly made early in the twentieth century, namely, that the ancient Assyrian
s disappeared immediately and vanished after the fall of Nineveh in 612 B.C. To dispr
ove Smith, they cite another assyriologist, W.W. Tarn, who noted that for centuri
es after the fall of their empire, Assyrian survivors perpetuated old Assyrian nam
es at various places on the site of ancient Ashur. Edward Y. Odishoo (a modern A
ssyrian nationalist, mine) refers to a few historians who talk about the continuati
on of the (Assyrian) [sic] identity until the establishment of Christianity in ge
ographical Assyria, some eight centuries after the fall of the Assyrian empire.
What do these few historians and assyriologists really talk about? p. 28

Excavations in northern Iraq, according to Sidney Smith, have it is true, shown th
at poverty-stricken communities perpetuated the old Assyrian namesbut the essenti
al truth, he concludes, remains the same: the Assyrians were unduly devoted to pract
ices which can only end in racial suicide. W.W Tarn notes that under the Parthian
s in the early 3rd century A.D. a little body of people worshipped the god Ashur;
he describes theirs as a pathetic survival. More recently assyriologist Joan Oates
, in a section entitled Assyria after the fall, points out that on the site of old
Ashur, where a large Parthian city was excavated, the influence of Assyrian tradi
tion and symbolism can sometimes be seen in architecture and art. Patricia Crone a
nd Michael Cook, in their Hagarism note than under the Parthians The temple of As
hur was restored, the city was rebuilt, and an Assyrian successor state returned
in the shape of the client kingdom of Adiabene, adding that the region had an As
syrian self-identification and speak of the survival of a native aristocracy. p 28

Odishoos reading of Hagarism leads him to the conclusion that as late as the Parth
ian period, over 800 years after the fall of the Assyrian empire, there survived
a strong native (Assyrian) [sic] aristocracy peculiar to itself and very conscio
us of its past and proud of it. To reinforce his hypothesis, Odisho cites histori
an of ancient Iraq Georges Roux, who notes that during the Parthian period geogr
aphical Assyria was literally resurrected and that several of its cities were inhabi
ted again, and Ashur, rebuilt anew, became at least as large a city as it had be
en in the heyday of the Assyrian empire. p. 28

According to Odisho, the resurrection and rebuilding of Assyria were done by the s
trong native Assyrian aristocracy that he believes flourished under the benign ru
le of the Parthians. A more careful reading of Roux, however, would have shown t
hat there is no mention of any Assyrian involvement in the reoccupation and reco
nstruction of the towns and villages which had been lying in ruins for hundreds o
f years. In the very next sentence following the above quotation, left out by Odi
sho, Roux writes that it must be emphasized that the revived settlements had very
little in common with their Assyrian or Babylonian precursors; that the old Sume
ro-Akkadian civilization, which was perpetuated by a few priests in a few temples,
was an ossified civilization that simply could not withstand the profound ethnic,
linguistic, religious and cultural changes that were introduced by successive w
aves of invaders in northern MesopotamiaPersians ,Greeks, Arameans, pre-Islamic A
rabswho could be neither kept at bay nor assimilated. This massive influx of foreig
n peoples and ideas had submerged what was left of the Sumero-Akkadian civilizati
on. pp 28-29


And this brings us to the crux of the matter;

Speaking specifically of the ancient Assyrians, Roux explains in what sense the a
ncient Assyrians disappeared: they were a people who had forgotten their Akkadian
mother tongue, and a nation which forgets its language forgets its past and soon
loses its identity. p 29

This last statement strikes a strong chord with this Assyrian writer as it must wi
th all those of this community whove been raised outside their native homelands.
In a losing battle to keep alive our mother-tongue of Aramaic, our parents and p
riests incessantly repeat that to forget our language would mean that we would s
oon forget who you are, meaning, to them; Assyrians. The irony is that they were ref
erring to the Aramaic language we now speak and not the Akkadian of the actual A
ssyrians, who indeed forgot who they were when they forgot their language. What th
ey underscore is the truth of Rouxs statement as regards the ancient Assyrians; T
hey disappeared when the language they had written their history and culture in di
sappeared. Undoubtedly their genetic material remained and mixed and survivedbut
not their conscious self-awareness of whom they had been. And this is exactly wh
at Aramaic-speaking parents warn their children ofDo not forget Aramaic or you wil
l forget who you are and, they might have added, You will then go the way of the a
ncient Assyrians, who forgot all when they forgot their mother-tongue.


One of the challenges for modern Assyrians, claiming to have always known they s
urvived since the fall of the Assyrian empire, was to explain how it was that, f
or all those centuries, the Nestorians referred to themselves as Syrians (Suryay
e/Arameans) and never Assyrians, until the 19th century.


The lost A theory:

Because the Nestorians had always called themselves Syrians (Suraye), strenuous eff
orts were made by the more educated to prove that Suraye (Syrians) was simply a
truncated form of Ashuraye (Assyrian) and that the two terms were synonymous. Th
e initial letter A of Assyrian it was explained, was lost (tliqta in Syriacit had dro
pped out); The lost A was now retrieved but placed under a cancellation mark, mean
ing that it was originally there but was not pronounced. Thus Suraya was written
[A]suraya, which, pronounced Ashuraya, also meant Assyrian. P 19

Heinrichs rightly calls the Lost-A hypothesis very ingenuous, facilitating the cl
aim of the nationalists, but points out that in the Armenian language, the names
for Syrian and Assyrian, although similar sounding, both have always retained a
nd pronounced the initial A:Asoric/Asori for Syria/Syrian and Asorestan/Asoresta
nsi or Asorestanci for Assyria/Assyrian. pp 19-20

The Armenians always used two distinct, though similar sounding, words for Syria
ns and Assyrians. Therefore, even if the Assyrians lost their initial A, others, c
ontemporaries and neighbors of theirs, always knew they were not the same.

Heinrichs, pp. 106-07, where he calls the hypothesis simply nave. Armenian name Asor
i referred to the people of geographical Syria, the Arameans; it was the name of
Arameans wherever they were found. The writer is grateful to the late Dr. Avedi
s K. Sanjian, Nareski Professor of Armenian Studies at the University of Califor
nia, Los Angeles, for confirming my reading of these terms in a letter dated Oct
ober 10, 1994In the late 16th century, Sharaf Khan al-Bidlisi referred to the Nes
torians of Hakkari (in Anatolia, mine) as Christian infidels called Ashuri, a borr
owing from the Armenian. See al-Bidlisis Sharafnameh (in Persian) (Cairo, n.d.),
pp. 130-132.

Although the name for Syrians in the Armenian language, Asori, sounds very like th
e modern Assyrians' own name for themselves, Ashuri, it was not, but rather always
referred to Syrians and not Assyrians.

Back to the text;

Moreover, even if Syrian were derived from Assyrian it does not mean that the people
of and culture of geographical Syria are identical to those of geographical Assy
ria. p 20


It's clear that New York was derived from (olde) York, but that does not make En
glishmen out of modern-day New Yorkers. The name is derived from England, just a
s Syria may be derived from Assyria, but the people and culture are not the same
.

A footnote;

Heinrichs, pp. 102-103, 104, n. 9. Well known Semitic scholars are of the opinion
that Syrian and Assyrian are of completely different origins even though it remains
for future scholars to prove the correctness of this theory.


Misreading History:

Herodotus is often erroneously cited by nationalists as having equated Assyria with
Syria, referring to his statement that the people whom the Greeks call Syrians ar
e called Assyrians by others. p 20.

Herodotus himself, however. Always differentiated between the two terms. Randolph
Helms researches show that Herodotus conscientiously and consistently distinguished
the names Syria and Assyria and used them independently of each other. p 21

This would mean that Syrian did not also include Assyrian, that they were different
words for two different entities, hence the fact that Nestorians referred to the
mselves as Syrians meant they always knew themselves to be Syrians, not Assyrians
. Indeed this writer, also born into an Assyrian family, recalls the only word use
d by us to refer to our community was always Syrian (Suraye), not Assyrian (Atur
aye). Later we learned to call ourselves Assyrians, but our own word for ourselv
es has always been Suraye (Syrians)

To Herodotus, writes Helm, Syrians were the inhabitants of the coastal Levant, inc
luding North Syria, Phoenicia, and Philistia; he never{emphasis Helms} uses the na
me Syria to apply to Mesopotamia. Mesopotamia is always called Assyria[and its] inhabi
tants Assyrians. The clear distinction made by Herodotus, comments Helm, was lost u
pon Classical authors, some of whom interpreted [Herodotus] Histories VII.63 as a
mandate to refer to Phoenicians, Jews, and any other Levantines as Assyrians. p 21

A footnote;

See Helms Herodotus Histories VII.63 and the Geographical Connotations of the Topon
ym Assyria in the Achaemenid Period (paper presented at the 190th meeting of the Am
erican Oriental Society, at San Francisco, April 1980). See also his Greeks in the
Neo-Assyrian Levant and Assyria in Early Greek Writers (Ph.D. dissertation, Univer
sity of Pennsylvania, 1980), pp 27-41; see also Herodotus Histories, I.105 and II
.106. The late Arnold J. Toynbee, has also clarified that the Syrioi are the peop
le whom Herodotus includes in his Fifth Taxation District which includes the whol
e of Phoenicia and the so-called Philistine, Syria, together with Cyprus. The Syr
ioi , emphasizes Toynbee, are not the people of an Assyria which contains Babylon
and which is the ninth district in his list. p 21

Physical Appearance:

Some have argued that the physiognomies of the ancient Assyrians and the present-
day Nestorians closely resemble each other. Before Wigram advocated his hypothes
is that the Nestorians are Assyrian by blood, Fletcher had observed that Those who
have studied with care the sculptural representations of the ancient Assyrians a
nd compared them with the modern inhabitants of the plain of Nineveh, can hardly
fail to trace the strong features of affinity which exist between the robed mon
archs and priests of early days and the Christian peasants of [the plain of Mosu
l]. Before Fletcher, Asahel Grant did not find it difficult to write convincingly
that the Nestorians were the descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel; he noted t
hat the physiognomy of the Nestorian Christians bears a close resemblance to that
of the Jews of the country in which they dwell.

They might have added that the Muslim peasants also look as much like the ancien
t "robed monarchs" as do the Jews, and everyone else in that region.

Adducing as peculiar to the ancient Assyrians and the present-day Nestorians feat
ures, customs, and practices which are shared by a great number of other Near Ea
sterners, Wigram, or Grant, are indeed trying to prove too much. A number of peo
ples in the region resemble both the Jews and the Nestorians in their physiognom
y, and not all the Nestorians share the same physical features, as both Fletcher
and Wigram have themselves observed. pp 21-22


The Language:

Yet another proof that the Aramaic-speaking Christians are descendants of the ancie
nt Assyrians argues that the language of the two peoples is the same. Layard wro
te that the Nestorians spoke the language of their [Assyrian] ancestors. An opinio
n expressed by Layards Aramaic-speaking assistant, Hormuzd Rassam: that the ancie
nt Assyrians Always spoke the Aramaic language and they still do. We have just seen
that the ancient Assyrians did not always speak Aramaic; their mother tongue was
Akkadian, the language of the famed cuneiform tablets and monuments that Rassam
himself helped excavate. p 22

This is another critical point because until the discovery of the cuneiform tabl
ets, beginning in the 1840s, the modern Nestorians remembered nothing of the gre
ater part of the history and culture of their supposed Assyrian ancestors; nothi
ng of the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Ennuma Elish, their own Creation Epic, includin
g the names Napishishtim, the precursor to Noah, as well as Sargon the Great, th
e basis of the Moses and the reed-boat story, written on those tablets in the ac
tual language of the Assyrians, which was Akkadian. In fact it was only when Geo
rge Smith, in the 19th century, was able to decipher the cuneiform that the Nest
orians, and others, became acquainted with the much larger scope of Assyrian his
tory than what appeared in the Bible .

It is also a curious fact that if the survivors of the fall of Nineveh maintaine
d an Assyrian consciousness, self-awareness and appreciation of who they were, t
hey did not translate their rich, centuries-old, heritage of art, literature, hi
story, science, architecture, engineering, medicine, astronomy etc. into their n
ew Aramaic language...a language which indeed was the language of Christ, but not
of Shalmannessar or TiglathPilessar. The Nestorians (who would insist they had b
een Assyrians all along), who become rightly famous for translating, preserving an
d passing on the works of Greek Classical writers as well as the Hebrew Bible, d
id not bother to translate their own Akkadian-language Assyrian heritage into Aram
aic to pass on to their children and the world, as they did with the works of ot
hers. Instead the Akkadian language was forgot and with it any traces of Assyria
n self-awareness and the artifacts neglected till sand and dirt covered them ove
r.


What Assyrians Remembered:

Thanks to the Old Testament, the names Assyria and Assyrian were well known for c
enturies, long before the archaeological excavations of the nineteenth century.
In the works of the early Eastern Christian writers, notes Fiey, we find all the
gamut of references to these ancients, employing indifferently the words Syrian
s, Athurians [Assyrians], Chaldeans, and Babylonians, but these writers never id
entified with these ancients. I have made indices of my Christian Assyria , emphas
ized Fiey, and have had to align some 50 pages of proper names of people; there i
s not a single writer who has an Assyrian name. In early modern times...the Roman C
atholic Church added to the confusion by coining a number of names for the vario
us Christian communities of the East and their patriarchs; These Roman Catholic
titles and names, however, tried to identify the geographical location of the ch
urches and patriarchates of the region and not the ethnic origin of the people i
nvolvedAlso in the 18th century, the British historian Edward Gibbon, aware of th
e confusion of names, wrote that the Nestorians, Under the name of Chaldeans or A
ssyrians, are confounded with the most learned or the most powerful nation in Ea
stern antiquity. p 23


The Bible kept the memory of the ancient Assyrians alive. However, there was muc
h more written by the ancient Assyrians themselves, but concealed in the ruins,
that did not appear in the Bible and was not known to anyone, including Nestoria
ns, until the excavations of the nineteenth century. Certainly the Assyrians and
Babylonians were mentioned by early East Christian writers, but in no way did t
hese writers claim to be Assyrians or Babylonians themselves, nor did they menti
on the existence of either.


Eager to establish a link between themselves and the ancient Assyrians, the natio
nalists conclude that such a link is confirmed whenever they find a reference to
the word Assyrians during the early Christian period; to them it proves that thei
r Christian ancestors always remembered their Assyrian forefathers. Nationalist wr
iters often refer to Tatians statement that he was born in the land of the Assyria
ns, and note that the Acts of Mar Qardagh trace the martyrs ancestry to Ancient As
syrian kings. p 26


In a footnote;

Tatian not only did not claim to be an Assyrian, but scholars point out that he w
as not even born in the lands east of the Euphrates. Tatian (Greek Tatianos), wr
ites Millar, no more came from geographical Assyria than did that other Assyrian w
ith a Latin name, Lucian (Greek Lucianos) of Samasota. Millar explains simply th
at the terms Assyria and Assyrians were common terms then for geographical Syria
and its inhabitants. See his Rome and the East, pp 227, 454-455, 460. Consult a
lso Asmussen, op. cit., p 927; Encyclopedia of the Early Church (New York 1992),
under Tatian; Patricia Crone and Michael Cook, Hagarism (Cambridge, 1977), p. 197
, n. 163. p 27


Descent From the Ancients:

It is not surprising that in the land of the Assyrians one encounters an occasional
legend that traces the ancestry of an individual or group to an ancient hero. T
his writer has heard Persians on the streets of Kermanshah begging and claiming
that they were the lineal descendants of Imam Husayn, grandson of the Prophet Mu
hammad, who lived over 1,300 years before them. Michael G. Morony speaks of vill
agers of Aramaic descent who, assimilated with the Persians, claimed to be of Ro
yal Persian descent, form Kisra, son of Qubadh. The story of Mar Qardagh, himself
a semi-legendary figure, is such a legend; it traces the ancestry of his father
to the family of Nimrud and that of his mother to the family of Sennacherib (705
-681), a geneology that harks back over a thousand years. p 27


In a footnote;

See also Hagarism , p. 190, n. 71, where, in accordance with their methodology, au
thors Crone and Cook accept Qardaghss descendance from Assyrian kings as a believ
ed fact by his contemporaries, making Hagarism a favorite source book of the mod
ern Assyrian writers. In a letter to the author, dated June 11, 1997, Patricia C
rone wrote that she and Cook do not argue that the Nestorians of pre-Islamic Iraq
saw themselves as Assyrians or that this is what they called themselves. They c
alled themselves Suryane (Syrians, mine), which had no greater connotation of As
syrian in their usage than it did in anyone else'sWe take it for granted that the
y got the modern Assyrian label from the West and proceeded to reinvent themselv
esOf course the Nestorians were Arameans (Syrian/Suryane, mine). p 27

While the names Assyrian and Chaldean were certainly used by early Eastern Christian
writers there was no claim to kinship with those ancient peoples. The mention o
f those names was not, as Joseph points out, a case of remembering our ancestors,
but simply acknowledging their existence in those lands and especially their imp
act on Biblical Hebrews and others. Modern claims of descent from ancient heroes
is a common foible of certain classes of Easterners to this dayas in the United
States people claim to have had ancestors who crossed with the Pilgrims of the M
ayflower.


Summary;

The Aramaic language molded widely differing ethnic, social, and political elemen
ts into a uniform and integrated culture. Just as the Arabic language later amal
gamated various ethnic groups, creating the Arabs, without much regard to their
Arabian physical origin, so did Aramaic mold peoples of different identities int
o Arameans (Syrians, mine). The ancient Assyrians did not vanish when they were va
nquished in the late 7th century B.C., nor did every one of them immediately peri
sh. They merely merged with the mass of Near Eastern Arameans, just as others befor
e and after them, were similarly assimilated, like the Sumerians, Babylonians, H
ittites, Hurrians, and others. About 800 years after the fall of Nineveh, a comm
on language (Aramaic) unified the peoples of this region, just as Islam and the
Arabic tongue would arabize and muslimize most of the Arameans a few centuries l
ater, causing them to disappear. P 30.

The lineal origin of the community, like that of most Middle Eastern nationalitie
s, and nationalities the world over, is hidden in the mists of history. The reli
gious and linguistic minority under discussion is naturally a mixture of ethnici
ties, mainly Aramean, but also Persian, Kurdish, Arab and Jewish, just as presen
t-day Arabs are the result of a similar merging of a variety of nationalities. B
ut, just as it was the speakers of the Arabian language who gave most of the con
verts to Islam in the Middle East and Africa the name Arab. So the Arameans gave t
he various converts to Christianity their mother-tongue, and for the next 1,800
years, bequeathed to them the language of their literature and liturgy as well a
s the very name by which they have for centuries called themselvesSuraye-Suryaye
. p 32.


Conclusion;

Dr. Joseph has shown how survivors of the Assyrian empire merged with other ethn
ic groups, eventually adopting Aramaic as a common language for the region, forg
etting their own language and identity, and in this sense disappeared...as did the
other ancient peoples of that region. The coming of Christianity pulled these p
eoples together under the one banner of the Christian Church with an Aramaic lit
urgy and literature. The peoples of Mesopotamia identified themselves as Syrian/
Suryaye until the 19th century excavations uncovered the glories of Assyria, lea
ding Europeans to dub these Christians the direct, lineal descendants of the anc
ient Assyrians. Increasingly, and loudly, the Syrians began referring to themsel
ves as Assyrians and by the end of WW I added their demands for their own Assyria
n nation to those being made by other groups recently released from Ottoman domin
ation. There was no prospect of being given territory as a Christian sect. Their
only hope was to adopt a national identity as the indigenous people of an ancient A
ssyria, usurped by Arabs and Ottomans, now called Iraq, who demanded their nation re
turned to them.

The results have been disastrous. Since European and American missionaries first
appeared on the scene and especially with the coming of WW I, overtures for sup
port from the Christians of the region in return for protection and then a land o
f their own has led to reprisals. What Assyrian nationalists have seen as working
for their indigenous rights, even to collaborating with occupying European armies
, were acts of sedition and, in time of war, treason, which are severely punishe
d by all governments in all countries. No land or territory has ever been grante
d nor even considered. Further, Assyrian insistence that only Christians can be
legitimate Assyrians has verified to their Muslim neighbors and rulers that mode
rn Assyrians are nothing more than religious sects sporting a national front in
hopes of gaining a Christian territory or enclave for themselves.

It is difficult enough to be Christian in Iraq these days, seeing as how the cou
ntry is being attacked by a coalition of mostly Christian nations, without seeki
ng the help of those same nations for a land of our own to be carved out of Iraq.
The Christians of the Persian Empire, facing the same dilemma; the need not to b
e seen as potentially disloyal, felt the need to distance themselves from their
co-religionsts in the Roman Empire, even to adopting a Roman heresy purely for p
olitical security. Christians in Iraq must be wary of identifying too closely, o
r being identified, with the Christian nations attacking that country, or as sec
retly hoping for a defeat as presenting them with a golden opportunity; of giving
even the slightest impression that they may constitute a fifth column. The moder
n Assyrian nationalists, all of them safely out of Iraq and settled in the West,
by their clamoring for help from these same Christian powers in getting them a
piece of Iraq, are pursuing exactly the opposite course the Christians of Persia
did. Had those earlier Christians begged the Romans to come liberate them and giv
e them a piece of the Persian Empire, they would have been wiped out to a man, w
oman and child. Yet this is precisely what modern Assyrian nationalists are risk
ing for the remaining Christians in Iraq, and the result has been the worst cond
itions ever for them.

The great historian Arnold J. Toynbee said the national aspirations of such smal
l minorities was a will-o'-the-wisp enticing them to destruction. And this has bee
n precisely the experience of the Christian minorities of Iraq, especially. The
fact that their self-identification, as direct descendants of the ancient Assyri
ans who deserve to have their country back, has no basis in fact only adds to thei
r tragedy.