Assyrian

Assyrian Empire 2500 BC–605 BC Overview map of the Ancient Near East in the 15th century BC (Middle Assyrian period), showing the core territory of Assyria with its two major cities Assur and Nineveh wedged between Babylonia downstream (to the south-east) and the states of Mitanni and Hatti upstream (to the north-west). Capital Aššur, Nineveh Languages Akkadian Sumerian Aramaic Religion Ancient Mesopotamian religion Government Monarchy King • c. 2500 BC Tudiya (first) • 612–599 BC Ashur-uballit II (last) Historical era Mesopotamia • Kikkiya overthrown 2500 BC • Decline of Assyria 612–599 BC 605 BC Currency Tekel Succeeded by Median Empire Neo-Babylonian_Empire Achaemenid Empire Today part of Syria Iraq Turkey Iran Assyria was a major Mesopotamian East Semitic-speaking kingdom and empire of the ancient Near East and the Levant. It existed as a state from perhaps as early as the 25th century BC in the form of the Assur city-state,[1] until its lapse between 612 BC and 599 BC, spanning the Early to Middle Bronze Age through to the late Iron Age.[2][3] From the end of the seventh century BC to the mid-seventh century AD, it survived as a geopolitical entity, for the most part ruled by foreign powers, although a number of Neo-Assyrian states arose at different times during the Parthian and early Sasanian Empires between the mid-second century BC and late third century AD, a period which also saw Assyria become a major centre of Syriac Christianity and the birthplace of the Church of the East.[4] Centered on the Tigris in Upper Mesopotamia (modern northern Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and the northwestern fringes of Iran), the Assyrians came to rule powerful empires at several times. Making up a substantial part of the greater Mesopotamian "cradle of civilization", which included Sumer, the Akkadian Empire, and Babylonia, Assyria was at the height of technological, scientific and cultural achievements for its time. At its peak, the Assyrian empire stretched from Cyprus and the East Mediterranean to Iran, and from what is now Armenia and Azerbaijan in the Caucasus, to the Arabian Peninsula, Egypt and eastern Libya.[5] Assyria is named after its original capital, the ancient city of Aššur, which dates to c. 2600 BC, originally one of a number of Akkadian city states in Mesopotamia. In the 25th and 24th centuries BC, Assyrian kings were pastoral leaders. From the late 24th century BC, the Assyrians became subject to Sargon of Akkad, who united all the Akkadian- and Sumerian-speaking peoples of Mesopotamia under the Akkadian Empire, which lasted from c. 2334 BC to 2154 BC.[6] After its fall from power, the greater remaining part of Assyria was a geopolitical region and province of other empires, although between the mid-2nd century BC and late 3rd century AD a patchwork of small independent Assyrian kingdoms arose in the form of Ashur, Adiabene, Osroene, Beth Nuhadra, Beth Garmai and Hatra. The region of Assyria fell under the successive control of the Median Empire, the Achaemenid Empire, the Macedonian Empire, the Seleucid Empire, the Parthian Empire, the Roman Empire, and the Sasanian Empire. The Arab Islamic Conquest in the mid-seventh century finally dissolved Assyria (Assuristan) as a single entity, after which the remnants of the Assyrian people (by now Christians) gradually became an ethnic, linguistic, cultural and religious minority in the Assyrian homeland, surviving there to this day as an indigenous people of the region.[7][8] Names Edit Assyria was also sometimes known as Subartu and Azuhinum prior to the rise of the city-state of Ashur, after which it was Aššūrāyu, and after its fall, from 605 BC through to the late seventh century AD variously as Achaemenid Assyria, and also referenced as Atouria, Ator, Athor, and sometimes as Syria which etymologically derives from Assyria[9] according to Strabo, Syria (Greek), Assyria (Latin) and Asōristān (Middle Persian). "Assyria" can also refer to the geographic region or heartland where Assyria, its empires and the Assyrian people were (and still are) centered. The indigenous modern Eastern Aramaic-speaking Assyrian Christian ethnic minority in northern Iraq, north east Syria, southeast Turkey and northwest Iran are the descendants of the ancient Assyrians (see Assyrian continuity).[10][11] Pre-history Edit In prehistoric times, the region that was to become known as Assyria (and Subartu) was home to a Neanderthal culture such as has been found at the Shanidar Cave. The earliest Neolithic sites in Assyria were the Jarmo culture c. 7100 BC and Tell Hassuna, the centre of the Hassuna culture, c. 6000 BC. The Akkadian-speaking people (the earliest historically-attested Semitic-speaking people[12]) who would eventually found Assyria appear to have entered Mesopotamia at some point during the latter 4th millennium BC (c. 3500–3000 BC),[13] eventually intermingling with the earlier Sumerian-speaking population, with Akkadian names appearing in written record from as early as the 29th century BC.[12][14] During the 3rd millennium BC, a very intimate cultural symbiosis developed between the Sumerians and the Akkadians throughout Mesopotamia, which included widespread bilingualism.[15] The influence of Sumerian (a language isolate) on Akkadian, and vice versa, is evident in all areas, from lexical borrowing on a massive scale, to syntactic, morphological, and phonological convergence.[15] This has prompted scholars to refer to Sumerian and Akkadian in the third millennium BC as a sprachbund.[15] Akkadian gradually replaced Sumerian as the spoken language of Mesopotamia somewhere after the turn of the 3rd and the 2nd millennium BC (the exact dating being a matter of debate),[16] although Sumerian continued to be used as a sacred, ceremonial, literary and scientific language in Mesopotamia until the 1st century AD, as did use of the Akkadian cuneiform. Letter sent by the high-priest Lu'enna to the king of Lagash (maybe Urukagina), informing him of his son's death in combat, c. 2400 BC, found in Girsu. The cities of Assur, Nineveh, Gasur and Arbela together with a number of other towns and cities, existed since at least before the middle of the 3rd millennium BC (c. 2600 BC), although they appear to have been Sumerian-ruled administrative centres at this time, rather than independent states. Greco-Roman classical writers such as Julius Africanus, Marcus Velleius Paterculus and Diodorus Siculus dated the founding of Assyria to various dates between 2284 BC and 2057 BC,[17][18][19] listing the earliest king as Belus or Ninus. According to the Biblical generations of Noah, which appears to have been largely compiled between the 7th and 5th centuries BC,[20] the city of Aššur was allegedly founded by a biblical Ashur the son of Shem, who was deified by later generations as the city's patron god. However, the much older attested Assyrian tradition itself lists the first king of Assyria as the 25th century BC Tudiya, and an early urbanised Assyrian king named Ushpia (c. 2050 BC) as having dedicated the first temple to the god Ashur in the city in the mid-21st century BC. It is highly likely that the city was named in honour of its patron Assyrian god with the same name. History Early urbanised kings Adaside dynasty Culture Edit Main article: Assyrian culture Assyria continued to exist as a geopolitical entity until the Arab-Islamic conquest in the mid-7th century. Assyrian identity; personal, family and tribal names; and both the spoken and written evolution of Mesopotamian Aramaic (which still contains many Akkadian loan words and an Akkadian grammatical structure) have survived among the Assyrian people from ancient times to this day. An Assyrian calendar has been revived. Language Edit Main articles: Sumerian language, Akkadian language, Aramaic language, and Assyrian Neo-Aramaic The pastime of an Assyrian King by F.A. Bridgman Assyrian was a dialect of Akkadian language, a member of the eastern branch of the Semitic family and the oldest historically attested of the Semitic languages, which began to appear in written form in the 29th century BC. The first inscriptions in Assyria proper, called Old Assyrian (OA), were made in the Old Assyrian period.[104] During the 3rd millennium BC, a very intimate cultural symbiosis developed between the Sumerians and Akkadian-speakers, which included widespread bilingualism.[15] The influence of Sumerian on Akkadian (and vice versa) is evident in all areas, from lexical borrowing on a massive scale, to syntactic, morphological, and phonological convergence.[15] This has prompted scholars to refer to Sumerian and Akkadian in the 3rd millennium BC as a sprachbund.[15] Akkadian gradually replaced Sumerian as the spoken language of Mesopotamia somewhere around the turn of the 3rd and the 2nd millennium BC (the exact dating being a matter of debate),[16] but Sumerian continued to be used as a sacred, ceremonial, literary and scientific language in Mesopotamia until the 1st century AD. In the Neo-Assyrian period, the Aramaic language became increasingly common,[105] more so than Akkadian—this was thought to be largely due to the mass deportations undertaken by Assyrian kings,[106] in which large Aramaic-speaking populations, conquered by the Assyrians, were relocated to Assyria and interbred with the Assyrians, and due to the fact that Tiglath-pileser II made it the lingua franca of Assyria and its empire in the 8th century BC. The ancient Assyrians also used Sumerian in their literature and liturgy,[106] although to a more limited extent in the Middle- and Neo-Assyrian periods, when Akkadian became the main literary language.[106] The destruction of the Assyrian capitals of Nineveh and Assur by the Babylonians, Medes and their allies, ensured that much of the bilingual elite (but not all) were wiped out. By the 7th century BC, much of the Assyrian population used distinct Akkadian influenced Eastern Aramaic varieties and not Akkadian itself. The last Akkadian inscriptions in Mesopotamia date from the 1st century AD. The Syriac language also emerged in Assyria during the 5th century BC, and during the Christian era, Syriac literature and Syriac script were to become hugely influential. However, the descendant Akkadian influenced Eastern Aramaic dialects from the Neo-Assyrian Empire, as well as Akkadian and Mesopotamian Aramaic personal, tribal, family and place names, still survive to this day among Assyrian people in the regions of northern Iraq, southeast Turkey, northwest Iran and northeast Syria that constituted old Assyria, and are spoken fluently by up to 1,000,000 Assyrians, with a further number having lesser and varying degrees of fluency.[106] These dialects which contain many Akkadian loan words and grammatical features are very different from the now almost extinct Western Aramaic of the Arameans in the Levant and Trans-Jordan, which does not have any Akkadian grammatical structure or loan words. After 90 years of effort, the University of Chicago in 2011 completed an Assyrian dictionary, the style of which is more like an encyclopedia than a dictionary.[107] Religion Edit Ancient Assyrian religion Edit Main article: Ancient Mesopotamian religion The Assyrians, like the rest of the Mesopotamian peoples, followed ancient Mesopotamian religion, with their national god Ashur having the most importance to them during the Assyrian Empire. This religion gradually declined with the advent of Syriac Christianity between the first and tenth centuries.[69] The major deities worshipped in Assyria include; Adad (Hadad) – storm and rain god Anu or An – god of heaven and the sky, lord of constellations, and father of the gods Dagan or Dagon – god of fertility Enki or Ea – god of the Abzu, crafts, water, intelligence, mischief and creation and divine ruler of the Earth and its humans Ereshkigal – goddess of Irkalla, the Underworld Ishtar or Inanna/Astarte – goddess of fertility, love, and war Marduk – patron deity of Babylon who eventually became regarded as the head of the Babylonian pantheon Nabu – god of wisdom and writing Nanshe – goddess of prophecy, fertility and fishing Nergal – god of plague, war, and the sun in its destructive capacity; later husband of Ereshkigal Ninhursag or Mami, Belet-Ili, Ki, Ninmah, Nintu, or Aruru – earth and mother goddess Ninlil – goddess of the air; consort of Enlil Ninurta – champion of the gods, the epitome of youthful vigour, and god of agriculture Nisroch Nusku Shamash or Utu – god of the sun, arbiter of justice and patron of travellers Sin or Nanna – god of the moon Tammuz or Dumuzi – god of food and vegetation Tiamat The original pagan religion of the Assyrians was widely adhered to until around the 4th century, and survived in pockets until at least the 10th century.[69] However, Assyrians today are exclusively Christian, with most following the Assyrian Church of the East, Chaldean Catholic Church, Ancient Church of the East, Syriac Orthodox Church, Syriac Catholic Church, Assyrian Pentecostal Church and Assyrian Evangelical Church. Assyrians had begun to adopt Christianity (as well as for a time Manicheanism and gnosticism) between the 1st and 3rd centuries AD. Christian history of the Assyrian people Edit The Assyrian people originally adhered to one of two Churches- The Assyrian Church of the East, an East Syrian Rite Church, or the Syriac Orthodox Church, a West Syrian Rite Church. However, now there are nearly 20 different Assyrian Christian Churches including the ones followed by ethnically Malayali Converts in India, known as St Thomas Christians. The first new Church formed around 100 years after the massacres by Timur during the 14th century due to the Schism of 1552, which occurred among the Assyrians of northern Mesopotamia when a large number of Nestorian (followers of the Assyrian Church of the East) Assyrians in Amid elected a rival Patriarch named Shimun VIII Yohannan Sulaqa after becoming dissatisfied with the leadership of the Assyrian Church (at this point based in Alqosh). Due to a need for an official ordination, Sulaqa went into communion with the Roman Catholic Church after at first failing to gain acceptance within the Syriac Orthodox Church. Rome named this new church The Church of Assyria and Mosul and its first leader Patriarch of the East Assyrians in 1553 AD. Soon after coming back Sulaqa was assassinated by supporters of the rival patriarch in Alqosh, but was able to form a new church structure and line of succession known as the Shimun Line prior to his death. This group of Assyrians eventually broke off ties with Rome, moved en masse to the Hakkari Mountains, and returned to the Nestorian faith they once adhered to prior to the Schism of 1552 (although the Shimun line still operated independently from the original Assyrian Church structure based in Alqosh). A decade or so before the Shimun line broke off ties with Rome, another faction within the Assyrian Church entered into communion with Rome known as the Josephite line, and upon the Shimun line leaving, inherited the now vacant Church of Assyria and Mosul, which was renamed the "Chaldean Catholic Church" in 1683. This is now believed to be due to an error by the Catholic Church, but now due to that error their followers became known as Chaldean Catholics or Chaldo-Assyrians despite having no ethnic, historical, linguistic, cultural or geographic connections whatsoever to the by now long extinct Chaldean tribe of south east Mesopotamia.[84] Later on in the 1830s the original Assyrian Church of the East structure in Alqosh combined with the Chaldean Catholic Jacobite one, creating the modern Chaldean Catholic Church structure, which is ironic considering that the only remaining ethnic Assyrian Church to practice the Assyrian Church of the East denomination until this day is ruled by the Shimun line- the very first Church to split from the Assyrian Church of the East back in 1552. There was also another Nestorian Denomination known as the Ancient Church of the East, which split from the Assyrian Church of the East due to reforms passed under the rule of Shimun XXIII Eshai in the 1960s, but with the election of Gewargis III in 2015 the churches had a reconciliation, and reunited. The Syriac Orthodox Church also has a large number of ethnically Assyrian Adherents, who are known as Syriacs. The Syriac Orthodox Church has 5 million adherents across the globe, mostly in India, but is based in Damascus. However, since the 11th century it was based in the Saffron Monastery of Tur Abdin, and prior to that it was based in Antioch. Like the Nestorian churches, schisms also occurred within the Syriac Orthodox Church. In 1626 Jesuit and Capuchin missionaries began to proselytize among the Syriac Orthodox faithful at Aleppo, forming a larger pro-catholic movement within the Syriac Orthodox Church. So in 1662, when the Syriac Orthodox Patriarchate had fallen vacant, the Catholic party was able to elect one of its own, Andrew Akijan as Patriarch of the Syriac Church. This provoked a split in the community, and after Akijan's death in 1677 two opposing patriarchs were elected, with one of those becoming the first Patriarch of the Syriac Catholic Church. This line of succession died out quickly, however, but in 1782 with the election of Michael Jarweh as Patriarch the Ignatius line has been the head of the Syriac Catholic Church since then, and also has its base in Damascus. Some Assyrians converted to Protestantism during the 20th century as well, forming the Assyrian Pentecostal Church and Assyrian Evangelical Church. Therefore, by the end of all the schisms which occurred, the Assyrian people are now followers of the Assyrian Church of the East, Chaldean Catholic Church, Ancient Church of the East, Syriac Orthodox Church, Syriac Catholic Church, Assyrian Pentecostal Church and Assyrian Evangelical Church- in addition to even more sub churches which are located in India that are adherent to the mother sees in the Middle East. Architecture Edit Main article: Architecture of Mesopotamia Assyrian architecture, like that of Babylonia, was influenced by Sumero-Akkadian styles (and to some degree Mitanni), but early on developed its own distinctive style. Palaces sported colourful wall decorations, and seal-cutting (an art learned from Mittani) developed apace. Schools for scribes taught both the Babylonian and Assyrian dialects of Akkadian, and Sumerian and Akkadian literary works were often copied with an Assyrian flavour. The Assyrian dialect of Akkadian was used in legal, official, religious, and practical texts such as medicine or instructions on manufacturing items. During the 13th to 10th centuries, picture tales appeared as a new art form: a continuous series of images carved on square stone steles. Somewhat reminiscent of a comic book, these show events such as warfare or hunting, placed in order from the upper left to the lower right corner of the stele with captions written underneath them. These and the excellent cut seals show that Assyrian art was beginning to surpass that of Babylon. Architecture saw the introduction of a new style of ziggurat, with two towers and colorful enameled tiles. Arts and Sciences Edit Main article: Art of Mesopotamia Relief from Assyrian capital of Dur Sharrukin, showing transport of Lebanese cedar (8th century BC) Assyrian art preserved to the present day predominantly dates to the Neo-Assyrian period. Art depicting battle scenes, and occasionally the impaling of whole villages in gory detail, was intended to show the power of the emperor, and was generally made for propaganda purposes. These stone reliefs lined the walls in the royal palaces where foreigners were received by the king. Other stone reliefs depict the king with different deities and conducting religious ceremonies. Many stone reliefs were discovered in the royal palaces at Nimrud (Kalhu) and Khorsabad (Dur-Sharrukin). A rare discovery of metal plates belonging to wooden doors was made at Balawat (Imgur-Enlil). Assyria. Head of winged bull, 9th c. B.C.; Brooklyn Museum Brooklyn Museum Archives, Goodyear Archival Collection Assyrian sculpture reached a high level of refinement in the Neo-Assyrian period. One prominent example is the winged bull lamassu or shedu that guard the entrances to the king's court. These were apotropaic meaning they were intended to ward off evil. C. W. Ceram states in The March of Archaeology that lamassi were typically sculpted with five legs so that four legs were always visible, whether the image were viewed frontally or in profile. Although works of precious gems and metals usually do not survive the ravages of time, some fine pieces of Assyrian jewelry were found in royal tombs at Nimrud. There is ongoing discussion among academics over the nature of the Nimrud lens, a piece of quartz unearthed by Austen Henry Layard in 1850, in the Nimrud palace complex in northern Iraq. A small minority believe that it is evidence for the existence of ancient Assyrian telescopes, which could explain the great accuracy of Assyrian astronomy. Other suggestions include its use as a magnifying glass for jewellers, or as a decorative furniture inlay. The Nimrud Lens is held in the British Museum.[108] The Assyrians were also innovative in military technology, with the use of heavy cavalry, sappers, siege engines etc. Legacy Notes See also Notes References