Assyrian continuity

Assyrian continuity is the study of continuity between the modern Assyrian people, a recognised Semitic indigenous ethnic, religious, and linguistic minority in Western Asia (particularly in Iraq, northeast Syria, southeast Turkey, northwest Iran and in the Assyrian diaspora) and the people of Ancient Mesopotamia in general and ancient Assyria in particular. Assyrian continuity and Ancient Mesopotamian heritage is a key part of the identity of the modern Assyrian people. No archaeological, genetic, linguistic, anthropological, or written historical evidence exists of the original Assyrian and Mesopotamian population being exterminated, removed, bred out, or replaced in the aftermath of the fall of the Assyrian Empire. Modern contemporary scholarship "almost unilaterally" supports Assyrian continuity, recognizing the modern Assyrians as the ethnic, historical, and genetic descendants of the East Assyrian-speaking population of Bronze Age and Iron Age Assyria specifically, and (alongside the Mandeans) of Mesopotamia in general, which were composed of both the old native Assyrian population and of neighboring settlers in the Assyrian heartland.

Due to an initial long-standing shortage of historical sources beyond the Bible and a handful of inaccurate and contradictory works by a few later classical European authors, many Western historians prior to the early 19th century believed Assyrians (and Babylonians) to have been completely annihilated, although this was never the view in the region of Mesopotamia itself or surrounding regions in West Asia, where the name of the land continued to be applied until the mid 7th century AD, and Assyrian people have continued to be referenced as such through to the present day.

European writers also often inaccurately equated Assyrians with Nestorians during the Medieval Era, a now unanimously rejected idea that lingered into the early 19th century among some western scholars, despite Assyrian conversion to Christianity preceding Nestorianism by many centuries, and Assyrians being members of churches such as the Assyrian Church of the East, Syriac Orthodox Church (and from the 17th century offshoot of the Assyrian Church, the Chaldean Catholic Church) which are doctrinally distinct from Nestorianism.

Modern Assyriology has increasingly and successfully challenged the initial Western perception; today, Assyriologists, Iranologists and historians recognize that Assyrian culture, identity, and people clearly survived the violent fall of the Neo-Assyrian Empire and endured into modern times. The last period of ancient Assyrian history is now regarded to be the long post-imperial period from the 6th century BC through to the 7th century AD when Assyria was also known as Athura, Assyria Provincia and Asoristan, during which the Akkadian language gradually went extinct by the 1st century AD, but other aspects of Assyrian culture, such as religion, traditions, and naming patterns, and the Akkadian influenced East Aramaic dialects specific to Mesopotamia survived in a reduced but highly recognizable form before giving way to specifically native forms of Eastern Rite Christianity, with the Akkadian influenced Assyrian Aramaic dialects surviving into the present day.Frahm, Eckart (2023). "Assyria's Legacy on the Ground". ''Assyria: The Rise and Fall of the World's First Empire''. Basic Books. p. 353. Boldt, Andreas D. (2017). ''Historical Mechanisms: An Experimental Approach to Applying Scientific Theories to the Study of History''. Taylor & Francis. p. 154.

The gradual extinction of Akkadian and its replacement with Akkadian influenced East Aramaic does not reflect the disappearance of the original Assyrian population; Aramaic was used not only by settlers but was also adopted by native Assyrians and Babylonians, in time even becoming used by the royal administrations of Assyria and Babylonia themselves, and indeed retained by the succeeding Indo-European speaking Achaemenid Empire. In fact, the new language of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, the Imperial Aramaic, was itself a creation of the Assyrian Empire and its people, and with its retention of an Akkadian grammatical structure and Akkadian words and names, is distinct from the Western Aramaic of the Levant which gradually replaced the Canaanite languages (with the partial exception of Hebrew). In addition, Aramaic also replaced other Semitic languages such as Hebrew, Phoenician, Arabic, Edomite, Moabite, Amorite, Ugarite, Dilmunite, and Chaldean among non-Aramean peoples without prejudicing their origins and identity. Since the Aramaic language was so deeply integrated into the empire and due to the fact it was spread chiefly by Assyria, in later Demotic Egyptian, Greek, and Mishanic Hebrew texts it was referred to as the "Assyrian writing." Due to assimilation efforts encouraged by Assyrian kings, fellow Semitic Arameans, Israelites, Judeans, Phoenicians, and other non-Semitic groups such as Hittites, Hurrians, Urartians, Phrygians, Persians, and Elamites deported into the Assyrian heartland are also likely to quickly have been absorbed into the native population, self-identified, and been regarded, as Assyrians. The Assyrian population of Upper Mesopotamia was largely Christianized between the 1st and 4th centuries AD, however Mesopotamian religion enduring among Assyrians in small pockets until the late Middle Ages, a further indication of continuity. Assyrian Aramaic-language sources from the Christian period predominantly use the self-designation ''Suryāyā'' ("Syrian") alongside "Athoraya" and "Asoraya" The term ''Suryāyā'', sometimes alternatively translated as "Syrian" or "Syriac", is generally accepted to derive from the ancient Akkadian ''Assūrāyu'', meaning Assyrian. The academic consensus is that the modern name "Syria" originated as a shortened form of "Assyria" and applied originally only to Mesopotamian Assyria and not to the modern Levantine country of Syria.

Assyrian nationalism centered on a desire for self-determination developed near the end of the 19th century, coinciding with increasing contacts with Europeans, increasing levels of ethnic and religious persecution, along with increased expressions nationalism in other Middle Eastern groups, such as the Arabs, Armenians, Copts, Jews, Kurds, Persians, and Turks. Through the large-scale promotion of long extant terms and promotion of identities such as ''ʾĀthorāyā'' and ''ʾAsurāyā'', Assyrian intellectuals and authors hoped to inspire the unification of the Assyrian nation, transcending long-standing religious denominational divisions between the Assyrian Church of the East, its 17th century offshoot, the Chaldean Catholic Church, the Syriac Orthodox Church, and various smaller largely Protestant denominations. This effort has been met with both support and some opposition from various religious communities; some denominations have rejected unity and promoted alternate religious identities, such as "Aramean", " Syriac", and " Chaldean". Though some religious officials and activists (particularly in the west) have promoted such identities as separate ethnic groups rather than simply religious denominational groups, they are not generally treated as such by international organizations or historians, and historically, genetically, geographically and linguistically these are all the same Assyrian people.

Assyrians after the Assyrian Empire

Early assumption of Assyrian annihilation

Ancient Assyria fell in the late 7th century BC through the Medo-Babylonian conquest of the Assyrian Empire, with most of its major population centers violently sacked and most of its territory incorporated into the fellow Mesopotamian Neo-Babylonian Empire. In the millennia following the fall of Assyria, knowledge of the ancient empire chiefly survived in western literary tradition through accounts of Assyria in the Hebrew Bible Book of Judith states that the Neo-Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II (605–562 BC) "ruled over the Assyrians in the great city of Nineveh", the Book of Ezra refers to the Persian king Darius I as "king of Assyria", and the Book of Isaiah states that there will come a day when God will proclaim "Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my heritage". The erroneous idea of complete Assyrian annihilation, despite increasing evidence to the contrary, proved to be enduring in western academia. As late as 1925, the Assyriologist Sidney Smith wrote that "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 so completely as was Assyria". Just a year later, Smith had completely abandoned the idea of the Assyrians having been eradicated and recognized the persistence of Assyrians through the Christian period into the present.

Post-imperial Assyria in modern Assyriology

Modern Assyriology does not support the idea that the fall of Assyria also brought with it an eradication of the Assyrian people and their culture. Though in the past regarded as a "post-Assyrian" age, Assyriologists today consider the last period of ancient Assyrian history to be the long post-imperial period, extending from 609 BC to around AD 250 with the destruction of the semi-independent Assyrian states of Assur, Osroene, Adiabene, Beth Nuhadra and Beth Garmai by the Sassanid Empire, or to the end of Sassanid ruled Asoristan (Assyria) and the Islamic Conquest around 637 AD, and support a continuity into the present day.

Though the centuries that followed the fall of Assyria are characterized by a distinct lack of surviving sources from the region, at least in comparison to previous eras, the idea that Assyria was rendered uninhabited and desolated stems from the contrast with the richly attested Neo-Assyrian period, not from the actual extant written sources from the post-imperial period, which although reduced, remain unbroken through to the modern era.

Though the Assyrian bureaucracy and governmental institutions disappeared with Assyria's fall, Assyrian population centers and culture did not. At Dur-Katlimmu, one of the largest settlements along the Khabur river, a large Assyrian palace, dubbed the "Red House" by archaeologists, continued to be used in Neo-Babylonian times, with cuneiform records there being written by people with Assyrian names, in Assyrian style, though dated to the reigns of the early Neo-Babylonian kings. These documents mention officials with Assyrian titles and invoke the ancient Assyrian national deity Ashur. Two Neo-Babylonian texts discovered at the city of Sippar in Babylonia attest to there being royally appointed governors at both Assur and Guzana, another Assyrian site in the north. Arbela is attested as a thriving Assyrian city, but only very late in the Neo-Babylonian period, and there were attempts to revive the city of Arrapha in reign of Neriglissar (560–556 BC), who returned a cult statue to the site. Harran was revitalized, with its great temple dedicated to the lunar god Sîn being rebuilt under Nabonidus whose mother was an Assyrian priestess from that city. (556–539 BC). In nearby Edessa, Assyrian religious traditions also survived well into the common era.

Individuals with Assyrian names are attested at multiple sites in Assyria and Babylonia during the Neo-Babylonian Empire, including Babylon, Nippur, Uruk, Sippar, Dilbat and Borsippa. The Assyrians in Uruk apparently continued to exist as a community until the reign of the Achaemenid king Cambyses II (530–522 BC) and were closely linked to a local cult dedicated to Ashur. Many individuals with clearly Assyrian names are also known from the rule of the Achaemenid Empire, sometimes in high levels of government. A prominent example is Pan-Ashur-lumur, who served as the secretary of Cambyses II. The temple dedicated to Ashur in Assur was rebuilt by local Assyrians in the reign of Cyrus the Great. Assyria was powerful enough to rebel twice against the Achaemenid Empire during the late 6th century BC, Assyrian troops provided heavy infantry and archers in the Achaemenid army, Assyrian agriculture provided a breadbasket for the empire and the Imperial Aramaic of the Assyrian Empire was continued by the Achaemenid Empire.

Under the Seleucid and Parthian empires, further efforts were made to revitalize Assyria and the ancient great cities began to be resettled, with the predominant portion of the population remaining native Assyrian. The original Assyrian capital of Assur is in particular known to have flourished during the Parthian era. Continuity from ancient Assyria is clear in Assur and other cities such as Arbela during this period, with personal names of the city's denizens greatly reflecting names used in the Neo-Assyrian Empire, such as ''Qib-Assor'' ("command of Ashur"), ''Assor-tares'' ("Ashur judges") and even ''Assor-heden'' ("Ashur has given a brother", a late version of the name ''Aššur-aḫu-iddina'', i.e. Esarhaddon), reflecting names extant in the lafe 3rd millennium BC. The Assyrians at Assur continued to follow the traditional ancient Mesopotamian religion, worshipping Ashur (at this time known as ''Assor'') and other Mesopotamian gods such as Shamash, Ishtar, Sin, Adad, Bel, Nergal, Ninurta and Tammuz. Assur may even have been the capital of its own semi-autonomous or vassal state, either under the suzerainty of the largely Assyrian populated Kingdom of Hatra, or under direct Parthian suzerainty. Though this second golden age of Assur came to an end with the conquest, sack and destruction of the city by the Sasanian Empire AD 240–250, the inscriptions, temples, continued celebration of festivals and the wealth of theophoric elements (divine names) in personal names of the Parthian period illustrate a strong continuity of traditions dating back to circa 21st century BC, and that the most important deities of old Assyria were still worshipped at Assur and elsewhere more than 800 years after the Assyrian Empire had been destroyed.

Identity in ancient Assyria

Development and distinctions

Ethnicity and culture are largely based in self-perception and self-designation. In ancient Assyria, a distinct Assyrian identity appears to have formed already in the Old Assyrian period ( 2025–1364 BC), when distinctly Assyrian burial practices, foods and dress codes are attested and Assyrian documents appear to consider the inhabitants of Assur to be a distinct cultural group, even though they were ethnolinguistically identical to the Semites of Southern Mesopotamia (Babylonia). A wider Assyrian identity appears to have spread across northern Mesopotamia under the Middle Assyrian Empire ( 1363–912 BC), since later writings concerning the reconquests of the early Neo-Assyrian kings refer to some of their wars as liberating the Assyrian people of the cities they reconquered. Though there for much of ancient Assyria's history existed a distinct Assyrian identity, Assyrian culture and civilization, like any other culture and civilization, did not develop in isolation. As the Assyrian Empire expanded and contracted, elements from regions the Assyrians conquered or traded with culturally influenced the Assyrian heartland and the Assyrians themselves. Early Assyrian culture was greatly influenced by the Hurrians and vice versa, a people that also lived in northern Mesopotamia, and by the culture of southern Mesopotamia, particularly that of Sumer and Babylonia.

Surviving evidence suggests that the ancient Assyrians had a relatively open definition of what it meant to be Assyrian. Modern ideas such as a person's ethnic background, or the Roman idea of legal citizenship, do not appear to have been reflected in ancient Assyria. Although Assyrian accounts and artwork of warfare frequently describe and depict foreign enemies, they are not usually depicted with different physical features, but rather with different clothing and equipment, though this may be more related to the fact Assyria mostly had contact with other societies in Western Asia, Anatolia, East Mediterranean, North Africa and Southern Caucasus where the people were likely similar physically to the Assyrians. Assyrian accounts describe enemies as barbaric only in terms of their behaviour, as lacking correct religious practices or being uncivilised, and as doing wrongdoings against Assyria. All things considered, there does not appear to have been any well-developed concepts of ethnicity or race in ancient Assyria. What mattered for a person to be seen by others as Assyrian was mainly fulfillment of obligations (such as military service), being affiliated with the Assyrian Empire politically, and maintaining loyalty to the Assyrian king; some kings, such as Sargon II (722–705 BC), explicitly encouraged assimilation and mixture of foreign cultures with that of Assyria.

Pre-modern self-identities

Though many foreign states ruled over the Assyrian heartland in the millennia following the empire's fall, there is no evidence of any large scale influx of immigrants that replaced the original population, which instead continued to make up a significant portion of the region's people until Mongol and Timurid massacres in the late 14th century. In pre-modern ecclesiastical Syriac-language (the type of Aramaic used in Christian Mesopotamian writings) sources, the typical self-designations used is suryāyā (as well as the shortened surayā), and sometimes ʾāthorāyā ("Assyrian") and ʾārāmāyā ("Aramaic" or "Aramean"). A reluctance of the overall Christian population to adopt ʾĀthorāyā as a self-designation probably derives from Assyria's portrayal in the Bible. "Assyrian" (Āthorāyā) also continuously survived as the designation for a Christian from Mosul (ancient Nineveh) and Mesopotamia in general. It is clear from the surviving sources that ''ʾārāmāyā'' and ''suryāyā'' were not distinct and mutually exclusive identities, but rather interchangeable terms used to refer to the same people; the Syriac author Bardaisan (154–222) is for instance referred to in 4th-century Syriac translations of Eusebius's ''Church History'' as both ''ārāmāyā'' and ''suryāyā''.

''Suryāyā'', which also occurs in the forms ''suryāyē'' and ''sūrōyē'', though sometimes translated to "Syrian", is believed to derive from the ancient Akkadian term ''assūrāyu'' ("Assyrian"), which was sometimes even in ancient times rendered in the shorter form ''sūrāyu''. Luwian and Aramaic texts from the time of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, such as the Çineköy inscription, sometimes use the shortened "Syria" for the Assyrian Empire. The consensus in modern academia is thus that "Syria" is simply a shortened form of "Assyria". The modern distinction between "Assyrian" and "Syrian" is the result of ancient Greek historians and cartographers, who designated the Levant as "Syria" and Mesopotamia as "Assyria". By the time the terms are first attested in Greek texts (in the 4th century BC), the local denizens in both the Levant and Mesopotamia had already long used both terms interchangeably for the entire region, and continued to do so well into the later Christian period. Whether the Greeks began referring to Mesopotamia as "Assyria" because they equated the region with the Assyrian Empire, long fallen by the time the term is first attested in Greek, or because they named the region after the people who lived there, the , is not known. It is known however, the Seleucid Greeks conceived that the Aramaic-speakers of the east were descended from the ancient Assyrians, an idea which the Seleucids borrowed from Classical Greeks, who deemed Assyrians and Syrians to be identical. Although the term "Syria" began to be confined to the region west of the Euphrates, the conflation of "Assyrian" and "Syrian" persisted, which is evident among certain communities well into the late medieval period. Even Josephus the Hebrew, who had a more unique stance on Syrian identity, perpetuated the traditions of Strabo and Herodotus which held Assyrians and Syrians to consisted of the same ethnos, mentioning the "Syrians" in Babylonia. This region was once under Assyria, and therefore Josephus followed the reasoning of Strabo, who argued that its inhabitants could be called "Assyrians" or "Syrians" interchangeably. Syrians in Roman Syria could also posit themselves as constituting the same ethnic group and heirs of an ancient legacy that their counterparts, the Assyrians in the Parthian and Sasanian kingdoms, claimed. Thus, those inhabiting Roman Syria could still envision the ancient Assyrians as their direct ethnic ancestors or at least the founders of their ethnos. In general, Syrians themselves adopted the Greek formulations that conceived of the Aramaic-speakers of the Near East as being descended from the Assyrians and understood their past through it. In doing so, they came to see themselves as an ethnic group. Hence, from the 1st and 2nd centuries CE, authors from Roman Syro-Mesopotamia, such as Tatian and Lucian, writing in Greek and Aramaic, extensively used the Assyrian past to define their communities in relation to the Greeks and Romans and bore their self-ascriptions as "Syrian" and "Assyrian" with significance. Furthermore, although the Seleucids emphasized their Macedonian origins and implemented a policy of Hellenization upon the inhabitants of the Near East whom they ruled over, they eventually began to assimilate into the native Assyrian population of Mesopotamia and adopt their customs, coming to be seen by their contemporaries and even themselves as the heirs of the Neo-Assyrian empire and dynasty. The (As)Syrians too came to see the Seleucids as the successors of Assyria, counting them in continuity with Semiramis and Sardanapalus, thereby Assyrianizing them. The Roman historian Titus Livius particularly captures this process of Greek assimilation into the native populations when he laments that the Macedonians who settled within Mesopotamia have "degenerated into Syrians".

Although ''suryāyā'' is thus clearly connected to "Assyrian", the more prevalent term for ancient Assyrians, ''ʾāthorāyā'' is not the typical self-designation in pre-modern sources. Syriac sources did however prominently use ''ʾāthorāyā'' in other contexts, particularly in relation to ancient Assyria. Ancient Assyria was typically referred to as ''ʾāthor'', which also survived as a designation for the region surrounding its last great capital, Nineveh. The reluctance of Medieval Syriac Christians to use ''ʾāthorāyā'' as a self-designation could perhaps be explained by the Assyrians described in the Bible being prominent enemies of Israel; the term ''ʾāthorāyā'' was sometimes employed in Syriac writings as a term for enemies of Christians. In this context, the term was sometimes applied to the Persians of the Sasanian Empire; the 4th-century Syriac writer Ephrem the Syrian for instance referred to the Sasanian Empire as "filthy ''ʾāthor'', mother of corruption". In a similar fashion, the term in this context was also sometimes applied to the later Muslim rulers. Though not used by the overall Syriac-speaking community in the Middle Ages, the term ''ʾāthorāyā'' did survive as a self-identity throughout the period as it was the typically used designation for a Syriac Christian from Mosul (ancient Nineveh) and its vicinity. The ancient designation of the homeland of the Aramaic-speaking peoples as being Assyria did not disappear, however, and some Syriac Christians certainly preserved the terms Assyria for the land and Assyrians for the people as self-designations to the present day, although the majority of Syriac Christians identified primarily by village or by religion, as was customary in the Middle East.

Pre-modern Syriac-language sources at times identified positively with the ancient Assyrians, with the regional population keeping the memory of Assyria alive in the local Syriac histories of the Sasanian period, drawing connections between the ancient empire and themselves. Most prominently, ancient Assyrian kings and figures long appeared in local folklore and literary tradition and claims of descent from ancient Assyrian royalty were forwarded both for figures in folklore and by actual living high-ranking members of society in northern Mesopotamia. Figures like Sargon II, Sennacherib (705–681 BC), Esarhaddon (681–669 BC), Ashurbanipal and Shamash-shum-ukin long figured in local folklore and literary tradition. In large part, tales from the Sasanian period and later times were invented narratives, based on ancient Assyrian history but applied to local and current landscapes. Medieval tales written in Syriac, such as that of Behnam, Sarah, and the Forty Martyrs, for instance by and large characterize Sennacherib as an archetypical pagan king assassinated as part of a family feud, whose children convert to Christianity. The appearance of Sennacherib in this story is not strange, as many Syriac sources from late antiquity and the early medieval period refer to both him and the Assyrians, usually with the goal of portraying Syriac Christians as the heirs of an Assyrian past. The story is, however, unique in portraying the Assyrian king as the father of the two martyrs. Sennacherib also appears in the Sasanian period stories of Mar Awgin, Mar Qardagh, Matthew the Hermit, Mar Mattai, and Mar Behnam. Although these stories often confused his figure, they likely relied upon inherited local traditions as well as the Bible for their memory of this king. Moreover, scholars such as Dorothea Weltecke and others have also shown that, in certain Syriac sources, the medieval Syriac Orthodox Patriarchate likewise portrayed the ancient Assyrians as the ancestors of the Christians in Upper Mesopotamia.

The 7th-century Assyrian ''History of Mar Qardagh'' made the titular saint, Mar Qardagh, out to be a descendant of the legendary Biblical Mesopotamian king Nimrod and the historical Sennacherib, with his illustrious descent manifesting in Mar Qardagh's mastery of archery, hunting and polo. A sanctuary constructed for Mar Qardagh during this time was built directly on top of the ruins of a Neo-Assyrian temple. The legendary figure Nimrod, otherwise traditionally viewed as simply Mesopotamian, is explicitly referred to as Assyrian in many of the Sasanian-period texts and is inserted into the line of Assyrian kings. Nimrod, as well as other legendary Mesopotamian (though explicitly Assyrian in the texts) rulers, such as Belus (Assyrian), Belus and Ninus, sometimes play significant roles in the writings. Certain Christian texts considered the Biblical figure Balaam to have prophesied the Star of Bethlehem; a local Assyrian version of this narrative appears in some Syriac-language writings from the Sasanian period, which allege that Balaam's prophecy was remembered only through being transmitted through the ancient Assyrian kings. In some stories, explicit claims of descent are made. According to the 6th-century ''History of Karka'', twelve of the noble families of Karka (ancient Arrapha) were descendants of ancient Assyrian nobility who lived in the city during the time of Sargon II. The goal of this specific Syriac text was to demonstrate that the past continued to the present without break, and hence, it begins with the pious king Sargon, who built the city and enacted the fast of Ninevites, and ends with the Assyrian martyrs who made it a blessed field for Christianity. Later on, the bishop of Karka d-Bet Selok, who was influenced by this story, Sabrisho, implemented the Fast of the Ninevites in efforts to act like the righteous king Sargon, who was the first to listen to Jonah's message. With this, the story of Jonah acted as a way to link Syriac Christians with a local Assyrian past. Generally, Syriac Christians of northern Mesopotamia were fascinated with the story of Jonah, and some Syriac works implied that the Ninevites, their alleged Assyrian ancestors, were the first Gentile converts to Christianity, as Jonah prefigured Christ.

To account for the appearance of Assyrian figures like Sennacherib and Esarhaddon in these Syriac texts, scholars have argued that oral, folkloric memories of the ancient Assyrians continued in regions such as Arbela, Nineveh, and Assur. Thus, although the Assyrian state collapsed, the memories of such ancient kings loomed large in the Assyrian heartland, and ruins in the region were attributed to ancient Assyrians. In places such as Nusaybin, Nisibis, Arbela, and Karka d-Beth Slokh, Karka d-Bet Selokh, these ruins of old encouraged links between the Syriac Christians and the ancient Assyrians, causing distant antiquity and Christian martyrdom to form the basis for the developed histories of these areas. The newly Christian inhabitants of Assyria and Babylonia during the 3rd and 4th centuries were largely the same pagan population of the Assyro-Babylonian empires and were the successors of this cultural background. In keeping with this background, they developed a personal approach to their Christian faith, retaining some knowledge from their past, particularly Assyrian traditions. So when Christianity spread to Adiabene, church leaders purposely suppressed some customs continuing from Assyria's imperial period, but at the same time, they integrated memories of Assyria into their emerging stories with the goal of forging a Christian identity compatible with local traditions. According to East Syrian synodical documents, Assyria was transformed into an archdiocese, and its bishop of Adiabene centered in Arbel, bore the title "Metropolitan of the Assyrians." The archbishopric of Adiabene, in this context should be understood in its Hellenic and Parthian boundaries, which extended to the Khabur (Euphrates), Khabur River, and not the region only between the Great Zab, Greater and Little Zab, Lesser Zab. Hence, by late antiquity, Syriac-speaking authors in Adiabene were positing that they, as Assyrians, were descended from the ancient Assyrians. A reason as to why the term "Syrians" is not explicitly found within these texts is possibly due to the Syrians being seen as meek people in the Sassanian regions, and thus it is unsurprising that these hagiographers sometimes avoided the term. Syriac Christians who lived within metropolitan regions of Beth Garmaï (East Syriac ecclesiastical province), Beth Garmai, Adiabene (East Syriac ecclesiastical province), Adiabene, and Mosul of northern Mesopotamia often turned to the Assyrian past to narrate themselves as its heirs in their efforts to include themselves in the political spheres of the Sasanian empire and to present themselves as the natives of the land, descending from a distinctly Assyrian population, in contrast with their fellow Zoroastrians. Survival of references to ancient Assyria in late antique and medieval Syriac sources are common, with Fergus Millar also noting that Syriac Christians who lived in what was once ancient Assyria did not suffer a 'historical amnesia,' retaining awareness of their Assyrian origins and the history of their native region. Comparative to southern Mesopotamia, which felt no connection with Babylonian continuity, the Christians of northern Mesopotamia employed the terms Assyria and Assyrians to identify themselves and developed notions that they were connected to the Assyrians of antiquity through various tales. The hagiography of Mar Qardagh reveals the outlook of a writer who considered the nobles of Adiabene to be of a local Assyrian origin, and the story of Mor Behnam serves to assign Syriac Christians origins more deeply into antiquity, connecting them with the ancient Assyrians. The two stories, in general, seem to share many similarities. However, in a way, the legend of Behnam and Sarah seems to one-up the legend of Qardagh, as they are not considered merely the descendants of the Assyrians, but the son and daughter of the Assyrian king Sennacherib himself. What is particularly striking is that the hagiographers of both legends felt the need to include their Assyrian ancestry, when their Zoroastrian background alone would have sufficed. These Assyrian martyrs were considered by the Syriac authors of their tales to be the true children of the ancient Mesopotamians. Qardagh's hagiography and his recognition as an Assyrian plays a key role in defining the identity of the Church of the East, which, by at least the seventh century, openly professed their Assyrian heritage. Timothy I of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, Timothy I expresses this while justifying claiming a pre-eminent position for his Episcopal see, Episcopal See by employing a polemical use of history and geography. He asserts the status of the East by focusing on its claims to antiquity, arguing it was the origin of monarchy and civilization through the biblical king Nimrod, who is associated with Akkad, Assyria, and Nineveh. These sections shed some light on the ethnicity of the Church of the East, although no particular national names are used. Timothy also focuses on its importance as an Old Testament site, through Abraham, and emphasizes that the East was the first to accept the message of Christ. For him, Mesopotamia was the natural home of Christianity, since Seleucia-Ctesiphon also stood at the crossroads of trade routes between East and West. Within Timothy's letters, an Assyrian ethnos is thus clearly portrayed.

The biblical king Nimrod is also of great importance for the identity formation among both East and West Syrians. Several Syriac writers hold a positive view of him, and despite Nimrod being overwhelmingly considered a depraved figure in other Christian literature, the Syriac tradition holds a confident view of him. Some of those who purported this image included, but were not limited to, Ephrem the Syrian, Jacob of Serugh, Jacob Serugh, and Narsai. Although some have suggested this positive view derives from a defunct, unwritten, Jewish tradition in Mesopotamia, this is hardly a viable theory. The development of this position on Nimrod appears to be an internal development within the Syriac and a form of local patriotism by Syriac Christians, and it is because Nimrod had become a Culture hero, cultural hero and a foundational figure among the Christians of upper Mesopotamia that they supplanted the negative view of him for a positive one. The biblical foundations that Nimrod created in Genesis 10:10-12 were associated with the important urban centers of northern Mesopotamia, such as Nisibis and Edessa, by these authors. The role Nimrod played in creating a distinctive identity for Syriac Christians in Mesopotamia also finds appeals to him as a direct ancestral figure. This idea is perhaps expressed most vividly in the Acts of Mar Mari, whose author declares the Syriac Christians within the region as "The sons of the powerful Nimrod". Nimrod is also often identified with the mythical Assyrian king Ninus by Jacob of Edessa and many other Syriac writers. Likewise, Ephrem also declares the Assyrians to be "the race of Nimrod." Ephrem in particular seems to stress the importance of his region and its connection with Nimrod, identifying him with the northern Mesopotamian territories and ascribing his biblical foundations to known cities in the region. This is perhaps one of the signs of an ethnic community, being geography and a link to a territory, but at least, his positive view of Nimrod, who reigned in his own land, is conspicuous. In general, the foundation of cities by various civic developers such as Nimrod, Belus, Semiramis, and Belochus all appear within the Syriac literature. The northern Mesopotamian Christian centers being founded by various Assyrian and Babylonian figures was interwoven into the writing of multiple Syriac writers in efforts to boost their national identity, ascertaining to a form of nationalism, as these were some of the most important sites for Syriac Christianity. Thus, Nimrod gained a positive view in Syriac literature, and the cities he founded were replaced by cities familiar to Syriac authors in northern and southern Mesopotamia. He had become a founding hero, whom Syriac authors believed to be the very first king on Earth, acculturated from the Bible to form connections and memories with the goal of cultivating a local Mesopotamian past for Syriac Christians.

Among West Syrians, the results of the Leiden project have argued that the Syriac Orthodox have been continuously reconstructing their past since their inception as a Christian community in hopes of legitimizing their existence as a distinct group. Before 451 AD, the Syriac Orthodox Church, Syriac Orthodox did not have the 6 features of an ethnic community as defined by Hutchinson and Smith. Syriac-speaking Miaphysitism, Miaphysites could not claim a myth of common ancestry or even features of a culture and had no proper name to express their community. But even after the Syriac Church became independent, from 451 to the middle of the seventh century, Syriac writers were primarily concerned with validating the status of Syriac Christianity. Only later on during contacts with Islam did the Syriac Christians start to question and define what their identity really was, based on cultural traditions and sources of their time. Language, which was one of the strongest features of communal identity, became very important, but only after some time. A reason why there is a great attachment to Aramaic is that it was considered by Syriac writers to be the divine language, used by Jesus on Earth. As soon as Syriac became a symbol of religious recognition that was becoming an ethnic community, it allowed Syriac Christians to turn to an ancient past in hopes of defining themselves. They reasoned that the Assyrians and Babylonians spoke Syriac, which was Aramaic, and hence they were a part of the Syrian people. This is a process of social identity construction, and one should not think of ancient fault lines here. This idea started as early as Severus Sebokht, who marked astronomy as one of the cornerstones of civilization and who identified the ancient peoples of modern-day Iraq as ''suryāyē'' (Syrians) in his discourse against the Greeks. Jacob of Edessa, Severus's disciple, also stressed that the Assyrian kings, or synonymously, Chaldean kings, were the ancestors of the Syrians and that they belonged to "our tongue." Jacob also aimed to prove, according to the Greek books, that "empires arose from our people more powerful than all the empires of their times." Later on, Dionysius I Telmaharoyo, Dionysius, inspired by Jacob's arguments, also wrote about the identity of the Syrians. He used the Old Testament to demonstrate that the Syrians were a people with a prestigious history and many kings in Damascus, Babylonia, Assyria, and Edessa. He aimed to demonstrate a continuous existence of a Syrian empire, and thus considered the Assyrians and Chaldeans as belonging to the people of the Syrians. Dionysius's conception of a Syrian identity was rooted in territory, language, and history of kingship. His arguments paved the way for other Syriac authors to form their own ethnic arguments, like Michael. Dionysius also recognized that the Syrians east of the Euphrates were termed such in a metaphorical way, and that they held the kings of Assyria, Babylon and Edessa, also believing these Syrians were Mesopotamians, distinct from those in Syria proper which was the west of the Euphrates. The sense of a Syrian identity dating back to antiquity based on language is notably expressed by Michael the Syrian, Michael, who counted 194 kings for the Syrians, including the Assyrians and Babylonians within this list. For him, the Aramaic language, which was very dear to him, was the common connection between the Babylonians, Assyrians, and the various Aramean principalities. It was a tool for him to prove the historical identity of the Syrians against his opponents, who claimed the Syrians had no kings. However, this does not mean that Michael's views of the Syriac Orthodox was not ethnic. In fact, language is used to prove common descent. Michael recognized that both the Arameans and Assyrians were called Syrians, but distinguished them. The "Syrians" east of the Euphrates were called such metaphorically and were putatively descended from the Assyrians and Babylonians. Despite the prominence of Edessa, he continued to maintain that the Syrians, in the proper sense, were most specifically those west of the Euphrates who traced descent from the Arameans. Michael also explicitly offers a passage where he declares the Assyrians to be Syrians while listing the sons of Shem, which is believed to derive from an earlier lost work of a Syriac writer during the reign of Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan, Abd al-Malik, who mentioned the Assyrians and also equated them to the Syrians in his list of the sons of Shem. The Chronicle of 1234 too shares many similarities with Michael's list, the most significant being is that both Syriac witnesses equate the Assyrians to the Syrians while mentioning those people who are literate in the world. Patriarch Philoxenus I Nemrud and his cousin, the priest Nebuchadnezzar, had names that harkened back to the ancient Assyrian and Babylonian kings. These choices were certainly inspired by Michael's historical vision, which held the ancient Mesopotamians to be Syrians. The name of King Sargon II, Sargon is also attested in Syriac Christians from the 7th century onwards, appearing in the personal names of a priest named Sargon and another, Autel, son of Sargon. The father of John of Damascus, Sarjun ibn Mansur, Sarjun Ibn Mansur, was also titled after the ancient king. Likewise with the names Nemrud and Nebuchadnezzar, these were likely attempts to link themselves with a pre-Christian Assyrian past. According to this understanding, the Seleucids were therefore also considered local Syrian kings in the ancient sense of the word. Since Alexander conquered Persia, which had previously conquered the Mesopotamian kingdoms that these authors referred to as "Syrian" kingdoms, the Seleucids were viewed as restorers of local Syrian royalty, and therefore, they were regarded as "Syrians" by Syriac authors who aimed to demonstrate their historical heritage. This explains the development of an identity based on the usage of Aramaic but marked by Greek culture. Bar Hebraeus, Bar Ebroyo's Chronicle also sheds some light on identity. His source, Michael, had identified both the Assyrians and Arameans as the ancestors of the Syrians, grouping them under the term "Chaldean." Bar Ebroyo removes difficulties in the identification of the old Mesopotamians and uses the term "Ancient Syrians," which included ancient speakers of Aramaic from Syria, Assyria, and Babylon. He explicitly identifies the Chaldean kings with these ancient Syrians, calling them by this term. Bar Ebroyo connected the Syriac Orthodox to the Ancient Near Eastern Empires using neutral terms like "ancient Syrians" and "our Syrians" to avoid the debate about the "true Syrians" discussed by Michael. Claims of an autonomous past for Syrians, like those made by Dionysius Telmahroyo, seem to have been accepted by Arab authors, particularly Al-Masudi, Masudi, who mentions that the kings of Nineveh and Mosul were Syrians. They had now constituted a nation, analogous to the Romans, Arabs, and Persians in his view. Both the Assyrian and Aramean pasts furnished Syriac Christians with ancestral narratives that could define them as linguistically, territorially, or theologically legible to more powerful audiences. The Aramean past offered a spatial orientation to the west in Syria (region), Syria, while the Assyrian past offered a link to Mesopotamia eastward. Thus, Syriac-speaking authors, both Syriac Orthodox and from the Church of the East, considered themselves not the stock of conquered peoples but of empire builders and great victors. This was a process that gradually crystallized based on available sources of their time, but by at least the 12th century, the Syriac Orthodox were aware of having a core composed of the cultural traditions of the Assyrians and Arameans.

Michael was the first writer to acknowledge community on a larger scale, counting East Syrians as part of his people. Theologically, he distinguished his community from the East Syrians, but in times of hardship, he grouped West and East Syrians all under the ethnic term "Syrian." East Syrian pre-Christian history and early Christian history were treated as the history of his own community by Michael, and he reflects a conscious group identity with East Syrians based on common name, ancestry, memories, language, regional culture, and to an extent, also a common homeland and solidarity between the two groups. Michael's predecessors also acknowledged linguistic unity and at times also shared cultural elements between both Syrian groups, but they were less pronounced ideas compared to Michael. This idea of unity with East Syrians was also expressed by Dionysius of Tel Mahre, although to a lesser extent, who became aware of a homeland and started to look for a common name. Dionysius represents the final phase of a gradual development to a common community. Various Syriac sources also indicate that East and West Syrians lived in the same regions and cities, in fact, there was also an increase in contact and shared use between the two groups literary traditions. Eliya of Nisibis used West Syrian sources, and this exchange can also be seen in various genres of Syriac literature. Bar Ebroyo, too, considered East Syrians to be of the same people as his community. He clearly indicated that anyone who speaks or spoke Aramaic belonged to his community, with his homeland also being Mesopotamia, including the region east of the Tigris. In this way, Bar Ebroyo tactically included East Syrians in his general "Syrian" terminology and even dedicated a section in his works to mentioning the patriarchs of the Church of the East.

Modern identity and nationalism

19th century identities and developments

Early travellers and missionaries in northern Mesopotamia in the 19th century observed connections between the indigenous Christian population and the ancient Assyrians. The British traveller Claudius Rich (1787–1821) referenced "Assyrian Christians" in ''Narrative of a Residence in Koordistan and on the site of Ancient Nineveh'' (published posthumously in 1836, though describing an 1820 journey). It is just possible that Rich considered "Assyrian" a geographic, rather than ethnic, term since he in a footnote on the same page also referenced the "Christians of Assyria". More clear-cut evidence of Assyrian self-identity in the 19th century can be seen in the writings of the American missionary Horatio Southgate (1812–1894). In Southgate's ''Narrative of a Visit to the Syrian [Jacobite] Church of Mesopotamia'' (1844) he remarked with surprise that Armenians referred to the Syriac Christians as ''Assouri'', which Southgate associated with the English "Assyrians", rather than ''Syriani'', which he himself had been using. It seems that the Assyrian identification had been in use for several decades before Layard's excavation, such as in Kharput, but also even the Syriac Orthodox Church in Istanbul, Constantinople bore the name "Assyrian Orthodox" as early as 1844. Early Jacobites found it conventional to use the English "Assyrian" to translate emic ''sūryōyō'' and its equivalents in other languages. Armenian and Georgian sources have since antiquity consistently referred to Assyrians as ''Assouri'' or ''Asori'', and similarly Medieval Arab writers named the Christians of Northern Mesopotamia as "Ashuriyun". Southgate also mentioned that the Syriac Christians themselves at this point claimed origin from the ancient Assyrians as "sons of Assour". Southgate's account thus demonstrates that modern Assyrians still claimed ancient Assyrian descent already in the early 19th century, a period prior to the great archaeological discoveries of the mid to late 19th century. Despite the survival of Assyrian self-ascription among some villages in the Syriac Orthodox heartland, even in areas that had never encountered missionaries or archeologists, the majority identified primarily as ''sūryōye''.

Connections between the modern population and ancient Assyrians were further popularized in the west and academia by the British archaeologist and traveller Austen Henry Layard (1817–1894), responsible for the early excavations of several major ancient Assyrian sites, such as Nimrud. In ''Nineveh and its Remains'' (1849), Layard argued that the Christians he met in northern Mesopotamia and southeast Anatolia claimed to be "descendants of the ancient Assyrians". It is possible that Layard's knowledge of them as such derived from his partnership with the local Assyrian archaeologist Hormuzd Rassam (1826–1910).

Towards the end of the 19th century, a so-called "religious renaissance" or "awakening" took place in Urmia, Iran. Perhaps partly encouraged by Anglicanism, Anglican, Catholic Church, Roman Catholic and Russian Orthodox Church, Russian Orthodox missionary efforts, the concepts of nation and nationalism were introduced to the Assyrians in Urmia, who began to revive the term ''ʾāthorāyā'' as a self-identity, and began building a national ideology more heavily based around ancient Assyria than Christianity. This was not an isolated phenomenon: Middle Eastern nationalism, probably influenced by developments in Europe, also began to be strongly expressed in other communities during this time, such as among the Armenians, Arabs, Kurds, Pontic Greeks, Maronites, Jews and Turkish people, Turks. This time also saw the development of Literary Urmia Aramaic, a new literary language based on the at the time spoken Neo-Aramaic languages, Neo-Aramaic dialects. Through the promotion of an identity rooted in ancient Assyria, various communities could transcend their denominational differences and unite under one national identity. Overall, the connection to the Assyrians of antiquity was certainly stimulated by ancient traditions in Syriac literature which linked the Syrians with the empires of biblical times, that of the Assyrians and Babylonians.

Contemporary identities and name debate

In the years before World War I, several prominent East Aramaic-language authors and intellectuals promoted Assyrian nationalism. Among them were Freydun Atturaya (1891–1926), who in 1911 published an influential article titled ''Who are the Syrians'' [surayē]''? How is Our Nation to Be Raised Up?'', in which he pointed out the connection between ''surayē'' and "Assyrian" and argued for the adoption of ''ʾāthorāyā''. The early 20th century saw an increase in the use of the term ''ʾāthorāyā'' as a self-identity. Also used as the neologism ''ʾasurāyā'', perhaps inspired by the Armenian ''Asori''. The adoption of ''ʾāthorāyā'' and a stronger association with ancient Assyria through nationalism is not a unique development in regard to the Assyrians. Greeks, for instance, due to associating the term "Hellene" with the pagan religion, overwhelmingly self-identified as Rhomioi, Romans (''Rhōmioi'') up until nationalism around the time of the Greek War of Independence, when a more strong association with Ancient Greece spread among the populace. Today, ''sūryōyō'' or ''sūrāyā'' are the predominant self-designations used by Assyrians in their native language, though they are typically translated as "Assyrian" rather than "Syrian".

Today, as a consequence of World War I, the ''Sayfo'' (Assyrian genocide) and various other massacres, a majority of the Assyrians have been displaced from their homeland, and today they live in Assyrian–Chaldean–Syriac diaspora, diaspora communities in Assyrian population by country, countries such as German Assyrians, Germany, Assyrians/Syriacs in Sweden, Sweden, Denmark, the British Assyrians, United Kingdom, Assyrians in Greece, Greece, Assyrian Australians, Australia, Assyrians in New Zealand, New Zealand and the Assyrian Americans, United States. In the aftermath of these events, explicit Assyrian self-identity became even more widespread and established in their communities, not only in order to unify communities in the diaspora (which often originated in different regions) but also because "Syrian" became internationally established as the demonym of the newly created country of Syria. Many Assyrians who were not members of the Assyrian Church of the East also embraced Assyrian nationalism, such as D. B. Perley (1901–1979), who in 1933 helped found the Assyrian National Federation and religiously identified himself as a Syriac Orthodox Church, Syriac Orthodox Christian but ethnically identified himself as an Assyrian. In 1935, Perley wrote that "The Assyrians, although representing but one single nation as the direct heirs of the ancient Assyrian Empire … are now doctrinally divided … No one can coherently understand the Assyrians as a whole until he can distinguish that which is religion or church from that which is nation …" and even proposed uniting all Assyrians under a single patriarch of the Church of the East.

For communities that identify themselves as Assyrian, Assyrian continuity forms a key part of their self-identity. Many modern Assyrians are named after ancient Mesopotamian figures, such as Sargon of Akkad, Sargon, Sennacherib and Nebuchadnezzar (and indeed many Assyrian family names still link to ancient Mesopotamian names), and the modern Assyrian flag displays symbolism which is derived from ancient Assyria. From the second half of the 20th century to the present, Assyrians, particularly in the diaspora, have continued to promote Assyrian nationalism as a unifying force among their people. Some denominational groups have opposed being lumped in as "Assyrians" and as a result, they have founded counter-movements of their own; the so-called "name debate" is still a hotly discussed topic within Syriac Christian communities today, especially in the diaspora which lives outside the Assyrian homeland.

Followers of the Assyrian Church of the East have historically most often been exposed to cultural influences from Iran whereas followers of the Syriac Orthodox Church have been exposed to cultural influences from Greece. In the Syriac Orthodox Church, officials have been important part of advancing secular Assyrianism, then later reducing it by creating of separate "Syrian" or "Arameans" identities. For instance, Patriarch Ignatius Aphrem I (then bishop, later patriarch between 1933 and 1957) was a part of the Assyrian Delegation to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, which asked for a Assyrian homeland, homeland for the Assyrian people. The patriarchal residence was later moved to Syria and after the Simele massacre, Ignatius Aphrem I took an anti-Assyrian stance due to fear of persecution, which came to influence the religious mindset of the Syriac Orthodox community. The church was then called the Assyrian Apostolic Church of Antioch in the United States, a name Ignatius Aphrem I came to change to the Syrian Orthodox. In 1981, Patriarch Ignatius Zakka I advocated Syriac identity over both Assyrian and Aramean identity. More recently, many Syriac Orthodox adherents have preferred to identify themselves as "Syriac" in English (the name of their church and the liturgical language and an alternate transliteration of ''suryayā''), some identifying as Syriac and Assyrian or Aramean interchangeably. Some members of the Chaldean Catholic Church, "Chaldean Catholics, Chaldeans", have also lobbied for recognition as a distinct group in recent times. Modern international organizations generally do not recognize Assyrians, Syriacs, Arameans and Chaldeans as members of different ethnic groups, instead, they merely consider these names alternate names for Assyrians and numerous church leaders have also affirmed that they belong to the same ethnic group, albeit to different Christian denominations.

Other forms of continuity

In addition to continuity in self-designation and self-perception, there continued to be important continuities between ancient and contemporary Mesopotamia in terms of religion, literary culture and settlement well after the post-imperial period.

Assyrian settlements

Assyrian settlements continued to be occupied into the Christian period. The ancient capital of Nineveh, for instance, became the seat of a bishop, the Bishop of Nineveh, and a church (later converted to a mosque under Islamic rule) was built on top of the ruins of an ancient Assyrian palace. The main population center in the city gradually shifted to the opposite bank of the river, which became the city today known as Mosul; ancient Nineveh only gradually fell into ruin and eventually became open countryside. Though most of the old population centers were similarly gradually abandoned and fell into ruin some also endured. The ancient city of Arbela, today known as Erbil, has been continuously inhabited since the time of the Neo-Assyrian Empire.

Religion

Although the ancient Mesopotamian pantheon ceased to be worshipped at Assur with the city's destruction in the 3rd century AD, it persisted at other localities, despite the overwhelming conversion of the region to Christianity, for much longer; the old faith persisted at Harran until at least the 10th century and at Mardin until as late as the 18th century.

The Fast of Nineveh is a three-day fast commemorating the repentance of the Ninevites at the hands of Jonah and is found in all of the traditional churches of modern Assyrians, such as the Syriac Orthodox Church, Assyrian Church of the East and Chaldean Catholic Church. This fast is unique to the Assyrian Christian community and connects to its ancient heritage.

Nusardil (Feast of God) is another religious festival found across all three churches and is usually celebrated in July. Following the holy mass, members of the community throw water at each other in an act of cleansing the path of God. This tradition likely finds its origins in ancient Assyrian and Mesopotamian rituals, such as the New Year. Such festivals, among others found locally in the Assyrian community, served to adapt to Christian needs but also to recall the ancient Assyrian heritage, acting as a link to a pre-Christian past.

Language

In the wake of the Late Bronze Age collapse around 1200 BC, Arameans, Aramean tribes began to migrate into Assyrian territory. In the first millennium BC, Aramean influence on Assyria grew greater and greater, owing to further migrations as well as mass deportations enacted by several Assyrian kings. Though the expansion of the Assyrian Empire, in combination with resettlements and deportations, changed the ethno-cultural make-up of the Assyrian heartland, there is no evidence to suggest that the more ancient Assyrian inhabitants of the land ever disappeared or became restricted to a small elite, nor that the ethnic and cultural identity of the new settlers was anything other than "Assyrian" after one or two generations.

Because the Assyrians never imposed their language on foreign peoples whose lands they conquered outside of the Assyrian heartland, there were no mechanisms in place to stop the spread of languages other than Akkadian. Beginning with the migrations of Aramaic-speaking settlers into Assyrian territory during the Middle Assyrian period, this lack of linguistic policies facilitated the spread of the Aramaic language. As the most widely spoken and mutually understandable of the Semitic languages (the language group containing many of the languages spoken through the empire), Aramaic grew in importance throughout the Neo-Assyrian period and increasingly replaced the Akkadian language even within the Assyrian heartland itself. From the 9th century BC onwards, Aramaic became the ''de facto'' lingua franca, with Akkadian becoming relegated to a language of the political elite (i.e. governors and officials).

The widespread adoption of the language does not indicate a wholesale replacement of the original native population; the Aramaic language was used not only by settlers but also by native Assyrians, who adopted it and its alphabetic script. The Aramaic language had entered the Assyrian royal administration by the reign of Shalmaneser III (859–824 BC), given that Aramaic writings are known from a palace he built in Nimrud. By the time of Tiglath-Pileser III (745–727 BC), the Assyrian kings employed both Akkadian and Aramaic-language royal scribes, confirming the rise of Aramaic to a position of an official language used by the imperial administration. It is clear that Aramaic was spoken by the Assyrian royal family from at least the late 8th century BC onwards, given that Tiglath-Pileser's son Shalmaneser V (727–722 BC) owned a set of Assyrian lion weights, lion weights inscribed with text in both Akkadian and Aramaic. A recorded drop in the number of cuneiform documents late in the reign of Ashurbanipal (669–631 BC) could indicate a greater shift to Aramaic, often written on perishable materials like leather scrolls or papyrus, though it could perhaps alternatively be attributed to political instability in the empire. The denizens of Assur and other former Assyrian population centers under Parthian rule, who clearly connected themselves to ancient Assyria, wrote and spoke Aramaic.

Though modern Assyrian languages, most prominently the Suret language, are Neo-Aramaic languages with little resemblance to the old Akkadian language, they are not wholly without Akkadian influence. Most notably there are numerous examples of Akkadian loanwords in both ancient and modern Aramaic languages. This connection was noted already in 1974, when a study by Stephen A. Kaufman found that the Syriac language, an Aramaic dialect today mainly used liturgical language, has at least fourteen exclusive (i.e. not attested in other dialects) loanwords from Akkadian, including nine of which are clearly from the ancient Assyrian dialect (six of which are architectural or topographical terms). A 2011 study by Kathleen Abraham and Michael Sokoloff on 282 words previously believed to have been Aramaic loanwords in Akkadian determined that many such cases were questionable, and also found that 15 of those words were actually Akkadian loanwords in Aramaic and that the direction of the loan could not be determined in 22 cases; Abraham's and Sokoloff's conclusion was that the number of loanwords from Akkadian to Aramaic was far larger than the number of loanwords from Aramaic to Akkadian. Akkadian is the underlying substrate of multiple modern Syriac phenomena, some of which have managed to survive four-thousand years, and both languages can help to decipher each other in their linguistics at times.

Academia and politics

The use of the Assyrian name by modern Assyrians has historically led to controversy and misunderstanding, not only within but also outside the Assyrian community. Discussions on the connection between the modern and ancient Assyrians have also entered into academia. In addition to support by prominent historical Assyriologists, such as Austen Henry Layard and Sidney Smith, Assyrian continuity enjoys wide support within contemporary Assyriology. Among proponents of continuity are prominent Assyriologists such as Simo Parpola, Robert D. Biggs, H. W. F. Saggs, Georges Roux, J. A. Brinkman and Mirko Novák. Historians of other fields have also supported Assyrian continuity, such as Richard N. Frye, Richard Nelson Frye, Philip K. Hitti, Patricia Crone, Michael Cook (historian), Michael Cook, Mordechai Nisan, Aryo Makko, Helen Younansardaroud, Onver A. Cetrez, Racho Donef, Geoffrey Khan, Eden Naby, Cynthia Jean, Andreas D. Boldt, Amar Annus, and Joshua J. Mark (contributor of the World History Encyclopedia). Other scholars supporting continuity include, among others, the linguist Judah Segal, the political scientist James Jupp, the genocide researcher Hannibal Travis, alongside the political scientist and genocide researcher Adam Jones (Canadian scholar), Adam Jones, and the geneticists Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Paolo Menozzi, Alberto Piazza, Mohammad Taghi Akbari, Sunder S. Papiha, Derek Frank Roberts and Dariush Farhud. Numerous scholars who themselves are of Assyrian origin, such as Efrem Yildiz, Sargon Donabed, Odisho Malko Gewargis, Edward Y. Odisho, Konstantine Matveef, Shamiran Mako, Fuat Deniz, Helen Malko, and William Piroyan, Amir Harrak, and Nicholas Al-Jeloo have also published Academic publishing, academic works and Lecture, lectures in support of Assyrian continuity.

Some academics, most notably the historians J.F. Coakley, John Joseph (historian), John Joseph, David Wilmshurst and Adam H. Becker, have opposed continuity between modern and ancient Assyrians, typically arguing that modern Assyrian identity only emerged in the middle to late 19th century as a consequence of interactions with foreign missionaries and/or the discovery of ancient Assyrian ruins. Wholesale opposition of Assyrian continuity is not reflected within Assyriology. Karen Radner considers Assyrian continuity to still be a matter of debate, but also opposes the idea that Assyrian identity only emerged in the 19th century, noting that modern Christians in northern Mesopotamia saw themselves as descendants of the ancient Assyrians long before the discovery of ancient sites and visits by foreign missionaries, as can for instance be gathered from the accounts of Horatio Postgate. Due to the efforts of many scholars in diverse fields of study, such a denial of Assyrian continuity has become increasingly difficult to sustain in academia. Some opponents to Assyrian continuity, such as Becker, have argued that the rich Christian literature from the Sasanian period connecting with ancient Assyria was simply based on the Bible, rather than actual remembrance of ancient Assyria, despite several figures appearing in the tales, such as Esarhaddon and Sargon II, barely being mentioned in the Bible. The texts are also very much a local Assyrian phenomenon, given that the historical accounts presented in them are at odds with those of other historical writings of the Sasanian Empire.

Names clearly reminiscent of those used by Assyrians in the Neo-Assyrian Empire continued to be used at Assur throughout the post-imperial period, at least until the 3rd century AD. Some opponents to Assyrian continuity, such as David Wilmshurst, hold that ancient Assyrian names ceased being used in the Christian period and that this in turn was evidence of a lack of continuity. There is some evidence of continued use of names with explicit ancient Mesopotamian connections in the Christian period; Arabic-language records from 13th-century Rumkale for instance record a man by the name Nebuchadnezzar (rendered ''Bukthanaṣar'' in the Arabic text), a relative of a Patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox Church named Philoxenus Nemrud (also a name with ancient Assyrian connections, deriving either from Nimrud or Nimrod); both of these names are also however mentioned in the Bible. Modern Assyrian authors, such as Odisho Malko Gewargis, contend that a decrease in ancient pagan names invoking gods such as Ashur, Nabu and Sîn is hardly surprising given the Christianization of the Assyrians; similar cases of native names being increasingly replaced by Biblically derived names are also known from numerous other Christianized peoples.

Modern Assyrians consider opposition to Assyrian continuity to be offensive and associate it with other historical forms of oppression against them. Sargon Donabed, for instance, considers the use of terms such as "Chaldeans", "Syrian", "Syriacs", "Arameans", or more extremely "Arab Christians", "Kurdish Christians" and "Turkish Christians", to be harmful as they add to division and confusion in regard to identity and are "clearly reflective of modern political parlance". These views are partly attributable to the actions of the government in Ba'athist Iraq (1968–2003), which sought to counteract Assyrian demands for autonomy through refusing to recognize Assyrians as a third ethnic minority of the country, instead promoting Assyrians, "Syrians" and Chaldeans as separate peoples, and undercounted Assyrians in censuses; in 1977, it was made impossible to register as Assyrian in the national census and Assyrians were consequently forced to register as Arabs for fear of losing employment and ration cards.

Genetic testing of Assyrian populations is a relatively new field of study, but has hitherto supported continuity from Bronze and Iron Age populations and underlined the notion that Assyrians historically rarely intermarried with surrounding populations. Genetic studies conducted in 2000 and 2008 support Assyrians as genetically distinct from other groups in the Middle East, with high endogamy; this indicates that the community has historically been relatively closed owing to their religious and cultural traditions, with little intermixture with other groups.

See also

*Assyria
*Neo-Assyrian Empire
*Old Assyrian Empire
*Middle Assyrian Empire
*Achaemenid Assyria
* Asoristan
*History of the Assyrians
*Assyrian culture
*Assyrian cuisine
*Assyrian music (disambiguation), Assyrian Music
*Assyrian nationalism
*Assyrian Church of the East
*Syriac Orthodox Church
*Chaldean Catholic Church
*Name of Syria
*List of ethnic Assyrians
*Nationalist historiography

Notes

References

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Further reading

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{{Assyrian topics

Assyrian nationalism, Continuity
Origin hypotheses of ethnic groups