#Assyrian stuff

[aqlstar]

If you don’t mind answering, I have a few questions about Assyrian independence, cause I’ve been wondering for a while. Also apologies in advance if my phrasing is accidentally wildly inaccurate, I’m not very educated about the topic at all but it’s very interesting to me still.

I know the Assyrian independence movement exists, but how popular is it, and how put together is the actual movement? Are there any steps being made towards the idea of independence or is it basically just a hope for people that one day it will come?

I think it was you who talked about how many groups that fall under the larger ethnic group have different beliefs about who they originate from. Like an Assyrian could believe that they’re descended from ancient Assyrians, an Aramean could believe they’re descended from ancient Arameans, but to my understanding they will still think of themselves as the same group, or at least connected to each other? So how does that factor into everything? I’ve read a bit and it seems that it makes it much harder to figure out what to do because nobody can agree properly on a shared group and place of origin.

Connecting to that question, do people generally want independence to be in historic Assyria/Aram/wherever a group believes they originate from, or the places where they’ve been for a long time? (ex for the latter type of place. the area where half of my family spent galut in is part of Iran and has spent most of its existence in the Persian empire, was never part of the Assyrian one, but Assyrians have been there in substantial numbers for about a millennium because of I think the Mongol invasion of Baghdad)

Also, is there a general consensus of how there should be independence? Like a state, or more of an Assyrian controlled area in another country, similar to the currently more independent parts of the Kurdish world?

Sorry for kind of overloading you here, plus idk if Shabbat has finished wherever you are. Again, this is just a very interesting topic to me haha. Have a nice day!

Shavua Tov and thanks for the question! I’ll add some more info when I have my computer on me, but for now I’ll just say your instincts are right and it is a very very complicated situation.

So disclaimer- I’m one person who is genetically 1/2 Assyrian, and I’m not even a Christian, so even though I’ve done my best to talk to my dad’s family about it and look things up on my own, I am definitely not the final authority on this subject.

There is general agreement that Arameans and Assyrians are the same people, (if you call them related peoples, you will make exactly no one happy 😭- trust me ). The disagreement lies in what that people should call themselves in English, and where exactly they should call home (beyond generally the northern levant).

Some of this confusion comes from the fact that the Aramaic endonym for the group is “Suryoye” should be translated literally (and was, for a time) as “Syrian.” With the establishment of the Syrian Arab Republic in 1944, using “Syrian” as an ethnic designation became increasingly problematic as “Syrian,” the adjective describing nationality, gained prevalence.

The push for independence is strongest in Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan, which is home to the largest Assyrian minority. So you’ll see a lot of sources citing the areas most densely populated by Assyrians in Iraq as the sole indigenous homeland of the Assyrian people for political purposes. (IMO the Assyrian homeland is probably much larger than that and should include northern syria and parts of Lebanon too).

Remember that the Assyrians living in modern day Iraq were hit very very hard by the Seyfo under the ottomans and anti-Assyrian pogroms (we’re using the word because it fits) under British and Iraqi leadership.

So much of the Assyrian desire for independence comes from not trusting the Muslim Arabs to south and the Kurds to north not to try to murder them all again like they have in the past.

It’s a very difficult situation because the independence movement faces the challenge of the Iraqi federal government and the Kurdish autonomous government/Kurdish separatists.

[jorrated]

MY COLLECTION GROWS.......

[dougielombax]

Given the time of year.

It has become abundantly clear that many people in Europe (not all of it but still) have learnt precisely fuck all from the last 80 years.

Their idea of fighting antisemitism consists solely of sucking up to Israel, all while allowing their own Jewish populations to be harassed and bullied by fascists, who they will also gladly platform and support at the same time.

At best.

At worst they’d vote the exact same descendants of those putrid Nazis into power without hesitation. Under promise of security and “tradition”.

Blaming any and all minorities for their problems. Again. Whether it’s Jewish people, Romani people, Sami people, Armenians, the disabled, neurodivergent folks, and so on. (Speaking as one of those (neurodivergent) I’ve seen a LOT of people all too quickly stop giving a shit about us)

80 years on, they’ve learnt next to fuck all. And they refuse to admit it. They’ll say that they have learnt, but most of them haven’t.

And they’d certainly do it all again without hesitating all because of the whim of some authoritarian shithead.

All it takes is the right bastard to win over the unthinking dullards with a kind smile and the right words.

This doesn’t apply to all of Europe. But a good percentage of it regardless.

I feel like I’m the only non-Jew who realises that much.

The only person in my country who realises that much as well perhaps.

Idk

And if they had learnt, then they ought to have at least done more to prevent future genocides which followed.

Such as the Bengal Genocide of 1971, the East Timor genocide, the Tamil Genocide in Sri Lanka, the Anfal Genocide of 1988 in Iraq, the Bosnian genocide, the Rwandan genocide, the genocide of Yazidis and/or Assyrians (and other Middle Eastern Christians) by ISIS, the genocide of Rohingyas in Burma, and so on.

Among others.

At the least.

Just saying.

[leroibobo]

details in saint hirmiz church in mardin, turkey. this chaldean catholic church was built in the 4th century and was originally orthodox.

[lostrealities0]

Slight volume warning

If they ever met (they're from different stories), Assyrian would despise Rowan because she was given so much less trauma and a much happier life than him

[rosenmarille]

nothing makes you feel like a real ancient historian than flipping through a handwritten book from 1924 on the translations and uses of ancient assyrian plants and their remedial purposes

[sams-apron]

LMFAAOAO ITS EITHER THAT OR KHMARA ITS THE FUNNIEST

i drew this in a 19 hours long carride

[fatehbaz]

what does your username mean?

Cat ghost.

As child. Would go to library, to look at books about creatures, with a pen and notepad. Or sit before a television watching "nature" documentary stuff, with a pen and notepad. Was fixated on habitats. The context. Did not like to isolate an individual creature from the wider ecological community. This led to interest in geography, distribution range maps. Was aware that, in popular perception, some creatures were strongly associated with a particular place. "Lion is an African animal. Tiger is an Asian animal." Allegedly. And other stereotypes (many of them, I would later come to learn, due to chauvinism, exoticism, Orientalism, colonialism, etc.). Came across a kind of large textbook on wild cats. Saw the historical distribution maps. Only a few centuries ago, tigers were in Anatolia, the Caucasus, near the shores of the Black Sea. Was intrigued. From the middle of the twentieth century onward, the lion and cheetah were so closely associated with Africa, where like over 99% of their range was located. And yet. There remains a small remnant population of nearly-extinct Asiatic lions far away within India''s borders. And there remains a small remnant population of nearly-extinct Asiatic cheetahs within Iran's borders. And all that space, in between, where both cats were now extinct. Only 100 years ago, tiger, lion, leopard, and cheetah all lived generally near each other, still, in eastern Anatolia, near Mesopotamia, etc. And now, only a few dozen wild native cheetah remain on the entire continent of Asia.

"Cheetah". The word for this cat is from South Asia. Through Hindi, from Sanskrit.

"What happened?" I read on. Cheetahs were present within the national borders of what is now India, along with tigers, lions, and leopards. By the 1500s, there was a tradition in South Asia, where some in the Mughal aristocracy enjoyed using cheetahs as companions in sport hunting. The cats would be captured in the wild, and then trained, and then brought along on royal hunts. The cat was the star athlete, goaded into chasing down prey, for the entertainment of the hunting party. There are elaborate paintings, commissioned by Mughal courts and some now displayed in collections of European museums, depicting trained cheetah hunts. It has since been popularly said that Akbar was particularly fond of cheetahs. (Akbar the Great was the "emperor" who is credited often for consolidating Mughal state power across India, solidifying regional power by building administrative systems/structures in India ["forging an empire out of fiefdoms"] that would later eventually be manipulated and overtaken by the British Empire. According to some tellings of the historical narrative.)

Accurate or not, it was said that at any one time, Akbar possessed one thousand cheetahs. A vast royal menagerie. The names of several of the most celebrated cheetahs are still known. In some stories, when he was still young, Akbar was presented with a gift. His very first cheetah: Fatehbaz.

This disturbed me. A child, reading this book, I was upset by the idea of such a vast menagerie of wild animals. Large wild animals, with great need for food, space, enrichment. I was upset by the exploitation of captive wild animals as displays of aristocratic wealth, not just in the Mughal state(s), but also those menageires and exhibitions elsewhere, both earlier and later in time: the royal hunts of Assyrian kings, the Roman arenas, Charlemagne's elephants, European circuses.

So, as a child, I imagined that Fatehbaz resisted the captivity. Like in a daydream, a fantasy. I imagined a royal menagerie breaking free from restraint. I imagined elephants and rhinos and tigers and lions and leopards and jackals and crocodiles. I imagined the beasts attacking an emperor's court. But there are now less than one hundred cheetahs which survive in the wild in Asia. And when Mughal statecraft gave way to European statecraft, when Britain moved into South Asia, the bounty hunting specifically targeted big cats. And, meanwhile, the cats were confronted indirectly with habitat destruction, commodity crop monocultures, industrial-scale resource extraction. So I came to imagine the ghosts of cats. The ghost of a cheetah like Fatehbaz on the Indus plain. The ghost of a jaguar in the Sonoran desert. The ghost of a lion on the Mediterranean coast. The ghost of a tiger on the Amu Darya shore beyond Bukhara, where even the Aral Sea itself has vanished.

[jollmaster]

Unpopular opinion and anyone feel free disagree to me

Lilith can be anything including being a goddess

One can argue that lilith and lilitu while are connected they are not the same entity which is can be true, but if we also think about judaism they probably borrow or inspired or even trade with other religion. Asmodeus Asherah this two are from different pantheon asmodeus from zoroastrianism and asherah come from canaanites. While Lilith is more in jewish folklore mysticism she is powerful, she is the dark feminine while Eve and Shekinah are the light feminine. She not only rival her on feminity she manage to defeat her and literally god the holy one having an affair or remarried with lilith. That's goddess level stuff

I think I agree with you too

given the mixing of cultures (judaism also has a lot of overlap with assyrian mythology, for example), the tendency for myth to change and the difference in interpretations depending on time/scientists/theologists, Lilith of course can have traits of a goddess

[nordseehexe]

🦁🧿🌙 Pre Islamic Goddesses 🌙🕋☀️

Al-Lāt, syrian and arabian goddess of destiny and the city Mecca, Lady of the temple, her Name means „Goddess“ and is the female version of „Allah“, represented by the lion, married to Bel, prototype for the greek goddess of wisdom, Athena, her followers took her figures with them in battles, one of the three goddesses of Mecca, the kaaba 🕋 was build for them, her shrine was a red stone cube

Al-Uzza, syrian and arabian goddess of destiny and the venus, one of the three goddesses of Mecca, the youngest of the them, she got worshipped at the kaaba 🕋 and was the greatest idol of the Qurayash who controlled Mecca, they used to journey to her, offer gifts and sacrifices, her shrine was a white stone cube

Anat, syrian and egyptian goddess of war and protector of wild animals, goddess of love and eternal virgin, mother of all, life and death

Ašera, syrian-canaanite sea goddess

Astarte, semitic goddess of love and fertility

Aštoreth, ugarit goddes, bride of the tyrrhenian sea,

Athirat, ugarit sea and sky goddess, lady of the sea, producer of gods, lady of gods

Ereškigal, sumerian goddess of the underworld and Inannas older sister, she can kill with her eyes, snake goddess, she is naked, with eyes out of stone and black hair, sometimes she wears a lions head and her palace is out of lapislazuli

Han-Ilat, northern arabian big goddess

Inanna, sumerian goddess of war, sex, love and the venus, lady of the sky, lady of all houses, city godess of Uruk, female leader goddess, her symbols are the moon and the star

Išhara, syrian underworld goddess

Ištar, babylonian and mesopotamian goddess of war, sex and the venus, most important diety in the ancient world of middle east, many goddesses are versions of her symbols are lions and the star

Ištar of Arbela, assyrian goddess of war

Kiriša, elamic mother goddess with an aspect of war, Lady of the sky, benefactor of the kings, mother of gods

Kulitta, servant of Ištar/Šauška

Lamaštu, babylonian sky goddess, demon with lion head who eats children and makes people sick, kills innocent people, always around rotten and filthy stuff like feces and dead animals,

Lilithu, sumerian goddess of mischief, misery, the night and the storm who lives in ruins, seduced men and stole children

Manat, arabian goddess of the moon, the venus, destiny, and one of the three big goddesses of Mecca. Her shrine was a black stone cube, pilgrims used to cut their hair at her shrine to conplete their journey to the kaaba 🕋

Nammu, sumerian creator goddess of the primordial sea, created together with her son Enki the first men out of clay

Nanše, sumerian goddess of water sources, and brooks, divination, dream interpretation and the holy order, most important goddess in Lagaš, Mother of her daughters Ninmah and Nunmar

Ninatta, servant of Ištar/Šauška

Ningal, mesopotamian goddess, wige of the moon god Nanna, great queen, high lady, lady, star of the prince, sevenfold light, treasured, goddes of the city Ur, goddess of epiphany, mother of Inanna and the sun god Ut

Ninmah, sumerian goddess of midwivery

Ninsianna, babylonian goddess, rust red lady of the sky, pure and sublime judge, sometimes war goddes with a scimitar and a lion headed club, she is the goddess of venus and she wears a star on hear horned crown

Ninšubur, sumerian goddess and holy servant of Inanna, Lady of the servants, been very popular because she was seen as a messenger between men and gods, seen as personal goddess by some kings, guardian who fights with the weapons of air and the sky

Nisaba, sumerian goddess of corn, goddes of writing texts, science and architecture, sister of Nanše and Ningirsu

Pinikir, elamian, later mesopotamian, hurrian and hittian mother goddess

Šauška, hurrian goddess of love, war, incantations and healing

Tiamat, babylonian goddess of the sea, embodiment of salt water, married to Abzu the embodiment of fresh water

Tunit, punish goddess of fertility and guardian of cartago, virgin mother of Baal, who gives him every year new life, her attributes are pomehrenates, figs, ears of corn and the dove

[procrasimnation]

Remember in TS3 when they made that Rococo store pack after this one guy waged a solid 2+ year campaign on the Store Stuff forum begging for it, and he just moaned about the skirts not being full enough lmao

I approve of the Castle Kit, despite not playing that era, because the only good use for kits is niche stuff for nerds that EA can't justify making a whole pack around.

[aqlstar]

One last (probably) think about Salwan Momika: I do not think burning a Quran is the same as burning a Tanach. (Articles that discuss this usually mention burning a Torah, which- idk about you guys- brings to my mind someone burning a Sefer Torah which is already illegal because you can’t just burn someone else’s stuff, and there’s no way to just buy a kosher Sefer Torah with the intent to set it on fire. Also why would you purposefully destroy a very expensive piece of history like that. No new regulation necessary there, thanks. )

Now, if you’re burning a Tanach or a Quran, you’re looking to offend someone.

But people hand out free Qurans and free Bibles on street corners. They will put up signs about how they are right and you are wrong, so you must read their very special book and start doing things their way.

That is just as offensive, if not more so, than someone burning a Quran or a Bible on occasion.

If you’re out here giving something contentious away for free, you don’t get to be mad when people don’t treat it with respect.

(Obviously- I’m taking into account the policy of the host country here. I think it would be gross for a Muslim to burn a Bible in Iraq, considering that Assyrians are not allowed to and do not proselytize in Iraq. )

How I feel about people burning religious texts has less to do with the action’s ability to offend people- and much more to do with if the person setting the text on fire intends to scare anyone. There’s a big difference in my book between an edgy occasional asshole and a bully.

[art-o-bart-o]

I don't think I shared this oc species called Stargazers here. Just stuff for comic lore

(The first character shown is named kokhwa (star in Assyrian so the pronunciation of his name might be hard lol))

First image is old

I'd be happy to share the lore of these aliens

[dougielombax]

One wonders.

What universally established, undisputed historical fact/event will JK Rowling deny next?

On account of her being a Holocaust denier.

The Armenian Genocide?

The Sayfo? (As it applies to Assyrians AND other Syriac peoples)

The Bosnian Genocide?

Ghastly old fool.

Don’t give me those excuses about “just asking questions”.

That’s not what denialism is. Nor will it ever be!

Anyone who does this deserves ridicule and scorn unending!

I study history, so I have an obligation to call out this bullshit.

[breitzbachbea]

gdsdfjgdflkg, ok, so, you can find the posts for my AU over on @i-centri-degli-universi . It's the Jerusalem AU, though I will say sorry, because a lot of the posts do revolve around the European Pilgrims rather than the Egyptian relic peddlers who set up shop in Jerusalem, but I also tag for character names, so if you just want Egyptian-involved content, 'mohammed' 'rut' and 'magdy' are their names! AND I am always down to talk about this AU and swap ideas in the dms!!!! I created it when I took a class on travel writings in late medieval europe, all of which were centered around pilgrimage writings and I had a lot of fun with the cultural interplay.

(And here's also an introduction and a drawing of Team Egypt for my main Human/Organized Crime AU, which is where all the OCs come from that I then use for historical AUs).

So tired of Egypt just being ancient Egypt 2.0

Look i get it i know the pharos and mummies are the most popular thing about Egyptians but what's the point of making them separate characters if you're gonna represent them with the same time period

Ancient Egypt died in 30 BC when the romans came in and fucked shit up Egypt has like 2050 years worth of history that has nothing to do with pharos yet that's all he's known for

Egypt doesn't even worship those Egyptian gods the romans forced Christianity on him then Muslims got their turn with forcing their religion on him

Also why is he always drawn in a dessert the whole population is condensed around the nile why would someone willingly live in a dessert when there's a river right there

[lostrealities0]

Rowan (she/her)

Story: still hasn't been named 😭

Assyrian (he/him)

Story: The Last Human