#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.......

[leroibobo]

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

[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.

[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.

[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

[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

[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.

[jeannereames]

I see a lot of popular history depicting Ancient Macedon in the style of a Prussia of Antiquity, a martial kingdom that's more an army than a state. How much of this is true?

How Much Like Prussia Was Ancient Macedon?

Especially as the Prussians also used a long pike, it can be very tempting to compare them to Macedon. But it’s problematic, as it imposes backwards some modern concepts of statehood that just don’t really fit antiquity.

Certainly, the ancient world had “states” and “nations,” as well as various democratic systems with voting by citizens (more or less formally defined). But their concepts of nations and democracies were less complex. And monarchies, including chieftainships, were the most common form of government.

Furthermore, in many, if not most of these early systems (monarchy, oligarchy, or democracy), the subject/citizen (male) was also a fighting soldier. I can’t think of any that didn’t assume military duty of subjects/citizens unless one were too young, too old, infirm, or property (e.g., a slave). In many, even resident foreigners (where that was a concept) also owed military service, and sometimes slaves, as well.

In short, the “state” was virtually always the army too.

The real question is which states had a professional, citizen army. That’s a bit different, and much rarer. We see it in Assyria, in Sparta, and in Macedon, to name the three I’m most familiar with, but they’re not the only ones.

In order to exist, these professional citizen-soldier armies required a support system. In Sparta, it was the helots. In Assyria, it was the feudal serf system bucked up later by the provincial system. In Macedon, it was a similar serf system. BUT in Macedon, at least, Philip’s development of citizen soldiers came late, and—perhaps ironically—Philip’s citizen soldiers wound up creating a middle class independent of the early feudal system. (Trying to pick this stuff apart, btw, is really tough, given the state of our evidence. So I’m riffing, based on emerging archaeology.)

Historically, Macedon was an absolute monarchy where the king WAS the law. He had estate-owning aristocratic Hetairoi (Companions) to advise him—but he made them and could break them. Their offices, and their land, owed to him. The king WAS the state, and his Hetairoi helped him to hold power. But this wasn’t particularly unusual at that point in time. The same thing held true for the Thracians and Illyrians, near as we can tell. Also, the Assyrians, and the Medes and Persians when they arrived on the plateau.

What Philip did was form, out of a serf system, a separate professional army supported BY that serf system. It’s pretty much the same thing the Middle and Neo-Assyrian kings did, too. Just as in Assyria, ALL subjects owed military service when demanded, and Assyria had two draft systems in addition to their professional standing army. The Macedonians had a professional army, but also could draft citizen-subjects at need too.

Ergo, ALL these systems interwove the function of the state/king with the army. The two were virtually inseparable. But it was normal for the time, rather than all that exceptional.

[dougielombax]

Should we tell them that a diaspora born of refugees and genocide/other such atrocity survivors are NOT colonisers?!

99.9% of the time. (Sometimes it happens but not always)

I mean they won’t listen, but still.

(I refer to morons in general)

[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

[yamayuandadu]

I don't know how well versed in Canaanite or Phoenician stuff, but if so, what's the deal with Tanit? Did she originate in Ashtart, or was a separate goddess? I keep finding a lot of conflicting information on her, and the fact that she's associated with supposed child-sacrifice means a lot of the stuff I find on her has an air of sensationalism

I won’t claim it’s a major interest (recall that the only strictly Canaanite deity whose wiki page I wrote is Baalat Gebal) but I think I can help. However, bear in mind there might be significant gaps in my knowledge esp. regarding the various colonies across the Ibernian peninsula, Sardinia etc.

Saying anything firm about Tanit is not exactly easy since virtually all attestations of her are brief dedicatory inscriptions, theophoric names, toponyms (ex. Aqtanit, Aitanit, Kfar Tanit) and symbolic representations. No hymns, no myths, no theological speculation, not even much in the way of sources hinting at how her cult was organized. Such a body of evidence doesn’t let one do much beyond concluding she certainly was an actively worshiped deity.

There are multiple proposals regarding her name but as far as I am aware most if not all come from authors whose methods leave a lot to be desired, so I’ll leave that out. It’s really not possible to say much beyond the fact she was clearly regarded as the tutelary goddess of Carthage. There is also evidence for some degree of worship in Sidon from the sixth century BCE onward, Kition from the fifth (references to a group of devotees, theophoric names) and in the Mount Lebanon range (a single Carthaginian inscription mentions “Tanit in Lebanon”; see Spencer L. Allen, The Splintered Divine, p. 243-244 and 302). The only connection between Tanit and another deity we can be sure about is that with Baal Hammon, presumably her spouse. It’s best reflected in her epithet “Face of Baal”, found almost exclusively in sources from Carthage, the main exception being two attestations from Constantine in Algeria. What exactly this title entails is difficult to tell, though (The Splintered Divine, p. 242-243). An interesting Neo-Punic inscription pairs Tanit with Kronos, which would indicate the author was familiar with the interpretatio graeca of Baal Hammon, which goes back at least to Sophocles’ times (The Splintered Divine, p. 57).

Out of necessity the rest of the response will largely focus on explaining who Tanit certainly wasn’t. 

For starters, she definitely was not Ashtart in any shape or form. Aren M. Wilson-Wright in Athtart. The Transmission and Transformation of a Goddess in the Late Bronze Age (the book isn’t open access, but you can find the dissertation it was based on here) points out that authors seeking to prove they’re related treat data from different locations and time periods as fully interchangeable, without taking into account deities change across time (p. 7). 

Ultimately the only real argument comes from a text discovered during the excavations in Sarepta dated to the sixth century BCE. It contains the compound name “Tanit-Astarte” (The Splintered Divine, p. 241). The problem is that the two were clearly viewed as distinct in Carthage, as evidenced by roughly contemporary sources. (The Splintered Divine, p. 244). 

Allen notes we might be dealing with a situation like Tanit being worshiped alongside Astarte and the double name designating her as an “associate” of sorts, or that similarly as in the case of Neo-Assyrian compound theonyms the double name indicates a form of Tanit with Astarte’s attributes, like how “Ashur-Enlil” was a designation of Ashur as the king of the gods and not an indication he was merged with Enlil (The Splintered Divine, p. 241).

Even with Ashtart out of the picture, the dreadful specter of interchangeability of goddesses refuses to leave the room, though. There’s an even more nonsensical proposal, namely that Tanit is, somehow, Asherah. We have Frank Moore Cross of Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic to blame for this one. As outlined by Steve A. Wiggins in A Reassessment of Asherah With Further Considerations of the Goddess (p. 131), subsequent publications making the same claim just rely on Cross, with no new material added. The equation is utterly baseless since it depends on assigning symbols to “Asherah” (really to Ugaritic Athirat) based on the pure vibes school of scholarship. Alleged leonine connections rest entirely on the deeply puzzling equation with the sparsely attested Qudshu (or however we’re romanizing her name this week), conclusively proven to be an Egyptian invention (see Christiane Zivie Coche, Foreign Deities in Egypt, pages 4-5) and thus irrelevant to this discussion.

It’s worth noting the only reason why forced attempts are made every now and then is that since Q. appears once - on a now lost stela, lol - with Anat and Ashtart - she CLEARLY must be a northern goddess of equal standing which somehow means Athirat (hardly attested outside Ugarit, and even then, Shapash, Nikkal, Pidray, the collective Kotharat are all equally if not better attested…). So, in other words: the Tanit link here was built on multiple levels of unsound foundations.