Assyrian Empire

Those who don't know or understand the history of Israel have tried to make the claim that modern Germany is descended from Ancient Assyria. This is not accurate and is disrespectful to the Assyrians living today who are fighting for their very existence. Those who make this claim are attempting to bring into the fold of Israel false Jews who have no right to the Heritage of Abraham Isaac and Jacob.

While these people make false claims about Germany and Assyria, the true Assyrians know who they are.

Assyria is located in north Mesopotamia and spans four countries: In Syria it extends west to the Euphrates river; in Turkey it extends north to Harran, Edessa, Diyarbakir, and Lake Van; in Iran it extends east to Lake Urmi, and in Iraq it extends to about 100 miles south of Kirkuk. This is the Assyrian heartland, from which so much of the ancient Near East came to be controlled.

Assyrians are a Semitic peoples indigenous to Mesopotamia. They are Mediterranean Caucasoids, and, while not white (anymore), are ethnically distinct from Arabs and Jews.

Assyrians have used two languages throughout their history: ancient Assyrian (Akkadian), and Modern Assyrian (neo-syriac). Akkadian was written with the cuneiform writing system, on clay tablets, and was in use from the beginning to about 750 B.C.. By 750 B.C., a new way of writing, on parchment, leather, or papyrus, was developed, and the people who brought this method of writing with them, the Arameans, would eventually see their language, Aramaic, supplant Ancient Assyrian because of the technological breakthrough in writing. Aramaic was made the second official language of the Assyrian empire in 752 B.C. Although Assyrians switched to Aramaic, it was not wholesale transplantation. The brand of Aramaic that Assyrians spoke was, and is, heavily infused with Akkadian words, so much so that scholars refer to it as Assyrian Aramaic.

Assyrians have practiced two religions throughout their history: Ashurism and Christianity. Ashurism was, of course, the first religion of the Assyrians. The very word Assyrian, in its Latin form, derives from the name of Ashur, the Assyrian god. Assyrians continued to practice Ashurism until 256 A.D, although by that time, most Assyrians had accepted Christianity. Indeed, Assyrians were the first nation to accept Christianity, and the Assyrian Church was founded in 33 A.D. by Thomas, Bortholemew and Thaddeus.

Assyrian population

History of the Assyrians

Assyrian history is divided into six time periods:

Beginnings to 2400 BC

Assyrian history dates at least to 5000 BC with the cities of Ashur and Arbel. They had domesticated animals, agriculture, pottery, built kilns, practiced smelting, had rich corn fields among other developments. Between 4500 and 2400 BC complex societies appear in the form of cities.

First Golden Age: 2400 to 512 BC

This period of time would see Assyria rise to great power in Mesopotamia beginning with Sargon of Akkad in 2371 BC. He would be the first king to assert control outside of his city-state. From his base at Akkad, south of Baghdad, Sargon would come to control territories stretching north to Ashur and west to the Mediterranean.

Shamshi-Adad I established his kingdom in 1813 BC and united the three cities of Ashur, Nineveh and Arbel into one cohesive unit. With Nimrod these four cities constituted the core of Assyria.

The Middle Assyrian empire began in 1307 BC with Tiglath-Pileser, who expanded Assyrian territory. During his reign Aramean migrations into Assyria occurred which had a profound impact on Assyria and the Assyrians. Tiglath-Pileser stated, "I crossed the Euphrates twenty eight times...in pursuit of the Arameans." Unfortunately, he was not successful.

The Aramean problem persisted and appears to be the principal cause of the decline of the Assyrian empire over the next century. It wasn't until 934 that Assyria would reemerge and the son of Shalmaneser II would obtain submission from the Arameans.

One of the queens of Assyria was Sammurammat, or Shamiram. Today, many Assyrian women are named after her. There's a memorial stele found at Ashur about her that reads: Stele of Sammurammat; queen of Shamshi-Adad; King of all, king of Ashur; mother of Adad-nerari; King of all, king of Ashur; Daughter-in-law (kalta) of Shalmaneser; King of the four regions. Not bad for a woman back then!

With the rule of Tiglath-Pileser III, 745-727, Sargon II, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, and Ashurbnaipal, Assyria would extend its rule over a vast area, from Egypt up to cyprus to the west, through Anatolia, to the Caspian in the east. By the time this expansion was over, the Assyrians would being the highest civilization to the then known world.

It's in Assyria that locks and keys were first used. Assyria developed the sexagesimal system of keeping time. The first paved roads were developed in Assyria and so was the first postal system, first use of iron, first magnifying glass, first libraries, first plumbing and flush toilets, first electric batteries, first guitars, first aqueducts, first arch and much more.

First Dark Age: 612 BC to 33 AD

The Assyrian empire collapsed in 612 AD when the Babylonians conquered Nineveh and the Assyrian people remained inconspicuous for 600 years. The Persians mention employing Assyrians as troops, and there is the failed attempt at reestablishing an Assyrian Kingdom in 350 B.C.; the Persians squelched this attempt and castrated 400 Assyrian leaders as punishment. Those Persians, just loved to castrate people.

Second Golden Age: 33 to 1300 AD

Throughout the first dark age of Assyrian history, the Assyrian people CONTINUED LIVING IN THEIR HOMELAND. With the death of Christ on the cross, most converted to CHRISTIANITY and founded the Assyrian Church of the East, considered by some to be the first and oldest Christian church in the world, although some continued in the Ashurite faith until 256 AD. By the end of the twelfth century the Assyrian Church was larger than the Greek Orthodox and the Roman Catholic churches combined and spanned the Asian continent from Syria to Mongolia, Korea, China, Japan and the Philippines.

By the sixth century A.D., Assyrians had begun exporting back to Byzantia their own works on science, philosophy and medicine. In the field of medicine, the Bakhteesho Assyrian family produced nine generations of physicians, and founded the great medical school at Gundeshapur. Also in the area of medicine, Hunayn ibn-Ishaq's textbook on ophthalmology, written in 950 A.D., remained the authoritative source on the subject until 1800 A.D.

In the area of philosophy, the Assyrian philosopher Job of Edessa developed a physical theory of the universe, in the Assyrian language, that rivaled Aristotle's theory, and that sought to replace matter with forces.

One of the greatest Assyrian achievements of the fourth century was the founding of the first university in the world. The School of Nisibis, on the southern edge of Turkey, had three departments: theology, philosophy and medicine, and became a magnet and center of intellectual development in the Middle East. The statutes of the School of Nisibis, which have been preserved, later became the model upon which the first Italian university was based.

When Arabs and Islam swept through the Middle East in 630 A.D., they encountered 600 years of Assyrian Christian civilization, with a rich heritage, a highly developed culture, and advanced learning institutions. It is this civilization which became the foundation of the Arab civilization.

But this great Assyrian Christian civilization would come to an end in 1300 A.D. The tax which the Arabs levied on Christians, simply for just being Christian, forced many Assyrians to convert to Islam to avoid the tax; this inexorably drained the community, so that by the time Timurlane the Mongol delivered the final blow in 1300 A.D., by violently destroying most cities in the Middle East, the Assyrian Christian community had dwindled to its core in Assyria, and henceforth the Assyrian Church of the East would not regain its former glory, and the Assyrian language, which had been the lingua franca of the Middle East until 900 A.D., was completely supplanted by Arabic (except amongst the Assyrians). This, from 1300 A.D. until World War One, became the second Assyrian dark age.

Second Dark Age: 1300 to 1918 AD

With the invasion of the Mongols in 1300, most of the Assyrian population fled to the Hakkary mountains (present day eastern Turkey) while the remaining Assyrians continued to live in their homelands in present day North Iraq and Syria and Urmi. The four Assyrian communities, over time, begin defining themselves in terms of their church affiliation. The western Assyrians, all of whom belonging to the Syrian Orthodox Church, began identifying themselves as "Jacobites". The remaining communities belonged to the Assyrian Church of the East. After the division of the Church of the East in 1550 A.D., the Chaldean Church of Babylon, a Roman Catholic Uniate, was created, and members of this church began to call themselves Chaldean. By the end of the nineteenth century, these three communities no longer saw themselves as one and the same.

Diaspora: 1918 to present

The Assyrians have suffered massive genocide in the twentieth century. They have lost control of their ancestral lands and are in a struggle for their very survival. One third of their people are in diaspora, the remaining two-thirds live perilously in their native lands. Islamic fundamentalism, Arabization, cultural immersion and absorption into Arab societies, mass emigration to the West and absorption into Western societies are just some of the dangers facing the Assyrians today.

Bodies of Assyrian genocide victims

The Syracuse Herald, Syracuse, New York - 1915

The Washington Post and other leading newspapers in Western countries reported on the Assyrian Genocide as it unfolded.

In early 1918, many Assyrians started to flee present-day Turkey. Kurdish troops of the Ottoman Army massacred almost the entire population of the district of Khoi. One of the survivors, Reverend John Eshoo, gave this chilling account of the massacre:

You have undoubtedly heard of the Assyrian massacre of Khoi, but I am certain you do not know the details.

These Assyrians were assembled into one caravansary, and shot to death by guns and revolvers. Blood literally flowed in little streams, and the entire open space within the caravansary became a pool of crimson liquid. The place was too small to hold all the living victims waiting for execution. They were brought in groups, and each new group was compelled to stand over the heap of the still bleeding bodies and shot to death. The fearful place became literally a human slaughter house, receiving its speechless victims, in groups of ten and twenty at a time, for execution.

At the same time, the Assyrians, who were residing in the suburb of the city, were brought together and driven into the spacious courtyard of a house [...] The Assyrian refugees were kept under guard for eight days, without anything to eat. At last they were removed from their place of confinement and taken to a spot prepared for their brutal killing. These helpless Assyrians marched like lambs to their slaughter, and they opened not their mouth, save by sayings "Lord, into thy hands we commit our spirits. [...]

The executioners began by cutting first the fingers of their victims, join by joint, till the two hands were entirely amputated. Then they were stretched on the ground, after the manner of the animals that are slain in the Fast, but these with their faces turned upward, and their heads resting upon the stones or blocks of wood. Then their throats were half cut, so as to prolong their torture of dying, and while struggling in the agony of death, the victims were kicked and clubbed by heavy poles the murderers carried. Many of them, while still laboring under the pain of death, were thrown into ditches and buried before their souls had expired.

The young men and the able-bodied men were separated from among the very young and the old. They were taken some distance from the city and used as targets by the shooters. They all fell, a few not mortally wounded. One of the leaders went to the heaps of the fallen and shouted aloud, swearing by the names of Islam's prophets that those who had not received mortal wounds should rise and depart, as they would not be harmed any more. A few, thus deceived, stood up, but only to fall this time killed by another volley from the guns of the murderers.

Some of the younger and good looking women, together with a few little girls of attractive appearance, pleaded to be killed. Against their will were forced into Islam's harems. Others were subjected to such fiendish insults that I cannot possibly describe. Death, however, came to their rescue and saved them from the vile passions of the demons. The death toll of Assyrians totaled 2,770 men, women and children.

By mid 1918 the British army had convinced the Ottomans to let them have 30,000 Assyrians from various parts of Persia. They then deported all of them to Baquba, Iraq. During the 25 day deportation, 7000 Assyrians died.

The majority of the Assyrians eventually went back to the Hakkari mountains while the rest were dispersed throughout Iraq, only to have a number of them killed in 1933. To this day Assyrians in Iraq make up an important Iraqi minority group.

Memorial in California

Helena Sawa, Assyrian from the Kurdish region of Iraq believed murdered by the Kurds, June, 1999

This is the unknown and unreported genocide of the CHRISTIAN Assyrians

January, 1999

The Assyrians in the Kurdish region of Northern Iraq suffer persecution and want their rights recognized

Why does a certain group of people who know that the "lost" tribes of Israel are the Europeans try and claim that Germany is Assyria?

Because they've been deceived by the false Jews

Assyria has her own identity

Don't you be fooled!

http://www.nineveh.com/Assyrians%20after%20Assyria.html

http://history-world.org/assyrians.htm

http://www.aina.org/aol/link4.htm