Log In

Sign up for access to the world's latest research

Banipal: Issued by General Directorate of Syriac Culture and Arts, 2025

Christianity rose to a position of great prominence in the Late Antique Middle East. In Āthōr “Assyria”, on the other hand, pre-Christian traditions may have persisted until the end of the fifth– or early-sixth centuries. The process of Christianisation was not only gradual but may have allowed for the preservation of collective memory and lore among the Āthōrāyē “Assyrians”. In what follows, I shall try to demonstrate how certain elements from Assyria’s pre-Christian past may have been consciously re-purposed not only as a means of bridging the transition from one faith to another but for maintaining devotional practices as well as cultural identity. Such processes not only appear to have asserted Christianity’s triumph over the “old faith” but may have served as building blocks for Christianisation. In this paper, I shall also try to elaborate on how the re-dedication of pre-Christian rituals, feasts, festivals, devotions, monumental structures, as well as sacred spaces and sites such as temples may have been part of a deliberate strategy to appeal to the cultural sensibilities of the region’s indigenous inhabitants. It shall be argued that church complexes and feast days associated with certain Syriac Christian saints— both East Syriac and West Syriac —may have been fixed upon sacred spaces and dates hitherto associated with major ancient Assyrian traditions. This paper will finally attempt to present a brief overview of how the Assyrian cultural identity may have served as a common and meaningful self-designation for Syriac Christians. In my methodology, I rely upon diverse sources that have been meticulously selected to ensure both relevance and reliability. Drawing upon insights from fields such as archaeology, anthropology, and linguistics, I adopt an interdisciplinary approach to analysis and contextualise the sources cited in my paper. By synthesizing perspectives from such disciplines, a nuanced understanding of the complexity of culture and memory among native population groups in Late Antique Assyria thus emerges. Through a systematic application of such techniques, my methodology challenges the prevailing narratives that continue to negate the cultural continuity of the Assyrian people post empire by uncovering overlooked voices and shedding further light on marginalised perspectives.

Banipal: Issued by General Directorate of Syriac Culture and Arts, 2024

Christianity rose to a position of great prominence in the Late Antique Middle East. In Āthōr “Assyria”, on the other hand, pre-Christian traditions may have persisted until the end of the fifth– or early-sixth centuries. The process of Christianisation was not only gradual but may have allowed for the preservation of collective memory and lore among the Āthōrāyē “Assyrians”. In what follows, I shall try to demonstrate how certain elements from Assyria’s pre-Christian past may have been consciously re-purposed not only as a means of bridging the transition from one faith to another but for maintaining devotional practices as well as cultural identity. Such processes not only appear to have asserted Christianity’s triumph over the “old faith” but may have served as building blocks for Christianisation. In this paper, I shall also try to elaborate on how the re-dedication of pre-Christian rituals, feasts, festivals, devotions, monumental structures, as well as sacred spaces and sites such as temples may have been part of a deliberate strategy to appeal to the cultural sensibilities of the region’s indigenous inhabitants. It shall be argued that church complexes and feast days associated with certain Syriac Christian saints— both East Syriac and West Syriac —may have been fixed upon sacred spaces and dates hitherto associated with major ancient Assyrian traditions. This paper will finally attempt to present a brief overview of how the Assyrian cultural identity may have served as a common and meaningful self-designation for Syriac Christians. In my methodology, I rely upon diverse sources that have been meticulously selected to ensure both relevance and reliability. Drawing upon insights from fields such as archaeology, anthropology, and linguistics, I adopt an interdisciplinary approach to analysis and contextualise the sources cited in my paper. By synthesizing perspectives from such disciplines, a nuanced understanding of the complexity of culture and memory among native population groups in Late Antique Assyria thus emerges. Through a systematic application of such techniques, my methodology challenges the prevailing narratives that continue to negate the cultural continuity of the Assyrian people post empire by uncovering overlooked voices and shedding further light on marginalised perspectives.

In a way, this bibliography is a continuation of the previous bibliographies compiled by The difference between Hämeen-Anttila's bibliography and the present one, however, is that we have tried to provide both the professional Assyriologist and the student of Assyriology with a considerable selection of secondary literature too. Therefore, this bibliography does not only list Neo-Assyrian text editions or studies that almost exclusively deal with the various linguistic aspects of Neo-Assyrian. One of the main reasons for this decision is simply the fact that during the last ten-twenty years the Neo-Assyrian data have often been approached in an interdisciplinary way. Hence, without listing titles belonging to relevant secondary literature, the viewpoint on Neo-Assyrian studies would remain unsatisfactory. Moreover, one could even maintain that during the last ten years, at the latest, the focus of Neo-Assyrian studies has somewhat shifted from its traditional philological roots to more interdisciplinary studies, at least quantitatively. Doubtless, this shift has affected the applied methods and methodologies in an unprecedented way. Nevertheless, many readers may still be puzzled when seeing titles listed here that refer to biblical, Aramaic, Greek, Median, Neo-Babylonian, Neo-Elamite, Phoenician and Urar\ian topics, but do not mention Neo-Assyrian at all. This results from an attempt to see Neo-Assyrian studies as part of a bigger picture.

The Syriac World

Assyrian Christians, Dr. Aaron M. Butts: A Rebuttal, 2023

In his research titled Assyrian Christians, Dr. Aaron M. Butts chronicles the supposed events that led to the propagation and adoption of the Assyrian identity by Syriac Christians, both East Syriac and West Syriac. The author of this article will consider and present conflicting evidence that not only stand in contradiction to Dr. Butts’ argument but shall also demonstrate how the Assyrian identity, contrary to the aforementioned hypothesis, did indeed survive post-empire.

International Journal of Middle East Studies, volume 45, issue 04, pp. 829-831, 2013

Department of African, Middle Eastern, and South Asian Languages and Literatures, Rutgers, State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, N.J.; e-mail: haberl@rutgers.edu

Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies 27-1, 2024

These are second proofs, with minor differences to the published version. This essay, delivered as a preliminary paper in Helsinki, was completed while three articles, organized in a specific series on the topic of ethnicity in the Neo-Assyrian empire through the lens of the nisbe, were in course of publication: Fales 2013, Fales 2015, and Fales 2017. It may thus be read as explicitly presenting a bird’s-eye view of the results given in much greater detail therein, although it also offers a number of new additions in the footnotes and the bibliography.

2019

This article is identical in content to the one published in 2018, The Composition and structure of the Neo-Assyrian Empire: Ethnicity, Language and Identities, in R. Rollinger (Ed.), Conceptualizing Past, Present and Future, Münster 2018, 443-494 (see below here in academia.edu). It was republished "as is" in SAAS 29 with no formal intimation, request to, or permission by the author --who is perplexed by this circumstance.

ISIMU

This is the second of three planned articles on ethnicity in the Assyrian empire, with ethnicity involving the identification of group identities and/or differentiations on the basis of mutual contact, as observed from the protagonists' viewpoint or from that of the surrounding social order, along the Barthian model. On a documentary basis, the Assyrian empire lends itself in a unique manner as observation point for the study of the mechanisms of ethnicity in the ancient Near Eastern context. The article focuses, like the others, on the study of “ethnic-group terms” as identifiers of ethnicity within the Neo-Assyrian period, and specifically on those terms to which the "gentilic" suffix (nisbe) was applied. The particular theme chosen for this article regards the ethnic-group term "Assyrian" (Aššur?yu and other designations) as utilized in both official(royal) inscriptions and "everyday" (or state archival) documents from the Neo-Assyrian empire. Th...

This is the second of three planned articles on ethnicity in the Assyrian empire, with ethnicity involving the identification of group identities and/or differentiations on the basis of mutual contact, as observed from the protagonists' viewpoint or from that of the surrounding social order, along the Barthian model. On a documentary basis, the Assyrian empire lends itself in a unique manner as observation point for the study of the mechanisms of ethnicity in the ancient Near Eastern context. The article focuses, like the others, on the study of “ethnic-group terms” as identifiers of ethnicity within the Neo-Assyrian period, and specifically on those terms to which the "gentilic" suffix (nisbe) was applied. The particular theme chosen for this article regards the ethnic-group term "Assyrian" (Aššurāyu and other designations) as utilized in both official (royal) inscriptions and "everyday" (or state archival) documents from the Neo-Assyrian empire.

The Current Theological Dialogue with the Assyrian Church of the East, 1998

This article contributes to current research on the development of Syriac Christian identity during the modern period by bringing into discussion a previously unknown literary source, the Book of the Rule, composed in the year 1829 by Sāḇā, an East Syrian priest from the village * An earlier version of this paper has been presented at the International Conference dedicated to the Centenary of the Birth of Academician Konstantine Tsereteli (20-22 December 2021, Tbilisi). I am most grateful to Jeanne-Nicole Mellon Saint-Laurent and to the two anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of the manuscript and their many insightful comments and suggestions. I am also indebted to Michael Rand (z"l), who very kindly provided me with a complete copy of the manuscript

2003