Ancient Assyria was located in north Mesopotamia and spanned 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.
Two great rivers run through Assyria, the Tigris and the Euhprates, and many lesser ones, the most important of which being the Upper Zab and Lower Zab, both tributaries to the Tigris. Strategically surrounding the Tigris and the two Zabs are the Assyrian cities of Nineveh (Mosul Iraq), Ashur, Arbel, Nimrod and Arrapkha.
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Date |
King |
Events |
Biblical Event |
|
884-858 |
Assur-nasir-apal II |
Warlike and cruel. Welded Assyria into the best fighting machine of the ancient world. |
|
|
858-824 |
Shalmaneser III |
First Assyrian king to come in conflict with Israel. Ahab fought him. Jehu paid tribute to him. |
|
|
824-810 |
Shamsi-Adad V |
|
|
|
810-782 |
Adad-nirari III |
||
|
783-773 |
Shalmaneser IV |
||
|
773-754 |
Assur-dayan III |
||
|
754-745 |
Ashur-nirari V (Assur-lush) |
Decline |
|
|
745-727 |
Tiglath-pileser III |
"Pul" was his personal name. He carried North Israel into captivity, 734 B.C. |
Isaiah 7; II Kings 15:19-20 |
|
727-722 |
Shalmaneser V |
He besieged Samaria, died in the siege. |
|
|
721-705 |
Sargon II |
Completed destruction of Samaria and Israel's captivity. Sargon I was a Babylonian King of 2000 years earlier. |
II Kings 17:5. Massive deportation of rebel peoples |
|
704-681 |
Sennacherib |
Most famous of Assyrian kings. Burned Babylon (II Chron. 32) |
Defeated by an angel before Jerusalem in 701 B.C. (Isaiah 37:33) |
|
681-669 |
Esar-haddon |
Rebuilt Babylon. Conquered Egypt. Was one of the greatest of Assyrian kings. |
Isaiah 37:38 |
|
669-626 |
Assur-banipal |
Destroyed Thebes in 663 B.C. Collected a great library. Powerful, cruel, literary. |
Nahum 3:8 |
|
626-607 |
Assur-etil-ilani |
Beset by Scythians, Medes, and Babylonia, the brutal Empire fell. |
|
|
612 |
Fall of Nineveh |
Fall of Haran (610), fall of Carchemish (605). |
Asshur, the son of Shem, was considered to be the founder of the Assyrian nation whose king list names the earliest founders as tent dwellers in the southern and western deserts Genesis 10:22. Old Assyrian texts, the primary literary source for this period of history, mention the ciy of Sumer and an Ishtar Temple about 2350 B.C.until it fell to the Medes and Babylonians in 614 B.C. Iraq's Assyrians claim direct descent from the original inhabitants of Iraq, who built the tower of Babel and enthusiastically received Jonah's grudging call for repentance at Nineveh. They have names like Sargon, the king described by Isaiah, or Nimrod, the "mighty hunter before the Lord" portrayed in Genesis. Abraham, also a descendant of Shem, was born in Ur of the Chaldees, located 9 miles west of Nasiriyeh on the Euphrates in southern Iraq. They are an ancient ethnic group distinct from the Arabs, who invaded their land in the seventh century. Ashurism was the first religion of the Assyrians. Sennacherib made Nineveh the Capital. The Assyrian Annals record that King Ahab of Israel supplied 2000 chariots and 14000 men to Shalmaneser for the battle against a 10 king coalition headed by Ben Hadad of Damascus in 853 B.C. Asshur, the first capital, is located 56 miles south of Mosul Iraq (Nineveh) on the west bank of the Tigris River. Ashur was the Assyrian national 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 the Apostle, Bortholemew and Thaddeus. The large majority of the world's most ancient people is now Christian. They continue to speak a version of Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke. Since many of them dissented from decisions by early church councils on the nature of Christ, they were often attacked by Byzantine Christians and The Ancient Church of the East, often called "Nestorian," responded to this persecution by becoming one of the greatest missionary churches in history, establishing 250 dioceses and 1,000 monasteries from Iraq to India and China. Under growing Islamic persecution and repression the Church declined. In the 16th century portions of the Church of the East sought relief by establishing relations with the Church of Rome. Thereafter, those Christians in union with Rome were known as Chaldeans which now includes the majority of Iraq's Christians.
Whereas the remaining Christians were called Assyrians. Many Assyrians have fled to southern California and Chicago, and Chaldeans to Detroit. The liturgical language of both Churches is Aramaic.The Christian populations of the Middle East, once dominant, have either vanished altogether or have been reduced to small minorities by forced conversions, persecutions and emigration.. Europe, North America and Australia have all experienced increased immigration by Middle Eastern Christians seeking to escape discrimination and persecution. In the United States about 74% of the Arabs are Christians
In the region of Baghdad and southwards the predominant vegetation is palm trees. . .The terrain is sun-parched earth. arid and dead wherever irrigation ditches do not reach. Approaching Mosul [Nineveh] to the north the traveller finds a striking change. The flat terrrain gives way to undulating plains, with pasturage or cereal crop and scented with flowers and clover. The rolling plains are cut with wadis, aflow after rains, with higher ranges of hills on the horizon.
The Assyrian land is rich and fertile, with growing fields found in every region. Two large areas comprise the Assyrian breadbasket: the Arbel plain and the Nineveh plain. To this day these areas remain critical crop producers. This is from where Assyria derived her strength, as it could feed a large population of professionals and craftsman, which allowed it to expand and advance the art of civilization.
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.
In 1932, Sir Max Mallowan, the eminent British archaeologist, dug a deep sounding which reached virgin soil ninety feet below the top of the mound of Nineveh (Mosul); this gave a pottery sequence back to prehistoric times and showed that the site was already inhabited by 4000 B.C.. Very soon after that, the two other great Assyrian cities were settled, Ashur and Arbel, although an exact date has yet to be determined. Arbel is the oldest extant city, and remains largely unexcavated, its archaeological treasures waiting to be discovered. The same holds for Ashur. It is clear that by 2500 B.C., these three cities were well established and were thriving metropoli.
Some of our most basic and fundamental devices of daily survival originated in Assyria. It is in Assyria where locks and keys were first used. It is in Assyria that the sexagesimal system of keeping time was developed. It is in Assyria where paved roads were first used. And the list goes on, including the first postal system, the first use of iron, the first magnifying glasses, the first libraries, the first plumbing and flush toilets, the first electric batteries, the first guitars, the first aqueducts, the first arch etc.etc.
It is in Assyria that the story of the flood originates, 2000 years before the old testament is written. It is here that the first epic is written, the Epic of Gilgamesh, with its universal and timeless theme of the struggle and purpose of humanity. It is here that civilization itself is developed and handed down to future generations. It is here where the first steps in the cultural unification of the Middle East are taken by bringing under Assyrian rule the diverse groups in the area, from Iran to Egypt, breaking down ethnic and national barriers and preparing the way for the cultural unification which facilitated the subsequent spread of Hellenism and Christianity.ideas that would shape the world to come. The example, of imperial administration, of dividing the land into territories administered by local governors who report to the central authority, the King of Assyria. This fundamental model of administration can be seen in America's federal-state system.
Assyrians continued living in their homeland throughout this dark age, until that momentous moment in human history, when the Lord Son of God gave himself for the salvation of mankind. Very soon after the crucifixion, the bulk of the Assyrian population converted to Christianity, although there remained someAshurites, until 256 A.D. It was the Apostle Thomas, with Thaddeus and Bartholomew who came to the Assyrian city of Edessa and founded the Assyrian Church of the East, said by many to be the oldest church in the world.
Armed with the word of God, and after 600 years of dormancy, the Assyrians once again set out to build an empire founded on divine revelation and Christian brotherhood. So successful was the Assyrian missionary enterprise, by the end of the twelfth century the Assyrian Church was larger than the Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches combined, and it spanned the Asian continent, from Syria to Mongolia, Korea, China, Japan and the Philippines.
When Marco Polo visited China in the thirteenth century, he was astonished to find Assyrian priests in the Chinese royal court, and tens of thousands of Chinese Christians. The Assyrian missionaries had reached China in the sixth century. With only the bible, a cross, and a loaf of bread in hand, these messengers had walked thousands of miles along the old silk road to deliver the word of God. When Genghis Khan swept through Asia, he brought with him an army over half of which belonged to the Assyrian Church of the East. So successful were the missionaries, the first Mongolian system of writing used the Assyrian alphabet. In the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries they began a systematic translation of the Greek body of knowledge into Assyrian. At first they concentrated on the religious works but then quickly moved to science, philosophy and medicine. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Galen, and many others were translated into Assyrian, and from Assyrian into Arabic. It is these Arabic translations which the Moors brought with them into Spain, and which the Spaniards translated into Latin and spread throughout Europe, thus igniting the European renaissance.
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 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, The University of Bologna, which began as a law school in the Middle Ages, recently celebrated its ninth centennial. Founded in 1088 it is the oldest continuing institution of higher learning in the world. Among its alumni are Thomas Aquinas and Italy's most famous writers, Dante, Petrarch and Torquato Tasso. Part of the national system of higher education, the University is a large public institution with over 90,000 students.
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.
The Assyrian missionary enterprise, which had been so successful throughout the Asian continent, came to an abrupt end with the coming of Timurlane the Mongol. The indiscriminate destruction leveled by Timurlane against the civilizations he encountered put to a permanent end the Assyrian missionary enterprise. A large segment of the Assyrian population escaped the ravages of Timurlane by fleeing into the Hakkary mountains (present day eastern Turkey); the remaining Assyrians continued to live in their homelands (presently 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. these three communities no longer saw themselves as one and the same.
The Assyrian people today stand at a crossroad. One third of is in a diaspora, while the remaining two-thirds lives perilously in its native lands. Although the Assyrian empire ended in 612 B.C., history is replete with recorded details of the continuous presence of the Assyrian people till the present time click here for detailed history
World Assyrian Population . Iraq 1,500,000 .. France 20,000 ... Syria 700,000 .. Belgium 15,000 ... USA 400,000 Georgia 15,000 ... Sweden 120,000 .. Armenia 15,000 ...Lebanon 100,000 ... Switzerland 10,000 ...Brazil 80,000 Denmark 10,000 ... Germany 70,000... Russia 70,000 ...Iran 50,000 ... Jordan 44,000 ... Australia 30,000
The Disciples New Testament, "the Galilean" edition
