THE MELAMMU PROJECT http://www.aakkl.helsinki.fi/melammu/ “Mapping Assyria” RICHARD N. FRYE Published in Melammu Symposia 3: A. Panaino and G. Pettinato (eds.), Ideologies as Intercultural Phenomena. Proceedings of the Third Annual Symposium of the Assyrian and Babylonian Intellectual Heritage Project. Held in Chicago, USA, October 27-31, 2000 (Milan: Università di Bologna & IsIao 2002), pp. 75-8. Publisher: http://www.mimesisedizioni.it/ This article was downloaded from the website of the Melammu Project: http://www.aakkl.helsinki.fi/melammu/ The Melammu Project investigates the continuity, transformation and diffusion of Mesopotamian culture throughout the ancient world. A central objective of the project is to create an electronic database collecting the relevant textual, art-historical, archaeological, ethnographic and linguistic evidence, which is available on the website, alongside bibliographies of relevant themes. In addition, the project organizes symposia focusing on different aspects of cultural continuity and evolution in the ancient world. The Digital Library available at the website of the Melammu Project contains articles from the Melammu Symposia volumes, as well as related essays. All downloads at this website are freely available for personal, non-commercial use. Commercial use is strictly prohibited. For inquiries, please contact [email protected]. FRYE M APPING ASSYRIA RICHARD N. F RYE Cambridge, Mass. Mapping Assyria olitical boundaries and names of as their principal ancestors? Or were lands change, but the name of a proto–Berbers the ancestors par excel- Ppeople is frequently preserved as lence of the present inhabitants of the the important identification of those who land? belong together and speak the same lan- Assyria and Assyrians present a guage. Foreigners frequently regard peo- greater continuity than many other lands ple speaking the same language as uni- and peoples, although the area of land ted, with few differences among them, occupied and the number of people was whereas they know that they themselves reduced throughout time. Let us begin have many divisions. Thus the German with an expansion of the original land of language provided a kind of unity of the Assyria which, as everyone knows, was various tribes north and east of the Rhine in present northern Iraq. We should ex- River, such that the Romans called the amine the contention that the Aramaic country Germania and the people Ger- speaking inhabitants of the neo–Assyrian mans. But politically the people were not empire were considered Assyrians, espe- united until the nineteenth century when cially in light of the many deportations the many kingdoms of Bavaria, Saxony, and mixing of peoples by the imperial Prussia, etc., came together into one government. For example, the realm of country – Germany. The native name Sargon included most Aramaic or (A)Sy- Deutschland over time was not forgotten riac speakers, similar to the German Em- by the people, and paralleled the foreign pire, which united most German speakers designations of their land. Invasions, ho- after 1870. Just as the Bavarians, Saxons, wever, can change names as well as po- and others were called Germans by Eng- pulations. For example, Tunisia in north lish speakers, so the people of the ‘Fer- Africa, probably was inhabited mainly by tile Crescent’ were called (A)Syrians by ancestors of the Berbers. The Phoeni- the Greeks, as I have explained else- cians were the first invaders whom we where. 1 I suggest that, generally speak- know, and they established the city of ing, in the eyes of outsiders the Aramaic Carthage as their center. The Carthagin- speakers and Assyrians were considered ians never recovered from Roman domi- the same. So our first map should show nation, and after the fall of the Roman Assyria at its greatest extent. Empire the Germanic Vandals estab- Just as German speakers existed in lished a kingdom in North Africa, fol- Austria and Switzerland, so Aramaic lowed by Arab rule. So modern Tunisians (Asyriac) speakers also were found out- can claim many changes in the history of side of Assyrian domains, as in present Tunisia, but do they claim Carthaginians Iranian Azerbaijan, where modern Assy- 1 Frye, R.N., “Assyria and Syria: Synonyms,” JNES 51, no.4 (Chicago, 1992), pp. 281-5. A. Panaino & G. Pettinato (eds.) MELAMMU SYMPOSIA III (Milano 2002) ISBN 88-8483-107-5 75 FRYE M APPING ASSYRIA rians had their center in the city of Ur- Parthian provinces. The name Assyria, in mia. The discovery of a stele inscribed in the form Asuristan, was shifted to an- Aramaic from the eighth century B.C. cient Babylonia, probably by the Parthi- suggests the existence of Aramaic speak- ans, and this continued under the Sasani- ers in that area who were not under Assy- ans. This is the information we glean rian but rather Mannaean rule. 2 This dis- from literary sources and maps, espe- covery may revise our ideas about the cially from Ptolemy, where Assyria oc- expansion of Assyrians, not only into cupies his sixth book. Cappadocia and Anatolia, but also onto In 116 A.D. the name Assyria, for the the Iranian plateau. homeland, was revived by the Roman The next reduction in size of Assyria emperor Trajan, who conquered all of came with the Achaemenid Empire, when northern Mesopotamia and created the the western part of Assyria (OP Athura) short–lived province of Assyria. 3 So both was called Ebir Nari, across the river in the east and in the west the name (Euphrates). This division became fixed Assyria was not forgotten. The next when the Romans created the province of question to ask is whether some, if not Syria as distinct from Assyria in the east. all, of the Aramaic speaking inhabitants The old homeland of Assyria, on the of this large area used the term Assyrian other hand, had been divided into a num- for themselves. They probably did not ber of small principalities already under exhibit any solidarity complex or unity in the Seleucids, with names such as So- this regard until the end of the Sasanian phene, Zabdicene, Gorduene, Sittacene, Empire, when a unity of the Christian Mygdonia (around Nisibis), and Apollo- religion combined with the linguistic niatis on the Diyala River. Before the unity to cause many people to consider coming of the Romans into the Near themselves (A)syrians. Such was the East, probably under the early Parthians, situation when the Muslim Arabs arrived the term Asuristan, Beth Aramaye in and gave the designation Nabat (Naba- Aramaic, had been coined for old Baby- tean) to all Aramaic speakers of the lonia, sometimes including northern Iraq, ‘Fertile Crescent.’ and at times not. It is difficult to identify We should now call those inhabitants Aramaic names under the Parthians with Syriac speakers, after the Christianized the Greek names of the Seleucids, and language, whose classical form came boundaries changed frequently. The area from Edessa, Urhai or Urfa. Even in the of the upper Diyala River basin was east where the name Assyrian was cur- called Beth Garmai, while Arbela and rent, the language came to be called Sy- the land between the Greater and Lesser riac or Suryani. Many Christian people in Zab Rivers was called Adiabene or Had- that part of the world knew they spoke hyab in Aramaic. The plain of ancient Syriac, or rather a dialect of the church Nineveh was called Beth Nuhadra, but it language, although there were differ- is unknown whether it, as well as other ences of both tongues and sects. Under regions, had independent rulers or were the Umayyad Caliphate the names Syria, 2 Lemaire, A., “Une inscription Araméen du VII e S. 3 A. Maricq, “La province d’«Assyrie» créée par Av, J.–C. trouvée à Boukân,” Studia Iranica , 27, Trajan,” Syria , 36 (1959), 257. fasc. 1 (Paris, 1998), pp. 15–30. 76 FRYE M APPING ASSYRIA Asuristan, and Assyria, however, re- torians in more recent times. ceived new Arabic designations: al- We may quote Edward Gibbon, who in Sham, al-Sawad and al-Jazira. As usual his Decline and Fall of the Roman Em- new boundaries did not coincide with the pire , written in the 18th century, long old, but the Arabic designations also did before excavations by Europeans in the not last after the coming of Turkish dy- Near East. He says, “Nestorians, who, nasties. under the name of Chaldaeans or Assyri- On the map of Idrisi, made in Sicily ans, are confounded with the most le- about the middle of the eleventh century, arned or the most powerful nation of we find only the Arabic names for the Eastern antiquity.” 7 We may interpret areas of the ‘Fertile Crescent.’ The des- this statement as a complaint that people ignation of the ancient homeland of the in his day called themselves Assyrians, Aramaic speaking people as Assyria, which term should only be used for the however, did not vanish among some inhabitants of the ancient Assyrian Em- educated Assyrians. For example, Bar pire. It means that the name ‘Assyrian’ Hebraeus, writing at the end of the thir- was in use, which has been denied by teenth century, mentions Assyria ( Athor some scholars. in Syriac), in his Chronography several Hopefully, I have convinced those who times. 4 He distinguishes Syria from contend that the name Assyrian was res- Assyria, as does the Syriac geography of urrected and first brought to the neo- an unknown author, usually designated as Syriac or neo-Aramaic speaking people pseudo-Bar Hebraeus. 5 As I have men- in the nineteenth century by missionaries tioned elsewhere, when the Carmelite and then archaeologists, that their argu- missionaries came to Isfahan in the reign ment is untenable. Their position may be of Shah ‘Abbas, the designation Assyrian rescued, however, with the observation was current, as were also the synonyms that the Europeans did publicize, spread, Chaldaean, Nestorian, and Syrian.