Keresés

Afram Barryakoub

Inscription From 800 BC Shows the Origin of the Name 'Syria'

A stone with a 2800 year old inscription sheds new light on today's Assyrian identity and the relation between the terms Suroyo, Suryoyo and Asuroyo. According to Prof. Robert Rollinger the question is solved. "Suroye or Suryoye means nothing else than Assyrians", he says to hujada.com. But Dr. Assad Sauma Assad has objections.

The stone with the important inscription was recently found in today's southeastern Turkey, more precisely in Cineköy in the vicinity of the city Adana. The archaeologists say the inscription dates from circa 800 BC, making it astonishingly 2800 years old. The striking feature of this particular inscription is its bilingual form, as it is written both in Phoenician and Luwian. Phoenician is not spoken anymore but back then it was the language of the Phoenicians who were traders along the eastern shores of the Mediterranean. Luwian is another dead language that was spoken by people in Anatolia but which later was replaced by the Aramaic language around 500 BC.

In the inscription, successfully translated by archaeologists, a local king named Urriki from the area of Cineköy tells of his relationship with the Assyrian empire. In the Phoenician version of the inscription the word Assyria is written "Assur" but in the Luwian version the same word is written "Sur". These two ways to write "Assyria" have caught the eye of the researchers as it might settle the much debated question about the names Assyria and Syria.

In the fourth issue of the highly acclaimed "Journal of Near Eastern Studies" from October 2006, Professor Robert Rollinger from the Leopold-Franzens-Universität in Innsbruck, Austria, argues that the Cineköy inscription delivers a definite answer to the question debated since the Middle Ages. Prof. Rollinger argues that the bilingual inscription proves beyond all reasonable doubt that the name Syria is only a shorter version of Assyria. Prof. Rollinger, who is considered an authority on the history, languages and cultures of the Orient, has only received positive feedback from other researchers regarding his conclusions. Positive feedback has also reached him from the Assyrian community who also has debated the question for a long-time now. The Professor has himself now put all questions aside.

"In my opinion this will put an end to all discussions, I am one hundred percent sure of it because it is written clearly in the inscription. We have the luck of finding the same text in two different languages, Phoenician on one side and Luwian on the other side, it is clearly a bilingual inscription. In the Phoenician version we have the word Assyria written in its original form with an 'A' in the beginning making it "Assur". In the Luwian version we have the same word but without the initial A making it "Sur". So the name Assyria had lost the initial 'A' in the Luwian version. Of course both "Assur" and "Sur" mean Assyria; the only difference is the usage of the shorter form of the word Assyria in the Luwian text, he told hujada.com

Prof. Rollinger states that the Greeks, who came into contact with the different cultures of the Middle East around 800 BC, must have adopted the word "Sur" and given it a Greek ending making it "Suria", a word which has lived on until this day as "Syria". The consequences of this discovery can turn out to be far reaching both for the researchers and for Assyrians, but Prof. Rollinger is reluctant to speculate on its influence for today's situation.

"Let's say it is a contribution clarifying where the name came from and finalizing the long discussion about the connection between the terms Assyria and Syria. What the Assyrian community is doing with this information, with this new result, I don't know, we have to wait and see," he commented.

What are then the consequences of Prof. Rollingers conclusions regarding today's Assyrians?

For as long as we remember we have called ourselves in our western dialect Suroye or the version with the extra "y" spelled Suryoye. And in the eastern dialect we have called ourselves Suraye or Suryaye. Both versions of the name sound very similar with the name "Sur" found in the Cineköy inscription which itself means Assyria. Could it be that Suroye, Suryoye and Suraye, Suryaye all mean Assyrians?

Did the Assyrian movement draw the right conclusions when it pointed out this connection from the beginning?

Prof. Rollinger himself has no doubt about the connection.

"I totally agree that these names mean Assyrians. From an etymological point of view, that is where the name came from, I think it is totally clear. It is an abbreviation of the name Assyria, he says and adds:

"And of course, in this area of Cilicia and northern Syria, exactly in this time we are talking about (800 BC), there were other than Assyrians; many Arameans, Luwians and Greeks. And of course the Arameans also used this expression for designating Assyria", says Rollinger and elaborates further:

"Generally speaking you have to distinguish between two aspects, one is the linguistic level, where the name comes from, and the other is the identity concerning culture, race, blood and things like that which are much more difficult and much more complicated to investigate."

"But concerning the name, it is now totally clear", says the eminent researcher.

But Dr. Assad Sauma Assad from the field of Syriology in the University of Stockholm is not as certain. Syriology is the common name for the study of the Syriac churches, the language and culture. Dr. Assad has been for a long time a strong advocate for a Syriac-Aramaic identity for our people, claiming we don't have any Assyrian identity.

But at the same time Dr. Assad is today ready to accept the connection between the terms Suroye, Suryoye and Asuroye after reading the text of Prof. Rollinger.

"It might be one hundred percent true that Suroyo and Suryoyo come from the word Asuroyo (Assyrian), but there might also surface other evidence in the future", he says and continuous by explaining that the theory long propagated by different persons on the origin of the word Suroye or Suryoye lacks historic evidence:

"All Syriac writers have throughout times unanimously explained that the word Suroye comes from a person that was called Sures or Syrus. But we haven't found this Sures/Syrus in history, so it is nothing scientific, one can call it a legend or a myth. There are many such legends people have made up in order to explain things", Dr. Assad reasons.

Dr. Assad points out at the same time that one has to differentiate between the name of a people and the ethnic identity of the people. According to Dr. Assad all Syriac Church fathers beginning from the third century AD. have associated themselves with the Arameans in their writings. One such example is the famous Saint Afram from the Third century who described the thinker Bardaysan as "Failasofo d'Oromoye" (The philosopher of the Arameans).

Dr. Assad emphasizes the fact that this was not only an occurrence in the Syriac Orthodox Church, but also in the Chaldean and Nestorian churches. This phenomenon has been explained by the Assyrian writer Johanon Qashisho who wrote that the deeply religious church fathers were greatly influenced by the negative description of the Assyrians in the Bible. The Old Testament was written by Jews who apprehended the Assyrians as enemies and therefore described the Assyrians in a biased and adversed way. That is the reason why many of our church fathers, strongly affected by the Bible, chose to deny their Assyrian origins by making excuses for their Assyrian name and associate themselves instead with the Arameans who are described in a significantly more positive way in the Bible. But Dr. Assad, who acknowledges that the word Suroye means Assyrians, maintains that we have to look beyond the linguistic aspect and understand that names can bear different meanings during different times in history.

"It is incorrect to translate the word Suroye or Suryoye to Assyrians today because it was such a long time ago that Suroyo evolved from Asuroyo. We must look at what the words mean during different periods. We cannot today use a word in the same way it was used 2600 years ago", he maintains. But further questioning shows that Dr. Assad himself does believe that we have Assyrian blood, although he his keen on maintaining that it is only to a small extent.

"The Assyrians-Chaldeans-Syriacs in Iraq, especially in the north of Iraq have some Assyrian roots. The old Assyrians no longer exist, they were killed and those of them who survived were assimilated among the Arameans. There are no Assyrian people today, nor linguistically, culturally or ethnically. They started to call themselves Oromoye (Arameans) and with time forgot that they had Assyrian roots", says Dr. Assad who designates himself in the mother tongue as "Suryoyo" (Assyrian).

One person who disagrees with Dr. Assad Sauma Assad is Zack Cherry, himself Assyrian and a doctoral student as well as teacher in the field of Assyriology from the University of Uppsala in Sweden. Assyriology is the compound name for the study of the different old cultures of the Near East. Zack Cherry, unlike Dr. Assad, agrees with the conclusions of Prof. Robert Rollinger regarding the connection between the words Syria and Assyria and that Suroye and Suryoye both mean nothing else than Assyrians.

"What I strongly want to emphasize is that our Assyrian forefathers did definitely not receive the notion Suraye or Suroye from a foreign people or language, to name for example the Luwian language, and started suddenly to call themselves Suraye or Suroye instead of Ashuraye. The reason for this change of pronunciation, that Ashuraye developed into Suraye and Suroye, is proven in the Aramean language which Assyrian kings, voluntarily and for strategic purposes, accepted and promoted to the level of an official language in the Assyrian empire since 900 BC, side by side their own and much older language which they called Ashuritu or Akadattu, meaning the Assyrian or the Akkadian language", he says.

Zack Cherry, who is now a guest doctoral student during a year at the Altorientalisches Institut University in Leipzig, Germany, says that he has collected many evidences during his studies that support an Assyrian identity for our people and that he is going to publish those evidences in the nearest future. Cherry also maintains that there is today no serious research that denies our Assyrian origin but there are plenty of proof that confirms our Assyrian identity and origins, he says.

Consequently both Prof. Robert Rollinger and doctoral student Zack Cherry concur on the correct translation of the names Suroye, Suryoye or Suraye and Suryaye to be Assyrians.

Dr. Assad agrees only on the original linguistical meaning and has some objections towards a wider interpretation of the connection between the terms Suroye and Asuroye.

It is in itself laudable that Dr. Assad, despite his former posture in this question welcomes and respects new evidence in the question of our people's identity. In order to reach consensus on this difficult and broad issue the example of Dr. Assad should be followed and accept new evidences instead of rejecting everything that does not fit in one's own Assyrian or Syriac agenda. Our national father Naum Faik had no problems with recognizing his Aramaic or Assyrian roots. One wonders why it has to be so difficult for us today to embrace and be proud of representing the Aramaic and Assyrian, two of the world's oldest civilizations.

Richard N. Frye (Harvard University)

Assyria and Syria: Synonyms

To begin, the dropping of an initial a- is a widespread phenomenon in many languages. Especially noteworthy is the loss of an initial a- in Phoenician in some proper names in Anatolia in the first half of the first millennium B.C. and in Old Iranian.2 Consequently, the confusion of the two forms with and without initial a- presents no problem.

Herodotus, as we have mentioned, having equated Syrian and Assyrian, makes a statement which appears strange (7.72). In describing the various peoples in the army of Xerxes and their costumes, he includes the Syrians together with the Paphlagonians and other peoples of Anatolia. He then adds that these Syrians are called Cappadocians by the Persians, which needs an explanation. Some years ago many cuneiform records of Assyrian trading colonies in Cappadocia dating from the first part of the second millenium B.C. were found in the excavations at a site called Kultepe.3 We may assume that the descendants of these settlers and merchants were in sufficient number to cause the Greeks to identify them as Syrians, whereas the Persians were more interested in the various lands they had conquered than in distinguishing their inhabitants ethnically or linguistically. The Achaemenids divided their empire into satrapies, and they called the people who lived in Cappadocia after the name of that land. Why did the Greeks call the people who lived there Syrians? I believe it was because they spoke the same language as the inhabitants of Syria and Mesopotamia.

Recent research has shown that the Greeks first used the term Syria/Assyria at the beginning of the 7th century B.C., and their first contacts with the interior of the Near East were with the people of Cilicia and Cappadocia, whom they called Syrians.4 At that time, the whole area was under Assyrian control and the lingua franca of the entire area was Aramaic. The spoken language of the Assyrian court and bureaucracy was also Aramaic.5 Consequently, the Greeks equated the political empire with the Aramaic speaking population living in it, which was quite logical to the Greeks.

To the east of the Euphrates, however, different designations prevailed, and there is some confusion in the use of terms. The Aramaic language spoken and written all over the Fertile Crescent came to be called Syriac in the West or Assyrian in the East, but inasmuch as the dialect of Edessa west of the Euphrates formed the basis of the Christian Classical Syriac language, only the term "Syriac" came to be used in the West, rather than "Assyriac." The latter, or rather different forms with prefixed a-, however, was used by the people of the East, especially by the Armenians who had an extensive written literature. For exarnple, we find in the history of Agathangelos (56 century) the expression "the Asori language," which is Classical Syriac.lø According to Diodorus Siculus (Roman History 9.23), after Alexander the Great, a satrap of Armenia called Orontes sent a letter to the Macedonian general Eumenes which was written in Syrian characters (Syriois). This was Aramaic, of course, later called Syrian by the Romans and Assyrian by the Armenians. The use of both terms, with and without a-. is found in writings of authors living to the west of the Euphrates. In the 2nd century A.D., the satirist Lucian of Samosata reputedly wrote a book in Greek De Syria Dea [The Syrian goddess], which has survived. It contains interesting passages relevant to the usage of the terms "Syrian" and "Assyrian."

At the present, the term "Neo-Syriac" or "Neo-Aramaic" is used by linguists for the language in its spoken form in dialects such as those in Tur Abdm, Urmia, MalCula, or wherever the language may be spoken. Some of those speakers of Neo-Syriac who live or lived in present-day Iraq or Iran prefer to call themselves Assyrians to distinguish themselves from the inhabitants of present-day Syria. They are not wrong in this designation, or in claiming descent from the ancient Assyrians, who had adopted the Aramaic, or the Syriac language, as it was later called in Christian times, as their everyday tongue. Just as modern Egyptians, although they speak Arabic, claim to be descended from the ancient Egyptians, or some inhabitants of Anatolia, although they speak Turkish, claim descent from the Hittites or other ancient peoples of Asia Minor, so the modern Assyrians, with more justification, since their language is a Semitic tongue related to ancient Assyrian, claim descent from ancient Assyrians; and history is more the record of what people believe than the mere recording of events.