They are thought to be more than 2,300 years old, likely from the Hellenistic period, when Iraq was under the rule of the Seleucid empire.
So similar territory and genetic people but well after the Assyrians.
Assyrian city-state: 2100 - 1400 BC
Assyrian empire: 1400 - 700 BC (thru the Bronze age collapse circa 1200 BC)
Seleucid empire: 312 - 63 BC
(rough dates from wikipedia)
expanded into an empire from the 14th century BC to the 7th century BC
The ancient timelines are sometimes so mind boggling. A 700 year empire must have seemed like a permanent state of the world. Yet here we are, little remains, and at the same time puts our current times in perspective. Ozymandias is very fitting.
700 years ago, 1325, was before the rise of the Ottomans. Before discovery and colonization of the Americas. Before the modern state. It is crazy to think that there were peoples or states that lasted 700 years and are just gone, a footnote in history.
Tangentially but somewhat interestingly, I was reading the other day that the field of "Assyriology" goes all the way up to the Islamic conquest, about a thousand years after the end of the Neo-Assyrian Empire mentioned above.
Yes, it seems like there was or is a region considered the "Assyrian homeland" [0] of the people for whom the empire was named (Assyria being named for the home city of Assur). Wikipedia's map makes it look the same as the Kurdish territory and when I look up differences between them, Reddit threads describing contemporary accounts are front and center. [1]
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assyrian_homeland
1. https://www.reddit.com/r/Assyria/comments/u8c324/relationshi...
> Assyria being named for the home city of Assur
Well, sort of. "Assyria" would be a rendering of the Greek idea of the name. The Greeks couldn't pronounce it.
In English the city (and god) is usually called "Ashur"; in Akkadian it's Ashshur. It's never called "Assur".
"Assyriology" is a bit of a misnomer and really means the study of cultures that used cuneiform. So it includes the Sumerians and their prehistory, which preceded the Assyrians by thousands of years. Taking it up to the Islamic conquest is stretching it a bit, but I suppose there was a lot of continuity between that period and the thousands of years of cuneiform use in the region. E.g. the latest cuneiform tablet known is from 79AD from the city of Uruk, which was inhabited from about 5000BC to 700AD
> E.g. the latest cuneiform tablet known is from 79AD from the city of Uruk, which was inhabited from about 5000BC to 700AD
Very interesting, thanks for expanding on that!
There is an amazing bit in the fall of civs podcast of a Greek military leader’s account who over 2000 years ago is retreating from battle in Iraq and comes across an entire ancient city. He doesn’t know it but the ruins for him are already over a 1000 years old.
In addition to archeology, ancient Greeks (and undoubtably others) also did paleontology:
Like their modern counterparts, the ancient fossil hunters collected and
measured impressive petrified remains and displayed them in temples and
museums; they attempted to reconstruct the appearance of these prehistoric
creatures and to explain their extinction. Long thought to be fantasy, the
remarkably detailed and perceptive Greek and Roman accounts of giant bone
finds were actually based on solid paleontological facts. By reading these
neglected narratives for the first time in the light of modern scientific
discoveries, Adrienne Mayor illuminates a lost world of ancient paleontology.
https://classics.stanford.edu/publications/first-fossil-hunt...Was that Xenophon’s anabasis? I didn’t remember that part but I love the book.
Xenophon, like Plato, was a student of Socrates and wrote philosophical dialogues involving him. Unlike Plato, Xenophon became a mercenary soldier who led 10,000 Greek soldiers to fight their way out of Iraq. It’s very well written — hope they make a movie at some point.