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1995 Volume 1, No.2, pages 45-48

SEMINARS :

WE ARE ATTURAI

     In the Assyrian world there are many special terms including the nation, national awakening, revival, self-awareness, and originality. With the use of this terminology certain groups and passionaries like individuals at first would like to try to preserve their ethnic identity and only then they probably pursue certain political and social goals.

     The eventful history of Mesopotamia has known many nations who made a considerable input in the civilization and left a definitive cultural legacy, but vanished over time anyway. Kassites, Khurrites, Elamites, Amorei, Khettes, and Mandaya would unlikely be claimed to be somebody's ancestors today. At the same time Arabs, Jews, Assyrians and many other nations faithfully believe that they come from the ancient nations of the same name. This passionate aspiration for ethnic similarity and even historical identity with a long perished civilization cannot be explained by social, economic, political or any other pragmatic, purpose. Therefore people may have common ideological roots or background that inevitably draw them closer 10 understanding of their ethnic identity and a sense of completion.

     Unnumbered manuscripts of ancient Assyria enabled A. Oppenheim to maintain that in those old days in Assyria the people revealed a very powerful spirit of "national self-awareness" which was an endless resource of high energy that gives Assyrians a living force and firmness to go till the end. The heroic end of the Assyrian kingdom did not finish the history of its nation at all. The remainder of the Assyrian army and majority of the noblesse who had fled from Nineveh or other Assyrian towns retreated to the town of Harran and highland territories in the north and northwest of the kingdom.

     After six centuries of obscurity the Assyrian culture was revived in Christianity. As a result a new powerful civilization was built into the history of mankind. Its cultural influence was tremendous indeed. In the course of time this civilization tended to denigrate, but the national awakening that occurred in the 19th century in Europe shook up the Assyrian world as well. Up to now the Assyrian national movement has been sporadic, so it has always needed a better guidance instead. This situation inevitably brings about some 'unrest of mind' and instability of decision-making. In search of optimal decisions in order to preserve the nation and revive the national center a most unpredictable and false or misleading conception could easily be adopted. It can be at best shown in the essay " Assyrian, Syrian of Aramaic?" published in the previous bulletin issue by a "group of history enthusiasts in St. Petersburg.

     In search of integration of the nation the authors made a very profound historical analysis upon which they concluded there is one common Syriac ethos, which incorporates Assyrians (Nestorians), Chaldeans and Jacobites. This conception in fact has no leg" to stand on many points. But the worst of all this conception as it seems reveals an arbitrary and quite unreasonable interpretation of linguistic, ethnic and religious categories.

     It is only fair to mention that many historians have observed the fact that in very complex multinational civilizations like the civilization of ancient Mesopotamia it is practically impossible to establish the identity of ethnic and language groups. The relation between these categories is very complex and inadequately investigated. Moreover there is no direct parallel in the development of the language and its literal forms. A. Oppenheim just remarks very precisely, "We must remember that written texts do not show a fairly reliable picture of the language that was used in the society where those texts were created. It is very true in case of Mesopotamia where more often than we would want it the highly conservative language that the clerks used in writing was different than the one their contemporaries spoke in their everyday life".1 Therefore the conclusion that the authors draw in their work that the Assyrian dialect of the Akkadian language "died out" has no leg to stand on, because when in Mesopotamia people adopted the Aramaic alphabet, it was the Akkadian literal form that "died out" but not the Akkadian dialects.

     The oldest manuscripts of the west Semitic Aramaic culture date back to the 9th to 8th centuries B.C. The first alphabet was introduced in Mesopotamia in connection with the fall of Assyria and Babylon in the 7th to 6th centuries B.C. In his famous monograph "The history of the literal forms" I. Frierich remarks, II At the turn 9f the 3rd and 2nd centuries B.C. the Aramaic literal form monotonous until then would fall into several groups basically due to dialects and political disintegration. Among the groups the most prominent are the so-called Jewish square writing style, then Palmirean letters as well as Nabatei and far more distant in time the Syriac literal form ".2  The author remarks as well that the oldest Syriac signs date back to the 1st and 2nd centuries A.D. and that the signs in one word are not interconnected. It was in the year of 489 A.D. when the Syriac literal form was differentiated by the confessional aspirations of the people falling into Eastern Syriac (Nestorian) and Western Syriac (Jacobite):

     Another focus is placed on the ethnic leanings, in our opinion the most updated and seemingly true interpretation of ethnic conception is to be found in L. N. Goumilev's works, "Ethos is a stable and natural conglomeration of people in opposition to some other conglomeration of people. Ethos is always complementary and has a stereotype of conduct, which has a tendency to change over time. Every ethos has a population which is isolated by the effect of endogamia".3Following his theory of ethnogeny such conceptions like " civilization ", "culture" and "world" are to be determined like super ethos. The proof of the super ethos lays in common ideology, religion and culture. Nations inside this conglomeration are not necessarily united politically. The people can fight each other from time to time. However the struggle inside the super ethos is a struggle for dominance while the struggle between super ethoses is genocide and enslavement. Preceding from this it became clear why monotheists used to have an old-aged conflict with Nestorians inside the Syriac super ethos. Therefore Christianity became the ideology for formation of the Syriac super ethos. Later in the 6th century A.D. the Islam brought about the Arabic super ethos. In the meantime the orthodox Christianity resulted in the formation of the Byzantine super ethos.

     In connection with the conception "Syrians" we could find references in the works of such authoritative scholars like L. N. Goumilev and I. M. Dyakonov. In his monograph L. N. Goumilev maintains " Semitic tribes which i.nhabited Syria and Mesopotamia till the 6th century B.C. were never united in one ethos. But in the time of the rule of Akhemenides and Selevkides the Semitic tribes became an ethnic formation anyway. Hananei, Idumei, Moavitians, Chaldean.s and some other tribes came together to form anew ethos in opposition to Greeks. Iranians and Hebrews. This ethos was given the name of "Sydac" as much conventionally as the name of "Byzantine".

     As a matter of t~ fact in his work I. M. Dyakonov maintains almost the same view on the subject in question. "The term of 'Syriac' in this work is applied in conformity with the old tradition to define the language and cultural conceptions which were popular in the Middle-ages (from the beginning of the 2nd and 3rd centuries A.D.). The Syriac language is a. specific dialect and one of the phases of the Aramaic language indeed.

     Until now the traditional Syriac language has been used during Church ceremonies and services in Monophysite and Nestorian confessions in the Middle Asia. The modem Syriac (Assyrian) language is a direct result from the traditional Syriac language development though it is different in many aspect".4

The formation of the Syriac super ethos coincided with the on-going Hellenic influences on the society. It helped them keep some steady ethnic distinction anyway. The climax of the Syriac super ethos is observed in the early Middle Ages in parallel with the intensive formation of the Byzantine super ethos. It is collectively known that the phase of the historical decline of the Byzantine super ethos happens to have come about in between the 8th and 14th centuries A.D. and its final phase is assumed to be in the 15th century.  Apparently the final phase of the Syriac super ethos arrives later in the 14th to 16th century .It is when the ethos in question lost its basic leaning on the Church.

     The language and its literal form played an important role in providing the ideology for the super ethnic unity formation. Therefore we can easily observe here the very complexity of many different factors acting on the process of ethnic formation including ethnic proper, linguistic, political, ideological or religious conceptions. It is noteworthy here again that the selection of the literal form of the language was largely influenced by the religious leaning priority of the literal form itself rather than by dialects.

     The super ethos on decline leaves as a rule some relics, which could remain in isolation over a very long time period. It is obvious that these relics can represent in a way the original ethos and sub ethos, which were incorporated in the ethos in question. The relic ethos can undergo some ethnic homeostatic process over a long time period. In this connection L. N. Goumilev maintains, "The relic ethos is largely a conglomeration of very harmonious people who can really work very hard, but who do not wish to change the mode of life anyway, passion-aries as a rule are a very rare occasion indeed. They will have to immigrate for want of life opportunities". We surmise that these characteristics can largely be attributed to those people who want to stay Assyrian or to the relic ethos, which went through the phase of the Syriac super ethos before.

     If we refer again to the ethnic name "Assyrians" and the modem Assyrian language; we can face the same situation found in the essay" Assyrian, Syriac or Aramaic’s" .It is quite natural as it seems that modem Italians never call themselves Romans. Instead they tend to restore their ethnic name "Italic" originated from the Apennines Peninsula tribes who were incorporated, into the Roman super ethos. By analogy the ethos name "Russian" originated from "Rus" who underwent the phase of the general Slavic super ethos. Such examples can be numerous.

The attempts to restore the old traditional Syriac language (Lishana Attica) as the basic language of the nation seem to be unrealistic and groundless in terms of the history .It is most unlikely that Russians would want to restore the old archaic Slavic language as the literal form of the language or modern Italians would want to use the Latin language instead. The modern Assyrian language in its literal form is based on the eastern Aramaic literal form like the traditional Syriac language. In its development this language underwent all phases that are typical of every modern language today. This historical phenomenon implies a declining super ethos in this case of the Syriac super ethos and the traditional Syriac language alike, which has remained anyway the language of the Church. By simple analogy this is the case of the Latin and old Slavic languages.

     There is one more important political aspect to bear in mind. If we adopt the ethnic name "Syrians", we automatically will attribute themselves to the present Arab state "Syria". Therefore, we must admit the existence of "Syriac Arabs" (Muslims) and "Syriac Christians". In this case why should we not accept president Khoussein's doctrine when he maintains that there are' " Arab Muslims" and "Arab Christians" but not Assyrians? And why should the so-called Nestorians and Chaldeans in Iraq consider this country their homeland if they are “Syrians" like everybody else in Syria? It seems absurd though.

     The ethnic name “Atturai" (Assyrians) existed always even in the prime time of the Syriac super ethos. We must be very grateful to those educators of the 19th century who in a big way managed to reconstitute the ethnic name Of" Assyrian" that is very acceptable in every aspect.

     We are afraid; there will be many more attempts though futile anyway to deny the term" Atturaya" in use. These attempts are very arbitrary and most probably determined by definitely tribal emotional, ill-thought conceptions. This is where the hostility of some tribal dialects representatives comes from. Anyway the historical fates of nations are not to be influenced by the local tribalism and the further development of the Assyrian language will be determined by the same modem Assyrian language that became the precursor of the nation's revival.

Dr. S. Ossipov