30°53′41″N 47°34′41″E / 30.89472°N 47.57806°E / 30.89472; 47.57806
128-503: Asoristan ( Middle Persian : 𐭠𐭮𐭥𐭥𐭮𐭲𐭭 Asōristān , Āsūristān ) was the name of the Sasanian province of Assyria and Babylonia from 226 to 637. The Parthian name Asōristān ( 𐭀𐭎𐭅𐭓𐭎𐭕𐭍 ; also spelled Asoristan , Asuristan , Asurestan , Assuristan ) is known from Shapur I 's inscription on the Ka'ba-ye Zartosht , and from the inscription of Narseh at Paikuli . The region
256-489: A "descendant of Sargon II", his great-grandfather. More extremely, Esarhaddon ( r. 681–669 BC) calls himself a "descendant of the eternal seed of Bel-bani ", a king who lived more than a thousand years before him. Assyrian royal titularies were often changed depending on where the titles were to be displayed, the titles of the same Assyrian king would have been different in their home country of Assyria and in conquered regions. Those Neo-Assyrian kings who controlled
384-487: A Christian Psalter fragment, which still retains all the letter distinctions that Inscriptional Pahlavi had except the one between t and ṭ ; and the Pahlavi found in papyri from the early 7th century CE, which displays even more letter coincidences than Book Pahlavi. The Manichaean script was an abjad introduced for the writing of Middle Persian by the prophet Mani (216–274 CE), who based it on his native variety of
512-536: A currently more popular one reflecting the Sassanid-era pronunciation, as used by C. Saleman, W. B. Henning and, in a somewhat revised form, by D. N. MacKenzie (1986). The less obvious features of the usual transcription are: A common feature of Pahlavi as well as Manichaean spelling was that the Aramaic letters ṣ and ḥ were adapted to express the sounds /t͡ʃ/ and /h/ , respectively. In addition, both could use
640-468: A different shape from a historical point of view, by under- or overlining them: e.g. the heterogram for andar 'in' is transliterated B YN , since it corresponds to Aramaic byn , but the sign that 'should' have been b actually looks like a g . Within Arameograms, scholars have traditionally used the standard Semitological designations of the Aramaic (and generally Semitic) letters, and these include
768-459: A gradual but large influx of Muslim peoples; at first Arabs arriving in the south, but later also including Iranian (Kurdish) and Turkic peoples during the mid to late Middle Ages . The Assyrian people continued to endure, rejecting Arabization , Turkification and Islamization , and continued to form the majority population of the north as late as the 14th century , until the massacres of Timur drastically reduced their numbers and led to
896-921: A large number of diacritics and special signs expressing the different Semitic phonemes, which were not distinguished in Middle Persian. In order to reduce the need for these, a different system was introduced by D. N. MacKenzie , which dispenses with diacritics as much as possible, often replacing them with vowel letters: A for ʾ , O for ʿ , E for H , H for Ḥ , C for Ṣ , for example ORHYA for ʿRḤYʾ ( bay 'god, majesty, lord'). For ''ṭ'', which still occurs in heterograms in Inscriptional Pahlavi, Θ may be used. Within Iranian words, however, both systems use c for original Aramaic ṣ and h for original Aramaic ḥ , in accordance with their Iranian pronunciation (see below). The letter l , when modified with
1024-465: A legitimate ruler over Babylon (Marduk and Sarpanit, the main pair of Babylonian deities). To exemplify an Assyrian royal title from the time Assyria ruled all of Mesopotamia, the titulature preserved in one of Esarhaddon's inscriptions reads as follows: The great king, the mighty king, king of the Universe, king of Assyria, viceroy of Babylon, king of Sumer and Akkad, son of Sennacherib, the great king,
1152-558: A less common view is that /x/ and /ɣ/ were uvular instead. Finally, it may be pointed out that most scholars consider the phoneme /w/ as being still a labial approximant, but a few regard it as a voiced labial fricative /v/ . The initial clusters of /s/ and a stop ( /sp-/ , /st-/ , /sk-/ ) had acquired a prosthetic vowel /i/ by the time of the Manichaean Middle Persian texts: istāyišn ( ՙst՚yšn ) 'praise' vs Pahlavi stāyišn ( ՙst՚dšn' ) 'praise'. Stress
1280-546: A mixture of Amorite tribal-geographical names with no relation to Assyria at all. It is possible that the 'kings who were ancestors', who are not attested in any other sources as present at Assur, refer to the ancestors of Shamshi-Adad I ( r. c. 1808–1776 BC), given that other sources claim that his father was named Ilu-kabkabu, and they might thus not have been kings of Assyria, but rather rulers of Terqa , Shamshi-Adad's supposed ancestral home. Including these figures may have served to justify Shamshi-Adad's rise to
1408-461: A script derived from Aramaic . This occurred primarily because written Aramaic had previously been the written language of government of the former Achaemenids , and the government scribes had carried that practice all over the empire. This practice had led to others adopting Imperial Aramaic as the language of communications, both between Iranians and non-Iranians. The transition from Imperial Aramaic to Middle Iranian took place very slowly, with
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#17328910414721536-561: A slow increase of more and more Iranian words so that Aramaic with Iranian elements gradually changed into Iranian with Aramaic elements. Under Arsacid hegemony , this Aramaic-derived writing system for Iranian languages came to be associated with the Parthians in particular (it may have originated in the Parthian chancellories ), and thus the writing system came to be called pahlavi "Parthian" too. Aside from Parthian, Aramaic-derived writing
1664-662: A sparsely populated and marginal region under the Neo-Babylonian and later Achaemenid empires. Under the Seleucid and Parthian empires, Assyria experienced a remarkable recovery. Under the last two or so centuries of Parthian rule, archaeological surveys have shown that the region reached a density of settlements that is only comparable to what the region was like under the Neo-Assyrian Empire. A semi-autonomous city-state under Parthian suzerainty appears to have formed around
1792-467: A special horizontal stroke that shows that the pronunciation is /l/ and not /r/, is rendered in the MacKenzie system as ɫ . The traditional system continues to be used by many, especially European scholars. The MacKenzie system is the one used in this article. As for Pahlavi, c is used for the transliteration of original Aramaic ṣ and h for the transliteration of original ḥ . Original Aramaic h , on
1920-542: A thousand of these in the Book Pahlavi variety. In addition, their spelling remained very conservative, expressing the pronunciation of the Arsacid period. The two most important subvarieties are: Other known Pahlavi varieties are the early Pahlavi found in inscriptions on coins issued in the province of Pars from the 2nd century BC to the 3rd century CE; the relatively conservative Psalter Pahlavi (6th–8th centuries CE), used in
2048-704: A vast geographical area. In some instances, Manichaeism even surpassed the Assyrian Church of the East in its reach, as it was for a time also widespread in the Roman Empire . While none of the six original Syriac scriptures of the Manichaeans have survived in their entirety, a long Syriac section of one of their works detailing key beliefs was preserved by Theodore Bar Konai (a Church of the East author from Beth Garmaï ), in his book Ketba Deskolion written in about 792. Like
2176-624: Is a Western Middle Iranian language which became the literary language of the Sasanian Empire . For some time after the Sasanian collapse, Middle Persian continued to function as a prestige language . It descended from Old Persian , the language of the Achaemenid Empire and is the linguistic ancestor of Modern Persian , the official language of Iran (also known as Persia) , Afghanistan ( Dari ) and Tajikistan ( Tajik ). "Middle Iranian"
2304-406: Is a major difficulty for scholars. It has also been pointed out that the Pahlavi spelling does not express the 3rd century lenitions, so the letters p , t , k and c express /b/ , /d/ , /ɡ/ and /z/ after vowels, e.g. šp' for šab 'night' and hc for az 'from'. The rare phoneme /ɣ/ was also expressed by the same letter shape as k (however, this sound value is usually expressed in
2432-432: Is expressed in a synchronic alternation: at least at some stage in late Middle Persian (later than the 3rd century), the consonants /b/ , /d/ , /ɡ/ appear to have had, after vowels, the fricative allophones [ β ] , [ ð ] , [ɣ] . This is slightly more controversial for /ɡ/ , since there appears to have been a separate phoneme /ɣ/ as well. A parallel development seems to have affected /d͡ʒ/ in
2560-427: Is far more common for the letter l to have that function, as in the example plhw' for farrox . In the relatively rare cases where l does express /l/ , it can be marked as ɫ . List of Assyrian kings The king of Assyria ( Akkadian : Iššiʾak Aššur , later šar māt Aššur ) was the ruler of the ancient Mesopotamian kingdom of Assyria , which was founded in the late 21st century BC and fell in
2688-580: Is further corroborated by the absence of certain figures in the list known to have ruled in Assur before the Puzur-Ashur dynasty (the governors under Assur's foreign rulers). The Synchronistic King List diverges from the Assyrian King List and considers Erishum I ( r. c. 1974–1935 BC), the fourth king of the Puzur-Ashur dynasty, to be the first king of Assyria. Though it includes earlier names,
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#17328910414722816-454: Is generally seen as the founder of Assyria as an independent city-state c. 2025 BC. Some historians on the other hand speculate that Puzur-Ashur was not a new dynastic founder, but that his dynasty actually began earlier, perhaps by Sulili. The dynasty has thus also been termed the 'Sulili–Puzur-Ashur dynasty'. The dynasty has also been referred to simply as the 'Old Assyrian dynasty'. These kings, beginning with Puzur-Ashur I, took power in
2944-569: Is in this particular late form of exclusively written Zoroastrian Middle Persian, in popular imagination the term 'Pahlavi' became synonymous with Middle Persian itself. The ISO 639 language code for Middle Persian is pal , which reflects the post-Sasanian era use of the term Pahlavi to refer to the language and not only the script. In the classification of the Iranian languages, the Middle Period includes those languages which were common in Iran from
3072-399: Is nevertheless often the old pronunciation or a transitional one that is reflected in the Pahlavi spelling. 2. Voiceless stops and affricates, when occurring after vowels as well as other voiced sounds, became voiced: This process is thought not to have been taken place before Sassanid Pahlavi, and it generally is not reflected in Pahlavi spelling. A further stage in this lenition process
3200-719: Is spelt mtr' . In contrast, the Manichaean spellings are gʾh , ngʾh , šhr , myhr . Some other words with earlier /θ/ are spelt phonetically in Pahlavi, too: e.g. gēhān , spelt gyhʾn 'material world', and čihr , spelt cyhl 'face'. There are also some other cases where /h/ is spelt /t/ after p : ptkʾl for pahikār 'strife', and /t/ may also stand for /j/ in that position: ptwnd for paywand 'connection'. There are some other phoneme pairs besides /j/ and /d͡ʒ/ that are not distinguished: h (the original Aramaic ḥ ) may stand either for /h/ or for /x/ ( hm for ham 'also' as well as hl for xar 'donkey'), whereas
3328-427: Is that Arsacid word-initial /j/ produced Sassanid /d͡ʒ/ (another change that is not reflected in the Pahlavi spelling). The sound probably passed through the phase /ʒ/ , which may have continued until very late Middle Persian, since Manichaean texts did not identify Indic /d͡ʒ/ with it and introduced a separate sign for the former instead of using the letter for their native sound. Nonetheless, word-initial /j/
3456-565: Is the name given to the middle stage of development of the numerous Iranian languages and dialects . The middle stage of the Iranian languages begins around 450 BCE and ends around 650 CE. One of those Middle Iranian languages is Middle Persian, i.e. the middle stage of the language of the Persians, an Iranian people of Persia proper , which lies in the south-western highlands on the border with Babylonia . The Persians called their language Parsig , meaning "Persian". Another Middle Iranian language
3584-523: Is typically divided into the Old , Middle and Neo-Assyrian periods, all marked by ages of ascendancy and decline. The ancient Assyrians did not believe that their king was divine himself, but saw their ruler as the vicar of their principal deity, Ashur , and as his chief representative on Earth. In their worldview, Assyria represented a place of order while lands not governed by the Assyrian king (and by extension,
3712-457: The Achaemenid and Parthian empires. Incomplete king-lists have been recovered from three of the major ancient Assyrian capitals ( Assur , Dur-Sharrukin and Nineveh ). The three lists are largely consistent with each other, all originally copies of a single original list, and are based on the yearly appointments of limmy -officials (the eponymous officials for each year, appointed by
3840-617: The Akkadian Empire ( c. 2334–2154 BC), the Mesopotamian civilization that preceded the later kingdoms of Assyria and Babylon . When the Mesopotamian central government under the Third Dynasty of Ur ( c. 2112–2004 BC) collapsed and polities that had once been vassals to Ur became independent, many of the new sovereign rulers refrained from taking the title of king ( šar ), instead applying that title to their principal deities (in
3968-702: The Imperial Aramaic introduced by Tiglath-Pileser III as the lingua franca of ancient Assyria and the Neo-Assyrian Empire in the 8th century BC. These Aramaic dialects still survive in their modern forms to this day among the Assyrians , with estimates ranging from 577,000 to 1,000,000 fluent speakers, with a far smaller number of speakers of Neo-Mandaic still extant. Aside from the liturgical scriptures of these religions which exist today, archaeological examples of all three of these dialects can be found in
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4096-485: The Median Empire in 609 BC, after which Assyria disappeared as an independent political unit, never to rise again. The Assyrian people survived the fall of their empire and kept their own cultural and religious traditions (though were Christianized in the 1st–3rd centuries AD). At times, Assur and other Assyrian cities were afforded great deals of autonomy by its foreign rulers after the 7th century BC, particularly under
4224-473: The Middle Assyrian Empire (reign beginning in c. 1178 BC). After his time, the lists are identical in their contents. The king-lists mostly accord well with Hittite , Babylonian and ancient Egyptian king lists and with the archaeological record , and are generally considered reliable for the age. It is however clear that parts of the list are fictional, as some known kings are not found on
4352-647: The Pahlavi Psalter (7th century); these were used until the beginning of the second millennium in many places in Central Asia , including Turpan and even localities in South India . All three differ minimally from one another and indeed the less ambiguous and archaizing scripts of the latter two have helped to elucidate some aspects of the Sasanian-era pronunciation of the former. The vowels of Middle Persian were
4480-579: The Syriac Orthodox Church . Asōristān was largely identical with ancient Mesopotamia. The northern border is somewhat uncertain but probably went along a line from Anta to Takrīt . Ḥīra was probably the southernmost point, north of Arabia , the border then following the northern part of the swamps of Wasit . The Parthians had exercised only loose control at times, allowing for a number of Assyrian kingdoms to flourish in Upper Mesopotamia in
4608-579: The imperial variety of the Aramaic alphabet used in the chancelleries of the Achaemenid Empire . As is typical of abjads, they express primarily the consonants in a word form. What sets them apart from other abjads, however, is the use of Heterograms , and more specifically Aramaeograms , i.e. words written in Aramaic (sometimes, in later periods, with distortions) but pronounced in Middle Persian: e.g. LY (Aramaic 'to me') for man 'me, I'. There were about
4736-481: The w and n have the same graphic appearance. Furthermore, letters used as part of Aramaic heterograms and not intended to be interpreted phonetically are written in capitals: thus the heterogram for the word ān is rendered ZK , whereas its phonetic spelling is transliterated as ʾn' (the final vertical line reflects the so-called 'otiose' stroke, see below ). Finally, there is a convention of representing 'distorted/corrupt' letters, which 'should' have appeared in
4864-442: The "old" language (i.e. Middle Persian) and Aramaic-derived writing system. In time, the name of the writing system, pahlavi "Parthian", began to be applied to the "old" Middle Persian language as well, thus distinguishing it from the "new" language, farsi . Consequently, 'pahlavi' came to denote the particularly Zoroastrian, exclusively written, late form of Middle Persian. Since almost all surviving Middle Persian literature
4992-412: The 10th–11th centuries, Middle Persian texts were still intelligible to speakers of Early New Persian. However, there are definite differences that had taken place already by the 10th century: Texts in Middle Persian are found in remnants of Sasanian inscriptions and Egyptian papyri , coins and seals, fragments of Manichaean writings , and Zoroastrian literature , most of which was written down after
5120-612: The 1st and 3rd centuries, are the Ginza Rabba and the Mandaean Book of John (preserving original traditions about John the Baptist ). The Mandaean population numbers between 60,000 and 100,000 today. Mandaeism flourished in the Parthian and early Sassanid period in the region. The religion of Manichaeism , founded by Mani (216–276), originated in 3rd century Asorestan, and spread across
5248-520: The 3000-year-old city of Assur being sacked in 256 AD. Some regions appear to have remained partly autonomous as late as the latter part of the fourth century, with an Assyrian king named Sinharib reputedly ruling a part of Assyria in the 370s AD. Between 633 and 638, the region was invaded by the Arabs during the Muslim conquest of Persia ; together with Meshan , it became the province of al-ʿIrāq . Asōristān
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5376-638: The 3rd and 4th centuries AD, and traces would survive into the 10th century in remote parts of Assyria. Asorestan, and particularly Assyria proper, were the centers for the Church of the East (now split into the Assyrian Church of the East , the Ancient Church of the East and the Chaldean Catholic Church ), which at one time extended far beyond the confines of the by then defunct Sasanian empire and
5504-774: The 7th-century, the Sassanids were overthrown by the Arabs. Under Arab influence, Iranian languages began to be written in Arabic script (adapted to Iranian phonology ), while Middle Persian began to rapidly evolve into New Persian and the name parsik became Arabicized farsi . Not all Iranians were comfortable with these Arabic-influenced developments, in particular, members of the literate elite, which in Sassanid times consisted primarily of Zoroastrian priests. Those former elites vigorously rejected what they perceived as ' Un-Iranian ', and continued to use
5632-420: The Aramaic distinctions between ḥ and h and between k and q were not always maintained, with the first often replacing the second, and the one between t and ṭ was lost in all but Inscriptional Pahlavi: thus YKTLWN (pronounced о̄zadan ) for Aramaic yqṭlwn 'kill', and YHWWN (pronounced būdan ) for Aramaic yhwwn 'be', even though Aramaic h is elsewhere rendered E . In the rest of this article,
5760-477: The Aramaic script of Palmyrene origin. Mani used this script to write the known book Šābuhrāgān and it continued to be used by Manichaeans until the 9th century to write in Middle Persian, and in various other Iranian languages for even longer. Specifically the Middle Persian Manichaean texts are numerous and thought to reflect mostly the period from the 3rd to the 7th centuries CE. In contrast to
5888-447: The Arsacid sound values, but is known from the more phonetic Manichaean spelling of texts from Sassanid times. As a result of these changes, the voiceless stops and affricates /p/ , /t/ , /k/ , /t͡ʃ/ rarely occurred after vowels – mostly when geminated, which has protected them from the lenition (e.g. waččag , sp. wck' 'child'), and due to some other sound changes. Another difference between Arsacid and Sassanid-era pronunciation
6016-566: The Assyrian King List does not list the length of the rule of any king before Erishum I. Given that the earliest rulers are described as "kings who lived in tents", they, if real, may not have ruled Assur at all but rather have been nomadic tribal chieftains somewhere in its vicinity. As in the Sumerian King List , several names may also have belonged to rulers who were contemporaries/rivals, rather than successors and predecessors of one another. Some researchers have dismissed these names as
6144-410: The Assyrian realm, Assyria itself, was thought to represent a serene and perfect place of order whilst the lands governed by foreign powers were perceived as infested with disorder and chaos. The peoples of these "outer" lands were seen as uncivilized, strange and as speaking strange languages. Because the king was the earthly link to the gods, it was his duty to spread order throughout the world through
6272-487: The Assyrians, the most dangerous animal of all was the lion , used (similarly to foreign powers) as an example of chaos and disorder due to their aggressive nature. To prove themselves worthy of rule and illustrate that they were competent protectors, Assyrian kings engaged in ritual lion hunts . Lion-hunting was reserved for Assyrian royalty and was a public event, staged at parks in or near the Assyrian cities. In some cases,
6400-494: The Avesta also retain some old features, most other Zoroastrian Book Pahlavi texts (which form the overwhelming majority of the Middle Persian corpus as a whole) are linguistically more innovative. In view of the many ambiguities of the Pahlavi script, even its transliteration does not usually limit itself to rendering merely the letters as written; rather, letters are usually transliterated in accordance with their origin regardless of
6528-712: The Church of the East, the traditional center of the Manichaean church was in Seleucia-Ctesiphon . Mani dedicated his only Middle Persian writing, the Shāpuragān , to Shapur I . The Jewish community of Babylonia came to prominence in the 3rd century CE as a center of Jewish scholarship owing to the decline of the Jewish population in the Land of Israel . The Jewish–Roman wars , the Crisis of
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#17328910414726656-570: The East were probably the most numerous group in the province. The old Mesopotamian religion of the indigenous Assyrians and Babylonians remained strong in places, particularly in the north, in Assyria proper. Temples were still being dedicated to Ashur , Shamash , Ishtar , Sin , Adad / Hadad , Tammuz , Nergal , Bel and Ninurta in Assur , Arbela , Edessa , Amid , Nohadra , Kirkuk , Sinjar , Nineveh Plains , and Harran among other places, during
6784-509: The Four Corners of the World ", by the Assyrian kings served to legitimize their rule and assert their control over Babylon and lower Mesopotamia . Epithets like "chosen by the god Marduk and the goddess Sarpanit " and "favourite of the god Ashur and the goddess Mullissu ", both assumed by Esarhaddon, illustrate that he was both Assyrian (Ashur and Mullissu, the main pair of Assyrian deities) and
6912-477: The Manichaean script and a maximally disambiguated transliterated form of Pahlavi do not provide exhaustive information about the phonemic structure of Middle Persian words, a system of transcription is also necessary. There are two traditions of transcription of Pahlavi Middle Persian texts: one closer to the spelling and reflecting the Arsacid-era pronunciation, as used by Ch. Bartholomae and H. S. Nyberg (1964) and
7040-519: The Neo-Assyrian Empire was used. Stelae erected by the local rulers of Assur in this time resemble the stelae erected by the Neo-Assyrian kings, though the rulers are depicted in Parthian-style trouser-suits rather than ancient garb. The rulers used the title maryo of Assur ("master of Assur") and appear to have viewed themselves as continuing the old Assyrian royal tradition. These stelae retain
7168-560: The Pahlavi scripts, it is a regular and unambiguous phonetic script that expresses clearly the pronunciation of 3rd century Middle Persian and distinguishes clearly between different letters and sounds, so it provides valuable evidence to modern linguists. Not only did it not display any of the Pahlavi coalescences mentioned above, it also had special letters that enabled it to distinguish [p] and [f] (although it didn't always do so), as well as [j] and [d͡ʒ] , unique designations for [β] , [ð] , and [ɣ] , and consistent distinctions between
7296-523: The Pahlavi spellings will be indicated due to their unpredictability, and the Aramaeograms will be given priority over the 'phonetic' alternatives for the same reason. If a word expressed by an Arameogram has a grammatical ending or, in many cases, a word-formation suffix, these are generally expressed by phonetic elements: LYLYA ʾn for šab ʾn 'nights'. However, verbs in Inscriptional Pahlavi are sometimes written as 'bare ideograms', whose interpretation
7424-419: The Parthian chancellery script. The religious demography of Mesopotamia was very diverse during Late Antiquity. From the 1st and 2nd centuries Syriac Christianity became the primary religion, while other groups practiced Mandaeism , Judaism , Manichaeism , Zoroastrianism , and the ancient Assyro-Babylonian Mesopotamian religion . Assyrian Christians of the Syriac Orthodox Church and Assyrian Church of
7552-478: The Sasanian era. The language of Zoroastrian literature (and of the Sasanian inscriptions) is sometimes referred to as Pahlavi – a name that originally referred to the Pahlavi scripts , which were also the preferred writing system for several other Middle Iranian languages. Pahlavi Middle Persian is the language of quite a large body of literature which details the traditions and prescriptions of Zoroastrianism , which
7680-855: The Third Century , and Rome's conversion to Christianity all led to an increase in Jewish immigration to Asoristan, and the region became the main center of Judaism in Late Antiquity. This set the stage for the composition of the major book defining Rabbinic Judaism , the Babylonian Talmud , which was written in Jewish Babylonian Aramaic in Asoristan between the 3rd and 5th centuries. The Babylonian Talmudic academies were all established relatively near to Seleucia-Ctesiphon. The first Talmudic academy
7808-472: The aftermath of the collapse of the Neo-Sumerian Empire, which had ruled over Assyria. The dynasty founded by Shamshi-Adad I, who deposed the Puzur-Ashur dynasty, is conventionally known as the 'Shamshi-Adad dynasty', after its founder. During the rule of Shamshi-Adad I and his successors, of Amorite descent and originally from the south, a more absolute form of kingship, inspired by that of Babylon,
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#17328910414727936-487: The ancient Assyrians themselves over the course of several centuries. Though some parts of the list are probably fictional, the list accords well with Hittite , Babylonian and ancient Egyptian king lists and with the archaeological record , and is generally considered reliable for the age. The line of Assyrian kings ended with the defeat of Assyria's final king Ashur-uballit II by the Neo-Babylonian Empire and
8064-507: The capital of both the Parthian and Sasanian Empire, and was for some time the largest city in the world. The main language spoken by the Assyrian people was Eastern Aramaic which still survives among the Assyrians, with the local Syriac language becoming an important vehicle for Syriac Christianity . The Assyrian Church of the East was founded in Asōristān and it was an important centre of
8192-528: The case of Assyria, Ashur ). For this reason, most of the Assyrian kings of the Old Assyrian period ( c. 2025–1364 BC) used the title Iššiʾak Aššur , translating to "governor of Assyria". In contrast to the titles employed by the Babylonian kings in the south, which typically focused on the protective role and the piety of the king, Assyrian royal inscriptions tend to glorify the strength and power of
8320-420: The chief deity, Ashur . The Assyrians believed that the king was the link between the gods and the earthly realm. As such, it was the king's primary duty to discover the will of the gods and enact this, often through the construction of temples or waging war. To aid the king with this duty, there was a number of priests at the royal court trained in reading and interpreting signs from the gods. The heartland of
8448-435: The city of Assur being finally abandoned. After this period, the indigenous Assyrians became the ethnic, linguistic and religious minority in their homeland that they are to this day. The population of Asorestan was a mixed one, the Assyrians lived in the northern half while their brethren formerly known as Babylonians lived in the south (though Assyrians and Babylonians, sometimes called Assyro-Babylonians are essentially
8576-420: The city of Assur, Assyria's oldest capital, near, or shortly after, the end of the 2nd century BC. In this period, the ancient city flourished, with some old buildings being restored and some new ones, such as a new palace, being constructed. The ancient temple dedicated to the god Ashur was also restored for the second time in the second century AD, and a cultic calendar effectively identical to that used under
8704-409: The city of Babylon used a "hybrid" titulary of sorts in the south, combining aspects of the Assyrian and Babylonian tradition, similar to how the traditional Babylonian deities were promoted in the south alongside the Assyrian main deity of Ashur . The assumption of many traditional southern titles, including the ancient " king of Sumer and Akkad " and the boastful " king of the Universe " and " king of
8832-429: The cluster *θr in particular), but it had been replaced by /h/ by the Sassanid period: The phoneme /ɣ/ (as opposed to the late allophone of /ɡ/ ) is rare and occurs almost only in learned borrowings from Avestan and Parthian , e.g. moγ (Pahlavi mgw or mwg 'Magian'), maγ (Pahlavi mγ ) 'hole, pit'. The sound /ʒ/ may also have functioned as a marginal phoneme in borrowings as well. The phoneme /l/
8960-411: The coinciding forms: thus, even though Book Pahlavi has the same letter shapes for original n , w and r , for original ʾ and ḥ and for original d , g and y , besides having some ligatures that coincide in shape with certain individual letters, these are all transliterated differently. For instance, the spelling of gōspand 'domestic animal' is transliterated gwspnd in spite of the fact that
9088-656: The collections of thousands of Aramaic incantation bowls —ceramic artifacts dated to this era—discovered in Iraq , northeast Syria and southeast Turkey . While the Jewish Aramaic script ( Ktav Ashuri ) retained the original "square" or "block" form of the Aramaic alphabet used in Imperial Aramaic , the Syriac alphabet and the Mandaic alphabet developed when cursive styles of Aramaic began to appear. The Mandaic script itself developed from
9216-521: The early Middle Persian of the Arsacid period (until the 3rd century CE) and the Middle Persian of the Sassanid period (3rd – 7th century CE) is due to a process of consonant lenition after voiced sounds that took place during the transition between the two. Its effects were as follows: 1. Voiced stops, when occurring after vowels, became semivowels : This process may have taken place very early, but it
9344-610: The fall of the Achaemenid Empire in the fourth century BCE up to the fall of the Sasanian Empire in the seventh century CE. The most important and distinct development in the structure of Iranian languages of this period is the transformation from the synthetic form of the Old Period ( Old Persian and Avestan ) to an analytic form: The modern-day descendants of Middle Persian are New Persian and Luri . The changes between late Middle and Early New Persian were very gradual, and in
9472-469: The first three centuries CE, in either southwestern Mesopotamia or the Syro-Palestinian area. However, some scholars take the view that Mandaeism is older and dates from pre-Christian times. Mandaeans assert that their religion predates Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as a monotheistic faith. Their language and script is Mandaic , a form of Aramaic. Two of their important religious texts, written between
9600-479: The following: It has been doubted whether the Middle Persian short mid vowels /e/ and /o/ were phonemic , since they do not appear to have a unique continuation in later forms of Persian and no minimal pairs have been found. The evidence for them is variation between spelling with and without the matres lectionis y and w , as well as etymological considerations. They are thought to have arisen from earlier /a/ in certain conditions, including, for /e/ ,
9728-437: The form of independent Osroene , Adiabene , Beth Nuhadra , Beth Garmai and the partly Assyrian state of Hatra , and Assyriologists such as Georges Roux and Simo Parpola opine that ancient Assur itself may have been independent during this time. The Sasanian Empire conquered Assyria and Mesopotamia from the Parthians during the 220s, and by 260 AD had abolished these independent Assyrian city-states and kingdoms, with
9856-404: The god Ashur) were seen as places of chaos and disorder. As such it was seen as the king's duty to expand the borders of Assyria and bring order and civilization to lands perceived as uncivilized. As Assyria expanded, its rulers gradually adopted grander and more boastful titles. Early kings used Iššiʾak Aššur (representative/viceroy of Ashur), considering the god Ashur to be the true king. From
9984-400: The hunt even took place with captive lions in an arena. As opposed to some other ancient monarchies, such as ancient Egypt , the Assyrian king was not believed to be divine himself, but was seen as divinely chosen and uniquely qualified for the royal duties. Most kings stressed their legitimacy through their familial connections to previous kings; a king was legitimate through his relation to
10112-433: The king received a royal scepter and was commanded to "broaden the land of Ashur". A similar inscription from the reign of Ashurbanipal ( r. 668–631 BC) commands the king to "extend the land at his feet". The king was also tasked with protecting his own people, often being referred to as a "shepherd". This protection included defending against external enemies and defending citizens from dangerous wild animals. To
10240-450: The king to preside over the celebration of the New Year festival). Because of the consistency between the list and the method through which it was created, modern scholars usually accept the regnal years mentioned as more or less correct. There are some differences between the copies of the list, notably in that they offer somewhat diverging regnal years before the reign of king Ashur-dan I of
10368-530: The king. Assyrian titularies usually also often emphasize the royal genaeology of the king, something Babylonian titularies do not, and also drive home the king's moral and physical qualities while downplaying his role in the judicial system. Assyrian epithets about royal lineage vary in how far they stretch back, most often simply discussing lineage in terms of "son of ..." or "brother of ...". Some cases display lineage stretching back much further, Shamash-shum-ukin ( r. 667–648 BC) describes himself as
10496-472: The late 7th century BC. For much of its early history, Assyria was little more than a city-state, centered on the city Assur , but from the 14th century BC onwards, Assyria rose under a series of warrior kings to become one of the major political powers of the Ancient Near East , and in its last few centuries it dominated the region as the largest empire the world had seen thus far. Ancient Assyrian history
10624-467: The later forms are an (Manichaean ՚n ), and meh (Pahlavi ms and Manichaean myh ); indeed, some scholars have reconstructed them as monosyllabic any , mahy even for Middle Persian. Middle Persian has been written in a number of different scripts. The corpora in different scripts also exhibit other linguistic differences that are partly due to their different ages, dialects and scribal traditions. The Pahlavi scripts are abjads derived from
10752-496: The letter p to express /f/ , and ṣ to express z after a vowel. The widespread use of Aramaeograms in Pahlavi, often existing in parallel with 'phonetic' spellings, has already been mentioned: thus, the same word hašt 'eight' can be spelt hšt or TWMNYA . A curious feature of the system is that simple word stems sometimes have spellings derived from Aramaic inflected forms: the spellings of verb stems include Aramaic inflectional affixes such as -WN , -TWN or -N and Y- ;
10880-419: The list and other listed kings are not independently verified. Originally it was assumed that the list was first written in the time of Shamshi-Adad I c. 1800 BC but it now is considered to date from much later, probably from the time of Ashurnasirpal I ( r. 1049–1031 BC). The oldest of the surviving king-lists, List A (8th century BC) stops at Tiglath-Pileser II ( r. 967–935 BC) and
11008-510: The list of kings who lived in tents). Kings named on bricks There are six of them, including three kings that are part of the Old Assyrian empire from Puzur-Ashur I to Ilu-shuma . A handful of early local rulers of Assur under foreign suzerainty are known from contemporary sources from before the time of Puzur-Ashur I . The precise dates of the highly incomplete sequence of figures listed below are unknown and none of them appear among
11136-468: The mid 3rd century AD these were reincorporated into Asoristan. During the Achaemenid (550–330 BCE) and Parthian Empires (150 BCE – 225 CE), Achaemenid Assyria had been known by the Old Persian name Athura . Asōristān, Middle Persian " land of Assyria ", was the capital province of the Sasanian Empire and was called Dil-ī Ērānshahr , meaning "Heart of Iran". The city of Ctesiphon served as
11264-413: The mighty king, king of Assyria, grandson of Sargon, the great king, the mighty king, king of Assyria; who under the protection of Assur, Sin, Shamash, Nabu, Marduk, Ishtar of Nineveh, Ishtar of Arbela, the great gods, his lords, made his way from the rising to the setting sun, having no rival. Ancient Assyria was an absolute monarchy, with the king believed to be appointed directly through divine right by
11392-454: The military conquest of these strange and chaotic countries. As such, imperial expansion was not just expansion for expansion's sake but was also seen as a process of bringing divine order and destroying chaos to create civilization. There exists several ancient inscriptions in which the god Ashur explicitly orders kings to extend the borders of Assyria. A text from the reign of Tukulti-Ninurta I ( r. c. 1243–1207 BC) states that
11520-524: The north and among Syriac Christians (Assyrians/Chaldeans/Syriacs) throughout the region, Classical Mandaic in the north and then south and among the Mandaeans , and a dialect in the central region and among Jews, of which the Judaic sub-variety is known as Jewish Babylonian Aramaic . In addition, the indigenous peoples of Mesopotamia spoke non-written colloquial dialects of Eastern Middle Aramaic, descended from
11648-437: The other hand, is sometimes rendered as ẖ . For original ṭ , the sign ṯ is used. The special Manichaean letters for /x/ , /f/ , [β] , /ɣ/ and [ð] are transcribed in accordance with their pronunciation as x , f , β , γ and δ . Unlike Pahlavi, the Manichaean script uses the letter Ayin also in Iranian words (see below) and it is transliterated in the usual Semitological way as ՙ . Since, like most abjads, even
11776-534: The pairs [x] – [h] and [r] – [l] . Since knowledge of Pahlavi decreased after the Muslim conquest of Iran , the Zoroastrians occasionally transcribed their religious texts into other, more accessible or unambiguous scripts. One approach was to use the Avestan alphabet , a practice known as Pazand ; another was to resort to the same Perso-Arabic script that was already being used for New Persian , and that
11904-451: The population were Assyrian people as the name of the province implies, descendants of the ancient Mesopotamians, speaking Akkadian influenced Eastern Aramaic dialects which still survive, as did the Jews and Mandeans. As the breadbasket of the Sasanian Empire, most of the population were engaged in agriculture or worked as soldiers, traders and merchants. The Persians lived in various parts of
12032-473: The presence of a following /n/ , sibilant or front vowel in the next syllable, and for /o/ , the presence of a following labial consonant or the vowel /u/ in the next syllable. Long /eː/ and /oː/ had appeared first in Middle Persian, since they had developed from the Old Persian diphthongs /ai/ and /aw/ . The consonant phonemes were the following: A major distinction between the pronunciation of
12160-619: The previous line of great kings who had been chosen by Ashur. Usurpers who were unrelated to previous kings usually either simply lied about being the son of some previous monarch or claimed that they had been divinely appointed directly by Ashur. Two prominent examples of such usurpers are the kings Tiglath-Pileser III ( r. 745–727 BC) and Sargon II ( r. 722–705 BC). The inscriptions of these kings completely lack any familial references to previous kings, instead stressing that Ashur himself had appointed them directly with phrases such as "Ashur called my name", "Ashur placed me on
12288-515: The province; Persian garrison soldiers lived along the outer fringe of southern and western Asoristan, Persian noble families lived in the major cities, whilst some Persian peasants lived in the villages in the southern part. The native Assyrians played a very active role in the province, and were found in the administrative class of society, as army officers, civil servants, and feudal lords. At least three dialects of Eastern Middle Aramaic were in spoken and liturgical use: Classical Syriac mainly in
12416-458: The rulers before Puzur-Ashur I in the king list. Perhaps their absence could be explained by these figures not being considered to be proper kings. Several are however attested with the title "supreme judge" ( waklum ) a title probably equivalent to Iššiʾak Aššur and sometimes used by later kings. The dynasty founded by Puzur-Ashur is conventionally known by modern historians as the 'Puzur-Ashur dynasty' after its founder. Puzur-Ashur I
12544-447: The same people in an ethno-linguistic and historical sense, hence the Parthians and Sassanids dubbing them collectively as Assyrian). Nabateans and Arameans dwelt in the far southwestern deserts, and minorities of Persians , Mandeans , Armenians and Jews lived throughout Mesopotamia. The Greek element in the southern cities, still strong in the Parthian period , was absorbed by the Assyrians in Sasanian times. The majority of
12672-442: The same position, possibly earlier; not only was it weakened to a fricative [ʒ] , but it was also depalatalised to [z] . In fact, old Persian [d͡ʒ] and [ʒ] in any position also produced [z] . Unlike the case with the spirantisation of stops, this change is uncontroversially recognised for Sassanid times. The lenition of voiceless stops and affricates remained largely unexpressed in Pahlavi spelling, which continues to reflect
12800-448: The shape, framing and placement (often in city gates) of stelae erected under the ancient kings and also depict the central figure in reverence of the moon and sun, an ever-present motif in the ancient royal stelae. This second period of prominent Assyrian cultural development at Assur came to end with the conquests of the Sasanian Empire in the region, c. 240, whereafter the Ashur temple
12928-411: The spellings of pronouns are often derived from Aramaic prepositional phrases ( tо̄ 'you' is LK , originally Aramaic lk 'to you', о̄y 'he' is OLE , originally Aramaic ʿlh 'onto him'); and inalienable nouns are often noun phrases with pronominal modifiers ( pidar 'father' is ABYtl , originally Aramaic ʾby 'my father', pāy 'foot' is LGLE , originally Aramaic rglh 'his foot'). Furthermore,
13056-419: The state of affairs in living Middle Persian only indirectly. The surviving manuscripts are usually 14th-century copies. Other, less abundantly attested varieties are Manichaean Middle Persian , used for a sizable amount of Manichaean religious writings, including many theological texts, homilies and hymns (3rd–9th, possibly 13th century), and the Middle Persian of the Church of the East , evidenced in
13184-457: The throne" and "Ashur placed his merciless weapon in my hand". The Assyrian King List includes a long sequence of rulers before Assyria's first confidently attested kings (of the Puzur-Ashur dynasty), though it is suspected by modern scholars that at least portions of this line of rulers are invented since none of the names are attested in contemporary records and many of the names of the earliest rulers rhyme (suggesting an invented pattern). This
13312-463: The throne, either through obscuring his non-Assyrian origins or through inserting his ancestors into the sequence of Assyrian kings. The early portion of the Assyrian King List contains these otherwise historically unverified names: Kings who lived in tents Kings who were ancestors The kings are listed in reverse order in the AKL, starting from Aminu and ending with Apiashal(who is also included in
13440-449: The throne. Additionally, there are some known inconsistencies between the list and actual inscriptions by Assyrian kings, often regarding dynastic relationships. For instance, Ashur-nirari II is stated by the list to be the son of his predecessor Enlil-Nasir II , but from inscriptions it is known that he was actually the son of Ashur-rabi I and brother of Enlil-Nasir. Assyrian royal titles typically followed trends that had begun under
13568-459: The time of Ashur-uballit I (14th century BC), the rulers instead used king ( šar ). In time, further titles, such as " king of Sumer and Akkad ", " king of the Universe " and " king of the Four Corners of the World ", were added, often to assert their control over all of Mesopotamia. All modern lists of Assyrian kings generally follow the Assyrian King List , a list kept and developed by
13696-535: The title ' king of the Universe ', though these styles fell into a long period of disuse again after his death. The short-lived realm founded by Shamshi-Adad I is sometimes referred to as the Kingdom of Upper Mesopotamia. The dynasty founded by Bel-bani, which ruled Assyria throughout most of its history, is conventionally known as the Adaside or Adasi dynasty, after Bel-bani's father. In Babylonia, this dynasty of kings
13824-451: The transition of /θ/ to /h/ in some words (in front of /r/ this reflex is due to Parthian influence, since the Middle Persian reflex should have been /s/ ). In such words, the spelling may have s or, in front of r – t . For example, gāh 'place, time' is spelt gʾs (cf. Old Persian gāθu ) and nigāh '(a) look' is spelt nkʾs ; šahr 'country, town' is spelt štr' (cf. Avestan xsaθra ) and mihr 'Mithra, contract, friendship'
13952-628: The transliteration). Similarly, the letter d may stand for /j/ after a vowel, e.g. pʾd for pāy 'foot' – this is no longer apparent in Book Pahlavi due to the coincidence of the shapes of the original letters y , d and g , but is already clearly seen in Inscriptional and Psalter Pahlavi. Indeed, it even appears to have been the general rule word-finally, regardless of the word's origins, although modern transliterations of words like xwadāy ( xwtʾd ) and mēnōy ( mynwd ) do not always reflect this analogical / pseudo-historical spelling. Final īy
14080-475: The use of original Aramaic h is restricted to heterograms (transliterated E in MacKenzie's system, e.g. LGLE for pāy 'foot'). Not only /p/ , but also the frequent sound /f/ is expressed by the letter p , e.g. plhw' for farrox 'fortunate'. While the original letter r is retained in some words as an expression of the sound /r/ , especially in older frequent words and Aramaeograms (e.g. štr' for šahr 'country, town', BRTE for duxt 'daughter'), it
14208-565: The year 200 AD. The Church of the East was consolidated in 410 at the Council of Seleucia-Ctesiphon , held at the Sasanian capital, Selucia-Ctesiphon , which remained the seat of the Patriarchate of the Church of the East for over 600 years. The Mandaeans , who are according to their traditions the original followers of John the Baptist , are the last surviving Gnostics from antiquity. According to most scholars, Mandaeism originated sometime in
14336-399: The youngest, List C, stops at Shalmaneser V ( r. 727–722 BC). One problem that arises with the Assyrian King List is that the creation of the list may have been more motivated by political interest than actual chronological and historical accuracy. In times of civil strife and confusion, the list still adheres to a single royal line of descent, probably ignoring rival claimants to
14464-504: Was Parthian , i.e. the language of the northwestern Iranian peoples of Parthia proper , which lies along the southern/south-eastern edge of the Caspian sea and is adjacent to the boundary between western and eastern Iranian languages. The Parthians called their language Parthawig , meaning "Parthian". Via regular sound changes Parthawig became Pahlawig , from which the word 'Pahlavi' eventually evolved. The -ig in parsig and parthawig
14592-732: Was a regular Middle Iranian appurtenant suffix for "pertaining to". The New Persian equivalent of -ig is -i . When the Arsacids (who were Parthians) came to power in the 3rd-century BCE, they inherited the use of written Greek (from the successors of Alexander the Great ) as the language of government. Under the cultural influence of the Greeks ( Hellenization ), some Middle Iranian languages, such as Bactrian , also had begun to be written in Greek script . But yet other Middle Iranian languages began to be written in
14720-516: Was adopted for at least four other Middle Iranian languages, one of which was Middle Persian. In the 3rd-century CE, the Parthian Arsacids were overthrown by the Sassanids , who were natives of the south-west and thus spoke Middle Persian as their native language. Under Sassanid hegemony, the Middle Persian language became a prestige dialect and thus also came to be used by non-Persian Iranians. In
14848-457: Was also called several other names, mostly relating to its Assyrian inhabitants: Assyria , Athura Bēṯ Nahren ( Classical Syriac : ܒܝܬ ܢܗܪܝܢ ), Bābēl / Bābil , and Erech / Erāq . After the mid-6th century it was also called Khvārvarān in Persian. The name Asōristān is a compound of Asōr ("Assyria") and the Iranian suffix -istān ("land of"). The name Assyria, in the form Asōristān ,
14976-515: Was called the "Baltil dynasty", Baltil being the oldest portion of the city of Assur. The defeat of Ashur-uballit II at Harran in 609 BC marked the end of the ancient Assyrian monarchy, which was never restored. The territory of the Assyrian Empire was split between the Neo-Babylonian and Median empires. The Assyrian people survived the fall of the empire, though Assyria continued to be
15104-630: Was dissolved by 639 AD, bringing an end to over 3000 years of Assyria as a geopolitical entity, although it remained an ecclesiastical province within Syriac Christianity . A century later, the area became the capital province of the Abbasid Caliphate and the center of the Islamic Golden Age for five hundred years, from the 8th to the 13th centuries. After the Muslim conquest, Asōristān saw
15232-776: Was founded in Sura by Rav (175–247) in about 220. One of the most influential Talmudic teachers, Rava (270–350), who was influenced by both Manichaean polemic and Zoroastrian theology, studied in another Talmudic academy at Pumbedita . The Sasanian state religion, Zoroastrianism , was largely confined to the Iranian administrative class, and did not filter down to the Assyrian-Babylonian population. Middle Persian language Middle Persian , also known by its endonym Pārsīk or Pārsīg ( Inscriptional Pahlavi script : 𐭯𐭠𐭫𐭮𐭩𐭪 , Manichaean script : 𐫛𐫀𐫡𐫘𐫏𐫐 , Avestan script : 𐬞𐬀𐬭𐬯𐬍𐬐 ) in its later form,
15360-412: Was introduced in Assyria. During the preceding Puzur-Ashur dynasty, royal power in Assur had been more limited than in other cities, with inscriptions describing how the king worked in tandem with the city assembly to establish law and order. The earliest use of the term šarrum (king) in Assyrian inscriptions comes from Shamshi-Adad I's reign. Shamshi-Adad I was also the first Assyrian king to assume
15488-419: Was on the last syllable. That was due to the fact that any Old Persian post-stress syllables had been apocopated : It has been suggested that words such as anīy 'other' (Pahlavi spelling AHRN , AHRNy d , Manichaean ՚ny ) and mahīy 'bigger' (Manichaean mhy ) may have been exceptionally stressed on the first syllable, since the last one was apocopated already in the course of the Middle Persian period:
15616-452: Was referred to as Pārsī. Since these methods were used at a relatively late linguistic stage, these transcriptions often reflect a very late pronunciation close to New Persian. In general, Inscriptional Pahlavi texts have the most archaic linguistic features, Manichaean texts and the Psalter exhibit slightly later, but still relatively early language stages, and while the Pahlavi translations of
15744-425: Was regularly written y d . In the same way, (w)b may also correspond to a w in the pronunciation after a vowel. The fortition of initial /j/ to /d͡ʒ/ (or /ʒ/ ) is not reflected either, so y can express initial /d͡ʒ/ , e.g. yʾm for ǰām 'glass' (while it still expresses /j/ in the learned word y z dt' for yazd 'god'). Some even earlier sound changes are not consistently reflected either, such as
15872-555: Was retained/reintroduced in learned borrowings from Avestan . Furthermore, some forms of Middle Persian appear to have preserved ǰ (from Proto-Iranian /d͡ʒ/ or /t͡ʃ/ ) after n due to Parthian influence, instead of the usual weakening to z . This pronunciation is reflected in Book Pahlavi, but not in Manichaean texts: Judging from the spelling, the consonant /θ/ may have been pronounced before /r/ in certain borrowings from Parthian in Arsacid times (unlike native words, which had /h/ for earlier *θ in general and /s/ for
16000-573: Was shifted to include what had been ancient Babylonia by the Parthians, and this continued under the Sasanians. During the Parthian Empire much of the historical country of Assyria ( Athura ), however, lay to the north of Asoristan, in the independent Assyrian frontier provinces of Beth Nuhadra , Beth Garmai , Adiabene , Osroene and Assur , when these were conquered by the Sassanid Empire in
16128-446: Was still relatively rare as well, especially so in Manichaean texts, mostly resulting from Proto-Iranian *rd, *rz and, more rarely, *r. It also occurred in the combination /hl/ , which was a reflex of Old Persian /rθ/ and /rs/ (cf. the words 'Pahlavi' and 'Parthian'). The sound /xw/ may be viewed as a phoneme or merely as a combination of /x/ and /w/ . Usually /x/ , /xw/ and /ɣ/ are considered to have been velar ;
16256-555: Was the most widespread Christian church in the world, reaching well into Central Asia , China , Mongolia Tibet and India as well as the Aegean . It sees as its founders the apostle Thomas ( Mar Toma ), and Saint Thaddeus ( Mar Addai ), and used the distinctly Syriac version of Eastern Aramaic for its scriptures and liturgy. The Holy Qurbana of Addai and Mari is one of the oldest Eucharistic prayers in Christianity, composed around
16384-491: Was the state religion of Sasanian Iran (224 to c. 650) before the Muslim conquest of Persia . The earliest texts in Zoroastrian Middle Persian were probably written down in late Sasanian times (6th–7th centuries), although they represent the codification of earlier oral tradition. However, most texts date from the ninth to the 11th century, when Middle Persian had long ceased to be a spoken language, so they reflect
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