Empires of ancient times are still with us. In September 2024 we saw "Babylon Strikes Back". Let's have a look at how Assyria and Sumer are also still with us.
Remembering how important symbolism can be, there is a simple explanation for the barbarity that has taken place during the uprisings in Syria and it's civil war.
What about the name of the country?
Syria is named for the Assyrian Empire, of ancient times, even though the cities that were successive capitals of the empire were in what is now neighboring Iraq. What the Assyrians were known for, plainly and simply, was brutality. They maintained an empire basically by terrifying subject peoples into submission.
There is some reason to doubt this view of the Assyrians. They did make a lot of enemies and they were defined by their enemies, after ultimately being conquered by them, as barbaric savages that the world is better off without.
Although there is certainly some truth to the stories of barbarity, it is also true that Assyria was one of history's great civilizations. It is now known for it's art, architecture, literature and, effective government. But the Assyrians have gone down in history as brutal warriors who maintained their rule mainly by terrifying subject peoples into submission.
Although Damascus and Aleppo were part of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, it was centered in what is now Iraq. But the ancient Greeks, who came later, were the ones who named much of the region. Egypt and Ethiopia are both Greek names. The names of the three famous pyramids at Giza are given in either the Egyptian or Greek form. The Greek name of Khufu is Cheops, of Khafre is Chephren, and of Menkaure is Mycerinus.
The Phoenicians were an ancient people along the coast to the north of Israel. They are renowned for sailing the Mediterranean and so many of the important cities there began as Phoenician settlements. They are also known for developing the first alphabet, based on the sounds of speech. The Phoenicians are where the name of your phone comes from. The country is now called Lebanon. But it is now believed that the Phoenicians were actually a group of independent coastal city states that didn't consider themselves as one nation, but were given the collective name by the Greeks.
Readers of the Bible know the Philistines as the persistent enemy of Israel in it's early days. But the Philistines had five cities and I believe that these were independent city states that cooperated with each other but didn't consider themselves as one nation. Notice that no king of all the Philistines, like the Phoenicians, is ever mentioned in the Bible, much unlike Israel's other neighbors. If the Philistines had been a nation, as opposed to independent city states, they certainly would have had a king. But since they cooperated together they were given a name, and Philistine is a Greek name.
The name of Jesus is actually the Greek form of "Joshua".
The name of Syria is ultimately from the Greeks, who came centuries later, for Assyria even though Assyria had been centered more to the east.
Another possible example of such misplacement is the fabled Hanging Gardens of Babylon. While it seems unlikely that the gardens are only a legend, no trace of them have been found. But it does seem that there were such gardens in Assyria and there are those who believed that Greek writers, several centuries later, misplaced the gardens in Babylon.
But what should we expect from the rulers of a country that was named for Assyria? What would Assyrian emperors like those named Tiglath-Pileser, Sennacherib, Salmaneser, Esarhaddon or, Ashurbanipal have done if there was an uprising against them?
When the Assad Dynasty conducted air raids on their own cities, isn't that what one of the Assyrian emperors would have done if they had an air force? The Assads did have the name of Assyria to live up to. If any city rose up against Assyrian rule they would make an example out of it so that no one else would dare to rise up. Until finally, the Assyrians had made so many enemies that they couldn't deal with them all at once.
As I have written here before, Syria wasn't the only way that Assyria has struck back in recent times. IS was more barbaric than the Assad family. But IS was declared in Mosul, which was once the Assyrian capital of Nineveh, and their territory was roughly the original territory of Assyria.
Another example in the region of how a name can invoke history is Gaza. The Philistines actually consisted of five independent city states that cooperated, and were the scourge of Israel for about 200 years. Gaza was one of those city states, and the present region of Gaza is named for it. This explains the hostility to Israel. The others were Ekron, Ashkelon, Ashdod and, Gath. The Philistines are not mentioned after the return of the Jews from exile in Babylon so it seems that the Babylonians also eliminated the Philistines.
SUMER STRIKES BACK
One of the places where civilization began was Mesopotamia, which means "The Land Between The Rivers". This means between the Tigris And Euphrates Rivers. The southern part of Mesopotamia was once called Sumer, and the northern part Akkad. Later, the southern part would be called Babylon, and the northern part Assyria. All four would be among the early civilizations. Sumer is often considered as the first civilization, and Assyria as the first major empire.
Mesopotamia is within what is now known as Iraq. The name of Iraq may have come from the city of Uruk, which was an important ancient city of Sumer. It is apparently not certain that the name of Iraq came from Uruk, but it was widely believed that it did.
Iraq surprised the world in 1990 by seizing neighboring Kuwait, which led to the First Gulf War. But what we have to remember is that the territory of oil-rich Kuwait had been part of Sumer, considering that the coast has receded since ancient times, probably because of glacial rebound.
We saw why Iraq invaded Iran, in 1980, in the posting "Babylon Strikes Back", September 2024. This explains why Iraq invaded Kuwait ten years later. The ancient kingdoms are very much still with us.
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