(Reuters) -- Two U.S. Congress members landed in Damascus on Friday to meet Syrian officials, the first visit by American lawmakers to the war-ravaged country since Bashar al-Assad was ousted from power by an Islamist-led rebel offensive in December. The two are U.S.
For nearly 2,000 years, Near East Christian communities have used Syriac, an Aramaic dialect, as their liturgical and cultural language. Over the centuries, they produced an extensive corpus of manuscripts that included passages from biblical texts, philosophical treatises, classical literature and theological commentaries, whose purpose often remains obscure to modern scholars.
A UK-EU parliamentary delegation visited northeastern Syria (Rojava) to discuss the region's political future and constitutional process in post-Assad Syria with local officials. During their meeting with prominent Kurdish diplomat Ilham Ahmed, the delegation focused on inclusive participation in Syria's new constitution and the escalating humanitarian impact of Turkish attacks.
The Federation of Pontian Associations of Australia has warmly welcomed and commended the recent statements made in the Victorian Parliament by Members of Parliament Chris Crewther, Ann-Marie Hermans, and Kim Wells, recognising the Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek Genocides.
The Christian faithful of Ankawa, a suburb of Erbil in Kurdistan Region, Iraq, came together on Saturday, 12 April, to witness their faith and ecumenical unity during the annual Palm Sunday Procession.
The writing boards excavated from Nimrud (modern Iraq) represent the first material evidence of cuneiform writing on wax. Scientific investigations conducted in the 1950s identified the yellowish writing paste as a mixture of beeswax and orpiment (As2S3), with the boards possibly made from walnut (Juglans regia).
The Kurdistan Region Security Council (KRSC) on Thursday released a statement detailing a terrorist attack that occurred during the Akitu festival on April 1, 2025, in Duhok. According to the statement, while residents gathered to celebrate the Assyrian and Babylonian spring festival, a man launched a violent cleaver attack against participants, injuring two civilians.
A Oxford Journal of Archaeology publication by Reli Avisar examines how vassal kingdoms, elite consumption, and imported luxury goods shaped Iron Age Lachish and Jerusalem. It maps out a surprising economic and political reversal between the two sites.
The Culture and Antiquities Authority in the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria issued a statement today, condemning the statements made by the Minister of Culture in the Damascus Authority regarding the origin of the Syriac language.
One significant decision at Nicaea was the date of the celebration of the Feast of the Resurrection, which at that time, and prior to the council was marked at different dates by different church denominations. However, despite this decision, the Feast of Resurrection or what is referred to now simply as "Easter" has been and continues to be celebrated on different dates by different denominations.
A new study uses digital tools to analyze nearly 1,000 Syriac manuscripts from the British Library, focusing on how scribes and editors selected and rearranged parts of texts--a practice known as excerpting. Researcher Noam Maeir introduces a new measurement called Excerpts Per Manuscript (EPM) to track how often this happened.
The Australian Hellenic Council (AHC) has warmly acknowledged the profound success of the ecumenical evening prayer service held at St. Paul's Cathedral in Melbourne on April 6, honouring the victims of the Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek genocides.
(AINA) -- The following lecture was delivered by Dr. Nicholas Al-Jeloo in Yerevan, Armenia. Dr. Al-Jeloo addresses the issue of the meaning of the Armenian word asori and the attempts of revisionist scholars to redefine the word so as not to mean Assyrian. ...
(AINA) -- Assyrian leaders and advocates are sounding the alarm on escalating human rights violations in Iraq and Syria, where forced displacement, systemic discrimination, and cultural erasure continue unabated. As political disenfranchisement and targeted violence drive Assyrians from their ancestral lands, the urgent need for intervention grows stronger.
(AINA) -- The Assyrian Arts Institute (AAI) is an organization founded by Nora Betyousef Lacey in 2017 and claims to support Assyrian arts. AAI has sponsored a few events since its founding, including an Assyrian women's choir.
(AINA) -- On July 12 Iraqi president Abdul Latif Rashid repealed the decree recognizing the appointment of Cardinal Louis Raphael Sako as head of the Chaldean Catholic Church and which appointed him to the office of the waqf (وقف), the endowment which oversees all church property. The details of the events leading up to this action are exhaustively covered in this report by MEMRI.
(AINA) -- 'Syria is free'; thus screamed the Syrians as they celebrated the tumbling down of the criminal regime during a whole week. Thousands, even millions, of Syrians strolled the streets of the entire major cities of Syria. They were from all societal segments, strata, trends, genders, religious beliefs and non-religious ones, convictions, sects, confessions, parties, and orientations.
(AINA) -- The collapse of the Syrian regime has added yet another chapter to the cycle of deep crises that perpetually plague the Middle East. Yet, these devastations increasingly render ancient peoples, burdened by the weight of historical memory, invisible.
A Oxford Journal of Archaeology publication by Reli Avisar examines how vassal kingdoms, elite consumption, and imported luxury goods shaped Iron Age Lachish and Jerusalem. It maps out a surprising economic and political reversal between the two sites.
Mardin, Turkey -- Mardin, a city etched into the rocky hills of southeastern Türkiye, offers an unparalleled confluence of history, architecture and cultural depth. Perched along the ancient Silk Road, the settlement has been a meeting point for empires, a sanctuary for faiths and a canvas for architectural ingenuity.