One of the greatest surviving Assyrian reliefs has been off show at the British Museum for most of the past 18 years. The Banquet Scene (around 645-635BC) remains in store because there is no suitable place to display it. Astonishingly, no UK institution has ever asked to borrow this masterpiece from antiquity.
The Turkish army targeted Mîska, an Assyrian village, during its bombardment of the Metîna region. The Christian church in the village was also hit in the attack. The Turkish army has been intensively bombing the Medya Defense Zones and especially the Metina region in southern Kurdistan (northern Iraq) in the past weeks.
On June 16-26, participants in the fifth meeting of the Commission for Dialogue between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Assyrian Church of the East visited monasteries, churches and historical and cultural sights in the Metropolias of Mordovia and Nizhny Novgorod, as well as in Moscow.
(AFP) -- Switzerland on Friday returned to Iraq three important Mesopotamian objects seized during a criminal procedure, Bern said. During a ceremony at the culture ministry in Bern, Swiss Interior Minister Elisabeth Baume-Schneider handed over a partial statue and two Mesopotamian reliefs to Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein.
Amman and its surroundings were a main centre of the Ammonite Kingdom and some of their structures can be found on the Amman Citadel, in Abdoun and Bayader Wadi Sir, on the western outskirt of the capital. The Iron Age was characterised by the power struggle between Egyptian dynasties and Mesopotamian kingdoms who fought over the control of modern-day Jordan.
My relatives fled Mosul to save their lives before ISIS invaded and seized power in the summer of 2014. The invasion of Iraq's second largest city not only uprooted my relatives, Indigenous Assyrians, but it also led to the genocide of Assyrians/Chaldeans/Syriacs (Christians), as well as Shiite Muslims, and Yazidis.
Within the magnificent stone halls of the Neo-Assyrian Empire's court in the 7th century BC, the name of the scribe Ahikar was synonymous with integrity. A royal advisor and chronicler who served under kings such as Sennacherib and Esarhaddon, Ahikar was mandated to record important matters of the state, and provide his lords with wise counsel they could use to better serve the ends of the Empire.
Archaeologists didn't know what to expect when they began searching for a 2,700-year-old Assyrian sculpture that had last been seen decades before. First documented in the nineteenth century and excavated in the early 1990s, the massive statue was subsequently reburied to protect it from turmoil in northern Iraq that threatened the site.
A peer-reviewed paper in the prestigious journal Near Eastern Archaeology reports the first-ever discoveries of ancient Assyrian military camps. Created circa 700 BC during military conquests across the Middle East, they mark the expansion of the Assyrian Empire, which became the prototype for the subsequent Persian, Greek, and Roman empires.
Turkish armed forces carried out over 800 attacks on the Kurdistan Region and Nineveh province so far in 2024, a conflict monitor told Rudaw on Sunday. Eight civilians were killed in the attacks. "Since the beginning of the year until June 2024, the Turkish army has carried out 833 attacks and bombardments on Kurdistan Region's territory, and eight civilians were killed in the attacks," Kamaran...
The fall of Mosul, Iraq, to ISIS in 2014 wasn't the beginning of the struggle for the city's Christians. Killings, abductions, and threats from armed groups had plagued the community since the 2003 invasion by U.S. military. Clergy and laypeople alike bore the brunt of the violence, with bombings targeting churches as well.
Fresh charges have been levelled against a 16-year-old boy accused of stabbing a bishop during a live-streamed sermon. A court was told today the teen will face charges of wounding with intent to murder and wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, in addition to an existing charge of committing a terrorist act.
Paris (AINA) -- On April 29, 2024 the French National Assembly adopted a resolution recognizing the 1915 Genocide committed against the Assyro--Chaldean people by the Ottoman Empire. The resolution was adopted with an overwhelming majority of 110 votes in favor and 10 abstentions. None voted against the resolution.
(AINA) -- The Senate of France passed a resolution on Monday recognizing the Turkish genocide of Assyrians in World War 1, which killed 750,000 Assyrians (75%), as well as one million Greeks and 1.5 million Armenians. The vote was 300 in favor and 2 against. Turkey condemned the resolution, calling it "null and void.
(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) -- In early December, Patriarch Awa spoke on the possible reunification of the Assyrian and Chaldean Churches, expressing opposition to any form of "uniatism" in the process. Patriarch Sako responded first on December 31 and then more fully on February 28.
(AINA) -- On February 21, the Federal Supreme Court of Iraq ruled on a set of cases pertaining to the Kurdistan Regional Government's (KRG) electoral law. The Court declared that the 11 parliamentary reserved seats for minorities were unconstitutional. So too was the KRG's single electoral district model.
During the years of World War I 75% (750,000) of the Assyrian population in the Ottoman Empire was systematically murdered. That genocide of Assyrians at the hands of the Ottoman Empire in 1915 is a fact, but it has largely been forgotten by the world.
Amman and its surroundings were a main centre of the Ammonite Kingdom and some of their structures can be found on the Amman Citadel, in Abdoun and Bayader Wadi Sir, on the western outskirt of the capital. The Iron Age was characterised by the power struggle between Egyptian dynasties and Mesopotamian kingdoms who fought over the control of modern-day Jordan.
Within the magnificent stone halls of the Neo-Assyrian Empire's court in the 7th century BC, the name of the scribe Ahikar was synonymous with integrity. A royal advisor and chronicler who served under kings such as Sennacherib and Esarhaddon, Ahikar was mandated to record important matters of the state, and provide his lords with wise counsel they could use to better serve the ends of the Empire.