The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> in which yoors trooly destroys the discovery in Turkey...

in which yoors trooly destroys the discovery in Turkey...
Posted by pancho (Moderator) - Sunday, July 14 2013, 1:41:28 (UTC)
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...you know the one...the one that supposedly proves that when assyrians say Syrian/Suyraye, they also mean ASSYRIAN. Our sillies fell all over themselves with joy that finally there was PROOF that they had always KNOWN they were Assyrians when they'd been calling themselves Syrians for 2000 years.....but it ain't so.


...that inscription found in Anatolia which supposedly confirms that when we say “Syrian”, we also mean “Assyrian”, hence the two words mean the same thing. On the surface of it this should be a serious blow to my position, but you should never remain on the surface...so I didn't.

Let me quote the page and the notes at the back.

“ As for deciding whether the term 'Syrian' meant the same as 'Assyrian', this has long been a cause for doubt among scholars, but it has been resolved recently by the discovery of a bilingual inscription which came to light in Cilicia. One version has 'Syrian' and the other 'Assyrian', proving that the two terms were variants of a single word in the 8th century BC...Therefore the earlier supposition, that Syria and Assyria meant two different regions in Greek texts at that time must be abandoned....” pp32-33.

..let me jump in here...when the author says "...a bilingual inscription..." what do you suppose that means? Well, let's look up "bilingual"...."expressed in two languages"....meaning two SEPARATE languages.

Looking up the note at the end of this paragraph I find...

“At Cinekoy near Adana in SE Turkey. The languages are Luwian(written in linear alphabetic script) and Phoenician (written in linear alphabetic script).

So, what are we really talking about? I thought until now that the two words were used to mean the same in ONE language. But it turns out that we're talking about two separate languages, of two separate peoples, hundreds of miles apart. This is significant and shouldn't be buried in the notes.

The Luwians of Turkey wrote the word “Assyrian” as Syrian.....the Phoenicians wrote Assyrian AS Assyrian and the Assyrians certainly wrote themselves as ASSYRIAN. It was the Luwians, a totally different people and language who wrote "Assyrian" as Syrian...what does that show?

I thought all along that the two different forms appeared in ONE language...but, really, what is so odd or definitive even in there being two separate words, in two SEPARATE languages for Assyrian? When the Luwians wrote to the Assyrian King, they wrote it as “Syrian”...a peculiarity of their own language where they dropped the initial "A".

The Phoenicians, having a separate language from the Luwians AND the Assyrians, didn't have this peculiarity and wrote it as “Assyrian”. Now, if the Assyrians referred to THEMSELVES as Syrians AND Assyrians, you'd have an argument...but they didn't. Especially not in modern times, which is the entire point, when they called themselves ONLY Syrians, until recently.

The fact that in a different language people wrote Assyrian as “Syrian”, or 'Dogspot'...or 'Blatherskein' does not mean that the ASSYRIANS called themselves by those other names. The Assyrians simply recognized that when the Luwians wrote to them, they referred to them as “Syrians”...a peculiarity in their OWN language and NOT one in the Assyrian language where they called themselves Assyrians...called THEMSELVES Assyrians and ONLY Assyrians.

The flaw in this reasoning is to assume that the Luwians called the Assyrians BOTH Syrians AND Assyrians...but they did not. All we have is a case of one people calling the Assyrians by another name, a name of their own choosing and language....which has absolutely nothing to do with Assyrians EVER calling THEMSELVES by what the Luwains, or any other people, chose to call them.



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