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When we look at the Ashurai nation at the height of their empire around 800 BC and then look at the Ashurai remnant in the 19th Century, without a country, just a people scattered in North Mesopotamia and Persia, and under the Ottoman rule, it is hardly possible to recognize them as the same people. For one thing, gone is their ancestral name: the Ashurai. Now they call themselves mostly by the name of their tribes. They commonly refer to themselves as "Soorai," or "Syrians." But there was no country called "Syria" until the 20th Century, so the "Syrian" refers only to the fact that their Christianity was from that region. Therefore, we still find some of them calling their Church "the Syrian Orthodox Church." Most of them, however, call their Church "the Church of the East." There is also the "Jacobite Church," and other Eastern Churches that share a common heritage. All these churches and tribes were one nation two thousand, five hundred years before, and their last capital was Nineveh in today's North Iraq. So who are the Ashurai and what happened to them? This is the subject of this book. Here are some highlights of the Ashurai Civilization and why I call it the First Civilization. King Ashurbanipal was the first person in history who collected historical and literary tablets and built a library. |