Now I was struck, earlier in the week, by the mention of Assyrian as a religion, for I connected it with the early civilization, and thought it long vanished.
However I was wrong, for there is still a large population which counts itself Assyrian, both by descent and by choice. Most of them remain in the Middle East, and around the same area that the Assyrians knew as Mesopotamia - Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. And look at the word, Syria, which is only two letters removed from Assyria. They also continue to speak more or less the same languages, dating all the way from the third century, Aramaic and Syriac.
The early Assyrians worshipped one main god, Ashur. He started out as a minor deity in just one area, but spread steadily across Mesopotamia until he was the main god of all. His role was to make the sun come up every morning, and, when it did, his fame grew. He took many forms, usually featuring or using sun symbols. A measure of his fame was that at one time the Capital city was called Ashur, and there were several Kings who used Ashur as part of their royal name. And there is strong evidence to support the fact that Assyria was named after him too.
As well as him, there were also a vast variety of smaller gods, almost two and a half thousand, many of which had control over either one thing, or one region of Mesopotamia. Most of these were depicted as combinations of two things, often an animal with human parts, or vice versa, using the particular strength or quality of the animal concerned, a lion for strength, a bird for swiftness.
Strangely, the Assyrians were amongst the first major religions to accept, and convert to Christianity, though today there is a split between Orthodoxy and Catholicism. However they still also continue to follow many of the ideas of their Syriac origins, and, in rural areas, the practise of worshipping several gods, especially the local ones, has not entirely disappeared
Again this set was issued in several languages - in Belgian and French as "Curieux Caracteres d'écriture", in German as "Eigentumliche Schriftzeichen", in Italian as "Curiosi Caratten di Scritura! and in Dutch as "Eigenaardige Schriifwiizen". You can get all but the Dutch version quite inexpensively and they turn up fairly readily at about £10 to £15 a set, however the Dutch one will set you back about £60 to £70.
The subjects of the set are :
- Arab Sheik writing on ivory
- Assyrian with clay tablets
- Chinese carving wooden letters
- Egyptian heiroglyphics
- Greek scribe with wax tablets
- Hindu sage with the Vedas