Rumtaya said:
Again thanks for the topic, very interesting too.
As for the charter, I think its not so represantative yet or, since you need way more people to do tests?
Yes, we certainly need more Assyrians to test.
What is not representative?
If you are referring to us matching the Mandaean first, have you ever read the first few lines of the history of their people, as contained in their book the
Haran Gawaitha? And yes, for all the folks who understand our language, it means the inside of Harran. Gawaithet Harran.
For the record, I am absolutely not one to assign the Assyrian label to all people, as some do. The fact remains, however, that based on what I have seen, Mandaeans and Assyrians, if one ventured far enough back in time, were a closely related people. In fact, Mandaeism, I think it possible, may have served as a transition faith for a few, most, or all of us, from our former Assyro-Babylonian religion to Christianity.
Mandaean history, as told by the Mandaeans:
Haran Gawaita
The interior of Harran admitted them, that city which has Nasurai* in it, so that there should not be a road (passage?) for the kings of the Yahutaiia (Chaldeans). Over them (the Nasurai*) was Malka Ardban. And they served themselves from the sign of the Seven and entered the mountain of the Madai (the Median Mountains), a place where they were free from domination of all races. And they built mandis (mandia) and dwelt in the call of the Life and in the strength of the high King of Light.
After the fall of Nineveh, the last Assyrian king, Assur-uballit II, the nobility, and what remained of the Assyrian forces fled to the final Assyrian stronghold, Harran. The Chaldean King Nabopolassar of Babylonia (Yahutaiia), and his Median allies (Madai), led by King Cyaxares (Grandfather of future Queen Mandana of Madai, mother of Cyrus the Great, King of Anshan), followed and laid siege to Harran. In 609 BCE Necho II of Egypt, after defeating a Judaean force attempting to obstruct his army's path, came to the aid of the Assyrians. At Carchemish (on the Euphrates) in 605 BCE the Assyrian-Egyptian forces were finally defeated by the Babylonian (now led by King Nebuchadnezzar II) and Median alliance. The Egyptians retreated, and
it is said Assur-uballit II and the Assyrian remnants disappeared from the annals of history.
After Assyria's defeat its lands were divided. Many areas came under Babylonian domination. Other parts became part of the land of the Madai. Including, of course, the place many of our ancestors fled to, when Timur's hordes laid waste to our villages, Hakkari.
*
Akkadian: naṣāru
[Army → Military]
to guard, protect , to defend , to safeguard ; to watch , to beware of , to cherish , to preserve / conserve + , to prize , to treasure.
Another note - the Mandaeans, in their texts, refer to both the Jews and Babylonians as "Yahutaiia."
Encyclopedia Iranica:
Nevertheless, Mandaic inherited abundantly phonetic, grammatical, and lexicographic features from Akkadian (Late Babylonian) that point to the fact that the Mandaeans? origin cannot have been anywhere else than in Mesopotamia (Kaufman, 1974, pp. 163-64; M?ller-Kessler, 2004).
In the area of loanwords, Mandaic inherited from Akkadian an abundance of termini technici concerning religion, but also many words in other areas. Despite the limitation in its attested lexicon, due to the loss of texts, Mandaic shows more Akkadian borrowings than any other Aramaic dialect. The Mandaean gnostic sect recruited from a Babylonian population, and a stock of Akkadian words had belonged to the idiom of that geographical area for some centuries. Particular borrowings in Mandaic are: priest classes, cult, divination, and magic terms: brʾyʾ < bartū ?diviner,? zʾbʾ 2 ?esoteric priests,? gynyʾ ?sacrifice,? ʿkwrʾ < ekurru ?temple,? prykʾ < parakku ?altar, shrine,? py?rʾ < pi?ru ?dissolving of a magic bond,? ʾ?p < a?āpu ?to bewitch,? ?ʾptʾ < ?iptu ?incantation?; terms concerning the gnostic doctrine and cult: gynyʾ < gin? ?sanctuaries,? zywʾ < zīmu ?brilliance,? nʾndbyʾ < nindab? ?offering,? nʾṣwrʾyʾ ?watcher of secrets,? nʾṣyrwtʾ ?secrecy? < niṣirtu; architectional terms: ʾngrʾ < agāru ?wall,?roof,? k?wrʾ < gu?ūru ?beam, post?; body parts: gysʾ 2 ?side?; ktʾ < qātu ?hand, handle,? ?ʾyryʾnʾ < ?vein, artery?; directions of the wind, name of winds, astronomical terms: ?ʾrʾ <?ārū ?direction of the wind,? stʾnʾ < i?tānu north(wind), ywniʾ 2 <ūmu 3 ?storm,? tʾlyʾ < attala ?eclipse.?
Names and other events are frequently, in Mandaean texts, not what they appear. Possibly, for example, the King (Malka) Ardban. Scholars have suggested the completely out of chronology Parthian era Ardbans. None of whom appear a good fit. Malka Ard-ban, may, perhaps, mean something along the lines of King "Creator of the Earth or City."
Akkadian: ban, N builder / maker.
ban? (4) : (deity) : to create (a person, grain , creation ...) 5) D : : to erect (a city)
Semitic languages words for "earth" - Arabic=ard; Akkadian=irt-situ
There are many, many more possible connections, here are but a few:
Encyclopedia Iranica:
It is assumed that the Mandaean Panja [ceremony] replaced the Babylonian-Assyrian spring festival, the Akitu, under Persian influence and thus lost its old seasonal connection.
Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran, E.S. Drower, Leiden, 1962
I had long been concerned with this question of origins. When I questioned the priests and got the answer 'We came from the North', I did not attach much literal value to the answer, for dwellers in the Middle East cannot distinguish between religion and race, and the divine ancestors naturally resided in the north, the seat of the gods.
But there seemed something more than this in their refusal to acknowledge Lower Iraq as the original home of the race. There is an arrogance, almost worthy of the present 'Nordic' propaganda, about the following, culled from the seventh fragment of the eleventh book of the Ginza Raba ("Great Treasure"):
All the word calls the north a highland and the south a lowland. For the worlds of darkness lie in the lowlands of the South....Whose dwelleth in the North is light of colour but those who live in the lowlands are black and their appearance is ugly like demons.
On the Existence of National Identity Before ?Imagined Communities?: The Example of the Assyrians of Mesopotamia, Anatolia, and Persia (2011)
Hannibal Travis
Florida International University College of Law
The anthropologist Lady Ethel Drower described a ?race and religion? of Mandai or Mandaeans consisting of about 5,000 persons who worshipped God as prophesied by John the Baptist in public, and preserved in their secret scriptures the memory of the Assyro-Babylonian religion they traced to Assyrian Harran.136 Drower judged it impossible to doubt that the Mandaeans were ?an aboriginal cult? of Assyria and Babylon, ?maintaining a continuous and unbroken ritual tradition? going back to the worship of ?ame?, Ea, and Marduk with ritual ablutions on the banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates.137 Building on Drower?s work, a scholar of Semitic languages in 1910 traced Mandaean light-god Mana Rabba to the Assyro-Babylonian Ea, his emanation Manda de hayye and his son Hibil Ziwa with Ea?s son Marduk, stating: ?Ea, the god of profound knowledge, father of the mediator Marduk, enthroned in the world-sea, whose holy element is water, is the Ea of the brilliant ocean of heaven, as comes out in the Ayar-yora and the heavenly Jordan of the Mandaeans.?138
. Can you send the exact link of which dna sample I would need?
