More than 2,700 years ago, someone in ancient Assyria carefully ground and polished a small piece of rock crystal, leaving it with one flat face and another slightly convex. The object, now known as the Nimrud Lens, can focus light and even provide crude magnification -- properties that have led to a much larger and more controversial question: could the Assyrians have experimented with telescopic...
Gothenburg, Sweden -- Members of the Assyrian community and others interested in Assyrian affairs gathered on 9 August 2026 for a ceremony organized by the Gothenburg branch of the Assyrian Democratic Movement (Zowaa), in cooperation with the Ashur Banipal Club, to mark Assyrian Martyrs' Day and the 93rd anniversary of the Simmele Massacre.
Archaeologists excavating Hattusa in central Turkey have uncovered a large storage complex dating back roughly 3,800 years to the Assyrian Trade Colonies Period, revealing new evidence about the economic life of the settlement before it became the capital of the Hittite Empire.
In Bucharest, scholars from more than 35 countries adopted a declaration on the protection of Christian heritage. Participants in two major international academic forums signed the document in an effort to preserve the Middle East's unique Christian sacred and cultural heritage amid geopolitical changes in the region, Basilica.ro reports.
Baghdad -- Patriarch of the Chaldean Church Mar Paulos III Nona said rebuilding Christian areas destroyed by wars in Iraq is not enough to ensure the survival of the Christian presence, stressing that the greatest challenge is encouraging residents to return to their historic communities and regain confidence in the future.
The Assyrian International News Agency chronicles and holds together a dispersed community between the Middle East and the global diaspora, committed to preserving identity and memory. Between historical persecution, migration, and new geopolitical challenges, Assyrians today seek cultural and media tools to survive. "We will survive.
The failure of Christians to return to the Nineveh Plain in northern Iraq today represents the main challenge for a community profoundly affected by war, persecution by the Islamic State, and emigration. This was stated by the Patriarch of Baghdad of the Chaldeans.
Assyrians around the world marked Martyrs Day last weekend with church services and commemorative events for the Assyrian victims of genocide, particularly across the 20th and 21st centuries. The Sydney-based The Young Assyrians and the Assyrian National Council -- Australia showcased scholarly talent amongst the Australian Assyrian and Australian Hellenic communities, supported by Federal and...
The 93rd anniversary of the Simmele Massacre has been marked not only by commemorative events and statements from Assyrian institutions, churches and political parties in Iraq and the diaspora, but also by growing calls from Iraqi officials for the massacre formal recognition.
The Assyrians are among the oldest settled peoples of Beth Nahrin (Mesopotamia) and among the first to embrace Christianity. In the decades before the establishment of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, they fell victim to the Sayfo Genocide, which was planned by the Ottoman Turks and carried out in collaboration with allied Kurdish tribes.
His Holiness Mar Awa III, Catholicos-Patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East, made his first-ever visit to Romania from August 3 to 7. According to a press release from the Levant Institute, the visit took place in conjunction with the 14th World Congress for Syriac Studies and the 12th International Conference on Christian Arabic Studies, organised by the Levant Institute and the Romanian...
Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani on Friday paid tribute to the victims of the 1933 Simmele massacre on the 93rd anniversary of Assyrian Martyrs' Day, asserting that the Region will remain "a shared homeland" for all its communities.
(AINA) -- The historical relationship between the designations Assyria, Syria, and Syriac has long occupied a central place in discussions of Near Eastern history, historical linguistics, and communal identity.
Glane, Netherlands (AINA) -- An Assyrian Genocide memorial has been erected at the St. Ephrem Monastery in Glane, Netherlands. This is the 23rd Assyrian Genocide monument in the world. The Assyrian Genocide occurred between 1915 and 1918 during World War One, and was perpetrated by Ottoman Turkey, with the help of Kurds, who were hired as the henchmen of Turkey.
(AINA) -- The Assyrian Arts Institute (AAI) is an organization founded by Nora Betyousef Lacey in 2017 and claims to support Assyrian arts. AAI has sponsored a few events since its founding, including an Assyrian women's choir.
(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) -- For decades, the world has heard repeated claims that northern Iraq is a region of stability, security, and coexistence. However, many Assyrians living in their ancestral homeland continue to express serious concerns about intimidation, restrictions on their freedoms, and growing pressures that threaten their ability to preserve their identity, voice, and presence in the land of their...
(AINA) -- Referring to Assyrians solely as "Christians" does not accurately represent an indigenous people with a distinct history, culture, language, and national identity. Christianity is an important part of Assyrian heritage and has played a significant role in Assyrian history, but it does not replace, define, or erase the Assyrian identity.
Alongside those early accounting systems, the Mesopotamians developed the world's first spreadsheets, as well as sophisticated banking systems. They also invented the concept of credit -- and, with it, interest-bearing loans.
An ancient Persian inscription, preserved since the inauguration of the Theatro Municipal do Rio de Janeiro in 1909, was finally deciphered after remaining untranslated for about 117 years. Furthermore, the discovery was made by professors Alex Mazzanti, from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), and Matheus Treuk, from the State University of Rio de Janeiro (Uerj).