Syriac language in the context of "Tel Keppe"

The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (US: /tɑːˈnɑːx/, UK: /tæˈnæx/ or /təˈnæx/; Hebrew: תַּנַ״ךְ, romanized: tanaḵ; תָּנָ״ךְ, tānāḵ; or תְּנַ״ךְ, tənaḵ), also known in Hebrew as Miqra (/miːˈkrɑː/; מִקְרָא, miqrāʾ), is the canonical collection of Hebrew scriptures, comprising the Torah (the five Books of Moses), the Nevi'im (the Books of the Prophets), and the Ketuvim ('Writings', eleven books). Different branches of Judaism and Samaritanism have maintained different versions of the canon, including the 3rd-century BCE Septuagint text used in Second Temple Judaism, the Syriac Peshitta, the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and most recently the 10th-century medieval Masoretic Text compiled by the Masoretes, currently used in Rabbinic Judaism. The terms "Hebrew Bible" or "Hebrew Canon" are frequently confused with the Masoretic Text; however, the Masoretic Text is a medieval version and one of several texts considered authoritative by different types of Judaism throughout history. The current edition of the Masoretic Text is mostly in Biblical Hebrew, with a few passages in Biblical Aramaic (in the books of Daniel and Ezra, and the verse Jeremiah 10:11).

The modern form of the Hebrew Bible that is authoritative in Rabbinic Judaism is the Masoretic Text (7th to 10th centuries CE), which consists of 24 books, divided into chapters and pesuqim (verses). The Hebrew Bible developed during the Second Temple Period, as the Jews decided which religious texts were of divine origin; the Masoretic Text, compiled by the Jewish scribes and scholars of the Early Middle Ages, comprises the 24 Hebrew and Aramaic books that they considered authoritative. The Hellenized Greek-speaking Jews of Alexandria produced a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible called "the Septuagint", that included books later identified as the Apocrypha, while the Samaritans produced their own edition of the Torah, the Samaritan Pentateuch. Both of these ancient editions of the Hebrew Bible differ significantly from the medieval Masoretic Text.

Late antique literature is literature that was composed during the period of late antiquity, a period of time that spans from the third to seventh centuries AD. This literature was written in many languages including Greek, Latin, Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, Georgian, Pahlavi, Arabic, and more.

Despite twentieth-century prejudices about the era as one of a period of decline, literature in late antiquity was highly productive and innovative and brought about new genres of texts, new avenues for literary productions, new textual functions, and new reading practices. The most important force causing change in literature during this time was the political and cultural rise of Christianity, which remade older genres in the classical canon and interweaved them with a new canon of scriptural texts and liturgy. Furthermore, the end of Late antiquity saw the last major representatives of Greek and Latin poetry, whereas poetry in other languages (like Syriac poetry) began to flourish.

The dinar (/dɪˈnɑːr/, /ˈdiːnɑː(r)/) is the name of the principal currency unit in several countries near the Mediterranean Sea, with a more widespread historical use. The English word "dinar" is the transliteration of the Arabic دينار (dīnār), which was borrowed via the Syriac dīnarā from the Latin dēnārius.

The modern gold dinar is a projected bullion gold coin, and as of 2019 is not issued as an official currency by any state.

The Iraqi people (Arabic: العراقيون; Kurdish: گه‌لی عێراق; Syriac: ܥܡܐ ܥܝܪܩܝܐ) are people originating from the country of Iraq.

Iraqi Arabs are the largest ethnic group in Iraq, followed by Iraqi Kurds, then Iraqi Turkmen as the third largest ethnic group in the country. Studies indicate that Mesopotamian Arabs, who make up the overwhelming majority of Iraq's population, are genetically distinct from other Arab populations in the Arabs of the Arabian peninsula.

Upper Mesopotamia constitutes the uplands and great outwash plain of northwestern Iraq, northeastern Syria and southeastern Turkey, in the northern Middle East. Since the early Muslim conquests of the mid-7th century, the region has been known by the traditional Arabic name of al-Jazira (Arabic: الجزيرة "the island", also transliterated Djazirah, Djezirah, Jazirah) and the Syriac variant Gāzartā or Gozarto (ܓܙܪܬܐ). The Euphrates and Tigris rivers transform Mesopotamia into almost an island, as they are joined together at the Shatt al-Arab in the Basra Governorate of Iraq, and their sources in eastern Turkey are in close proximity.

The region extends south from the mountains of Anatolia, east from the hills on the left bank of the Euphrates river, west from the mountains on the right bank of the Tigris river and includes the Sinjar plain. It extends down the Tigris to Samarra and down the Euphrates to Hit, Iraq. The Khabur runs for over 400 km (250 mi) across the plain, from Turkey in the north, feeding into the Euphrates.

The Maphrian (Syriac: ܡܦܪܝܢܐ, romanized: maphryānā or maphryono), is the second-highest rank in the ecclesiastical hierarchy of the Syriac Orthodox Church, right below that of patriarch. The office of a maphrian is a maphrianate. There have been three maphrianates in the history of the Syriac Orthodox Church and one, briefly, in the Syriac Catholic Church.

The first maphrianate, called the Maphrianate of the East or the Maphrianate of Tagrit, was established in 628 to give the Syriac Orthodox Church an ecclesiastical hierarchy in the Sasanian Empire and lands outside the control of the Roman Empire. The seat of the bishop was initially at Tagrit and he ranked second in the hierarchy after the Patriarch of Antioch. Initially he used the title catholicos in direct opposition to the rival Catholicos of Seleucia-Ctesiphon of the Church of the East. The title "maphrian" first came into use around 1100. In 1156 the seat of the maphrian was moved to Mosul. The Maphrianate of the East was abolished in 1860 as a result of a decreasing number of Syriac Orthodox outside of the region of Ṭur ʿAbdin. By then it had been a merely titular see for a long time.

Alexander the Great (356 – 323 BC), a king of ancient Macedon, created one of the largest empires in history by waging an extensive military campaign throughout Asia. Alexander was groomed for rulership from an early age and acceded to the throne after the assassination of his father, Philip II. After subduing rebellious vassals, he invaded the Persian Achaemenid Empire in 334 BC. Alexander swiftly conquered large areas of Western Asia and Egypt before defeating the Persian king Darius III in battle at Issus and Gaugamela. Achieving complete domination over the former lands of the Achaemenids by 327 BC, Alexander attempted to conquer India but turned back after his weary troops mutinied. Following his death aged thirty-two in Babylon in 323 BC, his empire disintegrated in a series of civil wars fought between his followers.

Alexander founded numerous settlements during his campaigns, naming them after himself or close followers. These have been the subject of intense debate, as the accounts of ancient and medieval scholars differ wildly and are often contradictory. Plutarch provides the maximum estimate of seventy cities in his Life of Alexander, but most texts attest to between ten and twenty foundations. The Greek Alexander Romance lists between nine and thirteen cities, depending on the recension; the Syriac, Armenian, Hebrew, and Ethiopic versions of the Romance also record twelve or thirteen foundations. Persian sources such as al-Tabari, al-Dinawari, Hamza al-Isfahani, and Qudama ascribe between nine and twelve settlements to Alexander. Stephanus of Byzantium recorded around twenty settlements. Some authors additionally document the number of cities established in a specific area: for example, Strabo records that Alexander founded eight cities in Bactria. The accounts of Alexander's campaigns, primarily those of Arrian, Plutarch, Diodorus, Curtius Rufus, and Justin, provide supplementary evidence. Finally, the geographers Eratosthenes, Ptolemy, and Pliny draw upon the otherwise-lost evidence of Alexander's bematist distance-measurers.

Melkite (/ˈmɛlkaɪt/) or Melchite churches are various Eastern Christian churches of the Byzantine Rite, and their members. The name comes from the Central Semitic root m-l-k 'royal', referring to the loyalty to the Byzantine emperor, and became a denominational designation for Christians who accepted imperial religious policies, notably the Council of Chalcedon (451).

Originally, during the Early Middle Ages, Melkites used both Koine Greek and Aramaic (Classical Syriac & Syro-Palestinian) language in their religious life, and initially employed the Antiochian rite in their liturgy, but later (10th–11th century) accepted the Constantinopolitan rite, and incorporated Arabic in parts of their liturgical practices.

Maronites (Arabic: الموارنة, romanized: Al-Mawārinah; Syriac: ܡܖ̈ܘܢܝܐ, romanized: Mārōnōye) are a Syriac Christian ethnoreligious group native to the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant (particularly Lebanon) whose members belong to the Maronite Church. The largest concentration has traditionally resided near Mount Lebanon in modern Lebanon. The Maronite Church is an Eastern Catholic sui iuris particular church in full communion with the pope and the rest of the Catholic Church.

The Maronites derive their name from Saint Maron, (350-410 AD.), a monk whose teachings spread throughout the Northern Levant becoming the basis of the Maronite tradition. The spread of Christianity was very slow in the Lebanese region; in the 5th century AD in the highlands they were still pagan. St. Maron sent the apostle Abraham of Cyrrhus known as the "Apostle of Lebanon" with a mandate to convert the pagan inhabitants of Mount Lebanon to Christianity. After their conversion, the inhabitants of the region renamed the Adonis River to the Abrahamic River in honor of the Saint who preached there.

The Assyrian Church of the East (ACOE), sometimes called the Church of the East and officially known as the Holy Apostolic Catholic Assyrian Church of the East, is an Eastern Syriac Christian denomination that follows the traditional Christology and ecclesiology of the historical Church of the East. It belongs to the eastern branch of Syriac Christianity, and employs the Divine Liturgy of Saints Addai and Mari belonging to the East Syriac Rite. Its main liturgical language is Classical Syriac, a dialect of Eastern Aramaic. Officially known as the Church of the East until 1976, it was then renamed the Assyrian Church of the East, with its patriarchate remaining hereditary until the death of Shimun XXI Eshai in 1975.

The Assyrian Church of the East is officially headquartered in the city of Erbil, in northern Iraq; its original area encompassed Iraq, southeastern Turkey, northeastern Syria and northwestern Iran, corresponding roughly to ancient Assyria. The current Catholicos-Patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East, Mar Awa III, was consecrated in September 2021.

The Masoretic Text (MT or 𝕸; Hebrew: נֻסָּח הַמָּסוֹרָה, romanized: Nussāḥ ham-Māsorā, lit. 'Text of the Tradition') is the authoritative Hebrew and Aramaic text of the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) in Rabbinic Judaism. The Masoretic Text defines the Jewish canon and its precise letter-text, with its vocalization and accentuation known as the masora. Referring to the Masoretic Text, masora specifically means the diacritic markings of the text of the Jewish scriptures and the concise marginal notes in manuscripts (and later printings) of the Tanakh which note textual details, usually about the precise spelling of words. It was primarily copied, edited, and distributed by a group of Jews known as the Masoretes between the 7th and 10th centuries of the Common Era (CE). The oldest known complete copy, the Leningrad Codex, dates to 1009 CE and is recognized as the most complete source of biblical books in the Ben Asher tradition. It has served as the base text for critical editions such as Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia and Adi.

The differences attested to in the Dead Sea Scrolls indicate that multiple versions of the Hebrew scriptures already existed by the end of the Second Temple period. Which is closest to a theoretical Urtext is disputed, as is whether such a singular text ever existed. The Dead Sea Scrolls, dating to as early as the 3rd century BCE, contain versions of the text which have some differences with today's Hebrew Bible. The Septuagint (a compilation of Koine Greek translations made in the third and second centuries BCE) and the Peshitta (a Syriac translation made in the second century CE) occasionally present notable differences from the Masoretic Text, as does the Samaritan Pentateuch, the text of the Torah preserved by the Samaritans in Samaritan Hebrew. Fragments of an ancient 2nd–3rd-century manuscript of the Book of Leviticus found near an ancient synagogue's Torah ark in Ein Gedi have identical wording to the Masoretic Text.

Manichaeism (/ˌmænɪˈkiːɪzəm/; in Persian: آئین مانی, romanized: Āʾīn-i Mānī; Chinese: 摩尼教; pinyin: Móníjiào) was a major world religion founded in the third century CE by the Parthian Iranian prophet Mani (C.E. 216–274) in the Sasanian Empire. Variably described as a Christian heresy and a Gnostic movement, Manichaeism was an organized and doctrinal religious tradition in its own right. It taught an elaborate dualistic cosmology describing the struggle between a good spiritual world of light, and an evil material world of darkness. Through an ongoing process that takes place in human history, light is gradually removed from the world of matter and returned to the world of the divine.

Mani's teachings were intended to integrate, succeed, and surpass the "partial truths" of various prior faiths and belief systems, including Platonism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Marcionism, Hellenistic and Rabbinic Judaism, Gnostic movements, Ancient Greek religion, Babylonian and other Mesopotamian religions, and mystery cults. Some forms of Manichaeism see Mani as the final prophet after Zoroaster, the Buddha, and Jesus. The Manichaean scriptural canon includes seven works attributed to Mani, written originally in Syriac. Manichaean sacramental rites included prayers, almsgiving, and fasting. Communal life centered on confession and the singing of hymns.

Lucian of Samosata (Λουκιανὸς ὁ Σαμοσατεύς, c. 125 – after 180) was a Hellenized Syrian satirist, rhetorician and pamphleteer who is best known for his characteristic tongue-in-cheek style, with which he frequently ridiculed superstition, religious practices, and belief in the paranormal. Although his native language was probably Syriac, all of his extant works are written entirely in ancient Greek (mostly in the Attic Greek dialect popular during the Second Sophistic period).

Everything that is known about Lucian's life comes from his own writings, which are often difficult to interpret because of his extensive use of sarcasm. According to his oration The Dream, he was the son of a lower middle class family from the city of Samosata along the banks of the Euphrates in the remote Roman province of Syria. As a young man, he was apprenticed to his uncle to become a sculptor, but, after a failed attempt at sculpting, he ran away to pursue an education in Ionia. He may have become a travelling lecturer and visited universities throughout the Roman Empire. After acquiring fame and wealth through his teaching, Lucian finally settled down in Athens for a decade, during which he wrote most of his extant works. In his fifties, he may have been appointed as a highly paid government official in Egypt, after which point he disappears from the historical record.

Assyrians (Syriac: ܣܘܪ̈ܝܐ, Sūrāyē / Sūrōyē) are an ethnic group indigenous to Mesopotamia, a geographical region in West Asia. Modern Assyrians share descent directly from the ancient Assyrians, one of the key civilizations of Mesopotamia. While they are distinct from other Mesopotamian groups, such as the Babylonians, they share in the broader cultural heritage of the Mesopotamian region. Modern Assyrians may culturally self-identify as Syriacs, Chaldeans, or Arameans for religious, geographic, and tribal identification.

The ancient Assyrians originally spoke Akkadian, an East Semitic language, but subsequently switched to the Aramaic language and currently speak various dialects of Neo-Aramaic, specifically those known as Suret and Turoyo, which are among the oldest continuously spoken and written languages in the world. Aramaic (language of the Arameans) was the lingua franca of West Asia for centuries and was the language spoken by Jesus. It has influenced other languages such as Hebrew and Arabic, and, through cultural and religious exchanges, it has had some influence on Mongolian and Uighur. Aramaic itself is the oldest continuously spoken and written language in the Middle East, with a history stretching back over 3,000 years.

Nimrud (/nɪmˈruːd/; Syriac: ܢܢܡܪܕ Arabic: النمرود) is an ancient Assyrian city (original Assyrian name Kalḫu, biblical name Calah) located in Iraq, 30 kilometres (20 mi) south of the city of Mosul, and 5 kilometres (3 mi) south of the village of Selamiyah (Arabic: السلامية), in the Nineveh Plains in Upper Mesopotamia. It was a major Assyrian city between approximately 1350 BC and 610 BC. The city is located in a strategic position 10 kilometres (6 mi) north of the point that the river Tigris meets its tributary the Great Zab. The city covered an area of 360 hectares (890 acres). The ruins of the city were found within one kilometre (1,100 yd) of the modern-day Assyrian village of Noomanea in Nineveh Governorate, Iraq.

The name Nimrud was recorded as the local name by Carsten Niebuhr in the mid-18th century. In the mid 19th century, biblical archaeologists proposed the Assyrian name Kalḫu (the Biblical Calah), based on a description of the travels of Nimrod in Genesis 10.

The Assyrian calendar (Syriac: ܣܘܼܪܓܵܕ݂ܵܐ ܐܵܬ݂ܘܿܪܵܝܵܐ sūrgāḏā ʾĀṯōrāyā) is a solar calendar used by modern Assyrian people.

Ctesiphon (/ˈtɛsɪfɒn/ TESS-if-on; Middle Persian: 𐭲𐭩𐭮𐭯𐭥𐭭, Tyspwn or Tysfwn; Persian: تیسفون; Ancient Greek: Κτησιφῶν, Attic Greek: [ktɛːsipʰɔ̂ːn]; Syriac: ܩܛܝܣܦܘܢ) was an ancient city in modern Iraq, on the eastern bank of the Tigris, about 35 kilometres (22 mi) southeast of Baghdad. Ctesiphon served as a royal capital of the Iranian empires for over eight hundred years, in the Parthian and Sasanian periods. Ctesiphon was the administrative capital of the Sasanian Empire from 226 to 637 (when it was conquered by the Arabs), or until the conclusion of the Muslim conquest of Persia in 651 AD.

Ctesiphon developed into a rich commercial metropolis, merging with the surrounding cities along both shores of the river, including the Hellenistic city of Seleucia. Ctesiphon and its environs were therefore sometimes referred to as "The Cities" (Mahuza, Arabic: المدائن, romanized: al-Mada'in). In the late 6th and early 7th century, it was listed as the largest city in the world by some accounts.

The Arameans, or Aramaeans (Hebrew: אֲרַמִּים, romanized: arammim; Ancient Greek: Ἀραμαῖοι, romanized: Aramaíoi; Classical Syriac: ܐܪ̈ܡܝܐ, romanized: ārāmāyē, Syriac pronunciation: [ʔɑːrɑːˈmɑːje]), were a tribal Semitic people in the ancient Near East, first documented in historical sources from the late 12th century BC. Their homeland, often referred to as the land of Aram, originally covered central regions of what is now Syria.

The Arameans were not a single nation or group; Aram was a region with local centers of power spread throughout the Levant. That makes it almost impossible to establish a coherent ethnic category of "Aramean" based on extralinguistic identity markers, such as material culture, lifestyle, or religion. The people of Aram were called "Arameans" in Assyrian texts and the Hebrew Bible, but the terms "Aramean" and “Aram” were never used by later Aramean dynasts to refer to themselves or their country, except the king of Aram-Damascus, since his kingdom was also called Aram. "Arameans" is an appellation of the geographical term Aram given to 1st millennium BC inhabitants of Syria.

The Sayfo (Syriac: ܣܲܝܦܵܐ, lit. 'sword'), also known as the Seyfo or the Assyrian genocide, was the mass murder and deportation of Assyrian/Syriac Christians in southeastern Anatolia and Persia's Azerbaijan province by Ottoman forces and some Kurdish tribes during World War I.

The Assyrians were divided into mutually antagonistic churches, including the Syriac Orthodox Church, the Assyrian Church of the East, and the Chaldean Catholic Church. Before World War I, they largely lived in mountainous and remote areas of the Ottoman Empire and Persia, some of which were effectively stateless. The Ottoman Empire's nineteenth-century centralization efforts led to increased violence and danger for the Assyrians.