• DOI:10.1086/373570
• Corpus ID: 161323237

Assyria and Syria: Synonyms

@article{Frye1992AssyriaAS,
  title={Assyria and Syria: Synonyms},
  author={Richard Nelson Frye},
  journal={Journal of Near Eastern Studies},
  year={1992},
  volume={51},
  pages={281 - 285}
}

• R. Frye
• Published 1 October 1992
• History
• Journal of Near Eastern Studies

Confusion has existed between the two similar words “Syria” and “Assyria” throughout history almost down to our own day. Several years ago, an article appeared in this Journal of Near Eastern Studies (Vol. 40 [1981]: 139-40), by John A. Tvedtnes, called “The Origin of the Name ‘Syria’,” in which he rejected the long-accepted statement of Herodotus (7.63) that the Greeks called Assyrians by the name “Syrian” without initial a-. Tvedtnes proposed that the two terms are completely different and that Syria is derived from urri, an old Egyptian word for the Hurrians, which in Coptic would have changed to *Suri. In this article, I suggest that this explanation is most unlikely and that the statement by Herodotus is preferable. It is conceivable, of course, that the Egyptians had a term for the Hurrians which they confused with later Assyria/Syria, but both the vocalization of the word “Syria” and the reconstructed Middle Egyptian word *Suri present problems, while the identification of Assyria with Syria does not. To begin, the dropping of an initial ais a widespread phenomenon in many languages. Especially noteworthy is the loss of an initial ain Phoenician in some proper names in Anatolia in the first half of the first millennium B.C. and in Old Iranian. Consequently, the confusion of the two forms with and without initial apresents no problem. Herodotus, as we have mentioned, having equated Syrian and Assyrian, makes a statement which appears strange (7.72). In describing the various peoples in the army of Xerxes and their costumes, he includes the Syrians together with the Paphlagonians and other peoples of Anatolia. He then adds that these Syrians are called Cappadocians by the Persians, which needs an explanation. Some years ago many cuneiform records of Assyrian trading colonies in Cappadocia dating from the first part of the second millenium B.C. were found in the excavations at a site called Khltepe. We may assume that the descendants of these settlers and merchants were in sufficient number to cause the Greeks to identify them as Syrians, whereas the Persians were more interested in the various lands they had conquered than in distinguishing their inhabitants ethnically or linguistically. The Achaemenids divided their empire