Language/Assyrian-Neo-Aramaic/Culture/Family
Ancient Assyria
Assyria was a major ancient Mesopotamian civilization which existed as a city-state from the 21st century BC to the 14th century BC,
then to a territorial state, and eventually an empire from the 14th century BC to the 7th century BC.
The ancient Assyrians primarily spoke and wrote the Assyrian language, a Semitic language.
Although archaeologists don't know for sure who invented the wheel, the oldest wheel discovered was found in Mesopotamia.
It is likely the Assyrians first used the wheel in making pottery in 3500BC and then used it for their chariots in around 3200 BC.
Assyrian families
Assyrian families were generally monogamous, with the home being core to the family. In Ashur archaeologists and historians certain patterns
in Assyrian family life emerge It was customary for people to be buried under their home, so we have domestic and skeletal remains that narrate a story
of a single family — generation after generation — living in the same home and also being buried underneath it. Usually, the home passed to the eldest son.
A typical home contained a husband and wife as well as their children, and often the husband's mother as well. Families were typically monogamous.
The legal children – those who qualified as heirs, whether boys taking inheritance or girls receiving dowry – had to be the offspring of the legally recognized marriage
between the husband and wife. Both mother and father were legally significant for defining the core of the family.
An Assyrian man would usually get married after his father passed away because marriage customarily happened only after he had received his inheritance.
Assyrian women were typically married around thirteen or fourteen years old — when they were still children themselves, really — as this was the youngest
possible age that they could be physically expected to survive pregnancy and childbirth.
In addition to the legally monogamous nuclear family in control of the household, Assyrians often owned slaves who belonged to the household as well.
The wealthiest families may have dozens of slaves as part of their home. We see that the household slaves and the nuclear family had more than just a binary relationship.
Not only did a slave belong to a family — so did the slave's children as well, in perpetuity, with the effect that slaves were born into a family.
Also, female slaves were the sexual property of the family, which meant that many slaves were related not just to one another but may be half-siblings,
cousins, or children of members of the nuclear family. Children of a man with his slave were legally outside his officially recognized and legally
monogamous nuclear family and thus also, of course, ineligible for inheritance. The closeness of the household's owners and the household's
slaves may explain why Assyrian families did not sell their slaves unless they really had a very strong reason.
In the most extreme grey areas, we even see adoptions of slave children into the nuclear family. However, there was nonetheless a slave trade, especially to sell prisoners of war,
and exotic foreign slaves from outside the Assyrian Empire were prized — Anatolians were particularly sought-after, for unknown reasons.
The Assyrian royal family had some remarkable differences with the normal family.
The royal household
The continuation of the royal dynasty was of paramount importance. There could be no risk taken that offspring would not be produced.
All children who the king begot with his consorts — not just his one legal wife — were also legally recognized as his heirs and thus eligible for kingship.
The queen was, ironically, in some ways less important than regular wives. Very often, we do not even know who was a certain king's mother —
the only thing that was legally significant is the link to the king before him, and so forth.