In his lecture, "Ancient Assyrian Identity," held at a symposium hosted by the Assyrian Cultural Foundation in Chicago in September 2026, Dr. Valk argued that while Assyrians possess an unbroken historical presence spanning four thousand years, what it meant to be "Assyrian" shifted fundamentally depending on the political and social conditions of the era.
Valk is a historian of the Ancient Near East and a researcher at the Spanish National Research Council's Institute of Languages and Cultures of the Mediterranean and the Near East. His work focuses on the social and economic history of Assyria and questions of identity and language in ancient imperial societies. He received his Ph.D. in Assyriology from New York University.
Assyrian Cultural Foundation
In his lecture, he focused his analysis on two contrasting eras of the second millennium BC: the Old Assyrian period (c. 2000–1650 BC) and the Middle Assyrian period (c. 1400–1050 BC). In the Old Assyrian era, Assyria was not an imperial superpower, but a mercantile city-state centered around the city of Assur. Governance relied on civic democratic principles, led by a popular assembly (Ālum) composed of household heads, alongside an annually elected executive officer (Līmum).
During this earliest phase, residents did not use a generic adjective for themselves. Instead, they used the formula Māru Aššur, literally the "sons" or "children of Assur." This identity functioned like an exclusive extended family. Operating trade outposts over 1,000 kilometers away in Central Anatolia (modern Turkey), these merchant families fiercely guarded their legal rights and commercial monopolies, maintaining strict boundaries between themselves and outsiders.
By the Middle Assyrian period, this civic framework had dissolved. Following a period of foreign subjugation, King Ashur-uballit I transformed Assyria into a centralized territorial state (Māt Aššur). The popular civic assembly vanished, replaced by an absolute monarchy where the king governed as the earthly representative of the god Assur. As the kingdom expanded through military campaigns and population deportations, the exclusive "family" model gave way to an inclusive imperial identity. The term Māru Aššur was replaced by Aššurāyū ("Assyrian"), a broader label under which diverse conquered peoples and integrated populations became subjects of the state.
"No identity is static over time"
Addressing the question of historical continuity, Dr. Valk emphasized that dramatic structural changes do not denote a rupture in identity. Instead, each era builds new institutions using inherited cultural materials. "No identity is static over time," Dr. Valk noted, drawing comparisons to modern nations whose social norms evolve without erasing their foundational identity. "Both the exclusive merchant democracy and the inclusive territorial empire were genuinely Assyrian, they were simply different ways of being Assyrian in response to the world around them."
Dr. Valk concluded by linking these ancient transformations to the present-day Assyrian nation. Facing global dispersal and the challenges of diaspora life, today's Assyrians continue to navigate questions of cultural preservation, language continuity, and community organizing. The long view of history, Dr. Valk suggested, demonstrates that Assyrian identity has endured for four millennia not by remaining rigid, but by repeatedly reimagining itself in times of crisis and change.
