Aramaean people

Aramaeans are the indigenous people of north Iraq, eastern Syria, Lebanon, Turkeyand Iran - members of the Assyrian Church of the East (Nestorian), the Chaldean Church of Babylon, and the Syriac Orthodox Church - who read and write Aramaic, a Semitic language.

Devisions

• Aramaeans: the real name of the people whose History spans over 3200 years. They were first mentioned in the Annals of the Assyrian Emperor Tiglath-pileser I. As Semitic people, the Aramaeans are closer to the Hebrews and the Phoenicians (North-Western Semitic languages) than to the Assyrians and the Babylonians (Eastern Semitic languages).
• Assyrians: along with the Babylonians, they are the descendants of the Accadians, the earliest Semites who settled around Agade (Accad) and prevailed over the Sumerians, forming a large empire under Sarrukin (Sargon I) and Naram Sin around the middle of the 3rd millennium BCE. Contrarily to the Babylonians, the Assyrians had a policy of national - ethnic purity, and did not intermingle with the Aramaeans, whom they pushed away to the West (today's Western Syria) and to the Mesopotamian South (Babylonia). At the moments of its greatest power, under the Sargonids (722 – 609), Assyria controlled almost all the then known world, but the Assyrians were a tiny and ethnically pure minority within their Empire. With the collapse of Assyria (614 – 612 – 609 BCE), Assyrian ceased to be written and spoken, and no Assyrians were found anywhere in the Middle East. According to a new interpretation that gets momentum, they constituted part of the migrations from the Caucasus area to Europe (Cimmerians).
• Chaldaeans: named 'Kaldu' in Assyrian – Babylonian texts, they are one of the Aramaean peoples. They intermingled extensively with the Babylonians, who finally - in later times - got assimilated with them, and were even called 'Chaldaeans' – mistakenly.