In Genesis 25 we learn that after the passing of Sarah Abraham took a new wife named Keturah. In verse 2 one of the sons by Keturah is named Jokshan. In verse 3 Jokshan has two sons named Sheba and Dedan, and then Dedan's descendants are referred to as the Asshurim, and Letushim, and Leummim.
Asshurim is the plural form of Asshur the second born son to Shem in Genesis 10:22 but also the name of a region in northern Mesopotamia and south-western Turkey. Asshurim is the exact same spelling as what's translated "Assyrians".
The modern Assyrians who tend to be members of one of three East-Syriac Churches (The Assyrian Church of The East, The Ancient Church of The East, or The Chaldean Catholic Church) actually claim to descend from the Asshurim of Dedan. One could dismiss that as Christian Assyrians wanting to take an opportunity to strengthen their ties with Abraham. However the Assyrian Kings List does list a Didanu among the "kings who lived in tents" which is a memory of when they were a more nomadic people before settling in the area of Nineveh. The Assyrian people in Assyria don't securely enter recorded history till around 2000 BC, I currently date the death of Joseph to about 2036 BC, 430 years before my date for the Exodus.
Now it's possible both Genesis Asshurs are relevant to the early history of the civilization that history would come to know as Assyria. Asshur son of Shem founded a settlement on the Tigris river roughly contemporary with Nimrod founding his three cities there and thus the region around it became named after him, later one of the nomadic tribal groups to come from Dedan migrated to that region and become called Asshurim because they were dwelling in Asshur. In time both of them along with other descendants of Arphaxad and Aram contributed to the population of Northern Mesopotamia but the Dedanites became numerically dominant, at least among those identifying as Assyrians, because YHWH did promise Abraham's Seed would be Numerous like the Stars of Heaven and Sands of the Sea.
As far as the other two tribes of Dedan go, Leummin I think is a form of the Lihyan the people who controlled the cities of Dedan and Hegra at the start of classical Antiquity. So it's only the Letushim who are a mystery, I am personally hoping for a way to link them to the Lakhmids, that would result in them sharing the Assyrians' connection to the Church of The East..
I found this discussion on Reddit of the Y-Chromosomal Haplogroups of the Assyrians.
They are mostly either the same as or related to the Haplogroups prominent in Jewish and Arab populations (as well as those I've argued descend from the Lost Tribes), R1b, J1, J2,, E1b1b, and even T and G show up in a few Jewish populations.
The below digression is a tangentially related theory I may abandon it, everything above holds together perfectly without it..
But what surprised me was the lack of Haplogroup I.
In my current view of how Haplogroups relate to Genesis 10 Y-Chromosomal Haplogroup I is identified with Asshur mostly by process of elimination. I've identified F with Shem and the 5 groups F is divided into with Shem's 5 named sons in Genesis 10:22. I view J and K as Arphaxad and Aram (though I keep changing my mind on which is which) because of their importance to Jewish populations (K is mainly through R and sometimes T and Q), with the E in Jewish populations coming from those Naturalized Mizraimites The Torah alludes to, and perhaps also some absorbed Canaanites. Haplogroup H is Elam because of the Elamo-Dravidian Hypothesis, and Haplogroup G I identify with Lud/Lydia because of this map.
Haplogroup I does have a presence in the right area to associate with Assyria according to this Map, but it's mostly prominent in Europe now.
What's amusing is that while I no longer (and never really did much) support British Israelism or other kinds of "White People are the Lost Tribes" theories. This conclusion about Haplogroup I has me supporting a theory often associated with it, the Germany=Asshur hypothesis of Edward Hine. Hine of course excluded the Anglo-Saxons from what he means by German here while I do not.
Basically I think three small groups of descendants of Asshur at some point in antiquity migrated to northern Europe and for some reason started speaking a form of proto Indo-European that became the ancestor of the Germanic Languages. Specifically I1 is the North Germanic Language Tribes, I2a1 the East German Language Tribes, and I2b the West Germanic Language Tribes. I2a's presence on Sardinia is probably via the Vandals, and other parts of the Western Mediterranean via the Ostorgoths and Visigoths, and this Map shows how East Germanic Tribes like the Goths, Heruli, and Gepids, had an ancient presence in the Balkans and Ukraine. So while the East Germanic Languages aren't spoken anymore, those Tribes still left lineages behind who are now speaking Romance or Slavic Languages.
There is a genre of Lost Tribes speculation that involves connecting various images of Medieval European Heraldry to Biblical Symbols associated with the Tribes of Israel in passages like Genesis 49 and Deuteronomy 33, and the first among those is often seeing Lions representing Judah. However Judah isn't the only Tribe or Nation ever represented by a Lion in Scripture, Assyrian Kings are also represented as Lions in Hosea 8:1 and Jeremiah 50:17, and I believe Nebuchadnezzar's Kingdom can be considered simply Assyria with a change of regime and capital making Assyria the first Empire of Daniel 2 and 7. We also know the Lamassu was a Lion Symbol Assyria used which they inherited from the Akkadians.
So there are types of Heraldic Lions associated with some Germanic Regions and Royal/Aristocratic Houses that I now speculate could actually descend from these Assyrian Lions, especially if they were Gold Lions. (Note, some Lions in Heraldry are called Leopards even though they have no spots because Medieval Europeans didn't use these animal terms properly). There are Lions in the Heraldry of the Dutch, Denmark, Norway and Sweden, as well as Normandy and the House of Plantagenet. The Heraldry of Flanders and Brabant in Belgium, and the Coat of Arms of the House of Hesse in Germany which was in origin a cadet branch of Brabant and Flanders. Lions were also in the Coat of Arms of the House of Hohenstaufen and Welf, and even for a time one branch of the House of Hohenzollern/Brandenburg.
Thor Heyerdahl proposed a theory that there was a later deified historical King Odin who ruled a civilization near Tanais on the Sea of Azov at the mouth of the river Don. This could be a stepping stone in how these Assyrians got from northern Mesopotamia to Germany and Scandinavia.
In Bill Cooper's After The Flood he covers various historical sources I'm more skeptical of them he is. These include documentation that various Royal Houses of Danmark, Norway and the Anglo-Saxons traced their Ancestry to an Odin who's ancestry in turn can be traced back to a Geat and then is further traced back to a Sceaf.
Now I disagree with Cooper on Scaaf really being Japheth or any other direct son of Noah, but I'm also skeptical of the Prose Edda's narrative tracing Sceaf back to a daughter of Priam king of Troy. In the context of what I've theorized here my hunch is Sîn-šar-iškun is either Sceaf or an ancestor of Sceaf.
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