A line of barefoot girls in headscarves and long patterned skirts carry large clay water jars on their backs past a brick wall. Newton & Co lantern slide no. 50 from the series "The Persians, Kurds, and Nestorians, their manners and customs", attributed by the Nelson Collection to Ernest Hoeltzer, late 19th century; published in The Living Races of Mankind (1901) as "Armenians water-carrying (Nestorians)" and by D'Allemagne (1911) as "Jeunes filles Nestoriennes faisant le métier de porteuses d'eau" (young Nestorian women working as water carriers).

Nestorian (Assyrian) girls carrying water jars

A printed sheet with the Union flag and royal arms, issued to airmen in the Middle East, asking local people to help the bearer reach British forces. Its panels repeat the appeal in English, French, Assyrian (in Syriac script), Azerbaijani, Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, Persian, Turkish and Kurdish. Likely Second World War era.

RAF appeal for help printed in Assyrian and eight other languages

Title page of the Russian-language edition of the Urmia Orthodox mission's periodical ("Pravoslavnaya Urmiya"), no. 16, October 1913, with subscription details. The mission published it alongside a Syriac edition for Assyrian converts to Orthodoxy.

Cover of Pravoslavnaya Urmiya (Urmia Orthodokseta), October 1913

Ten members of the Assyro-Chaldean delegation to the Paris Peace Conference pose around a table, with a caption in Syriac script below. Published in the periodical Babylon in February 1921; the delegation included Metran Afrem Barsoom and Rev. Joel E. Werda.

Assyro-Chaldean delegation to the Paris Peace Conference

Map from Our Smallest Ally marking the Assyrian districts and villages between Van, Urmia and Mosul, including Qudshanis, Tiyari, Tkhuma, Jilu, Ashitha, Amadia, Alqosh, Urmi and Salmas.

Map of the country of the Assyrian Christians, 1920

Page of a small, worn Syriac manuscript of the Gospel of Mark with six roundels outlined in red, green and yellow, each holding lines of Syriac script, inside a red ruled frame. The Library of Congress catalogues the manuscript as from Urmia and dates it "17??".

Syriac manuscript of the Gospel of Mark from Urmia, decorated page

Two facing pages from the "Assyrian" section of a printed 15-page phrase book with words and phrases in Assyrian, Azerbaijani, Arabic, Persian, Kurdish, Turkish and Russian, kept among the papers of RAF flight engineer Harold Ernest Wakefield DFC. The left page gives hints on "Conduct when meeting Assyrians" and a short English–Assyrian word list (water "Miya", village "Mata"); the right page carries a message in Syriac script beneath the royal coat of arms. The booklet is undated, possibly from the Second World War; this image places the two pages side by side.

British forces phrase book: Assyrian section

Patriarch Abraham Mar Shimun

Mountain refugees in the Russian consulate, Urmia

View over the rooftops of Urmia

British soldier tending a Jilu Assyrian refugee child

Assyrian children in a remote village of Hakkari, c. 1900

Assyrian woman in traditional jewellery at Tel Tamer, 1938

Malik Ismail II of Upper Tiyari at Baqubah

Assyrian fighters from Jilu, 1918

Nestorian (Assyrian) house in Tiyari

Nun with a gospel at the Church of the Virgin, Hah, 1909

A Syrian (Assyrian) girl, 1891 engraving

Two Chaldean women of Mardin

Syriac and Chaldean women and girls of Mardin province

Jilu Assyrian refugees cooking with a British soldier, 1918

Tiyari (Assyrian) refugees helped by the Armenian Committee in Urmia, 1917

Elderly Assyrian man at Tel Tamer, 1938

Assyrian refugees from Tiyari and Tkhuma encamped near Urmia, 1915

Entrance to the Syriac Orthodox church of St. Mark, Jerusalem

Syriac-rite Mass with Cardinal Tappouni at the 1937 Paris Exposition

Syriac cultural centre in Varberga, Örebro

Bear hunters at Qudshanis

Archbishop Julius Abdulahad Gallo Shabo at a church founding ceremony, Örebro

Jilu Assyrian mother giving her child a drink, 1918

Jacobite (Syriac Orthodox) women drawing water at Midyat, Tur Abdin

Nestorian (Assyrian) Christian family, studio portrait by Sevruguin

Stera and Warina, survivors of the massacres

St Peter and St Paul Syriac Orthodox church, Hallunda

Faces, places & memories of the Assyrian people.