In 1853, while excavating near the northern city of Mosul, a young archaeologist named Hormuzd Rassam unearthed clay tablets containing the oldest known written narrative poem – the Epic of Gilgamesh. Over the years Rassam revealed thousands of artefacts from the ancient world; many which painted a more robust and vibrant ancient Near East. It is in that kiln that fashioned some of the earliest human societies, witnessed the rise of all three Abrahamic faiths, and the transition of hundreds of political systems, where Assyria and its progeny find, both literally and figuratively, their beginning, and for some, their future. This presentation is largely a linear trajectory of the Assyrian predicament in the Middle East, as a case in point, a litmus test for threatened communities, illuminating patterns of hostility, dispossession, and displacement, but also perseverance, strength, and hope amidst peril. It approaches Assyrians as an indigenous and transnational society with the promise of creating a model that can be used for analyses of similar communities around the globe. This approach undoes forms of violence against the community by making its history larger than the nation-state and dominant narrative. This is accomplished by demonstrating the importance of minoritized groups to generally accepted ‘major’ events, creating a paradigm where the community and its individual experiences are ‘vital to and exist in symbiosis with all others in order to illuminate’ the historical record. This paradigm shift creates a new reality that can be termed panenhistoricism, which at its core observes the minority (in this case Assyrian) history/existence transcendent of politically-charged nation-states and majoritarian perspectives, all the while remaining immanent within majoritarian and/or state narratives that retain the major focus, force, and funding. Finally, in the words of Aleksandr Pushkin from the work Poltava, “the same hammer that shatters glass forges steel,” this presentation will reach beyond a victimized guise and illustrate a community shattered yet emboldened as active and integral participants in history, and the ways in which they can and do participate.