1. Such important references from Aboona will fur-ther aid in the correction of the now disproved theory that the opposite oc-curred (i.e., that western travellers and missionaries named the Assyr-ians).

2. Scholars frequently cite films such as Aladdin (Disney 1991), True Lies (20th Century Fox 1994), and 300 (Warner Bros. 2007), which portray westerners as heroic and virtuous and Middle Eastern people as evil, barbaric, depraved, dictatorial, and violent. See Jack G. Shaheen, Reel Bad Arabs: How Holly-wood Vilifies a People (New York: Olive Branch Press, 2001), and Kai Hafez, ed., Islam and the West in the Mass Media: Fragmented Images in a Globalized World (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2000).

3. Regarding the tendency to ignore atrocities by or in western nations, genocide scholar Adam Jones has written, ‘For proponents and defenders of Western states, for those who buttress the idea of the West’s exceptional role as a civilizing force, …[d]emocratic states “wouldn’t do” some-thing atrocious; therefore they “don’t” ’. Adam Jones, introduction to Genocide, War Crimes, and the West: History and Complicity (London: Zed Books, 2004), 11.

4. Compare, for example, Chris Bergeron, ‘At the MFA: Art and Archaeology’, Daily News Tribune (Waltham, MA), 21 September 2008, at http://www.dailynewstribune.com/arts/x689528668/AT-THE-MFA-Art-and-archaeology (noting the ‘brutality’ and ‘murderous ferocity’ of ancient Assyrians); with H. W. F. Saggs, Everyday Life In Babylonia and Assyria (New York: Dorset Press, 1987), 99, who wrote, ‘The Assyrian Empire was efficient and would not gladly bear those who wished to upset the civilised world order, but it was not exceptionally bloody or barbaric. The number of people killed or mutilated in an average Assyrian cam-paign in the interest of efficient administration was, even in proportion to the population, probably no more than the number of dead and mangled humans that most Western countries offer annually as a sacrifice to the motor-car, in the supposed interest of efficient transport’; Magnus Magnusson, Archaeology of the Bible (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978), 178, who wrote, ‘[T]there is no evi-dence that the Assyrians were more cruel in their methods of warfare than any of their contemporaries were’, and ‘no mention of Assyrian “atrocities” ’ in some contemporary sources describing the fall of a city to Assyria.