writing in 1844, the year following the first press reports of the magnificent assyrian palace reliefs discovered by paul-émile botta and austen henry layard, the first inklings of which had been made known to the west by claudius rich in 1836, horatio southgate commented that in 1841 he had found that armenians referred to those whom he called "the syrians" (the west syriacs of the syriac orthodox church, as distinct from the east syriacs of the church of the east, whom he called "nestorians" or "chaldeans", as distinct from those he called "papal chaldeans") as "assouri", a name that southgate associated with the ancient assyrians: "i began to make inquiries for the syrians. the people informed me that there were about one hundred families of them in the town of kharpout, and a village inhabited by them on the plain. i observed that the armenians did not know them under the name which i used, "syriani"; but called them "assouri", which struck me the more at the moment from its resemblance to our english name "assyrians", from whom they claim their origin, being sons, as they say, of assour, (asshur,) who 'out of the land of shinar went forth, and builded nineveh, and the city rehoboth, and calah, and resin between nineveh and calah: the same is a great city'." in reality, "assouri" means simply syrian, the armenian word for "assyrian" is "asorestants’i". this shows that in the mid-nineteenth century jacobite syrian christians, while not self-identifying as assyrians, considered themselves of assyrian descent, although systematic use of "assyrians" to mean syriac christians appears for the first time in the context of an effort by the "archbishop of canterbury's mission to the assyrian christians" to avoid using the term "nestorian" for the members of the church of the east not in communion with rome.