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The Gutians /ˈɡuːtiənz/ (also Guteans or Guti) were a tribe that overran southern Mesopotamia when the Akkadian empire collapsed in approximately 2154 BC.

Sumerian sources portray the Gutians as a barbarous, ravenous people from Gutium or Qutium (Sumerian: Gu-tu-umki[1] or Gu-ti-umki[2]) in the mountains, presumably the central Zagros in the Kurdish area of Iraq. The Sumerian king list represents them as ruling over Sumer for a short time after the fall of the Akkadian Empire, and paints a picture of chaos within the Gutian administration.[3]

Next to nothing is known about their origins, as no "Gutian" artifacts have surfaced from that time; little information is gleaned from the contemporary sources.[4] Nothing is known of their language either, apart from those Sumerian king names, and that it was distinct from other known languages of the region (such as Sumerian, Akkadian, Hurrian, Hittite and Elamite).

The Guti appear in Old Babylonian copies of inscriptions ascribed to Lugal-Anne-Mundu of Adab as among the nations providing his empire tribute. These inscriptions locate them between Subartu in the north, and Marhashe and Elam in the south. They were a prominent nomadic tribe who lived in the Zagros mountains in the time of the Akkadian Empire. Sargon the Great also mentions them among his subject lands, listing them between Lullubi, Armanu and Akkad to the north, and Nikku and Der to the south. The epic Cuthaean Legend of Naram-Sin of a later millennium mentions Gutium among the lands around Mesopotamia raided by Annubanini of Lulubum during Naram-Sin's reign in Akkad.[5] Contemporary year-names for Shar-kali-sharri of Akkad indicate that in one unknown year of his reign, he captured Sharlag king of Gutium, while in another year, "the yoke was imposed on Gutium".
Gutian dynasty of SumerMain article: Gutian dynasty of Sumer
As Akkadian might went into a decline, the Gutians began to practice hit-and-run tactics on Mesopotamia; they would be long gone by the time forces could arrive to deal with the situation. Their raids crippled the economy of Sumer. Travel became unsafe, as did work in the fields, resulting in famine. The Gutians eventually overran Akkad, and as the King List tells us, their army also subdued Uruk for hegemony of Sumer — although it seems that autonomous rulers soon arose again in a number of city-states, notably Gudea of Lagash. The Gutians also seem to have briefly overrun Elam at the close of Kutik-Inshushinak's reign, around the same time.[7] and in an inscribed statue of Gutian king Erridupizir at Nippur, in imitation of his Akkadian predecessors, he assumes the title "King of Gutium, King of the Four Quarters".

According to the Sumerian king list, "In the army of Gutium, at first no king was famous; they were their own kings and ruled thus for 3 years."

The Weidner Chronicle, of some 1500 years later, portrays the Gutian kings as uncultured and uncouth:

"Naram-Sin destroyed the people of Babylon, so twice Marduk summoned the forces of Gutium against him. Marduk gave his kingship to the Gutian force. The Gutians were unhappy people unaware how to revere the gods, ignorant of the right cultic practices.
Utu-hengal, the fisherman, caught a fish at the edge of the sea for an offering. That fish should not be offered to another god until it had been offered to Marduk, but the Gutians took the boiled fish from his hand before it was offered, so by his august command, Marduk removed the Gutian force from the rule of his land and gave it to Utu-hengal."
The Sumerian ruler Utu-hengal of Uruk is similarly credited on the King List with defeating the Gutian ruler Tirigan, and removing the Guti from the country (ca. 2050 BC (short)).[8] Following this, Ur-Nammu of Ur had their homeland of Gutium devastated, though according to one lengthy Sumerian poem, he died in battle with the Gutians, after having been abandoned by his own army.

Gutium as a later geographic termIn the first millennium BC, the term "Gutium" was used to refer to the region between the Zagros and the Tigris, also known as western Media. All tribes to the east and northeast who often had hostile relations with the peoples of lowland Mesopotamia, were referred to as Gutian [9] or Guti. Assyrian royal annals use the term Gutians to refer to Iranian populations otherwise known as Medes or Mannaeans; and as late as the reign of Cyrus the Great of Persia, the famous general Gubaru (Gobryas) was described as the "governor of Gutium".

Physical AppearanceAccording to the historian Henry Hoyle Howorth (1901), Assyriologist Theophilus Pinches (1908), renowned archaeologist Leonard Woolley (1929) and Assyriologist Ignace Gelb (1944) the Gutians were pale skinned and blonde haired.[10][11][12][13] This identification of the Gutians as fair haired first came to light when Julius Oppert (1877) published a set of tablets he had discovered which described Gutian (and Subarian) slaves as namrum or namrûtum, meaning "light colored" or "fair-skinned".[14][15] This racial character of the Gutians as blondes or being light skinned was also taken up by Georges Vacher de Lapouge in 1899 and later by historian Sidney Smith in his Early history of Assyria (1928).[16][17] Ephraim Avigdor Speiser however criticised the translation of "namrum" as "light colored". An article was published by Speiser in the Journal of the American Oriental Society attacking Gelb's translation.[18] Gelb in response accused Speiser of circular reasoning.[19] In response Speiser claimed the scholarship regarding the translation of "namrum" or "namrûtum" is unresolved.[20]

[edit] Modern connection theoriesThe historical Guti have been regarded by some as among the ancestors of the Kurds, including by some modern assyriologists.[21] However, the term Guti had by late antiquity become a "catch all" term to describe all tribal peoples in the Zagros region, and according to J.P. Mallory, the original Gutians precede the arrival of Indo-Iranian peoples (of which the Kurds are one) by some 1500 years[22] In the late 19th-century, Assyriologist Julius Oppert sought to connect the Gutians of remote antiquity with the later Gutones (Goths), whom Ptolemy in 150 AD had known as the Guti, a tribe of Scandia. Oppert's theory on this connection is not shared by many scholars today, in the absence of further evidence.

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The Hurrians (cuneiform Ḫu-ur-ri) were an ancient people, who spoke a Hurro-Urartian language of the Ancient Near East, living in Anatolia and Northern Mesopotamia during the Bronze Age. The largest and most influential partly Hurrian nation was the kingdom of Mitanni, though the Mitanni were an Indo-European speaking people who formed a ruling class over the Hurrians. The population of the Indo-European speaking Hittite Empire in Anatolia to a large part consisted of Hurrians and Hattians, and there is significant Hurrian influence in Hittite mythology. By the Early Iron Age, the Hurrians had been assimilated with other peoples, except perhaps in the kingdom of Urartu. According to I.M. Diakonoff and S. Starostin, the Hurrian, Hattic, and Urartian languages are related to the Northeast Caucasian languages.

Language
The Hurrians spoke an ergative-agglutinative language, conventionally called Hurrian, (unrelated to neighbouring Semitic or Indo-European languages), which may have been a language isolate. The Iron Age Urartian language is closely related to or a direct descendant of Hurrian. Several notable Russian linguists, such as S. A. Starostin and V. V. Ivanov, have claimed that the Hurrian and the Hattic were related to the Northeast Caucasian languages.[1]

From the 21st Century BC through to the late 18th Century BC, Assyria controlled colonies in Anatolia, and the Hurrians, like the Hattians, adopted the Assyrian Akkadian cuneiform script for their own language about 2000 BCE. Texts in the Hurrian language have been found at Hattusa, Ugarit (Ras Shamra), as well as one of the longest of the Amarna letters, written by King Tushratta of Mitanni to Pharaoh Amenhotep III. It was the only long Hurrian text known until a multi-tablet collection of literature in Hurrian with a Hittite translation was discovered at Hattusa in 1983.

Middle Bronze AgeHurrian names occur sporadically in north western Mesopotamia and the area of Kirkuk in modern Iraq by the Middle Bronze Age. Their presence was attested at Nuzi, Urkesh and other sites. They eventually infiltrated and occupied a broad arc of fertile farmland stretching from the Khabur River valley to the foothills of the Zagros Mountains. I. J. Gelb and E. A. Speiser believed Semitic Subarians had been the linguistic and ethnic substratum of northern Mesopotamia since earliest times, while Hurrians were merely late arrivals.[2]

[edit] UrkeshThe Khabur River valley became the heart of the Hurrian lands for a millennium. The first known Hurrian kingdom emerged around the city of Urkesh (modern Tell Mozan) during the third millennium BCE. There is evidence that they were allied with the Akkadian Empire indicating they had a firm hold on the area by the reign of Naram-Sin of Akkad (ca. 2254–2218 BCE). This region hosted other rich cultures (see Tell Halaf and Tell Brak). The city-state of Urkesh had some powerful neighbors. At some point in the early second millennium BCE, the Amorite kingdom of Mari to the south subdued Urkesh and made it a vassal state. In the continuous power struggles over Mesopotamia, another Amorite dynasty made themselves masters over Mari in the eighteenth century BCE. Shubat-Enlil (modern Tell Leilan), the capital of this Old Assyrian kingdom, was founded some distance from Urkesh at another Hurrian settlement in the Khabur River valley.

[edit] Late Bronze Age[edit] YamhadThe Hurrians also migrated west in this period. By 1725 BCE they are found also in parts of northern Syria, such as Alalakh. The Amoritic-Hurrian kingdom of Yamhad is recorded as struggling for this area with the early Hittite king Hattusilis I around 1600 BCE. Hurrians also settled in the coastal region of Adaniya in the country of Kizzuwatna. Yamhad eventually weakened to the powerful Hittites, but this also opened Anatolia for Hurrian cultural influences. The Hittites were influenced by the Hurrian culture over the course of several centuries.

[edit] MitanniMain article: Mitanni
Further information: Indo-Aryan superstrate in Mitanni
The Hittites continued expanding south after the defeat of Yamhad. The army of the Hittite king Mursili I made its way down to Babylon and sacked the city. The destruction of the Babylonian kingdom, as well as the kingdom of Yamhad, helped the rise of another Hurrian dynasty. The first ruler was a legendary king called Kirta who founded the kingdom of Mitanni around 1500 BCE. Mitanni gradually grew from the region around Khabur valley and became the most powerful kingdom of the Near East in c. 1450-1350 BCE.

Some theonyms, proper names and other terminology of the Mitanni exhibit an Indo-Aryan superstrate, suggesting that an Indo-Aryan elite imposed itself over the Hurrian population in the course of the Indo-Aryan expansion.[3]

[edit] ArraphaAnother Hurrian kingdom also benefited from the demise of Babylonian power in sixteenth century BCE. Hurrians had inhabited the region northeast of river Tigris, around the modern Kirkuk. This was the kingdom of Arrapha. Excavations at Yorgan Tepe, ancient Nuzi, proved to be one of the most important sites for our knowledge about the Hurrians. Hurrian kings such as Ithi-Teshup and Ithiya ruled over Arrapha, yet by the mid-fifteenth century BCE they had become vassals of the Great King of Mitanni. Arrapha itself was destroyed by the Assyrians in the fourteenth century BCE.

[edit] Bronze Age collapseBy the thirteenth century BCE all of the Hurrian states had been vanquished by other peoples. The heart of the Hurrian lands, the Khabur river valley, became an Assyrian province. It is not clear what happened to the Hurrian people at the end of the Bronze Age. Some scholars have suggested Hurrians lived on in the country of Subartu north of Assyria during the early Iron Age. The Hurrian population of Syria in the following centuries seems to have given up their language in favor of the Assyrian dialect of Akkadian or, more likely, Aramaic. This was around the same time that an aristocracy speaking Urartian, similar to old Hurrian, seems to have first imposed itself on the population around Lake Van, and formed the Kingdom of Urartu.

[edit] Culture and societyKnowledge of Hurrian culture relies on archaeological excavations at sites such as Nuzi and Alalakh as well as on cuneiform tablets, primarily from Hattusa (Boghazköy), the capital of the Hittites, whose civilization was greatly influenced by the Hurrians. Tablets from Nuzi, Alalakh, and other cities with Hurrian populations (as shown by personal names) reveal Hurrian cultural features even though they were written in Akkadian. Hurrian cylinder seals were carefully carved and often portrayed mythological motifs. They are a key to the understanding of Hurrian culture and history.

[edit] Ceramic wareThe Hurrians were masterful ceramists. Their pottery is commonly found in Mesopotamia and in the lands west of the Euphrates; it was highly valued in distant Egypt, by the time of the New Kingdom. Archaeologists use the terms Khabur ware and Nuzi ware for two types of wheel-made pottery used by the Hurrians. Khabur ware is characterized by reddish painted lines with a geometric triangular pattern and dots, while Nuzi ware has very distinctive forms, and are painted in brown or black.

[edit] MetallurgyThe Hurrians had a reputation in metallurgy. The Sumerians borrowed their copper terminology from the Hurrian vocabulary. Copper was traded south to Mesopotamia from the highlands of Anatolia. The Khabur Valley had a central position in the metal trade, and copper, silver and even tin were accessible from the Hurrian-dominated countries Kizzuwatna and Ishuwa situated in the Anatolian highland. Gold was in short supply, and the Amarna letters inform us that it was acquired from Egypt. Not many examples of Hurrian metal work have survived, except from the later Urartu. Some small fine bronze lion figurines were discovered at Urkesh.

[edit] The horseThe Mitanni were closely associated with horses. The name of the country of Ishuwa, which might have had a substantial Hurrian population, meant “horse-land”.[citation needed] A famous text discovered at Hattusa deals with the training of horses. The man who was responsible for the horse-training was a Hurrian called Kikkuli. The terminology used in connection with horses contains many Indo-Aryan loan-words (Mayrhofer, 1974).

[edit] MusicMain article: Hurrian song
Among the Hurrian texts from Ugarit are the oldest known instances of written music, dating from c. 1400 BCE.[4] Amongst these fragments are found the names of four Hurrian composers, Tapšiẖuni, Puẖiya(na), Urẖiya, and Ammiya.[5]

[edit] ReligionThe Hurrian culture made a great impact on the religion of the Hittites. From the Hurrian cult centre at Kummanni in Kizzuwatna Hurrian religion spread to the Hittite people. Syncretism merged the Old Hittite and Hurrian religions. Hurrian religion spread to Syria, where Baal became the counterpart of Teshub. The later kingdom of Urartu also venerated gods of Hurrian origin. The Hurrian religion, in different forms, influenced the entire ancient Near East, except ancient Egypt and southern Mesopotamia.

The main gods in the Hurrian pantheon were:

Teshub, Teshup; the mighty weathergod.
Hebat, Hepa; his wife, the mother goddess, regarded as the Sun goddess among the Hittites. Drawn from the Sumerian goddess Kubau, known as Hawwah, the biblical חוה, also known as Eve amongst the Aramaeans and some others.
Sharruma, or Sarruma, Šarruma; their son.
Kumarbi; the ancient father of Teshub; his home as described in mythology is the city of Urkesh.
Shaushka, or Shawushka, Šauska; was the Hurrian counterpart of Assyrian Ishtar, and a goddess of fertility, war and healing.
Shimegi, Šimegi; the sun god.
Kushuh, Kušuh; the moon god. Symbols of the sun and the crescent moon appear joined together in the Hurrian iconography.
Nergal; a Babylonian deity of the netherworld, whose Hurrian name is unknown.
Ea; was also Babylonian in origin, and may have influenced Canaanite El, and also ים Yam, God of the Sea and River.
Names of Indo-Aryan gods Mitra and Varuna especially, from the Vedic religion have survived in texts and personal names, but it is not known if any religious centers actually existed.

Hurrian cylinder seals often depict mythological creatures such as winged humans or animals, dragons and other monsters. The interpretation of these depictions of gods and demons is uncertain. They may have been both protective and evil spirits. Some is reminiscent of the Assyrian shedu.

The Hurrian gods do not appear to have had particular "home temples", like in the Mesopotamian religion or Ancient Egyptian religion. Some important cult centres were Kummanni in Kizzuwatna, and Hittite Yazilikaya. Harran was at least later a religious centre for the moon god, and Shauskha had an important temple in Nineve, when the city was under Hurrian rule. A temple of Nergal was built in Urkesh in the late third millennium BCE. The town of Kahat was a religious centre in the kingdom of Mitanni.

The Hurrian myth “The Songs of Ullikummi”, preserved among the Hittites, is a parallel to Hesiod's Theogony; the castration of Uranus by Cronus may be derived from the castration of Anu by Kumarbi, while Zeus's overthrow of Cronus and Cronus's regurgitation of the swallowed gods is like the Hurrian myth of Teshub and Kumarbi.[6] It has been argued that the worship of Attis drew on Hurrian myth.[7] The Phrygian goddess Cybele would then be the counterpart of the Hurrian goddess Hebat.

[edit] UrbanismThe Hurrian urban culture was not represented by a large number of cities. Urkesh was the only Hurrian city in the third millennium BCE. In the second millennium BCE we know a number of Hurrian cities, such as Arrapha, Harran, Kahat, Nuzi, Taidu and Washukanni – the capital of Mitanni. Although the site of Washukanni, alleged to be at Tell Fakhariya, is not known for certain, no tell (city mound) in the Khabur Valley much exceeds the size of 1 square kilometer (250 acres), and the majority of sites are much smaller. The Hurrian urban culture appears to have been quite different from the centralized state administrations of Assyria and ancient Egypt. An explanation could be that the feudal organization of the Hurrian kingdoms did not allow large palace or temple estates to develop.

[edit] ArchaeologyHurrian settlements are distributed over three modern countries, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. The heart of the Hurrian world is dissected by the modern border between Syria and Turkey. Several sites are situated within the border zone, making access for excavations problematic. A threat to the ancient sites are the dam many projects in the Euphrates, Tigris and Khabur valleys. Several rescue operations have already been undertaken when the construction of dams put entire river valleys under water.

The first major excavations of Hurrian sites in Iraq and Syria began in the 1920s and 1930s. They were led by the American archaeologist Edward Chiera at Yorghan Tepe (Nuzi), and the British archaeologist Max Mallowan at Chagar Bazar and Tell Brak. Recent excavations and surveys in progress are conducted by American, Belgian, Danish, Dutch, French, German and Italian teams of archaeologists, with international participants, in cooperation with the Syrian Department of Antiquities. The tells, or city mounds, often reveal a long occupation beginning in the Neolithic and ending in the Roman period or later. The characteristic Hurrian pottery, the Khabur ware, is helpful in determining the different strata of occupation within the mounds. The Hurrian settlements are usually identified from the Middle Bronze Age to the end of the Late Bronze Age, with Tell Mozan (Urkesh) being the main exception.

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Mitanni (Hittite cuneiform KUR URUMi-ta-an-ni, also Mittani Mi-it-ta-ni) or Hanigalbat (Assyrian Hanigalbat, Khanigalbat cuneiform Ḫa-ni-gal-bat) was an Hurrian-speaking state in northern Syria and south-east Anatolia from ca. 1500 BC–1300 BC. Founded by an Indo-Aryan ruling class governing a predominately Hurrian population, Mitanni came to be a regional power after the Hittite destruction of Amorite[1] Babylon, and a series of ineffectual Assyrian kings created a power vacuum in Mesopotamia. At the beginning of its history, Mitanni's major rival was Egypt under the Thutmosids. However, with the ascent of the Hittite empire, Mitanni and Egypt made an alliance to protect their mutual interests from the threat of Hittite domination. At the height of its power, during the 14th century BC, it had outposts centered around its capital, Washukanni, whose location has been determined by archaeologists to be on the headwaters of the Khabur River. Eventually, Mitanni succumbed to Hittite and later Assyrian attacks, and was reduced to the status of a province of the Middle Assyrian Empire.

Their sphere of influence is shown in Hurrian place names, personal names and the spread through Syria and the Levant of a distinct pottery type.

GeographyThe Mitanni controlled trade routes down the Khabur to Mari and up the Euphrates from there to Charchamesh. For a time they also controlled the Assyrian territories of the upper Tigris and its headwaters at Nineveh, Arbil, Assur and Nuzi. Their allies included Kizuwatna in southeastern Anatolia, Mukish which stretched between Ugarit and Quatna west of the Orontes to the sea, and the Niya which controlled the east bank of the Orontes from Alalah down through Aleppo, Ebla and Hama to Qatna and Kadesh. To the east, they had good relations with the Kassites.[2] The land of Mitanni in northern Syria extended from the Taurus mountains to its west and as far east as Nuzi (modern Kirkuk) and the river Tigris in the east. In the south, it extended from Aleppo across (Nuhashshe) to Mari on the Euphrates in the east. Its centre was in the Khabur River valley, with two capitals: Taite and Washshukanni called Taidu and Ushshukana respectively in Assyrian sources. The whole area allows agriculture without artificial irrigation; cattle, sheep and goats were raised. It is very similar to Assyria in climate, and was settled by both indigenous Hurrian and Amoritic-speaking (Amurru) populations.

Name"This kingdom was known as the Maryannu, Nahrin or Mitanni to the Egyptians, Hurri to the Hittites and Hanigalbat to the Assyrians. All three names were equivalent and interchangeable", asserted Michael C. Astour.[3] Hittite annals mention a people called Hurri (Ḫu-ur-ri), located in northeastern Syria. A Hittite fragment, probably from the time of Mursili I, mentions a "King of the Hurri", or "Hurrians". The Assyro-Akkadian version of the text renders "Hurri" as Hanigalbat. Tushratta, who styles himself "king of Mitanni" in his Akkadian Amarna letters, refers to his kingdom as Hanigalbat.[4]

Egyptian sources call Mitanni "nhrn", which is usually pronounced as Naharin/Naharina [5] from the Assyro-Akkadian word for "river", cf. Aram-Naharaim. The name Mitanni is first found in the "memoirs" of the Syrian wars (ca. 1480 BC) of the official astronomer and clockmaker Amememhet, who returned from the "foreign country called Me-ta-ni" at the time of Thutmose I.[6] The expedition to the Naharina announced by Thutmosis I at the beginning of his reign[7] may have actually taken place during the long previous reign of Amenhotep I[8] Helck believes that this was the expedition mentioned by Amenhotep II.

PeopleThe ethnicity of the people of Mitanni is difficult to ascertain. A treatise on the training of chariot horses by Kikkuli contains a number of Indo-Aryan glosses.[9] Kammenhuber (1968) suggested that this vocabulary was derived from the still undivided Indo-Iranian language,[9][10] but Mayrhofer (1974) has shown that specifically Indo-Aryan features are present.[11]

The names of the Mitanni aristocracy frequently are of Indo-Aryan origin, but it is specifically their deities which show Indo-Aryan roots (Mitra, Varuna, Indra, Nasatya), though some think that they are more immediately related to the Kassites.[12] The common people's language, the Hurrian language, is neither Indo-European nor Semitic.[13] Hurrian is related to Urartian, the language of Urartu, both belonging to the Hurro-Urartian language family. It had been held that nothing more can be deduced from current evidence.[14] A Hurrian passage in the Amarna letters – usually composed in Akkadian, the lingua franca of the day – indicates that the royal family of Mitanni was by then speaking Hurrian as well.

Bearers of names in the Hurrian language are attested in wide areas of Syria and the northern Levant that are clearly outside the area of the political entity known to Assyria as Hanilgalbat. There is no indication that these persons owed allegiance to the political entity of Mitanni; although the German term Auslandshurriter ("Hurrian expatriates") has been used by some authors. In the 14th century BC numerous city-states in northern Syria and Canaan were ruled by persons with Hurrian and some Indo-Aryan names. If this can be taken to mean that the population of these states was Hurrian as well, then it is possible that these entities were a part of a larger polity with a shared Hurrian identity. This is often assumed, but without a critical examination of the sources. Differences in dialect and regionally different pantheons (Hepat/Shawushka, Sharruma/Tilla etc.) point to the existence of several groups of Hurrian speakers.

HistoryNo native sources for the history of Mitanni (i.e. Hanilgalbat) have been found so far. The account is mainly based on Assyrian, Hittite and Egyptian sources, as well as inscriptions from nearby places in Syria. Often it is not even possible to establish synchronicity between the rulers of different countries and cities, let alone give uncontested absolute dates. The definition and history of Mitanni is further beset by a lack of differentiation between linguistic, ethnic and political groups.

SummaryIt is believed that the warring Hurrian tribes and city states became united under one dynasty after the collapse of Babylon due to the Hittite sack by Mursili I and the Kassite invasion. The Hittite conquest of Aleppo (Yamhad), the weak middle Assyrian kings who succeeded Puzur-Ashur III, and the internal strifes of the Hittites had created a power vacuum in upper Mesopotamia. This led to the formation of the kingdom of Mitanni.

King Barattarna of Mitanni expanded the kingdom west to Halab (Aleppo) and made the Canaanite king Idrimi of Alalakh his vassal. The state of Kizzuwatna in the west also shifted its allegiance to Mitanni, and Assyria in the east had become largely a Mitannian vassal state by the mid-15th century BC. The nation grew stronger during the reign of Shaushtatar but the Hurrians were keen to keep the Hittites inside the Anatolian highland. Kizzuwatna in the west and Ishuwa in the north were important allies against the hostile Hittites.

After a few successful clashes with the Pharaohs over the control of Syria, Mitanni sought peace with Egypt and an alliance was formed. During the reign of Shuttarna in the early 14th century BC the relationship was very amicable, and he sent his daughter Gilu-Hepa to Egypt for a marriage with Pharaoh Amenhotep III. Mitanni was now at its peak of power.

However by the reign of Eriba-Adad I (1390 BC - 1366 BC) Mitanni influence over Assyria was on the wane. Eriba-Adad I became involved in a dynastic battle between Tushratta and his brother Artatama II and after this his son Shuttarna II, who called himself king of the Hurri while seeking support from the Assyrians. A pro-Hurri/Assyria faction appeared at the royal Mitanni court. Eriba-Adad I had thus loosened Mitanni influence over Assyria, and in turn had now made Assyria an influence over Mitanni affairs.[15] King Ashur-Uballit I (1365 BC - 1330 BC) of Assyria attacked Shuttarna and annexed Mittani territory in the middle of the 14th Century BC, making Assyria once more a great power.

At the death of Shuttarna, Mitanni was ravaged by a war of succession. Eventually Tushratta, a son of Shuttarna, ascended the throne, but the kingdom had been weakened considerably and both the Hittite and Assyrian threats increased. At the same time, the diplomatic relationship with Egypt went cold, the Egyptians fearing the growing power of the Hittites and Assyrians. The Hittite king Suppiluliuma I invaded the Mitanni vassal states in northern Syria and replaced them with loyal subjects.

In the capital Washukanni a new power struggle broke out. The Hittites and the Assyrians supported different pretenders to the throne. Finally a Hittite army conquered the capital Washukkanni and installed Shattiwaza, the son of Tushratta, as their vassal king of Mitanni in the late 14th century BC. The kingdom had by now been reduced to the Khabur Valley. The Assyrians had not given up their claim on Mitanni, and Shalmaneser I in the 13th century BC annexed the kingdom.

Early kingdomAs early as Akkadian times, Hurrians are known to have lived east of the river Tigris on the northern rim of Mesopotamia, and in the Khabur Valley. The group which became Mitanni gradually moved south into Mesopotamia before the 17th century BC.

Hurrians are mentioned in the private Nuzi texts, in Ugarit, and the Hittite archives in Hattushsha (Boğazköy). Cuneiform texts from Mari mention rulers of city-states in upper Mesopotamia with both Amurru (Amorite) and Hurrian names. Rulers with Hurrian names are also attested for Urshum and Hashshum, and tablets from Alalakh (layer VII, from the later part of the old-Babylonian period) mention people with Hurrian names at the mouth of the Orontes. There is no evidence for any invasion from the North-east. Generally, these onomastic sources have been taken as evidence for a Hurrian expansion to the South and the West.

A Hittite fragment, probably from the time of Mursili I, mentions a "King of the Hurrians" (LUGAL ERÍN.MEŠ Hurri). This terminology was last used for King Tushratta of Mitanni, in a letter in the Amarna archives. The normal title of the king was 'King of the Hurri-men' (without the determinative KUR indicating a country).

It is believed that the warring Hurrian tribes and city states became united under one dynasty after the collapse of Babylon due to the Hittite sack by Mursili I and the Kassite invasion. The Hittite conquest of Aleppo (Yamkhad), the weak middle Assyrian kings, and the internal strifes of the Hittites had created a power vacuum in upper Mesopotamia. This led to the formation of the kingdom of Mitanni. The legendary founder of the Mitannian dynasty was a king called Kirta, who was followed by a king Shuttarna. Nothing is known about these early kings.

Barattarna / Parsha(ta)tarKing Barattarna is known from a cuneiform tablet in Nuzi and an inscription by Idrimi of Alalakh.[2] Egyptian sources do not mention his name; that he was the king of Naharin whom Thutmose III fought against in the 15th century BC can only be deduced from assumptions. Whether Parsha(ta)tar, known from another Nuzi inscription, is the same as Barattarna, or a different king, is debated.

Under the rule of Thutmose III, Egyptian troops crossed the Euphrates and entered the core lands of Mitanni. At Megiddo, he fought an alliance of 330 Mitanni princes and tribal leaders under the ruler of Kadesh. See Battle of Megiddo (15th century BC). Mitanni had sent troops as well. Whether this was done because of existing treaties, or only in reaction to a common threat, remains open to debate. The Egyptian victory opened the way north.

Thutmose III again waged war in Mitanni in the 33rd year of his rule. The Egyptian army crossed the Euphrates at Carchemish and reached a town called Iryn (maybe present day Erin, 20 km northwest of Aleppo.) They sailed down the Euphrates to Emar (Meskene) and then returned home via Mitanni. A hunt for elephants at Lake Nija was important enough to be included in the annals. This was impressive PR, but did not lead to any permanent rule. Only the area at the middle Orontes and Phoenicia became part of Egyptian territory.

Victories over Mitanni are recorded from the Egyptian campaigns in Nuhashshe (middle part of Syria). Again, this did not lead to permanent territorial gains. Barattarna or his son Shaushtatar controlled the North Mitanni interior up to Nuhashshe, and the coastal territories from Kizzuwatna to Alalakh in the kingdom of Mukish at the mouth of the Orontes. Idrimi of Alalakh, returning from Egyptian exile, could only ascend his throne with Barattarna's consent. While he got to rule Mukish and Ama'u, Aleppo remained with Mitanni.

Indo-Aryan superstrateMain article: Indo-Aryan superstrate in Mitanni
Some theonyms, proper names and other terminology of the Mitanni exhibit close similarities to Indo-Aryan, suggesting that an Indo-Aryan elite imposed itself over the Hurrian population in the course of the Indo-Aryan expansion. In a treaty between the Hittites and the Mitanni, the deities Mitra, Varuna, Indra, and Nasatya (Ashvins) are invoked. Kikkuli's horse training text includes technical terms such as aika (eka, one), tera (tri, three), panza (pancha, five), satta (sapta, seven), na (nava, nine), vartana (vartana, turn, round in the horse race). The numeral aika "one" is of particular importance because it places the superstrate in the vicinity of Indo-Aryan proper as opposed to Indo-Iranian or early Iranian (which has "aiva") in general.[16]

Another text has babru (babhru, brown), parita (palita, grey), and pinkara (pingala, red). Their chief festival was the celebration of the solstice (vishuva) which was common in most cultures in the ancient world. The Mitanni warriors were called marya, the term for warrior in Sanskrit as well; note mišta-nnu (= miẓḍha,~ Sanskrit mīḍha) "payment (for catching a fugitive)" (M. Mayrhofer, Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Altindoarischen< Heidelberg 1986-2000; Vol. II 358).

Sanskritic interpretations of Mitanni royal names render Artashumara (artaššumara) as Arta-smara "who thinks of Arta/Ṛta" (Mayrhofer II 780), Biridashva (biridašṷa, biriiašṷa) as Prītāśva "whose horse is dear" (Mayrhofer II 182), Priyamazda (priiamazda) as Priyamedha "whose wisdom is dear" (Mayrhofer II 189, II378), Citrarata as citraratha "whose chariot is shining" (Mayrhofer I 553), Indaruda/Endaruta as Indrota "helped by Indra" (Mayrhofer I 134), Shativaza (šattiṷaza) as Sātivāja "winning the race price" (Mayrhofer II 540, 696), Šubandhu as Subandhu 'having good relatives" (a name in Palestine, Mayrhofer II 209, 735), Tushratta (tṷišeratta, tušratta, etc.) as *tṷaiašaratha, Vedic Tvastr "whose chariot is vehement" (Mayrhofer, Etym. Wb., I 686, I 736).

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Corduene (Armenian: Կորճայք, also known as Gorduene, Cordyene, Cardyene, Carduene, Gordyene, Gordyaea, Korduene, Korchayk, Gordian, Hebrew:[1]קרטיגיני ) was an ancient region located in northern Mesopotamia and modern day Kurdish inhabited south east Turkey. Although it was independent for a short time, for most of the time it was ruled by others and was at times a province of Greater Armenia and later of the Roman Empire. It was referred to by the Greeks as Karduchia and by both the Greeks and Romans as Corduene.

Corduene's territory was 14,707 km2 (6,000 sq mi) and had 11 cantons:

HistoryFrom the 9th century BC to 595 BC, it was part of Urartu. From 595 BC, it was part of Armenian Orontid Dynasty, which was soon conquered by Achaemenid Empire and was incorporated as the Satrapy of Armenia. After 331 BC, it became independent. In 201 BC, two Armenian commanders of the army of the Seleucid Empire, Artaxias and Zareh liberated Armenia. From 189 BC, when Artaxias I declared himself a king, Corduene was part of Kingdom of Armenia until divided in 387. It was again reunited with Armenia, from IX-XI under the Vaspurakan Kingdom.

According to the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, Gordyene is the ancient name of the region of Bohtan (now Şırnak Province).[3] It is mentioned as Beth Qardu in Syriac sources and is described as a small vassal state between Armenia and Persia in the mountainous area south of Lake Van in modern Turkey[4] Corduene must also be sought on the left bank of the Tigris River.

It has been cited as the country of the Carduchians, a fertile mountainous district, rich in pasturage.[5] The three principalities of Corduene, Moxoene, and Zabdicene are referred to as Carduchian dynasties by Toumanoff.[6] The Kingdom of Gordyene emerged from the declining Seleucid Empire and for most of its history, it was a province of the Roman Empire[7] and acknowledged the sovereignty of Rome.[8] From 189 to 90 BC it enjoyed a period of independence.

The people of Gorduene were known to have worshipped the Hurrian sky God Teshub.[9]

[edit] Carduchoi in XenophonA people called the Carduchoi are mentioned in Xenophon's Anabasis. They inhabited the mountains north of the Tigris in 401 BC, living in well-provisioned villages. They were enemies to the king of Persia, as were the Greek mercenaries with Xenophon, but their response to thousands of armed and desperate strangers was hostile. They had no heavy troops who could face the battle-hardened hoplites, but they used longbows and slings effectively, and for the Greeks the "seven days spent in traversing the country of the Carduchians had been one long continuous battle, which had cost them more suffering than the whole of their troubles at the hands of the king and Tissaphernes put together."[10]

They have been also mentioned as Gordi by Hecataeus of Miletus ca 520 BC.

[edit] Corduene in Jewish SourcesTargum, a Jewish source of Talmudic period, consistently understands Ararat to be located in Gorduene and not in Armenia.[11] This region is usually identified with the landing site in Deluge mythology. According to Aggadah, Noah landed in Korduene in Armenia. Berossus was also of the opinion that Xisthros landed with his ship in Korduene.[12] Josephus cited the evidence of Berossus as proof that the Flood was not a myth and also mentioned that the remains of the Ark were still visible in the district of Carron, persumably identical with Korduene.[13] In Nashim, the third order of Talmud, Rav Nahman bar Jacob has allowed proselytization of Kurds from Corduene.[14] This points to the existence of Jewish converts among the population of Corduene in the early 4th century.

According to the Roman historian Strabo, the region of Gorduene (Γορδυηνῆ, or Γoρδυαῖα ὄρη, "Gordyaean Mts") referred to the mountains between Diyarbakir and Mush.[15][16] He recorded its main cities as Sareisa, Satalca and Pinaca (northwest of Bezabde), and considered its inhabitants (Gordyaeans) as descendants of the ancient Carduchians. According to him, the inhabitants had an exceptional repute as master-builders and as experts in the construction of siege engines and for this reason Tigranes used them in such work; he also notices the country for its naphtha resources.[17] Ammianus Marcellinus visited this region while on a diplomatic visit to the satrap of Corduene.[18] Eretrians who were exiled and deported by the Persians to Mesopotamia, were said to have taken up their dwelling in the region of Gordyene.[19]

According to Strabo the Gordyaeans received their name from Gordys son of Triptolemus, who assisted in searching after Io, and then settled in Gordyaea district of Phrygia.
Both Phraates III and Tigranes the Great laid claim to this province. However, it was conquered by the Roman troops under Pompey. The local population (called Gordyeni) did not defend the Armenian rule since according to Plutarch, Tigranes had demolished their native cities and had forced them into exile in Tigranocerta.[21] In 69 BC, Zarbienus, the king of Corduene, was secretly planning for a revolt against Tigranes. He was negotiating with Appius Claudius for Roman help. However the plan was revealed and he was killed by Tigranes. After this, Lucullus raised a monument to Zarbienus and then he took over the region of Corduene.[22] He took part in the funeral of Zarbienus, offered royal robes, gold and the spoils (taken from Tigranes), and called him his companion and confederate of the Romans.[23]

After Pompey's success in subjugating Armenia and part of Pontus, and the Roman advance across the Euphrates, Phraates was anxious to have a truce with the Romans. However, Pompey held him in contempt and demanded back the territory of Corduene. He sent envoys, but after receiving no answer, he sent Afranius into the territory and occupied it without a battle. The Parthians who were found in possession were driven beyond the frontier and pursued even as far as Arbela in Adiabene.[24] According to an inscription dedicated to the temple of Venus, Pompey gave protection to the newly acquired territory of Gordyene.[25]

[edit] Diocletian and Corduene
In the spring of 360, Shapur II staged a campaign to capture the city of Singara (probably modern Shingar or Sinjar northwest of Mosul). The town fell after a few days of siege. From Singara, Shapur directed his march almost due northwards, and leaving Nisibis unassailed upon his left, proceeded to attack the strong fort known indifferently as Pinaca (Phaenicha) or Bezabde. This was a position on the east bank of the Tigris, near the point where that river quits the mountains and debouches upon the plain; though not on the site, it may be considered the representative of the modern Jezireh (Cizre in southeastern Turkey), which commands the passes from the low country into the Kurdish mountains. It was much valued by Rome, was fortified in places with a double wall, and was guarded by three legions and a large body of Kurdish archers. Shapur sent a flag of truce to demand a surrender, joining with the messengers some prisoners of high rank taken at Singara, lest the enemy should open fire upon his envoys. The device was successful; but the garrison proved staunch, and determined on resisting to the last. After a long siege, the wall was at last breached, the city taken, and its defenders indiscriminately massacred.[29]

In 363, a treaty was signed in which Jovian ceded five provinces beyond the Euphrates including Corduene and Arzanene and towns of Nisibis and Singara to the Sassanids. Following this treaty, Greeks living in those lands emigrated due to persecution of Christians at the hands of Shapur and the Zoroastrians.[
Corduene in the 6th and 7th centuriesIn 578, the Byzantine emperor Flavius Mauricius Tiberius Augustus defeated the Sassanid army led by Chosroes I, and conquered Carduene and incorporated it once again in the Roman empire. The Roman army also liberated 10,000 Christian captives of the Sassanids.[32] According to Khwarizmi, Arabs conquered the area along with Nisbis and Tur Abdin in 640.[33]

[edit] List of kingsZarbienus; early-mid-1st century BC: A famous king of Cordyene, made overtures to Appius Claudius, when the latter was staying at Antiocheia, wishing to shake off the yoke of Tigranes. He was informed against, however, and was assassinated with his wife and children before the Romans entered Armenia. When Lucullus arrived, he celebrated his funeral rites with great pomp, setting fire to the funeral pile with his own hand, and had a sumptuous monument erected to him.
King Manisarus; c. 115 He took control over parts of Armenia and Mesopotamia, in the time of Trajan; therefor Osroes, the Parthian king, declared war against him; Manisarus sided with Romans. There are some coins extant, which are assigned to Manisarus.
Ardashir; c 340s He was against christianization of Corduene.[34]
Jovinian c. 359 [35]
Some 19th-century scholars, such as George Rawlinson, identified Corduene and Carduchi with the modern Kurds, suggesting that Carduchi was the ancient lexical equivalent of "Kurdistan".[36][37][38]

Some recent academic sources disagree, suggesting that Corduene should be described as proto-Kurdish.[39]

There were numerous forms of this name, partly due to the difficulty of representing kh in Latin. The spelling Karduchoi is itself probably borrowed from Armenian, since the termination -choi represents the Armenian language plural suffix -kh.[40] It is speculated that Carduchi spoke an Old Iranic language[

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The Lullubi[pronunciation?] or Lulubi were a group of tribes during the 3rd millennium BC, from a region known as Lulubum, now the Sharazor plain of the Zagros Mountains of modern Iran. Frayne (1990) identified their city Lulubuna or Luluban with the modern Kurdish town, Halabja.

The early Sumerian legend "Lugalbanda and the Anzud Bird", set in the reign of Enmerkar of Uruk, alludes to the "mountains of Lulubi" as being where the character of Lugalbanda encounters the gigantic Anzud bird while searching for the rest of Enmerkar's army en route to siege Aratta.


Photo of the Naram-Sin stele, commemorating his victory over Lullubum.Lullubum appears in historical times as one of the lands Sargon the Great subjugated within his Akkadian Empire, along with the neighboring province of Gutium to the south. Sargon's grandson Naram Sin defeated the Lullubi and their king Satuni, and had his famous victory stele made in commemoration. After the Akkadian Empire fell to the Gutians, the Lullubians rebelled against the Gutian king Erridupizir, according to the latter's inscriptions.

Following the Gutian period, the Neo-Sumerian (Ur-III) ruler Shulgi is said to have raided Lullubi at least 9 times; by the time of Amar-Sin, Lullubians formed a contingent in the military of Ur, suggesting that the region was then under Neo-Sumerian control.


Drawing by Pascal Coste, ca. 1840, of a rock bas-relief of Victory of King Annubanini and the goddess Ishtar, Sar-I Pul, IranAnother famous rock carving depicting the Lullubian king Anubanini with the Assyrian-Babylonian goddess Ishtar, captives in tow, is now thought to date to the Ur-III period; however, a later Babylonian legendary retelling of the exploits of Sargon the Great mentions Anubanini as one of his opponents.

In the following (second) millennium BC, the term "Lullubi" or "Lullu" seems to have become a generic Babylonian / Assyrian term for "highlander", while the original region of Lullubi was also known as Zamua. However, the "land of Lullubi" makes a reappearance in the late 12th century BC, when both Nebuchadnezzar I of Babylon (in c. 1120 BC) and Tiglath-Pileser I of Assyria (in 1113 BC) claim to have subdued it. Neo-Assyrian kings of the following centuries also recorded campaigns and conquests in the area of Lullubum / Zamua. Most notably, Ashur-nasir-pal II had to suppress a revolt among the Lullubian / Zamuan chiefs in 881 BC, during which they constructed a wall in the Bazian pass (between modern Kirkuk and Sulaymaniyah) in a failed attempt to keep the Assyrians out. They were said to have had 19 walled cities in their land, as well as a large supply of horses, cattle, metals, textiles and wine, which were carried off by Ashur-nasir-pal. Local chiefs or governors of the Zamua region continued to be mentioned down to the end of Esarhaddon's reign (669 BC).

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The Cyrtians or Kyrtians (gr. Κύρτιοι Kýrtioi, lat. Cyrtii) was an ancient tribe in historic Persia. Their name is a candidate for the nominal ancestor of the ethnonym of the Kurdish people.

According to Rüdiger Schmitt,[1] a tribe dwelling mainly in the mountains of Atropatenian Media together with the Cadusii, Amardi (or “Mardi”), Tapyri, and others (Strabo 11.13.3). Strabo characterized the Cyrtians living in Persia as migrants and predatory brigands.

In the Hellenistic period they seem to have been in demand as slingers, for they fought as such for the Median satrap Molon in his revolt against King Antiochus III in 220 BC

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The Medes (/midz/)[N 1] (from Old Persian Māda-) were an ancient Iranian people[N 2] who lived in Iran in an area known as Media and spoke a northwestern Iranian language referred to as the Median language. Their arrival to the region is associated with the first wave of Iranic tribes in the late second millennium BCE (the Bronze Age collapse) through the beginning of the first millennium BCE.

From the 10th century BCE to the late 7th century BCE, the Iranic Medes and Persians fell under the domination of the Neo Assyrian Empire based in Mesopotamia.[6]

After the fall of the Assyrian Empire, between 616 BCE and 605 BCE, a unified Median state was formed which together with Babylonia, Lydia, and Egypt became one of the four major powers of the ancient Near East. An alliance with the Babylonians and the Scythians helped the Medes to capture Nineveh in 612 BCE which resulted in the collapse of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. The Medes were subsequently able to establish their Median kingdom (with Ecbatana as their royal centre) beyond their original homeland (central-western Iran) and had eventually a territory stretching roughly from northeastern Iran to the Halys River in Anatolia. The Median kingdom was conquered in 550 BCE by Cyrus the Great who established the next Iranian dynasty—the Persian Achaemenid Empire.

A few archaeological sites (discovered in the "Median triangle" in western Iran) and textual sources (from contemporary Assyrians and also Greeks in later centuries) provide a brief documentation of the history and culture of the Median state. These architectural sources, religions temples, and literary references show the importance of Median lasting contributions (such as the Safavid-Achaemenid-Median link of the tradition of "columned audience halls") to the Iranian culture. A number of words from the Median language are still in use and there are languages being geographically and comparatively traced to the northwestern Iranian language of Median. The Medes had an Ancient Iranian Religion (a form of pre-Zoroastrian Mazdaism or Mithra worshipping) with a priesthood named as "Magi". Later and during the reigns of last Median kings the reforms of Zarathustra spread in western Iran.

Besides Ecbatana (modern Hamedan), the other cities existing in Media were Laodicea (modern Nahavand)[7] and the mound that was the largest city of the Medes, Rhages (also called Rey), on the outskirts of Shahr Rey, south of Tehran. The fourth city of Media was Apamea, near Ecbatana, whose precise location is unknown. In later periods, Medes and especially Mede soldiers are identified and portrayed prominently in ancient Persian archaeological sites such as Persepolis, where they are shown to have a major role and presence in the military of the Persian Empire's Achaemenid dynasty.

According to the Histories of Herodotus, there were six Median tribes[8]:

Thus Deioces collected the Medes into a nation, and ruled over them alone. Now these are the tribes of which they consist: the Busae, the Paretaceni, the Struchates, the Arizanti, the Budii, and the Magi.
The six Median tribes resided in Media proper, the triangle between of Ecbatana, Rhagae and Aspadana,[3] in today's central Iran,[9][10] the area between Tehran, Isfahan and Hamadan. Of the Median tribes, the Magi resided in Rhaga,[11] modern Tehran.[12] It was a sort of sacred caste, which ministered to the spiritual needs of the Medes.[13] The Paretaceni tribe resided in and around Aspadana, modern Isfahan,[3][14][15] the Arizanti lived in and around Kashan[3] and the Busae tribe lived in and around the future Median capital of Ecbatana, modern Hamadan.[3] The Struchates and the Budii lived in villages in the Median triangle.[16]

NameThe original source for different words used to call the Median people, their language and homeland is a directly transmitted Old Iranian geographical name which is attested as the Old Persian "Māda-" (sing. masc.).[17] The meaning of this word is not precisely established.[17][18] The linguist W. Skalmowski proposes a relation with the proto-Indoeuropean word "med(h)-" meaning "central, suited in the middle" by referring to Old Indic "madhya-" and Old Iranic "maidiia-" both carrying the same meaning.[17]

They also appear in many ancient texts. According to the Histories of Herodotus;[19]

The Medes were called anciently by all people Aryans; but when Medea, the Colchian, came to them from Athens, they changed their name. Such is the account which they themselves give.
[edit] Historical geography of MediaThe original population area of the Median people was western Iran and named after them as "Media". At the end of the 2nd millennium BCE the Median tribes arrived in the region (one of several Iranic tribes to do so) which they later called Media. These tribes expanded their control over larger areas subsequently and over a period of several hundred years the boundaries of Media moved.[20]

[edit] Ancient textual sourcesAn early description of the territory of Media by the Assyrians dates from the end of 9th century BCE until the beginning of the 7th century BCE. The southern border of Media, in that period, is named as the Elamite region of Simaški in present day Lorestan. From the west and northwest it was bounded by the Zagros mountains and from the east by Dašt-e Kavir. The region of Media was ruled by the Assyrians and for them the region "extended along the Great Khorasan Road from just east of Harhar to Alwand, and probably beyond. It was limited on the north by the non Iranic state of Mannea, on the south by Ellipi."[21] The location of Harhar is suggested to be "the central or eastern" Mahidasht in Kermanshah province.[22]

On the east and southeast of Media, as described by the Assyrians, another land with the name of "Patušarra" appears. This land was located near a mountain range which the Assyrians call "Bikni" and describe as "Lapis Lazuli Mountain". There are various opinion on the location of this mountain. Damavand of Tehran and Alvand of Hamadan are two proposed identifications of that location. This location is the most remote eastern area that the Assyrians knew or reached during their expansion until the beginning of 7th century BCE.[23]

In the sources from Achaemenid Iran and specifically from the inscription of Darius I (2.76, 77-78) the capital of Media is named as "Hamgmatāna-" in Old Persian (and as Elamite "Agmadana-", Babylonian "Agamtanu-", etc.). The classical authors transmitted this as Ecbatana. This site is the modern Hamadan province.[24]

[edit] Archaeological evidence
Excavation from ancient Ecbatane, Hamadan, IranThe Median archaeological sources are rare. The discoveries of Median sites happened only after the 1960s.[25] For sometime after 1960 the search for Median archeological sources has been for most parts focused in an area known as the “Median triangle,” defined roughly as the region bounded by Hamadān, Malāyer (in Hamdan province) and Kangāvar (in Kermanshah province).[25] Three major sites from central western Iran in the Iron Age III period (i.e. 850-500 BCE) are[26]

Tepe Nush-i Jan (a primarily religious site of Median period),
The site is located 14 km west of Malāyer in Hamadan province.[25] The excavations started in 1967 with D. Stronach as the director.[27] The remains of four main buildings in the site have "the central temple, the western temple, the fort, and the columned hall" which according to Stronach were likely to have been built in the order named and predate the latter occupation of the first half of the 6th century BCE.[28] According to Stronach, the central temple, with its stark design, "provides a notable, if mute, expression of religious belief and practice".[28] A number of ceramics from the Median levels at Tepe Nush-i Jan have been found which are associated with the time (the second half of the 7th century BCE) of the Median consolidation of their power in the Hamadān areas. These findings show four different wares known as “Common ware” (buff, cream, or light red in color and with gold or silver mica temper) including jars in various size the largest of which is a form of ribbed pithoi. Smaller and more elaborate vessels were in “grey ware”, (these display smoothed and burnished surface). The “Cooking ware” and “Crumbly ware” are also recognized each in single handmade products.[28]
Godin Tepe (its period II: a fortified palace of a Median king or tribal chief),
The site is located 13 km east of Kangāvar city on the left bank of the river Gamas Āb". The excavations, started in 1965, were led by T. C. Young, Jr. which, according to D. Stronach, evidently shows an important Bronze Age construction that was reoccupied sometime before the beginning of the Iron III period. The excavations of Young indicate the remains of a part of a single residence of a local ruler which later became quite substantial.[25] This is similar to those mentioned often in Assyrian sources.[26]
Baba Jan (probably the seat of a lesser tribal ruler of Media).
The site is located in northeastern Luristan with a distance of roughly 10 km from Nūrābād in Lurestan province. The excavations were conducted by C. Goff in 1966-69. The level II of this site probably dates to 7th century BCE.[29]
These sources have both similarities (in cultural characteristics) and differences (due to functional differences and diversity among the Median tribes).[26] The architecture of this archaeological findings that can probably be dated to the Median period show a link between the tradition of columned audience halls seen often in Achaemenid Iran (for example in Persepolis) and also in the Safavid Iran (for example in "the hall of forty columns" from 17th century CE) and the Median architecture.[26]

The materials found at Tepe Nush-i Jan, Godin Tepe, and other sites located in Media together with the Assyrian reliefs show the existence of urban settlements in Media in the first half of the first millennium BCE which had functioned as centres for production of handicraft and also of an agricultural and cattle-breeding economy of a secondary type.[30] For other historical documentation, the archaeological evidence, though rare, together with cuneiform records by Assyrian make it possible, regardless of Herodotus accounts, to establish some of the early history of Medians.[31]

[edit] Rise to power[edit] Pre-dynastic history
Rhyton in shape of rams head gold-west of Iran-median late 7th early 6th cent.B.CIranic tribes were present in western and northwestern Iran at least from 12–11th century BCE. The significance of Iranian elements in these regions were established from beginning of the second half of the 8th century BCE.[32] By this time the Iranian tribes were the majority in what later become the territory of Median kingdom and also the west of Media proper.[32] A study of textual sources from the region show that in Neo-Assyrian period, the regions of Media and further west and northwest had a population with Iranian speaking people as majority.[33]

In western and northwestern Iran and in areas west to these and prior to the Median rule there were previously political activities of powerful societies of Elam, Mannaea, Assyria and Urartu (Armenia).[32] There are various and up-dated opinions on the positions and activities of Iranian tribes in these societies and prior to the "major Iranian state formations" in the late 7th century BCE.[32] One opinion (of Herzfeld, et al.) is that the ruling class were "Iranian migrants" but the society was "autochthonous" while another opinion (of Grantovsky, et al.) holds that both the ruling class and basic elements of the population were Iranian.[34]

During the period of the Neo Assyrian Empire (911-612 BC) the Medes, Persians and other Iranic peoples of northern and western Iran were subject to Assyria. This changed during the reign of Cyaxares, who in alliance with Nabopolassar of Babylon and the Scythians attacked and destroyed the strife riven empire between 616 and 605 BC.[35]

[edit] Median dynasty
Protoma in the form of a bull's head, 8th century B.C., gold and filigree, National Museum, WarsawThe list of Median rulers and their dates compiled according to A: Herodotus who calls them "kings" and associates them with the same family, and B: Babylonian Chronicle which in "Gadd's Chronicle on the Fall of Nineveh" gives its own list, is:

Deioces (reign 700-647 BCE)

Phraortes (reign 647-625 BCE)

Scythian (reign 624-597 BCE)

Cyaxares (reign 624-585 BCE) and

Astyages (reign 585-549 BCE),

a total of 150 years.[36] Not all of these dates and personalities given by Herodotus match the other near eastern sources[36]

In Herodotus (book 1, chapters 95-130), Deioces is introduced as the founder of a centralized Median state. He had been known to Median people as "a just and incorruptible man" and when asked by Median people to solve their possible disputes he agreed and put the condition that they make him "king" and build a great city at Ecbatana as the capital of Median state.[37] Judging from the contemporary sources of the region and disregarding[38] the account of Herodotus puts the formation of a unified Median state during the reign of Cyaxares or later.[39]

[edit] Culture and societyIn Greek references to "Median" people there is no clear distinction between the "Persians" and the "Medians"; in fact for a Greek to become "too closely associated with Iranian culture" was "to become medianized, not persianized".[26] The Median kingdom was a short-lived Iranian state and the textual and archaeological sources of that period are rare and little could be known from the Median culture which nevertheless made a "profound, and lasting, contribu­tion to the greater world of Iranian culture".[40]

[edit] LanguageMain article: Median language
Median people spoke the Median language, which was an Old Iranian language. Strabo in his Geography (finished in the early 1st century AD) mentions the affinity of Median with other Iranian languages: "The name of Ariana is further extended to a part of Persia and of Media, as also to the Bactrians and Sogdians on the north; for these speak approximately the same language, but with slight variations".[41]

No original deciphered text is proved to have been written in Median language. It is suggested that similar to later Iranian practice of keeping archives of written documents in Achaemenid Iran, there was also a maintenance of archives by Median government in their capital Ecbatana. There are examples of "Median literature" found in later records. One is according to Herdotus that the Median king Deioces, appearing as a judge, made judgement on causes submitted in writing. There is also a report by Dinon on existence of "Median court poets".[42] Median literature is a part of the "Old Iranian literature" (including also Saka, Old Persian, Avestan) as this Iranian affiliation of them is explicit also in ancient texts, such as Herodotus's account[19] that many peoples including Medes were "universally called Iranian".[43]

Words of Median origin appear in various other Iranian dialects, including Old Persian. A feature of Old Persian inscriptions is the large number of words and names from other languages and the Median language takes in this regard a special place for historical reasons.[44] The Median words in Old Persian texts, whose Median origin can be established by "phonetic criteria",[44] appear "more frequently among royal titles and among terms of the chancellery, military, and judicial affairs".[44] Words of Median origin include:

*čiθra-: "origin".[45] The word appears in *čiθrabṛzana- (med.) "exalting his linage", *čiθramiθra- (med.) "having mithraic origin", *čiθraspāta- (med.) "having a brilliant army", etc.[46]
Farnah: Divine glory; (Avestan: khvarənah)
Paridaiza: Paradise, (as in Pardis پردیس)
Spaka- : The word is Median and means "dog".[47] Herodotus identifies "Spaka-" (Gk. "σπάχα" - female dog) as Median rather than Persian.[48] The word is still used in modern Iranian languages including Talyshi.
vazṛka-: "great" (as Modern Persian bozorg)[44]
vispa-: "all".[49] (as in Avestan). The component appears in such words as vispafryā (Med. fem.) "dear to all", vispatarva- (med.) "vanquishing all", vispavada- (med. -op.) "leader of all", etc.[50]
Xshayathiya (royal, royalty): This Median word (∗xšaθra-pā-) is an example of words whose Greek form (known as romanized "satrap" from Gk. "satrápēs - σατράπης") mirrors, as opposed to the tradition[N 3], a Median rather than an Old Persian form of an Old Iranian word.[51]
zūra-: "evil" and zūrakara-: "evil-doer".[44]
[edit] ReligionThere are very limited sources concerning the religion of Median people. Primary sources pointing to religious affiliations of Medes and found so far include the archaeological discoveries in Tepe Nush-e Jan, personal names of Median individuals, and the Histories of Herodotus. The archaeological source gives the earliest of the temple structures in Iran and the "stepped fire altar" discovered there is linked to the common Iranian legacy of the "cult of fire". Herodotus mentions Median Magi as a Median tribe providing priests for both the Medes and the Persians. They had a "priestly caste" which passed their functions from father to son. They played a significant role in the court of the Median king Astyages who had in his court certain Medians as "advisers, dream interpreters, and soothsayers". Classical historians "unanimously" regarded the Magi as priests of the Zoroastrian faith. From the personal names of Medes as recorded by Assyrians (in 8th and 9th century BCE) there are examples of use of the Indo-Iranian word arta- (lit. "truth") which is familiar from both Avestan and Old Persian and also examples of theophoric names containing Maždakku and also the name "Ahura Mazdā".[52] Scholars disagree whether these are indications of Zoroastrian religion of Medes. Diakonoff believes that "Astyages and perhaps even Cyaxares had already embraced a religion derived from the teachings of Zoroaster" which was not identical with doctrine of Zarathustra and Mary Boyce believes that "the existence of the Magi in Media with their own traditions and forms of worship was an obstacle to Zoroastrian proselytizing there".[52] Boyce wrote that the Zoroastrian traditions in the Median city of Ray probably goes back to 8th century BCE.[53] It is suggested that from 8th century BCE, a form of "Mazdaism with common Iranian traditions" existed in Media and the strict reforms of Zarathustra began to spread in western Iran during the reign of the last Median kings in 6th century BCE.[52]

It is also suggested that "Mithra" has a Median name and Medes may have practised Mithraism and had Mithra as their supreme deity.[54]

[edit] Media in later periods[edit] Achaemenid Persia
The Ganj Nameh (lit.: Treasure epistle) in Ecbatana. The inscriptions are by Darius I and his son in Xerxes I
Apadana Hall, 5th century BC carving of Persian archers and Median soldiers in traditional costume (Medians are wearing rounded hats and boots)Further information: Persian Mesopotamia
In 553 BC, Cyrus the Great, King of Persia, rebelled against his grandfather, the Mede King, Astyages son of Cyaxares; he finally won a decisive victory in 550 BC resulting in Astyages' capture by his own dissatisfied nobles, who promptly turned him over to the triumphant Cyrus.[55]

After Cyrus's victory against Astyages, the Medes were subjected to their close kin, the Persians.[56] In the new empire they retained a prominent position; in honor and war, they stood next to the Persians; their court ceremony was adopted by the new sovereigns, who in the summer months resided in Ecbatana; and many noble Medes were employed as officials, satraps and generals. Interestingly, at the beginning the Greek historians referred to the Achaemenid Empire as a Median empire.

After the assassination of the usurper Smerdis, a Mede Fravartish (Phraortes), claiming to be a scion of Cyaxares, tried to restore the Mede kingdom, but was defeated by the Persian generals and executed in Ecbatana (Darius I the Great in the Behistun inscription). Another rebellion, in 409 BC, against Darius II[57] was of short duration. But the Iranian[58] tribes to the north, especially the Cadusii, were always troublesome; many abortive expeditions of the later kings against them are mentioned.[59]

Under Persian rule, the country was divided into two satrapies: the south, with Ecbatana and Rhagae (Rey near modern Tehran), Media proper, or Greater Media, as it is often called, formed in Darius I the Great's organization the eleventh satrapy,[60] together with the Paricanians and Orthocorybantians; the north, the district of Matiane, together with the mountainous districts of the Zagros and Assyria proper (east of the Tigris) was united with the Alarodians and Saspirians in eastern Armenia, and formed the eighteenth satrapy.[61]

When the Persian empire decayed and the Cadusii and other mountainous tribes made themselves independent, eastern Armenia became a special satrapy, while Assyria seems to have been united with Media; therefore Xenophon in the Anabasis always designates Assyria by the name of "Media".[59]

[edit] Seleucid ruleMain article: Atropatene
Following Alexander's invasion of the satrapy of Media in the summer of 330 BC, he appointed as satrap a former general of Darius III the Great named Atropates (Atrupat) in 328 BC, according to Arrian. In the partition of his empire, southern Media was given to the Macedonian Peithon; but the north, far off and of little importance to the generals squabbling over Alexander's inheritance, was left to Atropates.

While southern Media, with Ecbatana, passed to the rule of Antigonus, and afterwards (about 310 BC) to Seleucus I, Atropates maintained himself in his own satrapy and succeeded in founding an independent kingdom. Thus the partition of the country, that Persia had introduced, became lasting; the north was named Atropatene (in Pliny, Atrapatene; in Ptolemy, Tropatene), after the founder of the dynasty, a name still said to be preserved in the modern form 'Azerbaijan'.

The capital of Atropatene was Gazaca in the central plain, and the castle Phraaspa, discovered on the Araz river by archaeologists in April 2005.

Atropatene is that country of western Asia which was least of all other countries influenced by Hellenism; there exists not even a single coin of its rulers. Southern Media remained a province of the Seleucid Empire for a century and a half, and Hellenism was introduced everywhere. Media was surrounded everywhere by Greek towns, in pursuance of Alexander's plan to protect it from neighboring barbarians, according to Polybius.[62] Only Ecbatana retained its old character. But Rhagae became the Greek town Europus; and with it Strabo[63] names Laodicea, Apamea Heraclea or Achais. Most of them were founded by Seleucus I and his son Antiochus I.

[edit] Arsacid ruleIn 221 BC, the satrap Molon tried to make himself independent (there exist bronze coins with his name and the royal title), together with his brother Alexander, satrap of Persis, but they were defeated and killed by Antiochus the Great. In the same way, the Mede satrap Timarchus took the diadem and conquered Babylonia; on his coins he calls himself the great king Timarchus; but again the legitimate king, Demetrius I, succeeded in subduing the rebellion, and Timarchus was slain. But with Demetrius I, the dissolution of the Seleucid Empire began, brought about chiefly by the intrigues of the Romans, and shortly afterwards, in about 150, the Parthian king Mithradates I conquered Media.[64]

From this time Media remained subject to the Arsacids or Parthians, who changed the name of Rhagae, or Europus, into Arsacia,[65] and divided the country into five small provinces.[66] From the Parthians, it passed in 226 to the Sassanids, together with Atropatene.

[edit] Kurdologists and MedesThe Russian historian and linguist Vladimir Minorsky suggested that the Medes, who widely inhabited the land where currently the Kurds form the majority, are likely to be the forefathers of the modern Kurds, also on the basis of historical and lingustic evidence that he gathered.[67][page needed][68]

M. Chahin and Wadie Jwaideh wrote that "The Medes were the ancestors of Xenophon's Carduchi and the modern Kurds.[69][70]

Contemporary linguistic evidence has challenged the previously held view that the Kurds are descendants of the Medes.[71][72] Gernot Windfuhr (professor of Iranian Studies) identified Kurdish dialects as Parthian, albeit with a Median substratum.[73] David Neil MacKenzie, an authority of Kurdish language, thought that the Medes spoke a northwestern Iranian language, while the Kurdish people speak a southwestern Iranian language.[67] The Kurdologist Martin van Bruinessen argues against the attempt to take Medes as ancestors of the Kurds.[68] Modern scholars who consider central Iranian dialects, mainly those of Kashan area, and Tati of Tehran area as the only direct offshoots of the Median language.[74]

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The Scythians (/ˈsɪθi.ən/ or /ˈsɪði.ən/; from Greek Σκύθης, Σκύθοι), or Scyths /ˈsɪθ/, were an Iranian nomadic people[1][2][3][4] living in Scythia, the region encompassing the Pontic-Caspian steppe (in Eastern Europe) and parts of Central Asia throughout the Classical Antiquity.[5] Much of the surviving information about the Scythians comes from the Greek historian Herodotus (c. 440 BC) in his Histories and Ovid in his poem of exile Epistulae ex Ponto, and archaeologically from the exquisite goldwork found in Scythian burial mounds in Ukraine and Southern Russia. Two of the largest Scythian tribal confederations were the Sarmatians of Western Scythia and the Amyrgians of Eastern Scythia.

In a broader sense, the name "Scythian" has also been used to refer to various peoples seen as similar to the Scythians, or who lived anywhere in the area known as Scythia.[6]

NamesSulimirski views the Histories of Herodotus as the most important literary source relating to ancient Scyths.[7] Herodotus provides a depiction that can be related to the results of archaeological research, but apparently knew little of the eastern part of Scythia. He did say that the ancient Persians called all the Scyths Σάκαι (Sacae, Herodotus 7.64). Their principal tribe, the "Royal Scyths", ruled the vast lands occupied by the nation as a whole (Herodotus 4.20), calling themselves Σκώλοτοι (Scōloti, Herodotus 4.6). Oswald Szemerényi devotes a thorough discussion to the etymologies of ancient ethnic words for the Scythians in his work "Four old Iranian ethnic names: Scythian – Skudra – Sogdian – Saka". In it, the names of Herodotus and the names of his title, except Saka, as well as many other words for "Scythian," such as Assyrian Aškuz and Greek Skuthēs, descend from *skeud-, an ancient Indo-European root meaning "propel, shoot" (cf. English shoot).[8] *skud- is the zero-grade; that is, a variant in which the -e- is not present. The restored Scythian name is *Skuda (archer), which among the Pontic or Royal Scythians became *Skula, in which the d has been regularly replaced by an l.

Saka, on the other hand, Szemerényi relates to an Iranian verbal root, sak-, "go, roam", and hypothesizes that the Achaemenids used "nomad" to refer to the northern tribes, rather than their endonym. The name does appear somewhat further east than the Achaemenid Empire, as the Chinese knew the Asian Scythians as Sai (Chinese character: 塞, Old Sinitic *sək). Whether they adopted the Achaemenid name, or "Saka" came to be an endonym, it is not clear. The term "saka" (سکه) exists in modern Pashto, and means "related by blood" (e.g. saka wror means "blood brother"). The modern region of Sistan in eastern Iran and southern Afghanistan takes its name from the classical Sakestan ("land of the Saka").[9][10][11]

Sakestan was not the only province of Scythian origin on the eastern margin of the Persian Empire. According to Szemerényi, Sogdiana was named from the Skuda form. Starting from the names of the province given in Old Persian inscriptions, Sugda and Suguda, and the knowledge derived from Middle Sogdian that Old Persian -gd- applied to Sogdian was actually pronounced as voiced fricatives, -γδ-, Szemerényi arrives at *Suγδa as an Old Sogdian endonym.[12] Applying sound changes apparent in other Sogdian words and inherent in Indo-European he traces the development of *Suγδa from Skuda, "archer," as follows: Skuda > *Sukuda by anaptyxis > *Sukuδa > *Sukδa (syncope) > *Suγδa (assimilation).
Literary evidence
Map of the Roman Empire under Hadrian (ruled 117–138 AD), showing the location of the Scythae Basilaei ("Royal Scyths") along the north shore of the Black SeaThe Scythians first appeared in the historical record in the 8th century BC.[14] Herodotus reported three contradictory versions as to the origins of the Scythians, but placed greatest faith in this version:[15]

There is also another different story, now to be related, in which I am more inclined to put faith than in any other. It is that the wandering Scythians once dwelt in Asia, and there warred with the Massagetae, but with ill success; they therefore quitted their homes, crossed the Araxes, and entered the land of Cimmeria.
Subsequently, the term Scythian, like Cimmerian, was used to refer to a variety of groups from the Black Sea to southern Siberia and central Asia. "They were not a specific people", but rather variety of peoples "referred to at variety of times in history, and in several places, none of which was their original homeland" [16] The Bible includes a single reference to Scythians in Colossians 3:11, immediately after mentioning barbarian, possibly as an extreme example of a barbarian.[17]

ArchaeologyModern interpretation of historical, archaeological and anthropological evidence has proposed two broad hypotheses. The first, formerly more espoused view by Soviet-era researchers, roughly followed Herodotus' (third) account, stating that the Scythians were an Iranic group who arrived from Inner Asia, i.e. from the area of Turkestan and western Siberia.[14][18][19]

An alternative view explains the origin of the Scythian cultural complex to have emerged from local groups of the "Timber Grave" (or Srubna) culture (although this is also associated with the Cimmerians). This second theory is supported by anthropological evidence which has found that Scythian skulls are similar to preceding findings from the Timber Grave culture, and distinct from those of the Central Asian Sacae.[20]


Scythian & related archaeological groups in circum- Pontic region, c. 7 - 3 century BCOthers have further stressed that "Scythian" was a very broad term used by both ancient and modern scholars to describe a whole host of otherwise unrelated peoples sharing only certain similarities in lifestyle (nomadism), cultural practices and language. The first millennium BC ushered a period of unprecedented cultural and economic connectivity amongst disparate and wide-ranging communities. A mobile, broadly similar lifestyle would have facilitated contacts amongst disparate ethnic groupings along the expansive Eurasian steppe from the Danube to Manchuria, leading to many cultural similarities. From the viewpoint of Greek and Persian ancient observers, they were all lumped together under the etic category "Scythians".

GeneticsEarly physical analyses have unanimously discovered that the Scythians, even those in the east (E.g. Pazyryk region), possessed distinctly European features. This has been supplemented and refined by analysis of ancient DNA.

In a 2009 study, the haplotypes and haplogroups of 26 ancient human specimens from the Krasnoyarsk area in Siberia dated from between the middle of the second millennium BC. to the 4th century AD (Scythian and Sarmatian timeframe). Nearly all subjects belong to haplogroup R1a1-M17. The study authors suggest that their data shows that between Bronze and Iron Ages, the constellation of populations known variously as Scythians, Andronovians, etc. were blue (or green)-eyed, fair-skinned and light-haired people who might have played a role in the early development of the Tarim Basin civilization. Moreover, this study found that they were genetically more closely related to modern populations of eastern Europe than central and southern Asia.[21]

In a 2004 study, analysis of the HV1 sequence obtained from a male Scytho-Siberian's remains at the Kizil site in the Altai Republic revealed the individual possessed the N1a maternal lineage.[22] Mitochondrial DNA has been extracted from two Scytho-Siberian skeletons found in the Altai Republic (Russia). Both remains were determined to be of males from a population who had characteristics "of mixed Euro-Mongoloid origin". One of the individuals was found to carry the F2a maternal lineage, and the other the D lineage, both of which are characteristic of East Eurasian populations.[23]

In a 2002 study, maternal genetic analysis of Saka period male and female skeletal remains from a double inhumation kurgan located at the Beral site in Kazakhstan was analysed. The two individuals were found to be not closely related and were possibly husband and wife. The HV1 mitochondrial sequence of the male was similar to the Anderson sequence which is most frequent in European populations. Contrary, the HV1 sequence of the female suggested a greater likelihood of Asian origins.[24]

HistoryClassical Antiquity (600 BC to AD 300)
Timeline of Scythian kurgans in Asia and Europe Per Fig.6 of Alekseev, A. Yu. et al., "Chronology of Eurasian Scythian< Antiquities"
Skunkha, king of the Sakā tigraxaudā ("wearing pointed caps Sakae", a group of Scythian tribes). Detail of Behistun Inscription.
Scythian warriors, drawn after figures on an electrum cup from the Kul-Oba kurgan burial near Kerch. The warrior on the right strings his bow, bracing it behind his knee; note the typical pointed hood, long jacket with fur or fleece trimming at the edges, decorated trousers, and short boots tied at the ankle. Scythians apparently normally wore their hair long and loose, and all adult men apparently wore beards. The gorytos appears clearly on the left hip of the bare-headed spearman; his companion has an interesting shield, perhaps representing a plain leather covering over a wooden or wicker base. (Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg)
Treasure of Kul-Oba, near Kerch
Silver coin of King Azes II (r.c. 35-12 BC). Buddhist triratna symbol in the left field on the reverse.Herodotus provides the first detailed description of the Scythians. He classes the Cimmerians as a distinct autochthonous tribe, expelled by the Scythians from the northern Black Sea coast (Hist. 4.11–-12). Herodotus also states (4.6) that the Scythians consisted of the Auchatae, Catiaroi, Traspians and Paralatae or "Royal Scythians."

For Herodotus, the Scythians were outlandish barbarians living north of the Black Sea in what are now Moldova and Ukraine.
—Michael Kulikowski, Rome's Gothic Wars from the Third Century to Alaric, pg. 14
In 512 BC, when King Darius the Great of Persia attacked the Scythians, he allegedly penetrated into their land after crossing the Danube. Herodotus relates that the nomad Scythians succeeded in frustrating the designs of the Persian army by letting it march through the entire country without an engagement. According to Herodotus, Darius in this manner came as far as the Volga River.

During the 5th to 3rd centuries BC, the Scythians evidently prospered. When Herodotus wrote his Histories in the 5th century BC, Greeks distinguished Scythia Minor in present-day Romania and Bulgaria from a Greater Scythia that extended eastwards for a 20-day ride from the Danube River, across the steppes of today's East Ukraine to the lower Don basin. The Don, then known as Tanaïs, has served as a major trading route ever since. The Scythians apparently obtained their wealth from their control over the slave-trade from the north to Greece through the Greek Black Sea colonial ports of Olbia, Chersonesos, Cimmerian Bosporus, and Gorgippia. They also grew grain, and shipped wheat, flocks, and cheese to Greece.

Strabo (c. 63 BC –- 24 AD) reports that King Ateas united under his power the Scythian tribes living between the Maeotian marshes and the Danube. His westward expansion brought him into conflict with Philip II of Macedon (reigned 359 to 336 BC), who took military action against the Scythians in 339 BC. Ateas died in battle, and his empire disintegrated. In the aftermath of this defeat, the Celts seem to have displaced the Scythians from the Balkans; while in south Russia, a kindred tribe, the Sarmatians, gradually overwhelmed them. In 329 BC Philip's son, Alexander the Great, came into conflict with the Scythians at the Battle of Jaxartes. A Scythian army sought to take revenge for the death of Ateas against the Macedonians, as they pushed the borders of their empire north and east, and take advantage of a revolt by the local Sogdian satrap. However, the Scythian army was defeated by Alexander at the Battle of Jaxartes. However, Alexander did not intend to subdue the nomads; he wanted to go to the south, where a far more serious crisis demanded his attention. He could do so now without loss of face; and in order to make the outcome acceptable to the Saccae, he released the Scythian prisoners of war without ransom in order to broker a peace agreement. This policy was successful, and the Scythians no longer harassed Alexander's empire.

By the time of Strabo's account (the first decades AD), the Crimean Scythians had created a new kingdom extending from the lower Dnieper to the Crimea. The kings Skilurus and Palakus waged wars with Mithridates the Great (reigned 120–63 BC) for control of the Crimean littoral, including Chersonesos and the Cimmerian Bosporus. Their capital city, Scythian Neapolis, stood on the outskirts of modern Simferopol. The Goths destroyed it later, in the mid-3rd century AD.

Sakas and Indo-ScythiansMain articles: Sakas and Indo-Scythians
Asians, especially Persians, knew the Scythians in Asia as Sakas. The Indo-Scythians had the name "Shaka" in South Asia, an extension on the name "Saka". Herodotus (7.64) describes them as Scythians, called by a different name:

The Sacae, or Scyths, were clad in trousers, and had on their heads tall stiff caps rising to a point. They bore the bow of their country and the dagger; besides which they carried the battle-axe, or sagaris. They were in truth Amyrgian (Western) Scythians, but the Persians called them Sacae, since that is the name which they gave to all Scythians.
Some Asian Saka include Nagbanshi, Bala, Gurjjara,[25][26] and Jats[27]

In the 2nd century BC, a group of Scythian tribes, known as the Indo-Scythians, migrated into Bactria, Sogdiana, Arachosia and Gandhara. The migrations in 175-125 BC of the Kushan (Chinese: "Yuezhi") tribes, who originally lived in eastern Tarim Basin before the Huns tribes dislodged them, displaced the Indo-Scythians from Central Asia. Led by their king Maues, they ultimately settled in modern-day Afghanistan/Pakistan from around 85 BC, where they replaced the kingdom of the Indo-Greeks by the time of Azes II (reigned c. 35–12 BC). Kushans invaded again in the 1st century, but the Indo-Scythian rule persisted in some areas of Central India until the 5th century. Abars, one of the Scythian tribes entered in Indian in 1st century BC.[28] Hellenic-Scythian contact still focused on the Hellenistic cities and settlements of the Crimea (especially in the Bosporan Kingdom). Greek craftsmen from the colonies north of the Black Sea made spectacular Scythian-style gold ornaments (see below), applying Greek realism to depict Scythian motifs of lions, antlered reindeer, and gryphons.

Late Antiquity (AD 300 to 600)In Late Antiquity, the notion of a Scythian ethnicity grew more vague and outsiders might dub any people inhabiting the Pontic-Caspian steppe as "Scythians", regardless of their language. Thus, Priscus, a Byzantine emissary to Attila, repeatedly referred to the latter's followers as "Scythians". But Eunapius, Claudius Cladianus and Olympiodorus usually mean "Goths" when they write "Scythians".

The Goths had displaced the Sarmatians in the 2nd century from most areas near the Roman frontier, and by early medieval times, the Turkic migration marginalized East Iranian dialects, and assimilated the Saka linguistically.[citation needed]

ArchaeologyArchaeological remains of the Scythians include kurgan tombs (ranging from simple exemplars to elaborate "Royal kurgans" containing the "Scythian triad" of weapons, horse-harness, and Scythian-style wild-animal art), gold, silk, and animal sacrifices, in places also with suspected human sacrifices.[29][30] Mummification techniques and permafrost have aided in the relative preservation of some remains. Scythian archaeology also examines the remains of North Pontic Scythian cities and fortifications.[31]

The spectacular Scythian grave-goods from Arzhan, and others in Tuva have been dated from about 900 BC onward. One grave find on the lower Volga gave a similar date, and one of the Steblev graves from the East European end of the Scythian area was dated to the late 8th century BC.[32]

Archaeologists can distinguish three periods of ancient Scythian archaeological remains:

1st period – pre-Scythian and initial Scythian epoch: from the 9th to the middle of the 7th century BC
2nd period – early Scythian epoch: from the 7th to the 6th centuries BC
3rd period – classical Scythian epoch: from the 5th to the 4th centuries BC
From the 8th to the 2nd centuries BC, archaeology records a split into two distinct settlement areas: the older in the Sayan-Altai area in Central Asia, and the younger in the North Pontic area in Eastern Europe.[33]

KurgansMain article: Kurgan

An arm from the throne of a Scythian king, 7th century BC. Found at the Kerkemess kurgan, Krasnodar Krai in 1905. On exhibit at the Hermitage Museum.Large burial mounds (some over 20 metres high), provide the most valuable archaeological remains associated with the Scythians. They dot the Ukrainian and south Russian steppes, extending in great chains for many kilometers along ridges and watersheds. From them archaeologists have learned much about Scythian life and art.[34] Some Scythian tombs reveal traces of Greek craftsmanship, suggesting a process of Hellenization among the Scythian elites.[35]

The Ukrainian term for such a burial mound, "kurhan" (Ukrainian: Курган) as well as the Russian term kurgan, derives from a Turkic word for "castle".[36]

Some Scythian-Sarmatian cultures may have given rise to Greek stories of Amazons. Graves of armed females have been found in southern Ukraine and Russia. David Anthony notes, "About 20% of Scythian-Sarmatian "warrior graves" on the lower Don and lower Volga contained females dressed for battle as if they were men, a style that may have inspired the Greek tales about the Amazons."[37]

Pazyryk culture
Horseman, Pazyryk felt artifact, ca. 300 BC.Main article: Pazyryk culture
Some of the first Bronze Age Scythian burials documented by modern archaeologists include the kurgans at Pazyryk in the Ulagan (Red) district of the Altai Republic, south of Novosibirsk in the Altai Mountains of southern Siberia (near Mongolia). Archaeologists have extrapolated the Pazyryk culture from these finds: five large burial mounds and several smaller ones between 1925 and 1949, one opened in 1947 by Russian archaeologist Sergei Rudenko. The burial mounds concealed chambers of larch-logs covered over with large cairns of boulders and stones.

The Pazyryk culture flourished between the 7th and 3rd century BC in the area associated with the Sacae.

Ordinary Pazyryk graves contain only common utensils, but in one, among other treasures, archaeologists found the famous Pazyryk Carpet, the oldest surviving wool-pile oriental rug. Another striking find, a 3-metre-high four-wheel funerary chariot, survived superbly preserved from the 5th century BC.

Although some scholars sought to connect the Pazyryk nomads with indigenous ethnic groups of the Altaic, Rudenko summed up the cultural context in the following dictum:[citation needed]

All that is known to us at the present time about the culture of the population of the High Altai, who have left behind them the large cairns, permits us to refer them to the Scythian period, and the Pazyryk group in particular to the fifth century BC. This is supported by radiocarbon dating.
Belsk excavationsRecent digs[citation needed](see:Gelonus) in Belsk near Poltava (Ukraine) have uncovered a "vast city", with the largest area of any city in the world at that time. It has been tentatively identified by a team of archaeologists led by Boris Shramko as the site of Gelonus, the purported capital of Scythia. The city's commanding ramparts and vast area of 40 square kilometers exceed even the outlandish size reported by Herodotus. Its location at the northern edge of the Ukrainian steppe would have allowed strategic control of the north-south trade-route. Judging by the finds dated to the 5th and 4th centuries BC, craft workshops and Greek pottery abounded.

Tillia tepe treasureMain article: Tillia tepe

"Kings with dragons", Tillia tepe
Royal crown, Tillia tepeA site found in 1968 in Tillia tepe (literally "The golden hill") in northern Afghanistan (former Bactria) near Shebergan consisted of the graves of five women and one man with extremely rich jewelry, dated to around the 1st century BC, and generally thought to belong to Scythian tribes. Altogether the graves yielded several thousands of pieces of fine jewelry, usually made from combinations of gold, turquoise and lapis-lazuli.

A high degree of cultural syncretism pervades the findings, however. Hellenistic cultural and artistic influences appear in many of the forms and human depictions (from amorini to rings with the depiction of Athena and her name inscribed in Greek), attributable to the existence of the Seleucid empire and Greco-Bactrian kingdom in the same area until around 140 BC, and the continued existence of the Indo-Greek kingdom in the northwestern Indian sub-continent until the beginning of our era. This testifies to the richness of cultural influences in the area of Bactria at that time.

Culture and societyTribal divisionsScythians lived in confederated tribes, a political form of voluntary association which regulated pastures and organized a common defence against encroaching neighbors for the pastoral tribes of mostly equestrian herdsmen. While the productivity of domesticated animal-breeding greatly exceeded that of the settled agricultural societies, the pastoral economy also needed supplemental agricultural produce, and stable nomadic confederations developed either symbiotic or forced alliances with sedentary peoples – in exchange for animal produce and military protection.

Herodotus relates that three main tribes of the Scythians descended from three brothers, Lipoxais, Arpoxais, and Colaxais:[38]

In their reign a plough, a yoke, an axe, and a bowl, all made of gold, fell from heaven upon the Scythian territory. The oldest of the brothers wished to take them away, but as he drew near the gold began to burn. The second brother approached them, but with the like result. The third and youngest then approached, upon which the fire went out, and he was enabled to carry away the golden gifts. The two eldest then made the youngest king, and henceforth the golden gifts were watched by the king with the greatest care, and annually approached with magnificent sacrifices.[39]

Gold clothing appliqué, showing two Scythian archers, 400 to 350 BC. Probably from Kul-Oba, Crimea. British Museum.Herodotus also mentions a royal tribe or clan, an elite which dominated the other Scythians:

Then on the other side of the Gerros we have those parts which are called the "Royal" lands and those Scythians who are the bravest and most numerous and who esteem the other Scythians their slaves.[40]
The elder brothers then, acknowledging the significance of this thing, delivered the whole of the kingly power to the youngest. From Lixopais, they say, are descended those Scythians who are called the race of the Auchatai; from the middle brother Arpoxais those who are called Catiaroi and Traspians, and from the youngest of them the "Royal" tribe, who are called Paralatai: and the whole together are called, they say, Scolotoi, after the name of their king; but the Hellenes gave them the name of Scythians. Thus the Scythians say they were produced; and from the time of their origin, that is to say from the first king Targitaos, to the passing over of Dareios [the Persian Emperor Darius I] against them [512 BC], they say that there is a period of a thousand years and no more.[41]
This royal clan is also named in other classical sources the "Royal Dahae". The rich burials of Scythian kings in (kurgans) is independent evidence for the existence of this powerful royal elite.

Although scholars have traditionally treated the three tribes as geographically distinct, Georges Dumézil interpreted the divine gifts as the symbols of social occupations, illustrating his trifunctional vision of early Indo-European societies: the plough and yoke symbolised the farmers, the axe – the warriors, the bowl – the priests.[42] According to Dumézil, "the fruitless attempts of Arpoxais and Lipoxais, in contrast to the success of Colaxais, may explain why the highest strata was not that of farmers or magicians, but rather that of warriors."[43]

WarfareThe Scythians were notoriously barbaric and aggressive warriors. They “fought to live and lived to fight” and “drank the blood of their enemies and used the scalps as napkins” [44] Ruled by small numbers of closely allied élites, Scythians had a reputation for their archers, and many gained employment as mercenaries. Scythian élites had kurgan tombs: high barrows heaped over chamber-tombs of larch-wood – a deciduous conifer that may have had special significance as a tree of life-renewal, for it stands bare in winter. Burials at Pazyryk in the Altay Mountains have included some spectacularly preserved Scythians of the "Pazyryk culture" – including the Ice Maiden of the 5th century BC.

The Ziwiye hoard, a treasure of gold and silver metalwork and ivory found near the town of Sakiz south of Lake Urmia and dated to between 680 and 625 BC, includes objects with Scythian "animal style" features. One silver dish from this find bears some inscriptions, as yet undeciphered and so possibly representing a form of Scythian writing.


Scythian bowl, 5th century BC found at Castelu, Romania. In display at Constanţa Museum of National History.Scythians also had a reputation for the use of barbed and poisoned arrows of several types, for a nomadic life centered on horses – "fed from horse-blood" according to Herodotus – and for skill in guerrilla warfare.

Clothing This section does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2012)


Scythians at the Tomb of Ovid (c.1640), by Johann Heinrich Schönfeld.According to Herodotus, Scythian costume consisted of padded and quilted leather trousers tucked into boots, and open tunics. They rode with no stirrups or saddles, just saddle-cloths. Herodotus reports that Scythians used cannabis, both to weave their clothing and to cleanse themselves in its smoke (Hist. 4.73-75); archaeology has confirmed the use of cannabis in funeral rituals.

Scythian women dressed in much the same fashion as men. A Pazyryk burial, discovered in the 1990s, contained the skeletons of a man and a woman, each with weapons, arrowheads, and an axe.

Men and women dressed differently. Herodotus mentioned that Sakas had "high caps and ...wore trousers." Clothing was sewn from plain-weave wool, hemp cloth, silk fabrics, felt, leather and hides.

Pazyryk findings give the most number of almost fully preserved garments and clothing worn by the Scythian/Saka peoples. Ancient Persian bas-relief – Apadana or Behistun inscription, ancient Greek pottery, archaeological findings from Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, China et al. give visual representations of these garments.

Herodotus says Sakas had "high caps tapering to a point and stiffly upright." Asian Saka headgear is clearly visible on the Persepolis Apadana staircase bas-relief – high pointed hat with flaps over ears and the nape of the neck.[45] From China to the Danube delta, men seemed to have worn a variety of soft headgear – either conical like the one described by Herodotus, or rounder, more like a Phrygian cap.

Women wore a variety of different headdresses, some conical in shape others more like flattened cylinders, also adorned with metal (golden) plaques.

Based on the Pazyryk findings (can be seen also in the south Siberian, Uralic and Kazakhstan rock drawings) some caps were topped with zoomorphic wooden sculptures firmly attached to a cap and forming an integral part of the headgear, similar to the surviving nomad helmets from northern China.


The "golden man" from the Issyk kurgan, 4th or 3rd century BC.Men and warrior women wore tunics, often embroidered, adorned with felt applique work, or metal (golden) plaques.

Persepolis Apadana again serves a good starting point to observe tunics of the Sakas. They appear to be a sewn, long sleeve garment that extended to the knees and belted with a belt while owner's weapons were fastened to the belt (sword or dagger, gorytos, battleax, whetstone etc.). Based on numerous archeological findings in Ukraine, southern Russian and Kazakhstan men and warrior women wore long sleeve tunics that were always belted, often with richly ornamented belts. The Kazakhstan Saka (e.g. Issyk Golden Man/Maiden) wore shorter tunics and more close fitting tunics than the Pontic steppe Scythians. Some Pazyryk culture Saka wore short belted tunic with a lapel on a right side, upright collar, 'puffed' sleeves narrowing at a wrist and bound in narrow cuffs of a color different from the rest of the tunic.

Scythian women wore long, loose robes, ornamented with metal plaques (gold). Women wore shawls, often richly decorated with metal (golden) plaques.

Men and women wore coats, e.g. Pazyryk Saka had many varieties, from fur to felt. They could have worn a riding coat that later was known as a Median robe or Kantus. Long sleeved, and open, it seems that on the Persepolis Apadana Skudrian delegation is perhaps shown wearing such coat. The Pazyryk felt tapestry shows a rider wearing a billowing cloak.

Men and women wore long trousers, often adorned with metal plaques and often embroidered or adorned with felt appliqués; trousers could have been wider or tight fitting depending on the area. Materials used depended on the wealth, climate and necessity.

Men and women warriors wore variations of long and shorter boots, wool-leather-felt gaiter-boots and moccasin-like shoes. They were either of a laced or simple slip on type. Women wore also soft shoes with metal (gold) plaques.

Men and women wore belts. Warrior belts were made of leather, often with gold or other metal adornments and had many attached leather thongs for fastening of the owner's gorytos, sword, whet stone, whip etc. Belts were fastened with metal or horn belt-hooks, leather thongs and metal (often golden) or horn belt-plates.

ArtMain article: Scythian art
Scythian contacts with craftsmen in Greek colonies along the northern shores of the Black Sea resulted in the famous Scythian gold adornments that feature among the most glamorous artifacts of world museums. Ethnographically extremely useful as well, the gold depicts Scythian men as bearded, long-haired Caucasoids. "Greco-Scythian" works depicting Scythians within a much more Hellenic style date from a later period, when Scythians had already adopted elements of Greek culture.

Scythians had a taste for elaborate personal jewelry, weapon-ornaments and horse-trappings. They executed Central-Asian animal motifs with Greek realism: winged gryphons attacking horses, battling stags, deer, and eagles, combined with everyday motifs like milking ewes.

In 2000, the touring exhibition 'Scythian Gold' introduced the North American public to the objects made for Scythian nomads by Greek craftsmen north of the Black Sea, and buried with their Scythian owners under burial mounds on the flat plains of present-day Ukraine, most of them unearthed after 1980.

In 2001, the discovery of an undisturbed royal Scythian burial-barrow illustrated for the first time Scythian animal-style gold that lacks the direct influence of Greek styles. Forty-four pounds of gold weighed down the royal couple in this burial, discovered near Kyzyl, capital of the Siberian republic of Tuva.


Chinese jade and steatite plaques, in the Scythian-style animal art of the steppes. 4th-3rd century BC. British Museum.Ancient influences from Central Asia became identifiable in China following contacts of metropolitan China with nomadic western and northwestern border territories from the 8th century BC. The Chinese adopted the Scythian-style animal art of the steppes (descriptions of animals locked in combat), particularly the rectangular belt-plaques made of gold or bronze, and created their own versions in jade and steatite.[46]

Following their expulsion by the Yuezhi, some Scythians may also have migrated to the area of Yunnan in southern China. Scythian warriors could also have served as mercenaries for the various kingdoms of ancient China. Excavations of the prehistoric art of the Dian civilization of Yunnan have revealed hunting scenes of Caucasoid horsemen in Central Asian clothing.[47]


A Crown of SillaScythian influences have been identified as far as Korea and Japan. Various Korean artifacts, such as the royal crowns of the kingdom of Silla, are said to be of Scythian design.[48] Similar crowns, brought through contacts with the continent, can also be found in Kofun era Japan.[49]

ReligionMain article: Scythian religion

Offering pot from a Scythian grave from Alba Iulia, Romania, 6th century BC. In display at National Museum of the Union, Alba IuliaThe religious beliefs of the Scythians was a type of Pre-Zoroastrian Iranian religion and differed from the post-Zoroastrian Iranian thoughts.[50] Foremost in the Scythian pantheon stood Tabiti, who was later replaced by Atar, the fire-pantheon of Iranian tribes, and Agni, the fire deity of Indo-Aryans.[50] The Scythian belief was a more archaic stage than the Zoroastrian and Hindu systems. The use of cannabis to induce trance and divination by soothsayers was a characteristic of the Scythian belief system.[50]

LanguageMain article: Scythian languages

The approximate extent of East Iranian languages in Middle Iranian times in the 1st century BC is shown in orangeThe "Scythian languages" are essentially unattested, and their internal divergence is difficult to judge. They belonged to the Eastern Iranian family of languages.

The Scythian languages may have formed a dialect continuum: "Scytho-Sarmatian" in the west and "Scytho-Khotanese" or Saka in the east.[51] They were mostly marginalized and assimilated as a consequence of the late antiquity and early Middle Ages Slavic and Turkic expansion. Some remnants of the eastern groups have survived as modern Pashto and Pamiri languages in Central Asia. The western (Sarmatian) group of Scythian survived as the language of the Alans and eventually gave rise to the modern Ossetic language.

It is likely that certain peoples included under the "Scythian" umbrella term spoke other languages; for example, the Meotians (Sindi), had adopted Indo-Aryan dialects.

HistoriographyHerodotus
Scythian artefacts originating from sites in Transylvania, in display at Aiud History Museum, Aiud, Romania.Herodotus wrote about an enormous city, Gelonus, in the northern part of Scythia[52]

The Budini are a large and powerful nation: they have all deep blue eyes, and bright red hair. There is a city in their territory, called Gelonus, which is surrounded with a lofty wall, thirty furlongs (τριήκοντα σταδίων = ca. 5,5 km) each way, built entirely of wood. All the houses in the place and all the temples are of the same material. Here are temples built in honour of the Grecian gods, and adorned after the Greek fashion with images, altars, and shrines, all in wood. There is even a festival, held every third year in honour of Bacchus, at which the natives fall into the Bacchic fury. For the fact is that the Geloni were anciently Greeks, who, being driven out of the factories along the coast, fled to the Budini and took up their abode with them. They still speak a language half Greek, half Scythian.
Herodotus and other classical historians listed quite a number of tribes who lived near the Scythians, and presumably shared the same general milieu and nomadic steppe culture, often called "Scythian culture", even though scholars may have difficulties in determining their exact relationship to the "linguistic Scythians". A partial list of these tribes includes the Agathyrsi, Geloni, Budini, and Neuri.

Herodotus presented four different versions of Scythian origins:

1.Firstly (4.7), the Scythians' legend about themselves, which portrays the first Scythian king, Targitaus, as the child of the sky-god and of a daughter of the Dnieper. Targitaus allegedly lived a thousand years before the failed Persian invasion of Scythia, or around 1500 BC. He had three sons, before whom fell from the sky a set of four golden implements – a plough, a yoke, a cup and a battle-axe. Only the youngest son succeeded in touching the golden implements without them bursting with fire, and this son's descendants, called by Herodotus the "Royal Scythians", continued to guard them.
2.Secondly (4.8), a legend told by the Pontic Greeks featuring Scythes, the first king of the Scythians, as a child of Hercules and Echidna.
3.Thirdly (4.11), in the version which Herodotus said he believed most, the Scythians came from a more southern part of Central Asia, until a war with the Massagetae (a powerful tribe of steppe nomads who lived just northeast of Persia) forced them westward.
4.Finally (4.13), a legend which Herodotus attributed to the Greek bard Aristeas, who claimed to have got himself into such a Bachanalian fury that he ran all the way northeast across Scythia and further. According to this, the Scythians originally lived south of the Rhipaean mountains, until they got into a conflict with a tribe called the Issedones, pressed in their turn by the Cyclopes; and so the Scythians decided to migrate westwards.
Persians and other peoples in Asia referred to the Scythians living in Asia as Sakas. Herodotus (IV.64) describes them as Scythians, although they figure under a different name:

The Sacae, or Scyths, were clad in trousers, and had on their heads tall stiff caps rising to a point. They bore the bow of their country and the dagger; besides which they carried the battle-axe, or sagaris. They were in truth Amyrgian (Western) Scythians, but the Persians called them Sacae, since that is the name which they gave to all Scythians.
Strabo
Scythian artefacts originating from sites in Transylvania, in display at Aiud History Museum, Aiud, Romania.In the 1st century BC, the Greek-Roman geographer Strabo gave an extensive description of the eastern Scythians, whom he located in north-eastern Asia beyond Bactria and Sogdiana:[53]

Then comes Bactriana, and Sogdiana, and finally the Scythian nomads.
Strabo went on to list the names of the various tribes among the Scythians, probably making an amalgam with some of the tribes of eastern Central Asia (such as the Tocharians):[53]

Now the greater part of the Scythians, beginning at the Caspian Sea, are called Daheans, but those who are situated more to the east than these are named Massageteans and Saceans, whereas all the rest are given the general name of Scythians, though each people is given a separate name of its own. They are all for the most part nomads. But the best known of the nomads are those who took away Bactriana from the Greeks (i.e. Greco-Bactrians), I mean the Asians, Pasians, Tocharians, and Sacarauls, who originally came from the country on the other side of the Jaxartes River that adjoins that of the Sacae and the Sogdians and was occupied by the Sacae. And as for the Daëans, some of them are called Aparns, some Xanthians, and some Pissures. Now of these the Aparni are situated closest to Hyrcania and the part of the sea that borders on it, but the remainder extend even as far as the country that stretches parallel to Aria.
Indian sources
Silver coin of the Indo-Scythian King Azes II (r.c. 35-12 7BC). Note the royal tamga on the coin.Main article: Indo-Scythians
Sakas receive numerous mentions in Indian texts, including the Puranas, the Manusmriti, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Mahabhashya of Patanjali.

Post-classical "Scythians"Migration periodSee also: Sarmatians, Alans, and Ossetians
Although the classical Scythians may have largely disappeared by the 1st century BC, Eastern Romans continued to speak conventionally of "Scythians" to designate Germanic tribes and confederations[54] or mounted Eurasian nomadic barbarians in general: in 448 AD two mounted "Scythians" led the emissary Priscus to Attila's encampment in Pannonia. The Byzantines in this case carefully distinguished the Scythians from the Goths and Huns who also followed Attila.

The Sarmatians (including the Alans and finally the Ossetians) counted as Scythians in the broadest sense of the word – as speakers of Northeast Iranian languages,[55] and are considered mostly of Indo-Iranian descent.[56]

Byzantine sources also refer to the Rus raiders who attacked Constantinople around 860 AD in contemporary accounts as "Tauroscythians", because of their geographical origin, and despite their lack of any ethnic relation to Scythians. Patriarch Photius may have first applied the term to them during the Siege of Constantinople (860).

Early Modern usageOwing to their reputation as established by Greek historians, the Scythians long served as the epitome of savagery and barbarism.

In the Bible, Paul uses "Scythian" as an example of people whom some label pejoratively, but who are, in Christ, acceptable to God:

Here there is no Greek or Jew. There is no difference between those who are circumcised and those who are not. There is no rude outsider, or even a Scythian. There is no slave or free person. But Christ is everything. And he is in everything.[57]
Shakespeare, for instance, alluded to the legend that Scythians ate their children in his play King Lear:

The barbarous Scythian

Or he that makes his generation messes
To gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom
¨ Be as well neighbour'd, pitied, and relieved,


As thou my sometime daughter.[58]
Characteristically, early modern English discourse on Ireland frequently resorted to comparisons with Scythians in order to confirm that the indigenous population of Ireland descended from these ancient "bogeymen", and showed themselves as barbaric as their alleged ancestors. Edmund Spenser wrote that

the Chiefest [nation that settled in Ireland] I Suppose to be Scithians ... which firste inhabitinge and afterwarde stretchinge themselves forthe into the lande as theire numbers increased named it all of themselues Scuttenlande which more brieflye is Called Scuttlande or Scotlande.[59]
As proofs for this origin Spenser cites the alleged Irish customs of blood-drinking, nomadic lifestyle, the wearing of mantles and certain haircuts and

Cryes allsoe vsed amongeste the Irishe which savor greatlye of the Scythyan Barbarisme.
William Camden, one of Spenser's main sources, comments on this legend of origin that

to derive descent from a Scythian stock, cannot be thought any waies dishonourable, seeing that the Scythians, as they are most ancient, so they have been the Conquerours of most Nations, themselves alwaies invincible, and never subject to the Empire of others.[60]

Romantic nationalism: Battle between the Scythians and the Slavs (Viktor Vasnetsov, 1881).The 15th-century Polish chronicler Jan Długosz was the first to connect the prehistory of Poland with Sarmatians, and the connection was taken up by other historians and chroniclers, such as Marcin Bielski, Marcin Kromer and Maciej Miechowita. Other Europeans depended for their view of Polish Sarmatism on Miechowita's Tractatus de Duabus Sarmatiis, a work which provided a substantial source of information about the territories and peoples of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in a language of international currency.[61] Tradition specified that the Sarmatians themselves were descended from Japheth, son of Noah.[62]

In the 17th and 18th centuries, foreigners regarded the Russians as descendants of Scythians. It became conventional to refer to Russians as Scythians in 18th century poetry, and Alexander Blok drew on this tradition sarcastically in his last major poem, The Scythians (1920). In the 19th century, romantic revisionists in the West transformed the "barbarian" Scyths of literature into the wild and free, hardy and democratic
A number of groups have claimed possible descent from the Scythians, including the Ossetians, Pashtuns (in particular, the Sakzai tribe), Jats[27] and the Parthians (whose homelands lay to the east of the Caspian Sea and who were thought to have come there from north of the Caspian). Some legends of the Poles,[61] the Picts, the Gaels, the Hungarians (in particular, the Jassics), the Serbs and the Croats, among others, also include mention of Scythian origins. Some writers claim that Scythians figured in the formation of the empire of the Medes and likewise of Caucasian Albania.

The Scythians also feature in some national origin-legends of the Celts. In the second paragraph of the 1320 Declaration of Arbroath, the élite of Scotland claim Scythia as a former homeland of the Scots. According to the 11th c. Lebor Gabála Érenn (The Book of the Taking of Ireland), the 14th c. Auraicept na n-Éces and other Irish folklore, the Irish originated in Scythia and were descendants of Fénius Farsaid, a Scythian prince who created the Ogham alphabet and who was one of the principal architects of the Gaelic language.

The Carolingian kings of the Franks traced Merovingian ancestry to the Germanic tribe of the Sicambri. Gregory of Tours documents in his History of the Franks that when Clovis was baptised, he was referred to as a Sicamber with the words "Mitis depone colla, Sicamber, adora quod incendisti, incendi quod adorasti."'. The Chronicle of Fredegar in turn reveals that the Franks believed the Sicambri to be a tribe of Scythian or Cimmerian descent, who had changed their name to Franks in honour of their chieftain Franco in 11 BC.

Based on such accounts of Scythian founders of certain Germanic as well as Celtic tribes, British historiography in the British Empire period such as Sharon Turner in his History of the Anglo-Saxons, made them the ancestors of the Anglo-Saxons.

The idea was taken up in the British Israelism of John Wilson, who adopted and promoted the "idea that the "European Race, in particular the Anglo-Saxons, were descended from certain Scythian tribes, and these Scythian tribes (as many had previously stated from the Middle Ages onward) were in turn descended from the ten Lost Tribes of Israel."[63] Tudor Parfitt, author of The Lost Tribes of Israel and Professor of Modern Jewish Studies, points out that the proof cited by adherents of British Israelism is "of a feeble composition even by the low standards of the genre."[64]

Whatever the claims of various modern ethnic groups, many of the peoples once known as the Scythians of Antiquity were amalgamated into the various Slavic peoples of eastern and southeastern Europe.[65]

Linguistically, only modern-day Ossetic and Pashto as well as Yaghnobi and Pamiri languages are similar to old Eastern Iranic languages once spoken by Scythians

Quote:

 

The Parthian language, also known as Arsacid Pahlavi and Pahlavanik, is a now-extinct ancient Northwestern Iranian language spoken in Parthia, a region of northeastern ancient Iran during the rule of the Parthian empire.

Parthian was the language of state of the Parthian Empire (248 BC – 224 AD
Parthian was a Western Middle Iranian language that, through language contact, also had some features of the Eastern Iranian language group, the influence of which is attested primarily in loan words. Some traces of Eastern influence survives in Parthian loan words in the Armenian language.[1]

Taxonomically, Parthian belongs to the Northwestern Iranian language group while Middle Persian belongs to the Southwestern Iranian language group.

[edit] Written ParthianMain article: Pahlavi scripts
The Parthian language was rendered using the Pahlavi writing system, which had two essential characteristics: First, its script derived from Aramaic,[2] the script (and language) of the Achaemenid chancellery (i.e. Imperial Aramaic). Second, it had a high incidence of Aramaic words, rendered as ideograms or logograms, that is, they were written Aramaic words but understood as Parthian ones (See Arsacid Pahlavi for details).

The Parthian language was the language of the old Satrapy of Parthia and was used in the Arsacids courts. The main sources for Parthian are the few remaining inscriptions from Nisa and Hecatompolis, Manichean texts, Sasanian multi-lingual inscriptions, and remains of Parthian literature in the succeeding Middle Persian. Among these, the Manichean texts, composed shortly after the demise of the Parthian power, play an important role for reconstructing the Parthian language.[3] These Manichean manuscripts contain no ideograms.

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Dewran

8th January 2013 - 02:34 AM

I think the Elamites are the ancestors of Persians.

Simko

24th February 2013 - 11:03 AM

What about the Mannaeans? Even though they are related to the Hurrians I think they should also be mentioned. They were living south of lake Wirme in the Mahabad plateu. The name of 'Mahabad' (mah+abad) is the persian translation of the ancient Mannaean name meaning place of moon, which is also a cognate with the Kurdish word mang. We should change the name "Mahabad" to "Mangabad"

thesunchild

25th February 2013 - 05:20 AM

What do they teach Kurdish children in history lessons in South Kurdistan? I guess, they’re glorifying our Median ancestors and more people should do the same on this site.

RawandKurdistani

8th January 2013 - 04:16 AM

Dewran

8th January 2013 - 02:34 AM

I think the Elamites are the ancestors of Persians.

They we're an independent Iranic group. Though it wouldn't be impossible to find persians with Elamite ancestry, maybe even some kurds.

thesunchild

25th February 2013 - 08:53 AM

The Medes made Kurds for what we're now!

The Mitanni (+Mannaeans) & the Medes were our most powerful ancestors.

By the way, centuries before the Medes devastated the Semitic tribes, Kurdistan was inhabited by other 'Iranic' folks.
The Medes were not the ONLY one Iranic people in Kurdistan.

We know about the Mitanni that they were proto-Iranic. It's also possible that Guti, Mannaeans etc. were all proto Iranic speakers related to Mitanni and not Hurrian speakers at all.

The Northern Central Hakkari kurgan stelae are dating back from 1500 BC. As old as powerful Mitanni. The Medes destroyed the Semites 612 BC. There's lots of time between 1500 B.C. anbd 612 B.C.!

These so called 'Kurgan' stelae from North Central Kurdistan predate the Medes by at least 750 years!

Kurdish SUN stelae !


Colemêrg stelae


The Yezidi Kurds have the same snake in front of their shrine

Colemêrg stelae, 1500 B.C.


Yezidi snake, Lalish, South Kurdistan.

jjmuneer

11th March 2013 - 06:09 AM

thesunchild

25th February 2013 - 08:53 AM

Colemêrg stelae from 1500 BC.

Those aren't Median, but Hurrian statues.

thesunchild

11th March 2013 - 07:53 AM

jjmuneer

11th March 2013 - 06:09 AM

Quoting limited to 2 levels deep

And this stelae from Ukraine is very similar to a Kurdistan stelae, also Hurrian???