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In classical antiquity and Greco-Roman geography, Colchis (; ) was an exonym for the Georgian polity of Egrisi (ეგრისი) located on the eastern coast of the Black Sea, centered in present-day western Georgia.
Its population, the Colchians, are generally thought to have been mainly an early Kartvelian-speaking tribe ancestral to contemporary western Georgians, namely Svans and Zans. According to David Marshall Lang: "one of the most important elements in the modern Georgian nation, the Colchians were probably established in the Caucasus by the Middle Bronze Age."
It has been described in modern scholarship as "the earliest Georgian formation", which, along with the Kingdom of Iberia, would later contribute significantly to the development of the Kingdom of Georgia and the Georgians.
Colchis is known in Greek mythology as the destination of the Argonauts, as well as the home to Medea and the Golden Fleece. It was also described as a land rich with gold, iron, timber and honey that would export its resources mostly to ancient Hellenic city-states. Colchis likely had a diverse population. According to Greek and Roman Empire sources, between 70 and 300 languages were spoken in Dioscourias (modern Sukhumi) alone.
According to Rayfield, the first mention of Colchis is during the reign of the Assyrian people king Tukulti-Ninurta I of the Middle Assyrian Empire (1245–1209 BC) when he mentions "40 kings by the Upper Black Sea". Colchis territory is mostly assigned to what is now the western part of Georgia and encompasses the present-day Georgian provinces of Samegrelo, Imereti, Guria, Adjara, Svaneti, Racha; Abkhazia; modern Russia's Sochi and Tuapse districts; and present-day Turkey’s Artvin Province, Rize Province, and Trabzon Province provinces.
Ronald Grigor Suny identifies Colchis as an early Georgian state formation. Suny emphasizes that the Colchians were among the early Kartvelian-speaking tribes, the linguistic ancestors of modern Georgians. He highlights the cultural and political continuity between Colchis and later Georgian states, noting that Colchis, along with the eastern Georgian kingdom of Iberia, played a significant role in the ethnogenesis of the Georgian people.
According to Donald Rayfield, the ethnic makeup of Colchis is "obscure" and Kartvelian names "are conspicuously absent from the few anthronyms found in Colchian burials." Instead, Greek language, Anatolian, Iranian, and possibly Abkhaz language names are present.
The name Colchis is thought to have derived from the Urartian Qulḫa.O, Lordkipanidze. (1991). Archeology in Georgia, Weinheim, 110. In the mid-eighth century BC, Sarduri II, the King of Urartu, inscribed his victory over Qulḫa on a stele; however, the exact location of Qulḫa is disputed. Some scholars argue the name Qulḫa (Colchís) originally referred to a land to the west of Georgia.M. Salvini, Geschichte und Kultur der Urartäer (Darmstadt, 1995) 70f.Bremmer, J. N. (2007). "The Myth of the Golden Fleece". Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions, 6, 9–38. Others argue Qulḫa may have been located in the south, near modern Göle, Turkey.Kemalettin Köroğlu. "The Northward Expansion of the Kingdom of Urartu and the Historical Geography of the Land of Qulha." Aralık 2000, Cilt LXIV – Sayı 241. [1]
According to Levan Gordeziani, while the Greek Colchis etymologically descends from Urartian Qulḫa, the Greeks may have applied the name to a different region (and/or cultures) than the preceding Urartians had. Further confusion rests in possible differences in the Greeks' own usage of the name Colchis in political and mythological contexts (i.e. the relationship between "Aia-Colchis" and "the land of Colchis").Levan Gordzeiani. "Some Remarks on Qulḫa." Over the Mountains and Far Away: Studies in Near Eastern history and archaeology presented to Mirjo Salvini on the occasion of his 80th birthday. eds. Pavel S. Avetisyan, Roberto Dan and Yervand H. Grekyan. Archaeopress Archaeology. 2019. p. 242. [2]
According to the scholar of Caucasian studies Cyril Toumanoff:
According to most Classical-era sources, Colchis was bordered on the south-west by Pontus, on the west by the Black Sea, as far as the river Corax. To its north was the Greater Caucasus, beyond which was Sarmatians. On its east it bordered the Kingdom of Iberia and Moschia (now the Lesser Caucasus). The south of Colchis bordered Armenia. The westward extent of the country is considered differently by different authors: Strabo makes Colchis begin at Trabzon, while Ptolemy, on the other hand, extends Pontus to the Rioni River.
Although some ancient authors consider Sukhumi to be the extreme northern settlement point of Colchians (in an ethnic sense), nevertheless "they consider it as a point located on the territory of non-Colchian tribes (Heniochi, Sanigs)". Since in a later era the name "Colchians" was organically connected with the name "Laz people", it should be remembered that Byzantine sources saw the northern limit of the spread of Laz people somewhere between the Phasis (modern. Poti) and Dioscurias".Giorgi Melikishvili, History of ancient Georgia. P. 64.Anchabadze, Zurab Vianorovich. History and culture of ancient Abkhazia. Moscow -1964. P. 132.
The Greek name italic=no (Κολχίς) is first used to describe a geographic area in the writings of Aeschylus and Pindar. Earlier writers speak of the "Kolchian" (Κολχίδα) people and their mythical king Aeëtes (Αἰήτης), as well as his city Aea or Aia (Αἶα ), but don't make explicit references to a Kolchis nation or region. The main river was known as the Phasis (now Rioni River) and was, according to some writers the southern boundary of Colchis, but more probably flowed through the middle of that country from the Caucasus west into the Euxine, and the Anticites or Atticitus (now Kuban). Arrian mentions many others by name, but they would seem to have been little more than mountain torrents: the most important of them were Charieis, Chobus or Cobus, Singames, Tarsuras, Hippus, Astelephus, Chrysorrhoas, several of which are also noticed by Ptolemy and Pliny. The chief towns were Sukhumi or Dioscuris (under the Roman Empire called Sebastopolis, now Sukhumi) on the seaboard of the Euxine, Sarapana (now Shorapani), Phasis (now Poti), Pityus (now Pitsunda), Apsaros (now Gonio), Vani (now Vani), Archaeopolis (now Nokalakevi), Macheiresis, and Cyta or Cutatisium or Aia (now Kutaisi), the traditional birthplace of Medea. Scylax mentions also Mala or Male, which he, in contradiction to other writers, makes the birthplace of Medea.
Its territory mostly corresponds to what is now the western part of Georgia and encompasses the present-day Georgian provinces of Samegrelo, Imereti, Guria, Adjara, Abkhazia, Svaneti, Racha; the modern Turkey’s Rize, Trabzon and Artvin provinces (Lazistan, Tao-Klarjeti); and the modern Russia’s Sochi and Tuapse districts.
The climate is mild humid; near Batumi, annual rainfall level reaches , which is the absolute maximum for continental western Eurasia. The dominating natural landscapes of Colchis are temperate rainforests, yet degraded in the plain part of the region; wetlands (along the coastal parts of Colchis Plain); subalpine and alpine meadows.
Colchis has a high proportion of Neogene and Palaeogene relict plants and animals, with the closest relatives in distant parts of the world: five species of and other evergreen shrubs, wingnuts, Caucasian salamander, Caucasian parsley frog, eight endemic species of lizards from the genus Darevskia, the Caucasus adder ( Vipera kaznakovi), Robert's snow vole, and endemic Troglocaris.
Colchis provided slaves as a tribute to the Achaemenid Empire and Colchian slaves are also attested in Ancient Greece. (1994). 9780198144731, Calendon Press. ISBN 9780198144731
The earliest attestations of the name of Colchis can be found in the 8th century Greek poet Eumelus of Corinth as ΚολχίδαLordkipanidzé Otar, Mikéladzé Teimouraz. La Colchide aux VIIe-Ve siècles. Sources écrites antiques et archéologie. In: Le Pont-Euxin vu par les Grecs : sources écrites et archéologie. Symposium de Vani (Colchide), septembre-octobre 1987. Besançon : Université de Franche-Comté, 1990. pp. 167-187. (Annales littéraires de l'
According to Svante Cornell, "What could be conceived as the proto Georgian statehood emerged mainly in the Western parts of today's Georgia, with the kingdom of Colchis ( Kolkheti) in the sixth century BC."
Colchis was inhabited by a number of tribes whose settlements lay along the shore of the Black Sea. Chief among those were the Machelones, Heniochi, Zydretae, Egrisi, Chalybes, Tibareni/Tubal, Mossynoeci, Macrones, Meskheti, Marres, Apsilae, Abasci,According to some scholars, ancient tribes such as the Absilae (mentioned by Pliny, 1st century CE) and Abasgoi (mentioned by Arrian, 2nd century CE) correspond to the modern Abkhazians (Chirikba, V., "On the etymology of the ethnonym apswa 'Abkhaz'", in The Annual of the Society for the Study of Caucasia, 3, 13-18, Chicago, 1991; Hewitt, B. G., "The valid and non-valid application of philology to history", in Revue des Etudes Georgiennes et Caucasiennes, 6-7, 1990–1991, 247-263; Grand Dictionnaire Encyclopédique Larousse, tome 1, 1985, p. 20). However, this claim is controversial and no academic consensus has yet been reached. Other scholars suggest that these ethnonyms instead reflect a common regional origin, rather than emphasizing a distinct and separate ethnic and cultural identity in antiquity. For example, Tariel Putkaradze, a Georgian scholar, suggests, "In the 3rd-2nd millennia BC the Georgians, Abhaz-Abaza people, Circassians and Vainakhs tribes must have been part of a great Ibero-Caucasian Ethnic group. Therefore, it is natural that several tribes or ethnoses descending from them have the names derived from a single stem. The Colchian Aphaz, Apsil, Apšil and north Caucasian Apsua, Abazaha, Abaza, existing in the 1st millennium, were the names denoting different tribes of a common origin. Some of these tribes (Apsils, Apshils) disappeared, others mingled with kindred tribes, and still others have survived to the present day." (Putkaradze, T. The Kartvelians, 2005, translated by Irene Kutsia) Sanigs, Coraxi, Coli, Melanchlaeni, Gelonians and Svaneti. The ancients assigned various origins to the tribes that inhabited Colchis.
Herodotus regarded the Colchians as "dark-skinned (μελάγχροες) and woolly-haired" and calls them Egyptians. Herodotus states that the Colchians, with the and the , were the first to practice circumcision, a custom which he claims that the Colchians inherited from remnants of the army of Pharaoh Sesostris (Senusret III). Herodotus writes:
These claims have been widely rejected by modern historians. It is in doubt if Herodotus had ever been to Colchis or Egypt, and no Egyptian army ever set foot in the Caucasus, a region shielded by states to the south of the Caucasus too powerful for any Egyptian army to pass through, such as Urartu, Hittites, Assyria and Mitanni.
According to Pliny the Elder:
Many modern theories suggest that the ancestors of the Laz people-Mingrelians constituted the dominant ethnic and cultural presence in the region in antiquity, and hence played a significant role in the ethnogenesis of the modern Georgians. Miniature Empires: A Historical Dictionary of the Newly Independent States, James Minahan, p. 116Cyril Toumanoff, Studies in Christian Caucasian History, p 80
Pausanias, a 1st-century BC Greek geographer, citing the poet Eumelos, assigned Aeëtes, the mythological first king of Colchis, a Greek origin.Pausanias, Description of Greece (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0160%3Abook%3D2)
Subsequently, the people of Colchis appear to have overthrown the Achaemenid authority, and to have formed an independent state. According to Ronald Suny this western Georgian state was federated to Kartli-Iberia in the east, and its kings ruled through skeptoukhi (royal governors) who received a staff from the king. The Making of the Georgian Nation, 2nd Ed., Ronald Grigor Suny, p 13 According to David Braund's reading of Strabo's account, the native Colchian dynasty continued ruling the country in spite of its fragmentation into skeptoukhies.
File:Colchis riders pendants - pair.JPG|Colchian pendants, riders and horses on wheeled platforms, Georgian National Museum
Under Hadrian, the Romans established relations with Colchian tribes. Hadrian sent his advisor, Arrian, to tour Colchis and Iberia. Arrian depicted a turbulent fluctuation of tribal powers and boundaries, with various hostile and anarchic tribes in the area. The Laz controlled most of coastal Colchis, while other tribes such as the Sanigs and Abasgoi escaped Roman jurisdiction. Other tribes, like the Apsilae, were becoming powerful and their king with the Romanised name Julianus was recognized by Trajan. Arrian listed the following peoples in his Periplus of the Euxine Sea written in 130-131 (from south to north): Sanni, Machelones, Heniochi, Zudreitae, Laz people, Apsilae, Abasgoi, Sanigs and Zygii.
According to traditional accounts Christianity began to spread in the early first century by Andrew the Apostle, Simon the Zealot, and Saint Matthias. A change in burial patterns in the 3rd century was possibly due to Christian influence. The Hellenistic civilization, local paganism and Mithraic Mysteries would, however, remain widespread until the fourth century. Goths, dwelling in the Crimea and looking for new homes, raided Colchis in 253, but were repulsed with the help of the Roman garrison of Pitsunda. By the first century BC, the Lazica (or the Laz) kingdom was established in the region. Lazica became known as Egrisi in 66 BC when Egrisi became a vassal of the Roman Empire after the Caucasian campaign of Pompey.
Colchis also is thought to be a possible homeland of the Amazons. Celebrate the Divine Feminine: Reclaim Your Power with Ancient Goddess Wisdom, Joy Reichard p. 169John Canzanella, Innocence and Anarchy p. 58Margaret Meserve, Empires of Islam in Renaissance Historical Thought, p. 250Diane P. Thompson, The Trojan War: Literature and Legends from the Bronze Age to the Present p. 193Andrew Brown, A New Companion to Greek Tragedy p. 66Mark Amaru Pinkham, The Return of the Serpents of Wisdom "The Amazons, The Female Serpents" Amazons also were said to be of origin from Colchis.William G. Thalmann, Apollonius of Rhodes and the Spaces of Hellenism "Apollonius of Rhodes", p. 130
According to the Greek mythology, Colchis was a fabulously wealthy land situated on the mysterious periphery of the heroic world. Here in the sacred grove of the war god Ares, King Aeëtes hung the Golden Fleece until it was seized by Jason and the Argonauts. Colchis was also the land where the mythological Prometheus was punished by being chained to a mountain while an eagle ate at his liver for revealing to humanity the secret of fire.
Apollonius of Rhodes named Aea as the main city ( Argonautica, passim). The main mythical characters from Colchis are:
/ref> and earlier, in Urartu records as Qulḫa mentioned by the Urartu kings, who conquered it in 744 or 743 BC before the Urartians and their territories were themselves conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Historian Askold Ivanchik states: “Based on cuneiform texts and archeological data, Qulḫa must have existed as an independent flourishing state during the second half of the eighth century BCE, but hardly survived the end of the century”.Valeriya Kozlovskaya, The Northern Black Sea in Antiquity: Networks, Connectivity, and Cultural Interactions. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017. xxvii; 366. ISBN 978-1-107-01951-5 [3]
Achaemenid satrapy
According to Donald Rayfield, the tribes living in the southern Colchis (Macrones, Meskheti, and Marres) were incorporated into the Achaemenid Empire and formed the 19th satrapy, while the northern tribes submitted "voluntarily" and had to send to the Achaemenid court 100 girls and 100 boys every five years, though it is not clear whether these were Colchians or persons obtained from other peoples by war or purchase. In 400 BC, shortly after the Ten Thousand reached Trabzon, a battle was fought between them and the Colchis in which the latter were decisively defeated. The influence exerted on Colchis by the vast Achaemenid Empire with its thriving commerce and wide economic and commercial ties with other regions accelerated the socio-economic development of the Colchian land. Gocha R. Tsetskhladze further argues that although Colchis and neighboring Iberia were once viewed as not having been under Achaemenid rule, upon request they did pay tribute to the Achaemenid Empire as one would expect of entities under Achaemenid suzerainty.
(1994). 9780198144731, Calendon Press. ISBN 9780198144731
Under Pontus
Mithridates VI, king of Pontus, quelled an uprising in the region in 83 BC and gave Colchis to his son Mithridates, who, soon being suspected in having plotted against his father, was executed. During the Third Mithridatic War, Mithridates VI made another of his sons, Machares, king of Bosporus and Colchis, who held his power, but only for a short period. On the defeat of Mithridates VI of Pontus in 65 BC, Colchis was occupied by Pompey, Pompey, Nic Fields p. 29 who captured one of the local chiefs (sceptuchus) Olthaces, and installed Aristarchus as a dynast (63–47 BC). On the fall of Pompey, Pharnaces II, son of Mithridates, took advantage of Julius Caesar being occupied in Ancient Egypt, and reduced Colchis, Armenia, and some part of Cappadocia, defeating Gnaeus Domitius Calvinus, whom Caesar subsequently sent against him. His triumph was, however, short-lived. Under Polemon I, the son and heir of Zenon, Colchis was part of the Pontus and the Bosporan Kingdom. After the death of Polemon (8 BC), his second wife Pythodorida of Pontus retained possession of Colchis as well as of Pontus, although the kingdom of Bosporus was wrested from her power. Her son and successor, Polemon II of Pontus, was induced by Emperor Nero to abdicate the throne, and both Pontus and Colchis were incorporated in the Province of Galatia (63) and later, in Cappadocia (81). Phasis, Sukhumi and other Greek settlements of the coast did not fully recover after the wars of 60-40 BC and Trebizond became the economical and political centre of the region.
Under Roman rule
Despite the fact that all major fortresses along the sea coast were occupied by the Romans, their rule was relatively loose. In 69, the people of Pontus and Colchis under Anicetus staged a major uprising against the Roman Empire, which ended unsuccessfully. The lowlands and coastal area were frequently raided by fierce mountain tribes, with the Svaneti and Heniochi being the most powerful of them. Paying a nominal homage to Rome, they created their own kingdoms and enjoyed significant independence.
Numismatics
Colchian coins, the oldest of which were dated to the middle of the 6th century BC, served as the primary source of evidence for the Colchian state. A reassessment of the coins, however, has revealed that these early "Colchian" coins actually represent the production of a Achaemenid satrapy.
Rulers
Little is known of the rulers of Colchis.
1. Akes ( Basileus Aku) end of the 4th c. BC his name is found on a coin issued by him. 2. Kuji 325–280 BC 3. Saulaces 2nd c. BC 4. Mithridates Floruit 80 BC under the authority of Pontus. 5. Machares fl. 65 BC under the authority of Pontus. 6. Aristarchus 63–47 BC appointed by Pompey
In mythology
From the fifth century B.C.E. onwards, Colchis was identified as Aea, the Greek mythology home of Aeëtes, Medea, the Golden Fleece, and the fire-breathing KhalkotauroiPindar Pythian Odes 4.11, 4.212; Simonides PMG545 (Schol. Eur. Med. 19); The Origin of Pagan Idolatry, George Stanley Faber p. 409 The Facts on File Companion to Classical Drama, John E. Thorburn "Colchian Bulls" p. 145 and was the destination of the Argonauts. The Routledge Handbook of the Peoples and Places of Ancient Western Asia: The Near East from the Early Bronze Age to the Fall of the Persian Empire, Trevor Bryce p. 171 World Mythology: An Anthology of Great Myths and Epics, Donna Rosenberg p. 218
See also
Explanatory notes
Citations
General and cited sources
(2025). 9781119174288, John Wiley & Sons, Inc.. ISBN 9781119174288
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