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Lydia (; ) was an Iron Age Monarchy situated in the west of Asia Minor, in modern-day Turkey. Later, it became an important province of the Achaemenid Empire and then the Roman Empire. Its capital was Sardis.
At some point before 800 BC, the Lydian people achieved some sort of political cohesion, and existed as an independent kingdom by the 600s BC. At its greatest extent, during the 7th century BC, it covered all of western Anatolia. In 546 BC, it became a satrapy of the Achaemenid Empire, known as Sparda in Old Persian. In 133 BC, it became part of the Roman Republic province of Asia.
Lydian coins, made of electrum, are among the oldest in existence, dated to around the 7th century BC."Lydia" in Oxford Dictionary of English. Oxford University Press, 2010. Oxford Reference Online. 14 October 2011.
The boundaries of historical Lydia varied across the centuries. It was bounded first by Mysia, Caria, Phrygia and coastal Ionia. Later, the military power of Alyattes and Croesus expanded Lydia, which, with its capital at Sardis, controlled all Asia Minor west of the River Halys, except Lycia. After the Persian conquest the River Maeander was regarded as its southern boundary, and during imperial Roman times Lydia comprised the country between Mysia and Caria on the one side and Phrygia and the Aegean Sea on the other.
The Lydian language is usually not categorized as part of the Luwic subgroup, unlike the other nearby Anatolian languages Luwian language, Carian language, and Lycian language.I. Yakubovich, Sociolinguistics of the Luvian Language, Leiden: Brill, 2010, p. 6
By roughly 800 BC, the Lydian people appear to have established their presence and achieved some degree of political cohesion. However, precise dates and events are impossible to determine due to the absence of contemporary written records. The only firm evidence for this early period comes from the archaeological excavations at Sardis. Although certain literary accounts purport the existence of two early Lydian dynasties, namely the house of Atys - after whose son Lydus the Lydians were supposedly named - and the Heraclids, who allegedly ruled for twenty-two generations before 685 BC, these sources are steeped in mythology and lack historical credibility.
Gyges took advantage of the power vacuum created by the Cimmerian invasions to consolidate his kingdom and make it a military power, he contacted the Neo-Assyrian court by sending diplomats to Nineveh to seek help against the Cimmerian invasions, and he attacked the Ionians Greek cities of Miletus, Smyrna, and Colophon. Gyges's extensive alliances with the Carian dynasts allowed him to recruit Carian and Ionian Greek soldiers to send overseas to assist the Ancient Egypt king Psamtik I of the city of Sais, with whom he had established contacts around 662 BC. With the help of these armed forces, Psamtik I united Egypt under his rule after eliminating the eleven other kinglets with whom he had been co-ruling Lower Egypt.
In 644 BC, Lydia faced a third attack by the Cimmerians, led by their king Tugdamme. This time, the Lydians were defeated, Sardis was sacked, and Gyges was killed.
Ardys's reign was short-lived, and in 637 BC, that is in Ardys's seventh regnal year, the Thracians Treri tribe who had migrated across the Bosporus and invaded Anatolia, under their king Kobos, and in alliance with the Cimmerians and the Lycians, attacked Lydia. They defeated the Lydians again and for a second time sacked the Lydian capital of Sardis, except for its citadel. It is probable that Ardys was killed during this Cimmerian attack.
Ardys was succeeded by his son, Sadyattes, who had an even more short-lived reign. Sadyattes died in 635 BC, and it is possible that, like his grandfather Gyges and maybe his father Ardys as well, he died fighting the Cimmerians.
Soon after Alyattes's ascension and early during his reign, with Assyrian approval and in alliance with the Lydians, the Scythians under their king Madyes entered Anatolia, expelled the Treres from Asia Minor, and defeated the Cimmerians so that they no longer constituted a threat again, following which the Scythians extended their domination to Central Anatolia until they were themselves expelled by the Medes from Western Asia in the 590s BC. This final defeat of the Cimmerians was carried out by the joint forces of Madyes, whom Strabo credits with expelling the Treres and Cimmerians from Asia Minor, and of Alyattes, whom Herodotus and Polyaenus claim finally defeated the Cimmerians.
Alyattes turned towards Phrygia in the east, where extended Lydian rule eastwards to Phrygia. Alyattes continued his expansionist policy in the east, and of all the peoples to the west of the Halys River whom Herodotus claimed Alyattes's successor Croesus ruled over - the Lydians, Phrygians, Mysians, Mariandyni, Chalybes, , Thyni and Bithyni Thracians, Carians, Ionians, Doric Hexapolis, Aeolis, and - it is very likely that a number of these populations had already been conquered under Alyattes, and it is not impossible that the Lydians might have subjected Lycia, given that the Lycian coast would have been important for the Lydians because it was close to a trade route connecting the Aegean Sea region, the Levant, and Cyprus. royal funeral tumulus (tomb of Alyattes, father of Croesus), Lydia, 6th century BC.]]
Alyattes's eastern conquests brought the Lydian Empire in conflict in the 590s BC with the Medes, (1991). 9781139054294, Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781139054294 and a war broke out between the Median and Lydian Empires in 590 BC which was waged in eastern Anatolia lasted five years, until a solar eclipse occurred in 585 BC during a battle (hence called the Battle of the Eclipse) opposing the Lydian and Median armies, which both sides interpreted as an omen to end the war. The Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II and the king Syennesis of Cilicia acted as mediators in the ensuing peace treaty, which was sealed by the marriage of the Median king Cyaxares's son Astyages with Alyattes's daughter Aryenis, and the possible wedding of a daughter of Cyaxares with either Alyattes or with his son Croesus.
Croesus brought Caria under the direct control of the Lydian Empire, and he subjugated all of mainland Ionia, Aeolis, and Doric Hexapolis, but he abandoned his plans of annexing the Greek city-states on the islands of the Aegean Sea and he instead concluded treaties of friendship with them, which might have helped him participate in the lucrative trade the Aegean Greeks carried out with Egypt at Naucratis. According to Herodotus, Croesus ruled over all the peoples to the west of the Halys River, although the actual border of his kingdom was further to the east of the Halys, at an undetermined point in eastern Anatolia.
Croesus continued the friendly relations with the Medes concluded between his father Alyattes and the Median king Cyaxares, and he continued these good relations with the Medes after he succeeded Alyattes and Astyages succeeded Cyaxares. And, under Croesus's rule, Lydia continued its good relations started by Gyges with the Saite Egyptian kingdom, then ruled by the pharaoh Amasis II. Croesus also established trade and diplomatic relations with the Neo-Babylonian Empire of Nabonidus, and he further increased his contacts with the Greeks on the European continent by establishing relations with the city-state of Sparta.
In 550 BC, Croesus's brother-in-law, the Median king Astyages, was overthrown by his own grandson, the Persian king Cyrus the Great, and Croesus responded by attacking Pteria, the capital of a Phrygian state vassal to the Lydians which might have attempted to declare its allegiance to the new Persian Empire of Cyrus. Cyrus retaliated by intervening in Cappadocia and defeated the Lydians at Pteria in a battle, and again at Thymbra before besieging and capturing the Lydian capital of Sardis, thus bringing an end to the rule of the Mermnad dynasty and to the Lydian Empire. Lydia would never regain its independence and would remain a part of various successive empires.
Although the dates for the battles of Pteria and Thymbra and of end of the Lydian empire have been traditionally fixed to 547 BC, more recent estimates suggest that Herodotus's account being unreliable chronologically concerning the fall of Lydia means that there are currently no ways of dating the end of the Lydian kingdom; theoretically, it may even have taken place after the fall of Babylon in 539 BC.
When Alexander's empire ended after his death, Lydia was possessed by the major Asian diadoch dynasty, the Seleucids, and when it was unable to maintain its territory in Asia Minor, Lydia was acquired by the Attalid dynasty of Pergamum. Its last king avoided the spoils and ravage of a Roman war of conquest by leaving the realm by testament to the Roman Empire.
Together with the provinces of Caria, Hellespontus, Lycia, Pamphylia, Phrygia prima and Phrygia secunda, Pisidia (all in modern Turkey) and the Insulae (Ionian islands, mostly in modern Greece), it formed the diocese (under a vicarius) of Asiana, which was part of the praetorian prefecture of Oriens, together with the dioceses Pontiana (most of the rest of Asia Minor), Oriens proper (mainly Syria), Aegyptus (Egypt) and Thraciae (on the Balkans, roughly Bulgaria).
The dating of these first stamped coins is one of the most frequently debated topics of ancient numismatics,N. Cahill and J. Kroll, "New Archaic Coin Finds at Sardis," American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 109, No. 4 (October 2005), p. 613. with dates ranging from 700 BC to 550 BC, but the most common opinion is that they were minted at or near the beginning of the reign of King Alyattes (sometimes referred to incorrectly as Alyattes II).A. Ramage, "Golden Sardis," King Croesus' Gold: Excavations at Sardis and the History of Gold Refining, edited by A. Ramage and P. Craddock, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 2000, p. 18. The first coins were made of electrum, an alloy of gold and silver that occurs naturally but that was further debased by the Lydians with added silver and copper.M. Cowell and K. Hyne, "Scientific Examination of the Lydian Precious Metal Coinages," King Croesus' Gold: Excavations at Sardis and the History of Gold Refining, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 2000, pp. 169–174.
The largest of these coins are commonly referred to as a 1/3 stater ( trite) denomination, weighing around 4.7 grams, though no full staters of this type have ever been found, and the 1/3 stater probably should be referred to more correctly as a stater, after a type of a transversely held scale, the weights used in such a scale (from ancient Greek ίστημι=to stand), which also means "standard."L. Breglia, "Il materiale proveniente dalla base centrale dell'Artemession di Efeso e le monete di Lidia", Istituto Italiano di Numismatica Annali, volumes 18–19 (1971/72), pp. 9–25. These coins were stamped with a lion's head adorned with what is likely a sunburst, which was the king's symbol. The most prolific mint for early electrum coins was Sardis which produced large quantities of the lion head thirds, sixths and twelfths along with lion paw fractions. To complement the largest denomination, fractions were made, including a hekte (sixth), hemihekte (twelfth), and so forth down to a 96th, with the 1/96 stater weighing only about 0.15 grams. There is disagreement, however, over whether the fractions below the twelfth are actually Lydian.M. Mitchiner, Ancient Trade and Early Coinage, Hawkins Publications, London, 2004, p. 219.
Alyattes' son was Croesus (Reigned c.560–c.546 BC), who became associated with great wealth. Croesus is credited with issuing the Croeseid, the first true with a standardised purity for general circulation, and the world's first bimetallism circa 550 BC.
It took some time before ancient coins were used for commerce and trade. Even the smallest-denomination electrum coins, perhaps worth about a day's subsistence, would have been too valuable for buying a loaf of bread."Hoards, Small Change, and the Origin of Coinage," Journal of the Hellenistic Studies 84 (1964), p. 89 The first coins to be used for retailing on a large-scale basis were likely small silver fractions, Hemiobol, Ancient Greek coinage minted in Cyme (Aeolis) under Hermodike II then by the Ionians in the late sixth century BC.M. Mitchiner, p. 214
Sardis was renowned as a beautiful city. Around 550 BC, near the beginning of his reign, Croesus paid for the construction of the temple of Artemis at Ephesus, which became one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. Croesus was defeated in battle by Cyrus II of Persia in 546 BC, with the Lydian kingdom losing its autonomy and becoming a Persian satrapy.
In Greek myth, Lydia had also adopted the double-axe symbol, that also appears in the Mycenaean civilization, the labrys.Sources noted in Karl Kerenyi, The Heroes of the Greeks 1959, p. 192. Omphale, daughter of Iardanos, was a princess of Lydia, whom Heracles was required to serve for a time. His adventures in Lydia are the adventures of a Greek hero in a peripheral and foreign land: during his stay, Heracles enslaved the Itones; killed Syleus, who forced passers-by to hoe his vineyard; slew the serpent of the river Sangarios (which appears in the heavens as the constellation Ophiucus)Hyginus, Astronomica ii.14. and captured the simian tricksters, the Cercopes. Accounts tell of at least one son of Heracles who was born to either Omphale or a slave-girl: Herodotus ( Histories i. 7) says this was Alcaeus who began the line of Lydian Heracleidae which ended with the death of Candaules c. 687 BC. Diodorus Siculus (4.31.8) and Ovid ( Heroides 9.54) mentions a son called Lamos, while pseudo-Apollodorus ( Bibliotheke 2.7.8) gives the name Agelaus and Pausanias (2.21.3) names Tyrsenus as the son of Heracles by "the Lydian woman". All three heroic ancestors indicate a Lydian dynasty claiming Heracles as their ancestor. Herodotus (1.7) refers to a Heraclid dynasty of kings who ruled Lydia, yet were perhaps not descended from Omphale. He also mentions (1.94) the legend that the Etruscan civilization was founded by colonists from Lydia led by Tyrrhenus, brother of Lydus. Dionysius of Halicarnassus was skeptical of this story, indicating that the Etruscan language and customs were known to be totally dissimilar to those of the Lydians. In addition, the story of the "Lydian" origins of the Etruscans was not known to Xanthus of Lydia, an authority on the history of the Lydians.Robert Drews, Herodotus 1.94, the Drought Ca. 1200 B.C., and the Origin of the Etruscans, in Historia: Zeitschrift Für Alte Geschichte, vol. 41, no. 1, 1992, pp. 14–39.
Later chronologists ignored Herodotus' statement that Agron was the first Heraclid to be a king, and included his immediate forefathers Alcaeus, Belus, and Ninus in their list of kings of Lydia. Strabo (5.2.2) has Atys, father of Lydus and Tyrrhenus, as a descendant of Heracles and Omphale but that contradicts virtually all other accounts which name Atys, Lydus, and Tyrrhenus among the pre-Heraclid kings and princes of Lydia. The gold deposits in the river Pactolus that were the source of the proverbial wealth of Croesus (Lydia's last king) were said to have been left there when the legendary king Midas of Phrygia washed away the "Midas touch" in its waters. In Euripides' tragedy The Bacchae, Dionysus, while maintaining his human disguise, declares his country to be Lydia.Euripides. The Complete Greek Tragedies Vol IV., Ed by Grene and Lattimore, line 463
In contemporary scholarship, Etruscologists overwhelmingly support an indigenous origin for the Etruscans, (2025). 9781614515203, De Gruyter. ISBN 9781614515203 (2025). 9781444337341, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 9781444337341 dismissing Herodotus' account as based on erroneous etymologies. Michael Grant argue that the Etruscans may have propagated this narrative to facilitate their trading in Asia Minor, when many cities in Asia Minor, and the Etruscans themselves, were at war with the Greeks. The French scholar Dominique Briquel contends that "the story of an exodus from Lydia to Italy was a deliberate political fabrication created in the Hellenized milieu of the court at Sardis in the early 6th century BC." (2025). 9780415673082, Routledge Taylor & Francis Group. ISBN 9780415673082 Ultimately, these Greek-authored accounts of the Etruscan origins are only the expression of the image that Etruscans' allies or adversaries wanted to divulge and should not be considered historical.Dominique Briquel, Le origini degli Etruschi: una questione dibattuta sin dall’antichità, in M. Torelli (ed.), Gli Etruschi Catalogo, Bompiani, Milan, 2000, p. 43–51 (Italian).
Archaeological evidence does not support the idea of Lydian migration to Etruria. The Etruscan civilization's earliest phase, the Villanovan culture, emerged around 900 BC, which itself developed from the previous Proto-Villanovan culture of Italy in the late Bronze Age. (1996). 9780842523349, Museum of Art, Brigham Young University. ISBN 9780842523349 This culture has no ties to Asia Minor or the Near East. (2025). 9782728311385, École française de Rome. ISBN 9782728311385 Linguists have identified an Lemnian language in a Lemnos stele on Lemnos island, in the Aegean Sea. Since the Etruscan language was a Pre-Indo-European language and neither Indo-European or Semitic, Etruscan was not related to Lydian language, which was a part of the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European languages. Instead, Etruscan language is considered part of the pre-Indo-European Tyrrhenian language family, along with the Lemnian language and Rhaetian language. (2025). 9780521562560, Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521562560
A 2013 genetic study suggested that the maternal lineages of western Anatolians and modern Tuscans had been largely separate for 5,000 to 10,000 years, with Etruscan mtDNA closely resembling modern Tuscans and Neolithic populations. This suggests Etruscans descended from the Villanovan culture, indicating their indigenous roots, and a link between Etruria, modern Tuscany, and Lydia dating back to the Neolithic Europe during the migration of Early European Farmers from Anatolia to Europe. A 2019 genetic study revealed that Etruscans (900–600 BC) and Latins (900–500 BC) from Latium vetus shared genetic similarities, with both groups having a mixture of two-thirds Copper Age ancestry and one-third Steppe-related ancestry. This study also suggested indigenous origins for the Etruscans, despite their pre-Indo-European language.
A 2021 study confirmed these findings, showing that Etruscans and Latins in the Iron Age had similar genetic profiles and were part of the European cluster. The Etruscan DNA was completely absent a signal of recent admixture with Anatolia and the Eastern Mediterranean. Etruscans exhibited a blend of WHG, EEF, and Steppe ancestry, with 75% of males belonging to haplogroup R1b and the most common mitochondrial DNA haplogroup being H.
Despite the small size of the recorded Lydian corpus, the various inscriptions relating to religion date from to , thus covering the period beginning with the establishment of the Mermnad dynasty under Gyges and ending with the aftermath of the Macedonian conquest under Alexander III and the beginning of the Hellenistic period. Based on limited evidence, Lydian religious practices were centred around the fertility of nature, as was common among ancient societies which depended on the successful cultivation of land.
The early Lydian religion exhibited strong connections to Anatolian as well as Greek traditions, and its pantheon was composed of native Lydian deities who were reflexes of earlier Aegean-Balkan ones, as well as Anatolian deities, the latter of whom held lesser roles.
Although Lydia had been conquered by the Achaemenid Empire in , native Lydian traditions were not destroyed by Persian rule, and most Lydian inscriptions were written during this period.
The Lydian religion was Polytheism in nature and was composed of a number of deities:
Because of a lack of evidence, little is known on the organisation of Lydian cults.
Due to the meagre evidence for Lydian religious spaces, little is known about their shapes, sizes, administration, and location: Lydian cultic spaces ranged from small places of worship to prestigious temples of the state cult which also had a political role, although the evidence for them dates from after the end of Lydian independence, while those from the Lydian empire are primarily known from Greek literature rather than from archaeological evidence.
The early Lydian religion possessed at least three cultic officiants, consisting of:
In addition to these clerical offices, the religious role of the kings among other Anatolian peoples suggests that Lydian were also Sacred king who participated in the cult as a representative of divine power on earth and claimed their legitimacy to rule from the gods. Anatolian and Hellenistic Greek parallels also suggest that Lydian kings might have been deified after their deaths.
The ecclesiastical province of Lydia had a metropolitan diocese at Sardis and suffragan dioceses for Philadelphia, Thyatira, Tripolis, Settae, Gordus, Tralles, Silandus, Maeonia, Apollonos Hierum, Mostene, Apollonias, Attalia, Hyrcania, Bage, Balandus, Hermocapella, Hierocaesarea, Acrassus, Dalda, Stratonicia, Cerasa, Jabala, Satala, Aureliopolis and Hellenopolis. Bishops from the various dioceses of Lydia were well represented at the Council of Nicaea in 325 and at the later ecumenical councils.Le Quien, Oriens Christianus, i. 859–98
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