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The Massagetae or Massageteans, also known as Sakā Tigraxaudā or Orthocorybantians, were an ancient Eastern Iranian Saka people who inhabited the of Central Asia and were part of the wider Scythian cultures.: "During the first millennium BCE, nomadic people spread over the Eurasian Steppe from the Altai Mountains over the northern Black Sea area as far as the Carpathian Basin... Greek and Persian historians of the 1st millennium BCE chronicle the existence of the Massagetae and Sauromatians, and later, the Sarmatians and Sacae: cultures possessing artefacts similar to those found in classical Scythian monuments, such as weapons, horse harnesses and a distinctive 'Animal Style' artistic tradition. Accordingly, these groups are often assigned to the Scythian culture... " The Massagetae rose to power in the 8th to 7th centuries BCE, when they started a series of events with wide-reaching consequences by expelling the Scythians out of Central Asia and into the Caucasian and Pontic Steppes. The Massagetae are most famous for their queen Tomyris's alleged defeating and killing of Cyrus, the founder of the Persians Achaemenid Empire.
The Massagetae declined after the 3rd century BCE, after which they merged with some other tribes to form the Alans, a people who belonged to the larger Sarmatians tribal confederation, and who moved westwards into the Caucasian and European steppes, where they participated in the events of the Migration Period.
The Iranologist Rüdiger Schmitt notes that although the original name of the Massagetae is unattested, it appears that the most plausible etymon is the Iranian . is the plural form, containing the East Iranian suffix , which is reflected in Greek language . The singular form is and is composed of the Iranian and , meaning "fish," derived from Young Avestan (; cognate with Vedic Sanskrit ). The name literally means "concerned with fish," or "fisherman." This corresponds with the remark made by the ancient Greek historian Herodotus (1.216.3) that "they live on their livestock and fish." Schmitt notes that objections to this reasoning, based on the assumption that, instead of , a derivation from Iranian "fish" (compare Ossetian кӕф ()) would be expected, is "not decisive." Schmitt states that any other interpretations on the origin of the original Iranian name of the Massagetae are "linguistically unacceptable."
The Iranologist János Harmatta has, however, criticised the proposal of 's derivation from , meaning "fish-eating (men)," as being semantically and phonologically unacceptable, and instead has suggested that the name might be derived from an early Bactrian language name , from an earlier related to the Young Avestan terms (), (), (), meaning "men," with the ending of the name being derived from the East Iranian suffix or from the collective formative syllable from which the suffix evolved. According to Harmatta's hypothesis, the Bactrian name would have corresponded to the name , meaning "men," used by the Massagetae for themselves.
The scholar Marek Jan Olbrycht has also identified the Massagetae with the .
The scholar Y. A. Zadneprovskiy has instead suggested that the Dahae were descendants of the Massagetae.: "The middle of the third century b.c. saw the rise to power of a group of tribes consisting of the Parni (Aparni) and the Dahae, descendants of the Massagetae of the Aral Sea region."
Marek Jan Olbrycht considers the as being a separate group from the Saka, and therefore as not identical with the Massagetae/.: "Apparently the Dahai represented an entity not identical with the other better known groups of the Sakai, i.e. the Sakai (Sakā) tigrakhaudā (Massagetai, roaming in Turkmenistan), and Sakai (Sakā) Haumavargā (in Transoxania and beyond the Syr Daryā)."
One of the Massagetaean sub-groups, the Apasiacae, lived either on the east coast of the Aral Sea between the Amu Darya and Syr Darya/Syr Darya rivers, or possibly along the Oxus in western Bactria, or between the Caspian and Aral Seas": "the Pausikai could be the same as the Apsiakai of Polybius and Strabo between the Oxus and the Jaxartes."}}
Another Massagetaean sub-group, the Derbices, lived in the arid area to the north of the Atrek river bordered by the Caspian Sea to the west, by Hyrcania to the south, the Oxus river in the east, and the Uly Balkan and the Uzboy river and its estuary were in their territory. During the Achaemenid period, some Derbices had migrated to the southwest along the shore of the Caspian Sea and reached central Tabaristan. The Derbices shared the region between the Caspian Sea and the Oxus with the Dahae, who might however have been identical with the Massagetae, and the Derbices might have extended to the east of the Oxus, with the Greek author Ctesias even extending their range up to the borders of Bactria and India.
The imprecise description of where the Massagetae lived by ancient authors has however led modern scholars to ascribe to them various locations, such as the Amu Darya delta, the Iaxartes delta, between the Caspian and Aral seas or further to the north or north-east, but without basing these suggestions on any conclusive arguments.
The had close contact with the Medes, whose influence had stretched to the lands east of the Caspian Sea, before it was replaced by the Persian Achaemenid dynasty in 550 BC.
The scribe Berossus, who lived in 3rd century BCE, instead recorded that Cyrus died in a battle against the Dahae; according to the Iranologist Muhammad Dandamayev, Berossus identified the Dahae rather than the Massagetae as Cyrus's killers because they had replaced the Massagetae as the most famous nomadic tribe of Central Asia long before Berossus's time; although some scholars identified the Dahae as being identical with the Massagetae or as one of their sub-groups.
The territories of the Saka were absorbed into the Achaemenid Empire as part of Chorasmia, which included much of the territory between the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya rivers, and the Saka supplied the Achaemenid army with a large number of mounted bowmen. After Darius's administrative reforms of the Achaemenid Empire, the were included within the same tax district as the Medes.
During the Macedonian invasion of the Achaemenid Empire, the Massagetae provided the Achaemenid army with 40,000 troops, which was a larger number than the troops furnished by all the other inhabitants of the coast of the Caspian Sea put together.
Among the scholars who do not identify the Massagetae with the Dahae, Rüdiger Schmitt suggests that the Massagetae were instead absorbed by the Dahae by the later Hellenistic period. Muhammad Dandamayev has suggested that the Dahae had replaced the Massagetae as the most known people of the Central Asian steppes. Marek Jan Olbrycht suggests that the Dahae migrated to the west from the areas east of the Aral Sea and around the Iaxartes valley and expelled the Derbices from their homeland, after which the latter split, with a part of them migrating into Hyrcania and others to the lower Uzboy river.
During the Hellenistic period, a section of the Massagetaean sub-tribe of the Derbices had migrated to the southwest along the coast of the Caspian Sea and reached central Tabaristan, while another sub-group moved to the south-east into Margiana.
Around 230 BCE, the king and founder of the Parthian Empire, Arsaces I, sought refuge from the Seleucid Empire king Seleucus II Callinicus by fleeing among the Massagataean sub-tribe of the Apasiacae. Seleucus's attempted campaign to recover the eastern satrapies of his empire was initially successful. However, the outbreak of revolts in the western part of his empire prevented him from continuing his war against the Parthians, who, with the backing of the Apasiacae, were ultimately successful.
The Massagetae themselves merged with tribal groups in Central Asia to form the Alans, a people who themselves belonged to the larger Sarmatians group. Related to the Asii who had invaded Bactria in the 2nd century BCE, the Alans were pushed by the Kang-chü people to the west into the Caucasian and Pontic steppes, where they came in contact and conflict with the Parthian Empire and Roman Empire empires. By the 2nd century CE, they had conquered the steppes of the north Caucasus and the north Black Sea area and created a powerful confederation of tribes under their rule.
In 375 CE, the Huns conquered most of the Alans living to the east of the Don river, massacred a significant number of them and absorbed them into their tribal polity, while the Alans to the west of the Don remained free from Hunnish domination and participated in the movements of the Migration Period. Some free Alans fled into the mountains of the Caucasus, where they participated in the ethnogenesis of populations including the Ossetians and the Kabardians, and other Alan groupings survived in Crimea. Other free Alans migrated into Central and then Western Europe, from where some of them went to Great Britain and Hispania, and some Alans joined the Germanic peoples Vandals into crossing the Strait of Gibraltar and creating the Vandal Kingdom in North Africa.
A 9th century work by Rabanus Maurus, De Universo, states: "The Massagetae are in origin from the tribe of the Scythians, and are called Massagetae, as if heavy, that is, strong Getae." In Central Asian languages such as Middle Persian and , the prefix massa means "great," "heavy," or "strong."
Some authors, such as Alexander Cunningham, James P. Mallory, Victor H. Mair, and Edgar Knobloch have proposed relating the Massagetae to the Gutians of 2000 BC Mesopotamia, and/or a people known in ancient China as the "Da Yuezhi" or "Great Yuezhi" (who founded the Kushan Empire in South Asia). Mallory and Mair suggest that Da Yuezhi may at one time have been pronounced d'ad-ngiwat-tieg, connecting them to the Massagetae. (2025). 9780500051016, Thames & Hudson. ISBN 9780500051016THE STRONGEST TRIBE, Yu. A. Zuev, page 33: "Massagets of the earliest ancient authors... are the Yuezhis of the Chinese sources" These theories are not widely accepted, however.
Many scholars have suggested that the Massagetae were related to the Getae of ancient Eastern Europe.
Tadeusz Sulimirski notes that the Sacae also invaded parts of Northern India. Weer Rajendra Rishi, an Indian linguist Indian Institute of Romani Studies has identified linguistic affinities between Indian and Central Asian languages, which further lends credence to the possibility of historical Sacae influence in Northern India.
Some Massagetae were primarily fishermen, and other groups of the tribe bred sheep for their milk and wool, but also harvested root vegetables and wild fruits. None of the Massagetae, however, practised any form of agriculture, and their food consisted of meat and fish, and they primarily drank milk, but not wine. According to the Greek author Strabo, the Derbices did not consume any female animals.
Gold and bronze were plentiful where the Massagetae lived, but they did not use any iron or silver because these were not available in their country.
The Massagetae might possibly have practised cranial deformation.
The fishermen wore seal skins, while the sheep-breeders wore clothing made of wool.
The Massagetae wore golden headdresses, belts, shoulder straps, and used golden harnesses and bronze armour for their horses.
The Massagetae especially used spears whose blades were made of copper or iron, due to which the Greek called them the (αιχμοφοροι), meaning "spear-bearers."
The name of the king Skunkha might be related to the Ossetian term meaning "distinguishing oneself," and attested as () in the Digor Ossetian dialect, and as () in the Iron Ossetian dialect.: "OPers. (the leader of the Sakas, who rebelled against Darius I), perhaps related to Oss. / "to distinguish oneself".": "3. altpers. Skunxa- (der Anführer der Saken, die sich gegen Dareios I. erhoben), vielleicht zu verbinden mit osset. digoron skₒyxyn, iron æsk'wænxun "sich auszeichnen usw."." 3.
However, Strabo recorded that the Derbices, who were either identical with the Massagetae or one of their sub-tribes, worshipped "Mother Earth," interpreted as the Earth and Water goddess Api.
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