Product Code Database
The Cimmerians were an ancient Eastern Iranian peoples Eurasian nomads people originating in the Pontic–Caspian steppe, part of whom subsequently migrated into West Asia. Although the Cimmerians were culturally Scythian, they formed an ethnic unit separate from the Scythians proper, to whom the Cimmerians were related and who displaced and replaced the Cimmerians.: "As the Cimmerians cannot be differentiated archeologically from the Scythians, it is possible to speculate about their Iranian origins. In the Neo-Babylonian texts (according to D’yakonov, including at least some of the Assyrian texts in Babylonian dialect) and similar forms designate the Scythians and Central Asian Saka, reflecting the perception among inhabitants of Mesopotamia that Cimmerians and Scythians represented a single cultural and economic group"
The Cimmerians themselves left no written records, and most information about them is largely derived from Neo-Assyrian records of the 8th to 7th centuries BC and from Graeco-Roman authors from the 5th century BC and later.
The name of the Cimmerians is attested in:
However, while the Cimmerians were an Iranic people sharing a common language, origins and culture with the Scythians and are archaeologically indistinguishable from the Scythians, all sources contemporary to their activities clearly distinguished the Cimmerians and the Scythians as being two separate political entities.
In 1966, the archaeologist Maurits Nanning van Loon described the Cimmerians as Western Scythians, and referred to the Scythians proper as the Eastern Scythians.
These climatic conditions in turn caused the nomadic groups to become Transhumance pastoralists constantly moving their herds from one pasture to another in the steppe, and to search for better pastures to the west, in North Caucasus and the forest steppe regions of western Eurasia.
Among these tribal confederations were the Cimmerians in the Caspian Steppe, as well as the Agathyrsi in the Pontic Steppe, and possibly the Sigynnae in the Pannonian Steppe. The archaeological and historical records regarding these migrations are however scarce, and permit to sketch only a very broad outline of this complex development.
The Cimmerians corresponded to a part of the Chernogorovka-Novocherkassk complex, to whose development three main cultural influences contributed to:
Thanks to their development of highly mobile mounted nomadic pastoralism and the creation of effective weapons suited to equestrian warfare, all based on equestrianism, these nomads from the Pontic-Caspian Steppes were able to gradually infiltrate into Central and Southeast Europe and therefore expand deep into this region over a very long period of time, so that the Chernogorovka-Novocherkassk complex covered a wide territory ranging from Central Europe and the Pannonian Basin in the west to Caucasus in the east, including present-day Southern Russia.
This in turn allowed the Chernogorovka-Novocherkassk complex itself to strongly influence the Hallstatt culture of Central Europe: among these influences was the adoption of trousers, which were not used by the native populations of Central Europe before the arrival of the Central Asian steppe nomads.
The Cimmerians were thus the first large nomadic confederation to have inhabited the Ciscaucasian Steppe, and they never formed the basic mass of the population of the Pontic Steppe, with neither Hesiod nor Aristeas ever recording them living in this area; moreover the groups of the Chernogorovka-Novocherkassk complex from the Pontic Steppe and Central Europe have so far not been identifiable with the historical Cimmerians. Instead, the main grouping of Iranic nomads of Central Asian origin belonging to the Chernogorovka-Novocherkassk complex in the eastern parts of the Pontic Steppe were the Agathyrsi to the north of the Lake Maeotis.
Some later place names mentioned by the ancient Greeks in the 5th century BC as existing in the Bosporan (Kerch Strait) region, might have owed their origin to the historical presence of the Cimmerians in this area, such as:
Like the nomads of the Chernogorovka-Novocherkassk complex, the Scythians originated in Central Asia in the steppes corresponding to either present-day eastern Kazakhstan or the Altai-Sayan region, which is attested by the continuity of Scythian burial rites and weaponry types with the Karasuk culture, as well as by the origin of the typically Scythian Animal Style art in the Mongolo-Siberian region.
Therefore, the Scythians and the nomads of the Chernogorovka-Novocherkassk complex were closely related populations who shared a common origin, culture, and language, and the earliest Scythians were therefore part of a common Aržan-Chernogorovka cultural layer originating from Central Asia, with the early Scythian culture being materially indistinguishable from the Chernogorovka-Novocherkassk complex.
This western migration of the early Scythians lasted through the middle 8th century BC, and archaeologically corresponded to the movement of a population originating from Tuva in southern Siberia in the late 9th century BC towards the west, and arriving in the 8th to 7th centuries BC into Europe, especially into Ciscaucasia, which it reached some time between and , thus following the same general migration path as the first wave of Central Asian Iranic nomads who had formed the Chernogorovka-Novocherkassk complex.
The reasons for the departure of the Cimmerians are unknown, although they might possibly have migrated under the pressure from the Scythians, similarly to how various nomadic peoples drove each other into the peripheries of the steppes in Europe, West Asia and the Iranian Plateau during Late Antiquity and afterwards.
Ancient West Asia sources are however lacking for any such pressure on the Cimmerians by the Scythians or of any conflict between these two peoples at this early period. Moreover, the arrival of the Scythians in West Asia about 40 years after the Cimmerians did so suggests that there is no available evidence to the later Graeco-Roman account that it was under pressure from the Scythians migrating into their territories that the Cimmerians crossed the Caucasus and moved south into West Asia.
The remnants of the Cimmerians in the Caspian Steppe were assimilated by the Scythians, with this absorption being facilitated by their similar ethnic backgrounds and lifestyles, thus transferring the dominance of this region from the Cimmerians to the Scythians who were assimilating them, after which the Scythians settled between the Araxes river to the east, the Caucasus mountains to the south, and the Maeotian Sea to the west, in the Ciscaucasian Steppe where were located the Scythian kingdom's headquarters.
The arrival of the Scythians and their establishment in this region in the 7th century BC corresponded to a disturbance of the development of the Cimmerian peoples' Chernogorovka-Novocherkassk complex, which was thus replaced through a continuous process over the course of to by the early Scythian culture in southern Europe, which itself nevertheless still showed links to the Chernogorovka-Novocherkassk complex.
Surrounding the Neo-Assyrian Empire were several smaller polities:
This state of permanent social disruption caused by the rivalries of the great powers of West Asia thus proved to be a very attractive source of opportunities and wealth for the Eurasian nomads. And, as the populations of the nomads of the Ciscaucasian Steppe continued to grow, their aristocrats would lead their followers southwards across the Caucasus Mountains in search of adventure and plunder in the volatile status quo then prevailing in West Asia, not unlike the later Ossetians tradition of the ritual plunder called the (балц), with the occasional raids eventually leading to longer expeditions, in turn leading to groups of nomads choosing to remain in West Asia in search of opportunities as mercenaries or freebooters.
Thus, the Cimmerians and Scythians became active in West Asia in the 7th century BC, where they would vacillate between supporting either the Neo-Assyrian Empire or other local powers, and serve them as mercenaries, depending on what they considered to be in their interests. Their activities would over the course of the late-8th to late-7th centuries BC disrupt the balance of power which had prevailed between the states of Elam, Mannai, the Neo-Assyrian Empire and Urartu on one side and the mountaineer and tribal peoples on the other, eventually leading to significant geopolitical changes in this region.
Nevertheless, a 9th or 8th century BC barrow grave, belonging from Paphlagonia to a warrior, and containing typical steppe nomad equipment, suggests that nomadic warriors had already been arriving in West Asia since the 9th century BC. Such burials imply that some small groups of steppe nomads from Ciscaucasia might have acted as Mercenary, adventurers and Settler in West Asia, which laid the ground for the later large scale movement of the Cimmerians and Scythians into West Asia.
There appears to have been very little direct connection between the Cimmerians' migration into West Asia and the Scythians' later expansion into this same region. Thus, the arrival of the Scythians in West Asia about 40 years after the Cimmerians did so suggests that there is no available evidence to the later Graeco-Roman account that it was under pressure from the Scythians migrating into their territories that the Cimmerians crossed the Caucasus and moved south into West Asia.
The presence of the Cimmerians in this area led Mesopotamian sources to call it (, ).
The territory of the Cimmerians at this time was separated from the kingdom of Urartu by a Urartian vassal country named Quriani, itself located near the countries of Colchis and Diauehi, to the east and northeast of the Lake Çıldır and the north and northwest of Lake Sevan.
The oldest known activities of the Cimmerians in West Asia date from the mid-710s BC, when they launched a sudden attack on Urartu's province of Uišini (whose capital was Oshnavieh) through the territory of the kingdom of Mannai, after the Mannaean king Ullusunu had invited them to attack Urartu through his kingdom's territory. This attack therefore took the Urartians by surprise and forced the governor of Uišini to ask for support from the king of the neighbouring small state of Musasir located on the Assyro-Urartian border region.
The first recorded mentions of the Cimmerians date from spring or early summer of 714 BC and are from the intelligence reports of the then superpower of West Asia, the Neo-Assyrian Empire, sent by the crown prince Sennacherib to his father the Neo-Assyrian king Sargon II, recording that the Urartian king Rusa I () had launched a counter-attack against the Cimmerians: Rusa I had gathered almost all of the Urartian armed forces to campaign against the Cimmerians, with Rusa I himself as well as his commander in chief and thirteen governors personally participating in this campaign. Rusa I's counter-attack was heavily defeated, and the governor of the Urartian province of Uišini was killed while the commander in chief and two governors were captured by the Cimmerian forces, attesting of the significant military power of the Cimmerians.
After this defeat, the Urartian forces retreated to Quriani, while Rusa I left for the Urartian province of Wazaun. Although Neo-Assyrian intelligence reports claimed that the Urartians were fearing an attack by the Neo-Assyrian Empire and that panic spread had among them following this defeat, the situation within Urartu remained calm, and the king Urzana of Muṣaṣir personally, as well as a messenger from the kingdom of Ḫubuškia, went to meet Rusa I to reaffirm his allegiance to Urartu.
This defeat against the Cimmerians had nonetheless weakened Urartu significantly enough that, when Sargon II campaigned against Urartu in 714 BC itself, in the month of Tamūzu, he was able to defeat the Urartians in the region of mount Wauš, and annex Muṣaṣir, while Rusa I consequently committed suicide and his son Melarṭua was crowned as the new king of Urartu. Although Urartu's power was so shaken by these defeats that it stopped harassing Mannai and the Neo-Assyrian provinces on the Iranian Plateau, it nevertheless remained a major power in West Asia under Melarṭua's successor, Argishti II ().
According to Neo-Assyrian reports from the reign of Sargon II itself, the king of the Cimmerians, whose name was not mentioned in these reports, had set up his camp in a region named Uṣunali. At another point, this Cimmerian king had departed from Mannai to attack Urartu, where he plundered several regions, including the district of Arḫi, and reached the city of Ḫuʾdiadae near the core territory of Urartu, forcing the governor of Uišini to request military aid for the people of Pulia and Suriana from Urzana of Muṣaṣir.
Urartu mobilised its armed forces to fight against this Cimmerian invasion, although the Urartians preferred to wait until it was snowing to attack the Cimmerians, due to how snow could block roads and hinder the mobility of the horses that the Cimmerians depended on to carry on their attacks.
Thus, the Cimmerians were attacking Urartu by passing through the routes in Mannai, thanks to which they were able to establish areas of influence on the northeastern borders of Urartu, which also provided them with access to the Anatolian Plateau and allowed them to replace Urartu as the dominant power in some parts of the western Iranian Plateau and Transcaucasia.
In 705 BC, Sargon II led a campaign against a rebellious Neo-Assyrian vassal, the Neo-Hittite kingdom of Tabal in Anatolia, during which he probably also fought the Cimmerians, and was killed in battle against the Tabalian ruler Gurdî of Kulummu.
After Sargon II's death, Gurdî's kingdom grew in power while the Neo-Assyrian Empire lost control of Tabal, which largely came under Gurdî's rule; although Sargon II's son and successor Sennacherib () attacked Gurdî at Til-Garimmu in 695 BC, he was able to evade capture by the Neo-Assyrian forces.
Nonetheless, although the Neo-Assyrian Empire stopped intervening in Anatolia, Sennacherib was able to secure the new northwestern Neo-Assyrian borders running from Cilicia to Melid to Harran due to which the Cimmerians ceased being mentioned in Neo-Assyrian records under his reign and would re-start being mentioned by the Assyrians only under the reign of Sennacherib's own son and successor Esarhaddon.
The Cimmerians might however have possibly ended their hostilities with Urartu and acted as mercenaries in the Urartian army during this period, under the reign of Argišti II. Some of these Cimmerians serving in the Urartian army might have been responsible for the creation of several human funerary statues in the region of Muṣaṣir which resemble the funerary statues of steppe nomads.
The Cimmerian and Scythians movements into Anatolia and the Iranian Plateau would act as catalysts for the adoption of Eurasian nomadic military and equestrian equipments by various West Asian states: it was during the 7th and 6th centuries BC that "Scythian-type" socketed arrowheads and sigmoid bows ideal for use by mounted warriors, which were the most advanced shooting weapon of their time and were both technically and ballistically superior to native West Asian archery equipment, were adopted throughout West Asia.
Cimmerian and Scythian trading posts and settlements on the borders of the various West Asian states at this time also supplied them with goods such as animal husbandry products, not unlike the trade relations which existed the mediaeval period between the eastern steppe nomads and the Chinese Tang Empire.
Once they had finally crossed into West Asia, the Scythians settled in eastern Transcaucasia and the northwest Iranian plateau, between the middle course of the Cyrus and Araxes rivers before expanding into the regions corresponding to present-day Gəncə, Mingachevir and the Mughan plain in the steppes of what is presently Azerbaijan, which became their centre operations until , and this part of Transcaucasia settled by the Scythians consequently became known in the Akkadian sources from Mesopotamia as (, ) after them.
The arrival of the Scythians in West Asia about 40 years after that of the Cimmerians suggests that there is no available evidence to the later Graeco-Roman account of the Cimmerians crossing the Caucasus and moving south into West Asia under pressure from the Scythians migrating into their territories.
The first ever recorded mention of the Scythians is from the records of the Neo-Assyrian Empire of , which detail the first Scythian activities in West Asia and refer to the first recorded Scythian king, Išpakāya, as an ally of the .
Around this time, Aḫšēri was hindering operations by the Neo-Assyrian Empire between its own territory and Mannai, while the Scythians were recorded by the Neo-Assyrians along with the eastern Cimmerians, Mannaeans and Urartians as possibly menacing communication between the Neo-Assyrian Empire and its vassal of Ḫubuškia, with messengers travelling between the Neo-Assyrian Empire and Hubuskia being at risk of being captured by hostile Cimmerian, Mannaean, Scythian or Urartian forces. Neo-Assyrian records also referred to these joint Cimmerian-Scythian forces, along with the Medes and Mannaeans, as a possible threat against the collection of tribute from Media.
During these attacks, the Scythians, along with the eastern Cimmerians who were located on the border of Mannai, were able to reach far beyond the core territories of the Iranian Plateau and attack the Neo-Assyrian provinces of Parsua and Bīt-Ḫambān and even until as far as Yašuḫ, Šamaš-naṣir and Zamua in the valley of the Diyala river. One Scytho-Cimmerian attack which had invaded Ḫubuškia from Mannai was even able to threaten the core Neo-Assyrian territories by passing through Qaladiza and Ranya on the Lower Zab river and sack the small city of Milqiya near Erbil, close the capital cities of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, where they destroyed the (House of the New Year Festival) of this city, which later had to be rebuilt by Esarhaddon. These attacks into their heartlands shocked the Assyrians, who sought to know if they were to face more such invasions through divination.
Meanwhile, Mannai, which had been able to grow in power under Aḫšēri, possibly thanks to its adaptation and incorporation of steppe nomad fighting technologies borrowed from its Cimmerian and Scythian allies, was able to capture the territories including the fortresses of Šarru-iqbi and Dūr-Illil from the Neo-Assyrian Empire and retain them until the .
Under Argišti II, Urartu attempted to restore its power by expanding to the east towards the region of Sabalan, possibly to relieve the pressure on the trade routes across the Iranian Plateau and the steppes from the Scythians, Cimmerians, and Medes. Urartu remained a major power under Argišti II's successor Rusa II (), the latter of whom carried out major fortification construction projects around Lake Van, such as at Bastam Citadel, and at Teishebaini near what is presently Yerevan; other fortifications built by Rusa II were Qale Bordjy and Qale Sangar north of Lake Urmia, as well as the fortresses of Pir Chavush, Qale Gavur and Qiz Qale around the administrative centre of Haftevan to the northwest of the Lake, all intended to monitor the activities of the allied forces of the Scythians, Mannaeans and Medes.
These allied forces of the Cimmerians, Mannaeans and Scythians were defeated some time between and by Sennacherib's son Esarhaddon (), who had succeeded him as the king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire and carried out a retaliatory campaign which reached deep into Median territory until Mount Damavand and the country of Patušarra (Patischoria) on the limits of the Dasht-e Kavir. Išpakāya was killed in battle against Esarhaddon's forces during this campaign, and he was succeeded as king of the Scythians by Bartatua, with whom Esarhaddon might have immediately initiated negotiations.
Since the Cimmerians had left their Ciscausian homelands and moved into West Asia to seek booty, they had no interest in the local affairs of the West Asian states and therefore fought for whoever was capable of paying them the most: therefore Esarhaddon took advantage of this and, at some point before , he started secret negotiations with the eastern Cimmerians, who confirmed to the Assyrians that they would remain neutral and promised not to interfere when Esarhaddon invaded Mannai again in . Nonetheless, since the Cimmerians were distant foreigners with a very different culture, and therefore did not fear the Mesopotamian gods, Esarhaddon's diviner and advisor Bēl-ušēzib referred to these eastern Cimmerians instead of the Scythians as possible allies of the Mannaeans and advised Esarhaddon to spy on both them and the Mannaeans.
This second Assyrian invasion of Mannai however met little success because the Cimmerians with whom Esarhaddon had negotiated had deceived him by accepting his offer only to attack his invasion force, and the relations between Mannai and the Neo-Assyrian Empire remained hostile while the Cimmerians remained allied to Mannai until the period lasting from 671 to 657 BC. As a result of this failure, the Neo-Assyrian Empire resigned itself to waiting until the Cimmerians were no longer a threat before mounting any further expedition in Mannai.
Around this same time, the Indaraeans were also active around the northern boundary of Elam, and some of them might have moved to the southern Iranian Plateau, where they possibly introduced Bronze articles from the Koban culture into the Luristan bronze culture.
The marriage between Bartatua and the Šērūʾa-ēṭirat likely took place, in consequence of which the Scythians ceased to be referred to as an enemy force in the Neo-Assyrian records and the alliance between the Scythian kingdom and the Neo-Assyrian Empire was concluded, following which the Scythian kingdom therefore remained on friendly terms with the Neo-Assyrian Empire and maintained peaceful relations with it.
The eastern Cimmerians meanwhile remained hostile to Assyria, and, along with the Medes, were the allies of Ellipi against an invasion by the Neo-Assyrian Empire between and . The eastern Cimmerians also attacked the Assyrian province of Shupria during this time.
It consequently became more difficult for the Neo-Assyrian Empire to control the Median city-states and the various polities in the Zagros Mountains at this point. Soon, the Median chieftains Kaštaritu of Kār-Kaššî and Dusanni of Šaparda became powerful enough that their respective polities were seen by the Neo-Assyrian Empire as major forces in Media. And when Kaštaritu rebelled against the Neo-Assyrian Empire and founded the first independent kingdom of the Medes after successfully liberating them from Neo-Assyrian overlordship in to , the eastern Cimmerians were allied to him.
Around , the eastern Cimmerians experienced a defeat by the Neo-Assyrian army and were forced to retreat into their own territory, and they were still on the territory of Mannai by .
However, some time in the late 660s or early 650s BC, the eastern Cimmerians left the Iranian Plateau and retreated to the west into Anatolia to join the western Cimmerians operating there: since Aḫšēri had depended on his alliance with the Cimmerians and Scythians to protect his kingdom from attacks by the Neo-Assyrian Empire, their departure provided Esarhaddon's successor to the Neo-Assyrian kingship, Ashurbanipal (), with the opportunity to attack Mannai and recover some of the settlements which the Mannaeans had previously captured. And although Aḫšēri himself was able to withstand the Neo-Assyrian invasion, he had depended on the Cimmerians to suppress internal opposition to his rule, and their absence weakened him enough that he was soon deposed and killed by a popular rebellion which his son Uallî repressed before ascending to the throne of Mannai and submitting to the Neo-Assyrian Empire.
Thus, Ashurbanipal's situation improved once he was finally re-establish Neo-Assyrian overlordship over Mannai thanks to the retreat of the Cimmerians from the Iranian Plateau.
This Cimmerian movement into Anatolia consisted of a large scale migration, with Cimmerian families taking their mobile possessions, animals, as well as conquered booty, along with them. This migration is archaeologically attested in the form of the expansion of the Scythian culture into this region, although the further details of the exact time and trajectory through which the Cimmerians moved into Anatolia, and whether these movements consisted of a single group or of disparate divisions, are however unknown.
Despite this victory, and although Esarhaddon had managed to stop the advance of Cimmerians in the Neo-Assyrian province of Que so that this latter region remained under Neo-Assyrian control, the military operations were not successful enough for the Assyrians to firmly occupy the areas around of Ḫubišna, nor were they able to secure the borders of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, leaving Que vulnerable to incursions from Tabal, Kuzzurak and Ḫilakku, who were allied to the western Cimmerians who were establishing themselves in Anatolia at this time and might still have maintained connections with them even after Esarhaddon's victory at Ḫubišna.
The western Cimmerians consequently settled in Phrygia and subdued part of the Phrygians so that they controlled a large area consisting of Phrygia from its western limits which bordered on Lydia to its eastern boundaries neighbouring the Neo-Assyrian Empire, after which they made Cappadocia into their centre of operations.
These western Cimmerians soon became sedentary, and by , they had established their rule over native Anatolian settlements as well as formed their own settlements in Central Anatolia, with the city of Ḫarzallē or Ḫarṣallē being the capital city of the Cimmerian king Dugdammî. Each of these settlements had rulers referred to by Neo-Assyrian sources as (): these administrators consisted of both Cimmerians and members of other ethnic groups who lived within Dugdammî's kingdom.
According to a tradition later recorded by Stephanus of Byzantium, the Cimmerians found several tens of thousands of Medimnos of wheat in the underground granaries of the Phrygian village of Syassos that they used as food for a long time.
Assyrian sources from around this same time also recorded a Cimmerian presence in the area of the Neo-Hittite state of Tabal.
And between and , an Assyrian oracular text recorded that the Cimmerians, together with the Phrygians and the Cilicians, were threatening the Neo-Assyrian Empire's newly conquered territory of Melid.
The western Cimmerians were thus active in Tabal, Ḫilakku and Phrygia in the 670s BC, and, in alliance with these former two states, were attacking the western Neo-Assyrian provinces. At unknown dates, the western Cimmerians also invaded Bithynia and Paphlagonia.
In the early 660s BC, the power of the Cimmerians grew drastically and they became the masters of Anatolia, where they controlled a large territory bordering Lydia in the west, covering Phrygia around Gordion and the Sangarios river, and reaching the Taurus Mountains in Cilicia and the borders of Urartu in the east, and encompassing the area bounded by the Black Sea in the north and the Mediterranean Sea in the south.
The core territories of the western Cimmerians were in Central Anatolia between the Konya Plain and the Neo-Assyrian province of Que, but also extended to parts of the Konya Plain itself, including its western parts, and to Cappadocia, as well as to the west of Tabal, implying that some of the Neo-Hittite states in and near the Konya Plain had become subjected to the Cimmerians.
The disturbances experienced by the Neo-Assyrian Empire as result of the activities of the Cimmerians in Anatolia led to many of the rulers of this region to try to break away from Neo-Assyrian overlordship, with Ḫilakku having become an independent polity again under the king Sandašarme by the time that Esarhaddon had been succeeded as king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire by Ashurbanipal, so that by then the Cimmerians had effectively ended Neo-Assyrian control in Anatolia.
The Cimmerians destroyed Sinope during the 7th century BC and killed its founder, Habrōn, after they had invaded Paphlagonia. The Greek colony of Cyzicus might also have been destroyed by the Cimmerians so that it had to be re-founded at a later date. Thus, it was at this time that the Cimmerians first came into contact with the Greeks in Anatolia, constituting the first encounter between the ancient Greeks and steppe nomads.
In 671 to 670 BC, Cimmerian contingents were serving in the Assyrian army, and Neo-Assyrian sources were referring to the spread of military technology and animal husbandry products referred to in Assyrian sources as "Cimmerian leather straps" and "Cimmerian bows" into the Neo-Assyrian Empire from to .
However, the Lydian forces were initially not able to resist this invasion, and Gyges sought to find help to face the Cimmerian invasions by initiating diplomatic relations with the Neo-Assyrian Empire in 666 BC: without accepting Assyrian overlordship, Gyges started to send regular embassies and diplomatic gifts to Ashurbanipal, with another Lydian embassy to the Neo-Assyrian Empire being attested from .
Since it was due to the threat of the Cimmerians that Gyges had made friendly overtures to the Neo-Assyrian Empire, Ashurbanipal considered the Cimmerian presence in Anatolia more useful than fighting them. Therefore, he adopted a policy of accepting whatever gifts and praise that Gyges would offer him, in exchange of which Ashurbanipa promised him support from the gods Aššur and Marduk while keeping him waiting and abstaining from providing any military support to Lydia.
These Cimmerian attacks also destroyed the relations between Lydia and Phrygia, and archaeological evidence from the Lydian site of Daskyleion shows that the Cimmerian invasion ended the development of trade and economic production in the early 7th century BC which had contributed to integrating both Lydia and Ionia into the Mediterranean economy. Lower class Ionian Greeks and Carians affected by this Cimmerian invasion appear to have formed a significant part of the colonists who went to set up new settlements throughout the shore of the Black Sea in the 7th century BC, such as the colonies of Berezan Island, Histria, Sozopol, Mangalia, and Shabla.
Gyges's struggle against the Cimmerians soon turned in his favour without Neo-Assyrian support, so that he was able to defeat them between and , possibly through campaigns in western Central Anatolia to the east of Sardis and the south of the core Phrygian territory, after which he sent captured Cimmerian city-lords as diplomatic gifts to Ashurbanipal.
Gyges then stationed Carian and Ionian mercenaries at Abydos, which provided an impetus for the formation of new Greek colonies in the Propontis and therefore made the Black Sea accessible to Greeks from Ionia.
The defeat of the Cimmerians by Gyges in turn weakened their allies, Mugallu of Tabal and Sandašarme of Ḫilakku, enough that they were left with no choice but to submit to the authority of the Neo-Assyrian Empire in .
These Cimmerian aggressions worried Ashurbanipal about the security of the northwest border of the Neo-Assyrian Empire enough that he sought answers concerning this situation through divination. And, as a result of these Cimmerian conquests, by 657 BC, the Assyrian astrologer Akkullanu was calling the Cimmerian king Dugdammî by the title of (), which in the Mesopotamian worldview was a title that could belong only a single ruler in the world at any given time, and was normally held by the King of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. This attribution of the title of to a foreign ruler was an unprecedented situation of which there is no other known occurrence throughout the duration of the Neo-Assyrian Empire.
Akkullanu nevertheless also assured to Ashurbanipal that he would eventually regain the , that is the world hegemony which rightfully belonged to him, from the Cimmerians who had usurped it.
This extraordinary situation meant that, under Dugdammî, who was their most powerful king, the Cimmerians had become a force feared by Ashurbanipal, and the Cimmerians' successes against the Neo-Assyrian Empire meant that they had become recognised in ancient West Asia as equally powerful as Ashurbanipal himself.
This situation remained unchanged throughout the rest of the 650s and the early 640s BC, with the Cimmerian aggressions worrying Ashurbanipal regarding the security of his northwestern border so much that he often sought answers regarding this situation through divination.
These setbacks, along with Ashurbanipal's refusal to provide military support to Lydia, discredited Neo-Assyrian power enough that Gyges understood that he could not rely on Assyrian support against the Cimmerians, and, once the Cimmerians had moved to the east and their attacks on his kingdom decreased, he therefore ended diplomacy with the Neo-Assyrian Empire and instead sent troops to help the Egyptian kinglet Psamtik I of Sais, who had himself been a Neo-Assyrian vassal who was then eliminating the other Neo-Assyrian vassal kinglets in Lower Egypt to unite the whole of Egypt under his own rule. Ashurbanipal responded to Gyges's disengagement with the Neo-Assyrian Empire by cursing him.
One of the oracular responses received by Ashurbanipal in 652 BC itself claimed that the goddess Inanna had promised to him that the Cimmerians would be defeated similarly to how Ashurbanipal himself had defeated the Elamites and killed their king Teumman in 653 BC.
Meanwhile, Dugdammî might have taken advantage of the civil war within the Neo-Assyrian Empire caused by Samas-suma-ukin's rebellion to attack northwestern Neo-Assyrian provinces.
After this attack, Gyges's son Ardys succeeded him as king of Lydia and resumed diplomatic activity with the Neo-Assyrian Empire with the hope of military support which Ashurbanipal again did not provide. As a result, Ardys might possibly have been forced to submit to the Cimmerians, although the Cimmerians themselves never ruled Lydia.
The Cimmerians and Treres remained on the western coast of Anatolia inhabited by the Greeks for three years, from to , where later Greek tradition claimed that Lygdamis had occupied Antandrus and Priene, which forced a large number of the inhabitants of the coastal region called Batinētis to flee to the islands of the Aegean Sea.
Although the Urartians had sent tribute to the Neo-Assyrian Empire in 643 BC, the Urartian king Sarduri III (), who had been a Neo-Assyrian vassal, was at this time also forced to accept the suzerainty of the Cimmerians.
However, Mussi died before the planned attack on Neo-Assyrian Empire and his kingdom collapsed when its elite fled or was deported to Assyria, while Dugdammî carried it out but failed because, according to Neo-Assyrian sources, he became ill and fire broke out in his camp. Following this, Dugdammî was faced with a revolt against himself, after which ended his hostilities against the Neo-Assyrian Empire and sent tribute to Ashurbanipal to form an alliance with him, while Ashurbanipal forced Dugdammi to swear an oath to not attack the Neo-Assyrian Empire.
Dugdammî was succeeded as king of the Cimmerians in Cilicia by his son Sandakšatru, who continued Dugdammî's attacks against the Neo-Assyrian Empire but failed just like his father.
The power of the Cimmerians dwindled quickly after the death of Dugdammî, although the Lydian kings Ardys and Sadyattes might however have either died fighting the Cimmerians or were deposed for being incapable of efficiently fighting them, respectively in and .
Around , and with Neo-Assyrian approval, the Scythians under their king Madyes conquered Urartu, entered Central Anatolia, and defeated the Cimmerians and Treres. This final defeat of the Cimmerians was carried out by the joint forces of Madyes's Scythians, whom Strabo credits with expelling the Treres from Asia Minor, and of the Lydians led by their king Alyattes, who was himself the son of Sadyattes as well as the grandson of Ardys and the great-grandson of Gyges, whom Herodotus of Halicarnassus and Polyaenus claim permanently defeated the Cimmerians so that they no longer constituted a threat.
In an inscription from after , Ashurbanipal thanked the god Marduk for the fate which had struck Sandakšatru, suggesting that he had experienced a horrifying death not unlike his father's.
The Cimmerians completely disappeared from history following this final defeat, and they were soon assimilated by the various populations and polities of Anatolia, such as Lydia, Media, and Pteria. It was also around this time that the last still-existing Syro-Hittite and Aramaean states in Anatolia, which had been either independent or vassals of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, Phrygia, Urartu, or of the Cimmerians, also disappeared, although the exact circumstances of their end are still very uncertain.
Scythian power in West Asia thus reached its peak under Madyes, with the West Asian territories ruled by the Scythian kingdom extending from the Halys river in Anatolia in the west to the Caspian Sea and the eastern borders of Media in the east, and from Transcaucasia in the north to the northern borders of the Neo-Assyrian Empire in the south. And, following the defeat of the Cimmerians and the disappearance of these states, it was the new Lydian Empire of Alyattes which became the dominant power of Anatolia, while the city of Sinope was re-founded by the Milesian Greek colonists Kōos and Krētinēs.
The Cimmerian and Scythian activities in West Asia also hampered the development of trade, and overland trade routes in the region such as the Great Khorasan Road likely became dangerous to use, while also preventing the formation of new trade routes.
These Cimmerian and Scythian activities also influenced the developments in West Asia through the spread of the steppe nomad military technology brought by them into this region, and which were disseminated during the periods of their respective hegemonies in West Asia.
Proponents of a Cimmerian migration into southeastern Europe suggest that it affected as far as Thrace, where between 700 and 650 BC the Edoni allied with the Cimmerians to expand their territories by occupying Mygdonia and the area up to the Vardar at the expense of the Sintians and the Siropaiones.
The proponents of this hypothesis of a Cimmerian invasion also suggest that it would have also affected south-eastern Illyria, where raids by Cimmerians allied to Thracians ended the hegemony of Illyrians around 650 BC, and possibly into Epirus as well, where distinctive Cimmerian horse trappings were found offered in dedication at the temple of Dodona.
These Cimmerians and Scythians also influenced the developments in West Asia through the spread of the steppe nomad military technology brought by them into this region, and which were disseminated during the periods of their respective hegemonies in West Asia.
After the end of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, and following the conquest of the Neo-Babylonian Empire which had succeeded it by the Persian Achaemenids, the Babylonian scribes of the Achaemenid Persian Empire used the name of the Cimmerians (: and ) in Neo-Babylonian Akkadian to indiscriminately and anachronistically refer to all of the nomads of the steppes, including both the Pontic Scythians and the Central Asian Saka, because of their similar nomadic lifestyles. The Achaemenid Babylonian scribes therefore designated the bows used by Saka mounted archers as (, and , ). The Greeks similarly used the name of the Scythians as a generalising term for all stepp nomads, and the Byzantines later also similarly used it as an archaising term to designate the Huns, Slavs and other eastern peoples centuries after the actual Scythians had disappeared.
The Cimmerians appear in the Hebrew Bible under the name of Gomer (; ), where is closely linked to Ashkenaz (אשכנז), that is to the Scythians.
Due to the fear that the Cimmerian invasions caused among the Greeks of Ionia, they were remembered in Greek tradition, and an inscription from 283 BC mentioned that the Greek city-states of Samos and Priene were still engaging in a lawsuit disputing the territory of Batinetis which had been abandoned during the Cimmerian invasion of Ionia and Aeolia.
In the mediaeval period, Armenian tradition assigned the name of the Biblical Gōmer to the Konya Plain and to Cappadocia, which was therefore called (Գամիրք]]) in the Armenian language.
This mention of the Cimmerians in the was purely poetic and combined fantasy with records of real events, and naturalism with supernatural elements, and therefore contained no reliable information about the real Cimmerian people. This image was created as a poetic opposite of the Laestrygonians and who, in ancient Greek mythology, lived in a permanently sunlit land on the eastern borders of the world. Due to this location, the Ancient Greek name of the Cimmerians was identified with the word for mist, ().
Homer's passage relating to the Cimmerians had however used as its source the Argonauts, which dealt with the region of the Black Sea and the country of Colchis, on whose eastern borders the Cimmerians were still living in the 8th century BC. Thus, Homer's source on the Cimmerians was the Argonautic myth, which itself recorded of their existence when they were still living in northern Transcaucasia: the location of the Cimmerians as recorded by the Argonautic myth corresponds to the same one recorded by the late 7th century BC poem by Aristeas and the later writings of Herodotus, who both described the Cimmerians as having once dwelt in the steppe to the immediate north of the Caspian Sea, with the Araxes river (the Volga) forming their eastern border separating them from the Scythians.
The Greek historian Hecataeus of Miletus, drawing from information acquired by the Persian army during its invasion of Scythia in 513 BC, later started the tradition of locating Homer's Cimmerians and "Cimmerian" places (such as a "Cimmerian city") in the Scythian-dominated Pontic Steppe between the Araxes and the Bosporus.
Basing himself on Greek folk tales from the Tyras, Herodotus claimed the tombs of the Cimmerian princes could still be seen in his days near the Tyras river.
Herodotus also referred to the presence of several "Cimmerian" toponyms as existing in the Bosporan region, such as:
Herodotus likely used Bosporan Greek folk tales as source for these claims, although some of the "Cimmerian" toponyms in the Bosporan region might have originated from a genuine Cimmerian presence in this area.
The story of the fratricidal war of the Cimmerian "royal tribe," that is of the defeat and destruction of its ruling class, is contradicted by how powerful the Cimmerians were according to the Assyrian records contemporaneous with their presence in West Asia. Another inconsistency in Herodotus's description of the flight of the Cimmerians is the direction through which they retreated: according to this narrative, the Cimmerians moved from the Pontic Steppe to the east into Caucasia to flee from the Scythians, who were themselves moving from the east into the Pontic Steppe.
These inconsistencies suggest that Herodotus's narrative of an eastern flight of the Cimmerians was a later folk tale invented by Greek colonists on the north shore of the Black Sea to explain the existence of ancient tombs, reflecting the motif of assigning old tombs and buildings with mythical heroes or with lost ancient valiant peoples, similarly to how the Greeks within Greece proper claimed similar remains had been built by the Pelasgians and the Cyclopes, or how later Ossetian tradition Nart saga.
Herodotus's account of the Cimmerians' flight contracted the actual events into a more condensed story where they moved south by following the shore of the Black Sea under the leadership of Lygdamis, while their Scythian pursuers followed the Caspian Sea's coast, thus leading the Cimmerians into Anatolia and the Scythians into Media. While Cimmerian activities in Anatolia and Scythian activities in Media are attested, the claim that the Scythians arrived in Media while pursuing the Cimmerians is unsupported by evidence, and the arrival of the Scythians in West Asia about 40 years after that of the Cimmerians suggests that there is no available evidence to the later Graeco-Roman account of the Cimmerians crossing the Caucasus and moving south into West Asia under pressure from the Scythians migrating into their territories.
Moreover, Herodotus's account also ignored the earlier Cimmerian activities in West Asia during the reigns of Sargon II to the ascension of Ashurbanipal, including the two separate invasions of Lydia, and instead contracted them into a single event during which Lydgamis led the Cimmerians from the steppes into Anatolia to sack Sardis under the reign of Ardys.
In the 4th century BC, a town called Cimmeris was established in the Taman Peninsula.
Homer's description of the Cimmerians as living deprived from sunlight and close to the entrance of Hades influenced later Graeco-Roman authors who, writing centuries after the disappearance of the historical Cimmerians, conceptualised of this people as the one described by Homer, and therefore assigned to them various fantastical locations and histories:
In the 18th to 20th centuries, the racialist British Israelist movement developed a pseudohistory according to which, after population of the historical kingdom of Israel had been deported by the Neo-Assyrian Empire in 721 BC and became the Ten Lost Tribes, they fled north to the region near Sinope, from where they migrated into East and Central Europe and became the Scythians and Cimmerians, who themselves moved to north-west Europe and became the supposed ancestors of the White people Protestantism peoples of North Europe, with the being the supposed descendants of those among them who maintained their Cimmerian identity. Being an antisemitic movement, British Israelists claim to be the most authentic heirs of the ancient Israelites while rejecting Jews as being "contaminated" through intermarriage with ; or, they adhere to the antisemitic conspiracy theory claiming that Jews descend from the Khazars. According to the scholar Tudor Parfitt, the proof cited by adherents of British Israelism is "of a feeble composition even by the low standards of the genre."
Research in the late 20th century AD eventually concluded that the various "Cimmerian" toponymies from the Pontic Steppe were invented during the 6th century BC, that is when the Pontic Steppe was under Scythian rule, long after the historical Cimmerians had disappeared.
, a novel by Michael Chabon, includes a chapter describing the (fictional) oldest book in the world, , created by ancient Cimmerians.
Isaac Asimov attempted to trace various place names to Cimmerian origins. He suggested that gave rise to the Turkic languages Toponymy Stary Krym, which in turn gave rise to the name . The derivation of the name of Crimea from that of the Cimmerians is however no longer accepted, and it is now thought to have originated from the Crimean Tatar word , which means "fortress."
Manau's song recounts an imaginary battle between Celts and enemies identified by the narrator as Cimmerians.
The region of the Pontic Steppe to the north of the Lake Maeotis was instead inhabited by the Agathyrsi, who were another nomadic Iranic tribe related to the Cimmerians, and the claim in earlier scholarship that the Cimmerians lived in the Pontic Steppe appears to be erroneous and lacks evidence to support it.
The later claim by Greek authors that the Cimmerians lived in the Pontic Steppe around the Dniester was a retroactive invention dating from after the disappearance of the Cimmerians.
And, while the Cimmerians are archaeologically, culturally and linguistically indistinguishable from the Scythians, all Mesopotamian and Greek sources contemporary to their activities sources both nevertheless clearly distinguished between the Cimmerians and the Scythians as separate political entities, suggesting that the Scythians and Cimmerians were merely two member tribes of a single cultural group.
Other suggestions for the ethnicity of the Cimmerians include the possibility of them being Thracians. However the proposal of a Thracian origin of the Cimmerians is untenable and arose from a confusion by Strabo of Amasia between the Cimmerians and their allies, the Thracian tribe of the Treri. According to the scholar Igor Diakonoff, the possibility of the Cimmerians being Thracian-speakers is less likely than that of them being Iranic-speakers.
The Iranologist Ľubomír Novák considers Cimmerian to be a relative of Scythian which exhibited similar features as Scythian, such as the evolution of the sound into .
According to Igor Diakonoff, the Cimmerians spoke a Scythian language belonging to the eastern branch of the Iranic language. The Scythologist Askold Ivantchik also considers the Cimmerians to have been linguistically very close to the Scythians.
The recorded personal names of the Cimmerians were either Iranic, reflecting their origins, or Anatolian, reflecting the cultural influence of the native populations of Asia Minor on them after their migration there. Only a few personal names in the Cimmerian language have survived in inscriptions:
Such nomadic states were managed by institutions of authority presided over by the rulers of the tribes, the warrior aristocracy, and ruling dynasty.
Once the Cimmerians in Anatolia had become sedentary, they formed settlements which were ruled by city-lords not unlike those who ruled the city-states of the Medes.
After the Cimmerians who had migrated into West Asia had divided into two groups, the western horde living in Anatolia had become sedentary and were living in settlements, some of which were fortified, and which had either been founded by them or were native Anatolian settlements over whom the Cimmerians had established their rule. The capital of these Anatolian Cimmerians was a city by the name of Ḫarzallē.
These settlements were administered by leaders who were part of a hierarchical system, and who were either Cimmerians themselves or belonged to the various ethnic groups living within the Cimmerian kingdom in Anatolia. The Neo-Assyrian Empire considered these leaders to be equivalents of the rulers of the contemporary Median city-states, due to which they referred to the leaders of these Cimmerian rulers as (), which was the same designation that they had used for the Median petty-rulers as well.
The Cimmerians used the same types of horse harness as the Scythians.
The Cimmerians who moved in Anatolia also adopted the use of Chariot and unmounted infantry.
Another genetic study published in Current Biology in July 2019 examined the remains of three Cimmerians. The two samples of Y-DNA extracted belonged to haplogroups R1a-Z645 and R1a2c-B111, while the three samples of mtDNA extracted belonged to haplogroups H35, U5a1b1 and U2e2.
The Cimmerians before their migration into West Asia archaeologically corresponded to a part of the Chernogorovka-Novocherkassk complex of the northern Pontic steppe regions over the course of the 9th to 7th centuries BC.
The Chernogorovka-Novocherkassk complex thus developed natively in the North Pontic region over the course of the 9th to mid-7th centuries BC from elements which had earlier arrived from Central Asia, due to which the Chernogorovka-Novocherkassk complex itself exhibited similarities with the other early nomadic cultures of the Eurasian steppe and forest-steppe which existed before the 7th century BC, such as the Aržan culture, so that these various pre-Scythian early nomadic cultures were thus part of a unified Aržan-Chernogorovka cultural layer originating from Central Asia.
Both the Cimmerians and the early Scythians thus belonged to pre-Scythian archaeological cultures, and the material culture of the Cimmerians was therefore similar enough to that of the later Scythians who followed them that the Chernogorovka-Novocherkassk and Proto-Scythian cultures are archaeologically indistinguishable from each other.
By the time the Cimmerians had moved into West Asia, their culture along with the pre-Scythian culture of the Scythians had evolved into the Early Scythian culture: several "Early Scythian" remains are known from West Asia which correspond to the activities of the Cimmerians in this region, with "Scythian" arrowheads have been found among the weapons of besieging armies of ruined cities in parts of Anatolia where Cimmerians are attested have operated but where Scythians were not active.
Despite textual sources attesting of Cimmerian activities in Anatolia which strongly affected the polities in that region, their presence there has largely still not been identified in the archaeology of Iron Age Anatolia.
The few known Cimmerian archaeological remains from the period of their presence in Anatolia include a burial from the village of İmirler in the Amasya Province of Turkey which contains typically Early Scythian weapons and horse harnesses. Another Cimmerian burial, located at about 100 km to the east of İmirler and 50 km from Samsun, contained 250 Scythian-type arrowheads.
The site of Büklükale, where was discovered Scythian-type animal style ornaments, might have been the location of a Cimmerian settlement, although this identification is still uncertain.
|
|
