affording pasture for flocks, and at one time suited for the cul- ture of the vine (Is 168). The number and extent of the ruins
in this district show that it was once thickly inhabited. The Bedawin in their black tents are now the chief inhabitants ; tee G. A. Smith, HGHL pp. 535, 548.
a translation from Clermont-Ganneau’s Recueil @Archéologie Orientale, tom. xi. p. 161, 1897. Further communications with reference to this mosaic are to be found on p. 239 of PEFSt for July 1897, p. 85 of April 1898, » 177 of July 1898, p. 251 of Oct. 1898. . T. CHAPMAN.
MEDES (1p, M#do).—In Gn 10? Madai is a son of Japheth, and is associated with Gomer and Javan. The Assyr. form of the name is Mada, but when we first meet with it in the annals of Shal- maneser Il. (c. B.C. 840) it is written Amada. Hadad-nirari mI. (c. B.C, 800) overthrew Khana- ziruka, king of the Mat&, who inhabited Matiéné, S.W. of the Caspian ; W. of the Mat& was Parsuas (perhaps Parthia), with its 27 kings, on the shores of Lake Urumiyeh. It is doubtful whether we should identify Mata and Mada& as variant forms of the same name, or regard the Maté as a division of the Mada; at all events, Hadad-nirari II. also employs the name Mada, and it is the onl form of the name henceforth found in the cunei- form inscriptions. ‘Tiglath-pileser ΠῚ. overran the Median states E. of Zagruti or the Zagros, send- ing one of his generals against ‘the Medes at the rising of the sun’ (B.C. 743); and Sargon in B.C. 713 subdued a number of Median chieftains, one of whom was the chief of Partakanu. Esarhaddon divides Partakanu into the two provinces of Partakka and Partukka, and describes it as ‘re- mote.’ In the early part of his reign Assyria was threatened by a combined attack on the part of the Medes, Kimmerians, Sapard& (Sepharad), and ‘Kaztarit, king of Karu-Kassi’; but the Assyr. king carried the war into the enemy’s country, and the defeat of the Median ‘ city-lords’ in the far east relieved him of all danger from the Median tribes. A portion of the Kimmerians, how- ever, took possession of the old kingdom of Ellipi, north of Elam, where a new power arose, with its capital in Ecbatana (Pers. Hangmatdna). In the cuneiform inscriptions the Kimmerians are called Umman Manda or nomad ‘ Barbarians’ (Goiim in OT), and the resemblance of Manda to Mad caused the two words to be confused together by the classical writers.
The Medes, like the Kimmerians, belonged to the Iranian branch of the an race, the Persians being a kindred tribe, which pushed farther south towards the Persian Gulf. According to Herodotus (vii. 62, i. 101), they were called Arians by their neighbours, and were divided into six tribes: the Buse, Paretakéni (Assyr. Partakanu), Struchates, Arizanti, Budii, and Magi. The Magi, however, seem rather to have been a priestly caste. The Assyr. inscriptions show that the Medes obeyed no central authority, but were divided, like the Greeks, into a number of small states, each under the rule of its own ‘city-lord.’ Consequently the classical belief in a ‘Median empire’ was groundless, and was really due to the confusion
etween the names Mada and Manda.
A recently discovered inscription of Nabonidos has informed us that the destruction of Nineveh (B.C. 606) was brought about by the Manda, not by the Mada or Medes. We have also learned from the cuneiform texts that it was the Manda who devastated Mesopotamia, destroying Harran and its temple of the Moon-god; that Astyages (Istuvigu in cuneiform) was king of the Manda; and that the revolt of Cyrus was against the Manda, and not against the Medes. Medes may have been included among the Manda or ‘Bar- barians,’ but the term was primarily applied to the northern hordes who had swarmed across the Caucasus into W. Asia, and were called Kim. merians (see GOMER) and Scythians by the Greeks. The kingdom of Ecbatana was founded by these
MEDES
aati who had conquered the ancient kingdom of ipi.
The ‘Median’ kings of Herodotus and Ctesias are alike artificial creations. Herodotus makes the Median monarchy begin with Déiokes, B.c. 710, at a time when the Assyr. empire was at the height of its power, and Sargon was punishing the : at Gayo >of the Medes. Déiokes is the Dainkku of the Assyr. inscriptions, a vassal-chief under the king of the Manna (Minni), who was carried cap- tive to Hamath by Sargon in B.c. 715. Phraortes, who is said to have succeeded Déiokes, is Fra- wartish, who carried on wars against the Persians and the Assyrians, and called himself Xathrites (Kaztarit). Mis successor Cyaxares may be Kaz- tarit, or he may have been a genuine king of Ecbatana, and the actual predecessor of Astyages. At all events Astyages was a king of the Manda, and his conquest by his rebel vassal Cyrus took place in B.c. 549. On Arphaxad king of the Medes (Jth 11), see ARPHAXAD.
The list of Median kings given by Ctesias prob- ably comes from a Persian source, and the chrono- logical arrangement of it is even more artificial than that of the list of Herodotus. Lenoz=sant seems to have been right in suggesting that two of the kings in it, Arteeus and Astibaras, are the kings of Ellipi, Rita (Dalta) and Ispabara, who were contemporaries of Sargon and Sennacherib.