RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Medo-Persia
Lulubi must have come into the territory from the west or northwest to find it already occupied by the dark-skinned folk, connected above tentatively with the Sumerians, and also by the people from the Caucasus. Their title for "prince" seems to have been "Yanzu." As they entered the land from west or northwest, there came from the east the Kasyapa, or Kasyapi. These may perhaps be all grouped together and called the Umman Manda.
After this early period knowledge of Media
passes into darkness for many centuries, as the
next intelligence comes from the period of the
Kasshite dominion in Babylonia when Agum II.
(see Babylonia, VI., 5, § 1, where this
2. The king is registered under the name Kasshites. Agum-kakrime) claimed dominion not
only over Babylonia, but also over some Median provinces, from which it may be inferred that the great Kasshite invasion passed also over Media, and conquered portions of its territory. Another long period is to be passed over, of which nothing is known until the reigns of Adadnirari I. and Shalmaneser I., his son, kings of Assyria about 1300 B.C., who conquered the Lulubi or Lulumi, who were again conquered about two centuries later by Nebuchadrezzar I. of Babylonia. During this entire period there is not a single mention of the people whom the Greeks called Medes. They have not yet appeared in history. All the people who have up to this time attracted attention belonged in some way to the unclassified Manda hordes.
In his twenty-fourth campaign in the year 836 Shalmaneser II., king of Assyria, made an expedition into Namri, and passing on through the country met for the first time the Amadai or Madai, that is, the Medes of the Indo-European
3. The family. He claims a great victory Early over them, carrying away prisoners
Medes. and devastating their cities. Their recuperative power was great, for during the reign of Adad-nirari V. (formerly known as Ramman-nirari III. or IV- or Adad-nirari III. or IV.; 810-782 B.C.) the eponym canon sets down no less than eight campaigns and still another under Asshur-Dan III. (771-754 B.C.). The Medes seem to have increased in numbers, and then to have mastered more thoroughly the primitive population and to have gained rapidly in power with the passing years in spite of the great efforts of the Assyrians to overcome them. During the next Assyrian reign (Tiglath-Pileser IV.; 745-727 B.C.) two great expeditions were led against the Medes in 744 and in 737, in the former of which the Assyrian king claims to have carried away 60,500 captives, and in the latter 8,650. The king always refers to them as the " dangerous " Medes, and such he doubtless found them to be. There was an almost continuous battery of attacks upon the Medes during the reign of Sargon II., 722-705; and Sennacherib (705-681) received tribute from " the far-away Medes, whose names no one of my predecessors had known."
From about 700 B.C. new waves of migration from the neighborhood of Lake Urumiah passed VII.— 18
down into the territory once held by the Assyrians
and lying east of the Tigris. These were Indo-
Europeans, and their names have been
4. Early preserved in part at least by the Assyr- Migrations; ians. The best-known of them are
The Cim- the Cimmerians (the Kimmerioi of merians. the Greeks, the Gomer of the Hebrews). All these peoples were a cause of deep anxiety to the Assyrians during the reign of Esarhaddon (681-668 B.C.), and Asshurbanipal (668-625 b.c.) in vain attempted to hold them in check. In large numbers, and increasing both in power and in daring, they were sweeping all before them. From about the year 640 the native rulers of Elam no longer are mentioned, for the Medes had possessed the land, and very soon after that year there is notice of the kings of Anshan, to whom Cyrus the Great looked back as his ancestors. As Assyrian power dwindled these new invaders east of Assyria were building up a new people, the old Indo-Europeans melting together with the new, and soon this new combination was able to found a kingdom of its own with the capital city Ecbatana. From many sources there come down memories
5. Ecba- of that great city. The ancient tana. Persians called it Hagmatana, and the
Babylonians Agamatanu, while the Greeks catching a false quantity made it Ecbatana. It is perhaps safe to suppose that it is the city called Amadana by Tiglath-Pileser I., and in this case its origin would go back to the twelfth century before Christ. Herodotus, on the other hand, ascribes its origin to Deioces, whom he regards as the first great ruler of the Median empire about 700 B.C., who is represented as having erected great walls of defense, " the walls being arranged in circles one within another." From this time onward, the stream of Median history is in full flow, and the Greek sources give valuable sidelights upon the native monuments.
Herodotus makes Deioces the ruler of the Medes 700-647 B.C. The successor of Deioces, according
to Herodotus, was Phraortes (646-625) ,
6. Deioces but of him nothing is learned from
and Asty- the inscription material which has
ages I. come down, and the name is therefore
suspect. It has been suggested by Winckler that the real ruler of Media at this time was Astyages I., and that it was he who was first invoked by the Babylonians to lend aid against the Assyrians. There is no solid evidence for this and the statement must suffice that the next king of the Medes, Cyaxares (624-585), is the first really historical monarch of the Median empire. His name is handed down by Darius the Great in the form Uvakshatara, and he it was who broke the Scythian power and formed an alliance with the Babylonians. Urged onward by Nabopolassar, king of Babylon, Cyaxares attacked Nineveh and in the year 606 b.c. laid it waste, and with it the upper part of Mesopotamia and the Babylonian cities which had cast in their lot with the Assyrians. By this one stroke the Medes were enriched through the vast plunder which Nineveh provided, but also they had sprung from insignificance into the position of a world power. The Median armies flushed with victory swept
Medo-Pereia Megander