Cimmerians

See also: Cimmeria (Conan) or Cimmeria (poem) for the fiction of Robert E. Howard.

The Cimmerians or Kimmerians (Greek: Κιμμέριοι, Kimmerioi) were ancient equestrian nomads of Indo-European origin.

According to the Greek historian Herodotus, of the 5th century BC, the Cimmerians inhabited the region north of the Caucasus and the Black Sea during the 8th and 7th centuries BC, in what is now Ukraine and Russia. The archeologist Renate Rolle and others have argued that no one has demonstrated with archeological evidence the presence of Cimmerians in the southern parts of Russia or elsewhere.^[1]

Scholars in the 19th and 20th centuries had relied upon Herodotus's account. But, Sir Henry Layard's discoveries in the royal archives at Nineveh and Calah have enabled the study of new source material that is several centuries earlier than Herodotus's history.^[2] The Assyrian archeological record shows that the Cimmerians, and the land of Gamir, were located not far from Urartu, (Urartu was an Iron Age kingdom centered around Lake Van in the Armenian Highland), south of the Caucasus.^[3][4] Military intelligence reports to Sargon in the 8th century BC describe the Cimmerians as occupying territory south of the Black Sea.^[5]

Origins

The origin of the Cimmerians is unclear. They are mostly supposed to have been related to either Iranian or to Thracian speaking groups, or at least to have been ruled by an Iranian elite.^[6][7]

Although the 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica reflects Herodotus, stating, "They [the Cimmerians] probably did live in the area north of the Black Sea, but attempts to define their original homeland more precisely by archaeological means, or even to fix the date of their expulsion from their country by the Scythians, have not so far been completely successful,"^[6] recent research by academic scholars have made use of documents dating to centuries earlier than Herodotus, such as intelligence reports to Sargon, and note that these identify the Cimmerians as living south rather than north of the Black Sea.^[3][4]

A few stone stelae found in Ukraine and the northern Caucasus have been connected with the Cimmerians and the Srubna culture. They are in a style clearly different from both the later Scythian and the earlier Yamna/Kemi-Oba stelae.^{[citation needed]}

Historical accounts

Cimmerian invasions of Colchis, Urartu and Assyria during the reign of King Rusas I

The first historical record of the Cimmerians appears in Assyrian annals in the year 714 BC. These describe how a people termed the Gimirri helped the forces of Sargon II to defeat the kingdom of Urartu. Their original homeland, called Gamir or Uishdish, seems to have been located within the buffer state of Mannae. The later geographer Ptolemy placed the Cimmerian city of Gomara in this region. After their conquests of Colchis and Iberia in the First Millennium BC, the Cimmerians also came to be known as Gimirri in Georgian. According to Georgian historians,^[8] the Cimmerians played an influential role in the development of both the Colchian and Iberian cultures. The modern-day Georgian word for hero, გმირი, gmiri, is derived from the word Gimirri. This refers to the Cimmerians who settled in the area after the initial conquests.

Some modern authors assert that the Cimmerians included mercenaries, whom the Assyrians knew as Khumri, who had been resettled there by Sargon. Later Greek accounts describe the Cimmerians as having previously lived on the steppes, between the Tyras (Dniester) and Tanais (Don) rivers. Greek and Mesopotamian sources note several Cimmerian kings including Tugdamme (Lygdamis in Greek; mid-7th century BC), and Sandakhshatra (late-7th century).

A "mythical" people also named Cimmerians are described in Book 11, 14 of Homer's Odyssey as living beyond the Oceanus, in a land of fog and darkness, at the edge of the world and the entrance of Hades. Most likely they were unrelated to the Cimmerians of the Black Sea.^[9]

According to the Histories of Herodotus (c. 440 BC), the Cimmerians had been expelled from the steppes by the Scythians. To ensure burial in their ancestral homeland, the men of the Cimmerian royal family divided into groups and fought each other to the death. The Cimmerian commoners buried the bodies along the river Tyras and fled from the Scythian advance, across the Caucasus and into Anatolia and the Near East. Their range seems to have extended from Mannae eastward through the Mede settlements of the Zagros Mountains, and south as far as Elam.^{[citation needed]}

The Assyrians recorded the migrations of the Cimmerians, as the former people's king Sargon II was killed in battle against them in 705 BC. The Cimmerians were subsequently recorded as having conquered Phrygia in 696-695 BC, prompting the Phrygian king Midas to take poison rather than face capture. In 679 BC, during the reign of Esarhaddon of Assyria, they attacked Cilicia and Tabal under their new ruler Teushpa. Esarhaddon defeated them near Hubushna.^{[citation needed]}

In 654 BC or 652 BC – the exact date is unclear – the Cimmerians attacked the kingdom of Lydia, killing the Lydian king Gyges and causing great destruction to the Lydian capital of Sardis. They returned ten years later during the reign of Gyges' son Ardys II; this time they captured the city, with the exception of the citadel. The fall of Sardis was a major shock to the powers of the region; the Greek poets Callinus and Archilochus recorded the fear that it inspired in the Greek colonies of Ionia, some of which were attacked by Cimmerian and Treres raiders.^{[citation needed]}

The Cimmerian occupation of Lydia was brief, however, possibly due to an outbreak of plague. Between 637 and 626 BC, they were beaten back by Alyattes II of Lydia. This defeat marked the effective end of Cimmerian power. The term Gimirri was used about a century later in the Behistun inscription (ca. 515 BC) as a Babylonian equivalent of Persian Saka (Scythians). Otherwise Cimmerians disappeared from western Asian historical accounts, and their fate was unknown. It has been speculated that they settled in Cappadocia, known in Armenian as Գամիրք, Gamir-kʿ (the same name as the original Cimmerian homeland in Mannae).^{[citation needed]}

Timeline

• 721-715 BC – Sargon II mentions a land of Gamirr near to Urartu.
• 714 – suicide of Rusas I of Urartu, after defeat by both the Assyrians and Cimmerians.
• 705 – Sargon II of Assyria dies on an expedition against the Kulummu.
• 695 - Cimmerians destroyed Phrygia. King Midas died.
• 679/678 – Gimirri under a ruler called Teushpa invade Assyria from Hubuschna (Cappadocia?). Esarhaddon of Assyria defeats them in battle.
• 676-674 – Cimmerians invade and destroy Phrygia, and reach Paphlagonia.
• 654 or 652 – Gyges of Lydia dies in battle against the Cimmerians. Sack of Sardis; Cimmerians and Treres plunder Ionian colonies.
• 644 – Cimmerians occupy Sardis, but withdraw soon afterwards
• 637-626 – Cimmerians defeated by Alyattes II.
• ca. 515 – Last historical record of Cimmerians, in the Behistun inscription of Darius.

Language

Only a few personal names in the Cimmerian language have survived in Assyrian inscriptions:

• Te-ush-pa-a; according to Professor J. Harmatta, it goes back to Old Iranian Tavis-paya "swelling with strength".^[7] Mentioned in the annals of Esarhaddon, has been compared to the Hurrian war deity Teshub;^{[citation needed]} others interpret it as Iranian, comparing the Achaemenid name Teispes (Herodotus 7.11.2).

• Dug-dam-mei (Dugdammê) king of the Ummân-Manda (nomads) appears in a prayer of Ashurbanipal to Marduk, on a fragment at the British Museum. According to Professor J. Harmatta, it goes back to Old Iranian Duγda-maya "giving happiness".^[7] Other spellings include Dugdammi, and Tugdammê. Yamauchi also interprets the name as Iranian, citing Ossetic Tux-domæg "Ruling with Strength."^[10] The name appears corrupted to Lygdamis in Strabo 1.3.21.

• Sandaksatru, son of Dugdamme. This is an Iranian reading of the name, and Mayrhofer (1981) points out that the name may also be read as Sandakurru. Mayrhofer likewise rejects the interpretation of "with pure regency" as a mixing of Iranian and Indo-Aryan. Ivancik suggests an association with the Anatolian deity Sanda. According to Professor J. Harmatta, it goes back to Old Iranian Sanda-Kuru "Splendid Son".^[7] Kur/Kuru is still used as "son" in Kurdish languages and in Persian, korr is used for the male offspring of horses.

Some researchers have attempted to trace various place names to Cimmerian origins. It has been suggested that Crimea is named after the Cimmerians^[11] as well as the Armenian city of Gyumri. The name "Crimea" is traceable to the Crimean Tatar word qırım (my steppe, hill), and the peninsula was known as Taurica, (Peninsula) of the Tauri, in antiquity (Strabo 7.4.1; Herodotus 4.99.3, Amm. Marc. 22.8.32).

Based on ancient Greek historical sources, a Thracian^[12][13] or a Celtic^[14] association is sometimes assumed. According to Ferdinand Friedrich Carl Lehmann-Haupt, the language of the Cimmerians could have been a "missing link" between Thracian and Iranian.

Possible offshoots

Herodotus thought the Cimmerians and the Thracians closely related, writing that both peoples originally inhabited the northern shore of the Black Sea, and both were displaced about 700 BC, by invaders from the east. Whereas the Cimmerians would have departed this ancestral homeland by heading west and south across the Caucasus, the Thracians migrated southwest into the Balkans, where they established a successful and long-lived culture. The Tauri, the original inhabitants of Crimea, are sometimes identified as a people related to the Cimmerians and later the Taurisci.

Premodern historians asserted Cimmerian descent for the Celts or the Germans, arguing from the similarity of Cimmerii to Cimbri or Cymry. It is unlikely that either Proto-Celtic or Proto-Germanic entered western Europe as late as the 7th century BC; their formation was commonly associated with the Bronze Age Urnfield and Nordic Bronze Age cultures, respectively. It is, however, conceivable that a small-scale (in terms of population) 8th century "Thraco-Cimmerian" migration triggered cultural changes that contributed to the transformation of the Urnfield culture into the Hallstatt C culture, ushering in the European Iron Age. Later Cimmerian remnant groups may have spread as far as to the Nordic Countries and the Rhine River. An example is the Cimbri tribe, considered to be a Germanic tribe hailing from the Himmerland (Old Danish Himber sysæl) region in northern Denmark.^[15]

The etymology of Cymro "Welshman" (plural: Cymry), connected to the Cimmerians by 17th century Celticists, is now accepted by Celtic linguists as being derived from a Brythonic word *kom-brogos,^{[16][17][18][19]} meaning "compatriots", (i.e. fellow-Brythons as opposed to the Anglo-Saxons).

Appearance in myths of other peoples

In sources beginning with the Royal Frankish Annals, the Merovingian kings of the Franks traditionally traced their lineage through a pre-Frankish tribe called the Sicambri (or Sugambri), mythologized as a group of "Cimmerians" from the mouth of the Danube river, but who instead came from Gelderland in modern Netherlands and are named for the Sieg river^[20] or which could derive from that of the Cimbri as their chieftain names have the same suffix -rix.

Also, the Biblical name "Gomer" has been linked in some sources to the Cimmerians.

Archaeology

• Koban culture (Northern Caucasus, 12th to 4th centuries BC)
• Cernogorovka culture (9th to 8th centuries)
• Novocerkassk culture (8th to 7th century, between Danube and Volga)

See also

• Gog and Magog
• Ancient Indo-Scythian Kambojas, Saka, Sakha
• Celts
• Amazons
• Cimbri
• Thraco-Cimmerian
• Other Cimmerians: The Cimmerians MILSIM Airsoft Association
• Other Cimmerians: Cimmerian, founder of RantMedia
• Cimmerian Sibyl

Notes

1. ^ Renate Rolle, "Urartu und die Reiternomaden", in: Saeculum 28, 1977, S. 291-339
2. ^ K. Deller, "Ausgewählte neuassyrische Briefe betreffend Urarṭu zur Zeit Sargons II.," in P.E. Pecorella and M. Salvini (eds), Tra lo Zagros e l'Urmia. Ricerche storiche ed archeologiche nell'Azerbaigian Iraniano, Incunabula Graeca 78 (Rome 1984) 97-122.
3. ^ ^{a b} Cozzoli, Umberto (1968). I Cimmeri. Rome Italy: Arti Grafiche Citta di Castello (Roma). http://openlibrary.org/b/OL19361902M/Cimmeri.. 
4. ^ ^{a b} Salvini, Mirjo (1984). Tra lo Zagros e l'Urmia: richerche storiche ed archeologiche nell'Azerbaigian iraniano. Rome Italy: Ed. Dell'Ateneo (Roma). http://openlibrary.org/b/OL13958629M/Tra-lo-Zagros-e-l%27Urmia. 
5. ^ Kristensen, Anne Katrine Gade (1988). Who were the Cimmerians, and where did they come from?: Sargon II, and the Cimmerians, and Rusa I. Copenhagen Denmark: The Royal Danish Academy of Science and Letters. 
6. ^ ^{a b} "The origin of the Cimmerians is obscure. Linguistically they are usually regarded as Thracian or as Iranian, or at least to have had an Iranian ruling class." "Cimmerian", in Encyclopædia Britannica, 2006, Retrieved August 30, 2006. Quote: "The origin of the Cimmerians is obscure. Linguistically they are usually regarded as Thracian or as Iranian, or at least to have had an Iranian ruling class."
7. ^ ^{a b c d} J.Harmatta: "Scythians" UNESCO Collection of History of Humanity: Volume III: From the Seventh Century BC to the Seventh Century AD, Routledge/UNESCO. 1996, p. 182
8. ^ Berdzenishvili, N., Dondua V., Dumbadze, M., Melikishvili G., Meskhia, Sh., Ratiani, P., History of Georgia (Vol. 1), Tbilisi, 1958, pp. 34-36
9. ^ "Cimmerians" (Κιμμέριοι), Henry Liddell & Robert Scott, Perseus, Tufts University
10. ^ Yamauchi, Edwin M (1982). Foes from the Northern Frontier: Invading Hordes from the Russian Steppes. Grand Rapids MI USA: Baker Book House. 
11. ^ Asimov, Isaac (1991). Asimov's Chronology of the World. New York: HarperCollins. pp. 50. 
12. ^ Meljukova, A. I. (1979). Skifija i Frakijskij Mir. Moscow. 
13. ^ Strabo ascribes the Treres to the Thracians at one place (13.1.8) and to the Cimmerians at another (14.1.40)
14. ^ Posidonius in Strabo 7.2.2.
15. ^ Jones, Gwyn. A History of the Vikings, London: Oxford University Press, 2001
16. ^ Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru, vol. I, p. 770.
17. ^ Jones, J. Morris. Welsh Grammar: Historical and Comparative. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995.
18. ^ Russell, Paul. Introduction to the Celtic Languages. London: Longman, 1995.
19. ^ Delamarre, Xavier. Dictionnaire de la langue gauloise. Paris: Errance, 2001.
20. ^ Geary, Patrick J. Before France and Germany: The Creation and Transformation of the Merovingian World. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988

Bibliography

• Ivanchik A.I. "Cimmerians and Scythians", 2001
• Terenozhkin A.I., Cimmerians, Kiev, 1983
• Cimmerian. (2006). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved August 30, 2006, from Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9082650
• Collection of Slavonic and Foreign Language Manuscripts - St.St Cyril and Methodius - Bulgarian National Library: http://www.nationallibrary.bg/slavezryk_en.html

External links

• Wiki Classical Dictionary: Cimmerians
• Cimmerians on Stevequayle.com
• Cimmerians on Regnal Chronologies
• map of the distribution of "Cimmerian" bronze finds in Europe
• Cimmerians by Jona Lendering
• Dorin Sârbu, A controversial archeological phenomenon: the Cimmerian Culture (Romanian (full) and English (abstract))