Lets see if we can narrow a bit:
* We don't know who destroyed Urartu.
* It may have been Sargon II (Assyria) ca. 714 BC
* Sargon II did die in battle, but in Cilicia in the Taurus mountains. (ca.
705) (too far south for Cimmerians) probably in the Cilician Gate.
*We haven't a clue who he was fighting (maybe Cilicians :-) .
*The Cimmerian impact on Anatolia / Phrygia theory began to die in the
fifties.
* There was no Cimmerian (nor Scythian) layer at Gordium (Phrygia) when
Young excavated. * Gordium was apparently destroyed then gradually
reinhabited by locals till Persian occupation.
*The only cities known to be impacted in the Cimmerian passage (not
occupation) were Magnesia, and Sardis..with some reference to a stop at
Ephesus. All west Coast.
*Lydia blocks further movement south down the Aegean coast
*Then to Cappadochia went the Cimmerians.
*Callamachus puts them at Ephesus.
*Herodotus puts them in Western Anatolia
*Homer only describes a people Northwards on the coast of a Sea (Black?)
* Young's findings at Gordium have been slow to defeat a largely conjectural
pre 1950's placement of a Cimmerian "power block" all over Anatolia. It
wasn't there.
*Lydia did not take Phrygia from Cimmerians; but from Phrygians (< also
>Thracian).
*The only extraregional force in the east (for the period) was Scythian.
* They were expelled in ca. 625 from Media by Cyaxares.
*Which they had invaded from the NW.(IE..From Cimmeria) maybe 50 to a
hundred years? <after> the literary pursuit of the Cimmerians..and the
destruction of Gordium.
*Scythians may have destroyed Gordium, as a raid and burn..no occupation.
* Cimmerians never ruled Phrygia.
*The Amazon myth is unrelated to Cimmerians, and may have entered Anatolia
as people or stories from the NE much earlier. (But may be related to
people -Sarmatians- who took Cimmeria from the Scythians much later.)
There is no hint above of Cimmerian passage through the Caucasus.
O-: From:
cas111jd@... [mailto:
cas111jd@...]
O-: If you study the Assyrian history, you see first that Urartu was
O-: suddenly destroyed by the Cimmerians.
After this, the Assyrian king
O-: (Sargon II?) received pleas from the neo-Hittite states in Anatolia
O-: and Phrygia to save them from the Cimmerians, pledging to become his
O-: vassals. Not one to turn down a chance to expand his empire, Sargon
O-: took his army into Anatolia but was killed in battle. The Phrygian
O-: kingdom was overthrown and the Cimmerians ruled there, with their
O-: legends living in Greek myth as the Amazons. Meanwhile, the Scythians
O-: appeared on the Assyrian northern borders. They never attacked
O-: Assyria. Perhaps it was because they knew of the Assyrian enmity with
O-: their enemies the Cimmerians. Instead, they stayed there, playing a
O-: three-way geo-political game against the Medes. After the fall of
O-: Nineveh, however, the Scythians withdrew back into the steppes.
O-:
O-: Now, this chain of events obviously suggests that the Cimmerians came
O-: through the Caucasus, destroyed Urartu, then rode west into Anatolia
O-: where they attacked the small states there and even defeated the
O-: Assyrians. The Scythians followed the Cimmerians as far as NW Iran
O-: and Azerbaijan.
Rex earlier:
O-: > Our differences remain the same on Cimmerians: Start point,
O-: route, and
O-: > Impact enroute (combining several of the last few posts on the
O-: subject).
O-: