[tied], Re:, Urartu.

--- In cybalist@..., "Rex H. McTyeire" <rexbo@...> wrote:

> Lets see if we can narrow a bit:
> * We don't know who destroyed Urartu.

The Cimmerians destroyed Urartu.

> * It may have been Sargon II (Assyria) ca. 714 BC

He weakened it.

> * Sargon II did die in battle, but in Cilicia in the Taurus

mountains. (ca.

> 705) (too far south for Cimmerians)

It is not too far south for Cimmerians who were probably centered on
the Halys bend in the old Hittite homeland, IMO. Besides, we don't
know where the battle took place. It could very well have happened
north of the Taursus.

probably in the Cilician Gate.

> *We haven't a clue who he was fighting (maybe Cilicians :-) .

Cilicia was already a vassal state. Phrygia and the still independent
neo-Hittite states in Anatolia (or Phrygian dependencis) appealed to
Assyria for aid. It seems unlikely that a small state like Cilicia
couild manage to defeat the Assyrian grande armee, even in ambush. It
seems more likely that steppe nomads with tactics and weapons that
were always superior to anything in the west on the open plain (until
the age of gunpowder) was responsible for the Assyrian defeat in
central Anatolia.

> *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.

Yes, but as I have stated, I believe the Cimmerians were mounted
warriors, the remnants that had survived and chosen to flee after an
initial Scythian defeat on the steppes. Being steppe pastoralists,
why would they settle in a ruined city? Being warrior-pastorialists,
would you expect that they should climb off their horses and sit down
in some burned out city like women and start making pots? Or, would
you expect them to grab some local women to have them make the pots
as they follow their new men around the countryside while the men
tend their horses and sheep?

> *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.

Yes, and all within the perview of the Aegean-based Greeks who
obviously knew about nothing of interior Anatolia (besides Phrygia
was there) until Xenophon's return, and of course Alexander conquered
the place. The Cimmerian attacks came from their base of operations
in central Anatolia (IMO). The Greeks didn't know what interior
cities the Cimmerians might have destroyed. After the Hittite
collapse, there was hardly anything there, anyway - nothing for the
Greeks to reference, except some legendary Amazons living along the
north-central Anatolian coast. Why should we not suspect that
Cimmerian pastoralists lingered in central Anatolia, with their
mobile tool kits too scanty to recognize today? They didn't last very
long, so why should we claim that without archaeological evidence, we
must conclude that they did not exist?

> *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.

Their presence was ephemeral. They married local women, whose
children learned their mother's tongues and culture first, and within
a short time the Cimmerians, as a political presence, had dissipated.
After the Lydians defeated them, they probably surrendered without a
fight to the Medes and their leaders assimilated into the Pax Medea/
Persae. Whatever culture that had, they lost to the native and
Persian influences.

> *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-: