Mede and Scythian links
Fred Hamori
Media originally was a short lived northern Messopotamian country located at first between the Caspean Sea on the north and the great rivers of Messopotamia on the west. The area changed as a results of growth in power and later it's loss. The province of Atropane is it's core.
While I personally am not convinced of the Iranian origin of the Medes, for lack of evidence, I am not ruling it out either. Given facts and evidence I could accept this relationship. However I find the simple acceptance based on little facts annoying. Here I have tried to give a case for their independent origins and relationship to the Scythians, whom I also don't accept to be Iranians but an Anatolian people in origin. Rather I consider the Medes as an Iranianized local peoples originally unrelated to the Iranians who came from the north. I am sure that the Iranian language has received much from Mede, Urartuan and other local languages like Elamite, which may not yet be recognizable because they are barely known, thereby clouding the picture which we are seeking to understand.
It is a commonly held belief, based on no reliable proof, that the Medes were Iranians simply because the Iranians generally got along with them well and together founded a new empire. Such things can happen without being related. Yet even some of the Persian experts like Richard Fry claim that at best some of the Mede ethnic elements were Iranians, but many were not. Herodotus also separates the Persians as "artai" and the Medes as "aryan". So they were not the same. The Persians gained their empire by means of a palace coup over their Mede rulers and even the so called first Persian royal house "achamenian" were of Mede descent, with Mede names.
The U.A. Sumerian, Dravidian term URU for blood, town (clan residence), clan, relations etc are linked to the term ary/er/erim for man/clan so that the term "aryan" is nothing more than a variation of this term for blood lines/clans/family.
The 6 Median Ethnic Groups from Herodotus
Herodotus mentioned the 6 Mede ethnic "tribes", some of which are similar to the Scythian tribal names. For this reason the two groups are often tied together.
1. The "Busae" group supposed to derive from the Persian term "buza" which means the aboriginals < not Iranians>. Was this based on an originally Iranian term or their own name is not known. I cannot help thinking there may be a relation to the Scythian/Turk "pasi-ani" which in Turkic became "petchegen ", which in Hungarian is Bese-nyö. Their ethnic name may derive from what in Parthian is "basyo" meaning sea hawk, much like Hungarian "bese" sea hawk. They gave the name Bosnia its name. The Besenyö came west along with the Magyars, whom they supposedly attacked according to mistaken Greek reports, but whom they also aided and became allied with soon afterwards. Many settling in old Hungarian territories, which at times included much of Bosnia and Chroatia. Generally the Pasiani of early Iranian history and the Petchegens are treated separately but sure seem to be of the same name.
2. The second group is called " Parae-tak-(eni)" in Persian and means nomads. This name is much like the Scythian "Para-la-ti", the people of Kolaxis, who we believe represented the common people in general, "the black heads". Similarly in Sumerian the term bar=rib, boundary, wastelands. It was in such lands useless for cultivation that the "nomads" and shepherds worked their flocks. (Hungarian "par-lag", Sumerian "par-im", Scythian "para-la-ti").
3.The third group is called "Strukhat". Here the term "Chat, Khat, Had, Geta" can mean clan/clan territory as in all Ural Altaic, Dravidian languages or "KAATI" which means the royal house of the Hatti and Scythians. Similarly there was a Mede king named Katiertes. The term STRU in Messopotamia meant to cover, while Turkish c'atir and Hungarian sátor or Sumerian sudug means a simple tent or temporary home/cover.
4. The fourth tribe is the "Arizan-ti" (-ti =plural in old U.A.)
The " hari, ari, khari" name derives from the name of the higlands and mountains of the north and was also the ethnic name of the aboriginals of northern Messopotamia known as Subarians and Hurrians. A variant of the name in Hurrian is "iuri=lord".
The term ZAN is probably just a distortion of SANG =head, chief, and the source of the eastern SAKA =scythian name. The nasal vellar NG often changes to N or G or N'. (in Hungarian ny, gy, g)
The Hurrians also founded the kingdom of Kwarezmia next to the Aral Sea. (Siavus, whose tamga is the three mountains.)
Sumerian sang =head, isang=chief, peak // kur =mountain
Ugrian sank =head, peak etc // Uralic *wore =mountain,peak
Ostjak kar-is=mountain, Cheremis kurok=mountain, Vote gures=mount.
Scythian sco=head,chief.
Hurrian -sa =collective suffix.,
Hungarian -ság=collective suffix.
5. The fifth group were the "Budii" found also amongst the Black Sea Scythians as Budi-ni as well as the eastern Saka. Budha was of the tribe "Budha"., which was also eastern Scythian "sakiya". The name was possibly related to BUDIN =people in turkic/mongol. Perhaps another meaning of this is related to Mongol Bahadur, Batur =brave, knight. Hungarian and ancient Turkic batur=brave. The root word may be the recently discussed terms BAD/BAT =beat, break, wreck, etc in Sumerian. The general meaning given for Budha however is "enlightenment".
6.The sixth tribe, which is also non Iranian, are the Magii. They were a priest class, who were the carriers of not Iranian religion but ancient Messopotamian religion deriving from the Sumerians. Their name implies also a link with the language of the Sumerians who called their language "Emegir", which was over time simplified to Magi. Christian tradition has of course twisted them out of their original forms and made them descending from all over but in fact they were one people and Messopotamian in origin. They did spread into Central Asia also due to Persian persecution at times. In time the Persians also developed their own form of Magian religion, with several differences from the Magian like religion of the Huns or the Messopotamians. Taking the Sumerian name "eMeGiR" where the trailing consonant often wore off, one can find many northern Messopotamian place names from antiquity that shows this name. Including the royal Hungarian tribal name the Magyar, which is claimed to originate from Subartu. /Constantine Purporigenitos
Mede Personal Names
König writes that there are no Mede basic words that are known, only personal names or titles. (very much like the case with Hunish). These are known from two Assyrian military reports. The first from 800BC lists 28 names. Of these 19 are certainly not Iranian and 4 are Chaldean-Urartuan-Hurrian, 4 are unknown, leaving 1 which might be Iranian. The second report is from ca. 700 BC and lists 26 names. Of these 5 sound sort of Iranian, the others are not. (Too bad those don't interest him.)
Gobrias was the governor of Kurdistan and a Mede. Mazares and Harpagos were Medes who conquered Ionia for Cyrus.
It was the Asssyrians who first recorded the name of the new "MEDE" nation as "Mata", which is based on ancient Messopotamian word for a land area rather than any Iranian word.
Sumerian ma=land+ta=locative,
Finnugor ma=land, (Finn,Estonian,Chuvash,Zurjen,Vogul etc =ma)
Parthian megala=province,
Hungarian megye=county.
Also in old Egyptian mat.
Old Japanese ma =country, land
In their early history they lived under various chiefs rather than a single king, just like the Urartuans.
In 800BC Hadad-nirary defeated Kana-ziruka, the ruler of the Matiene region Medes.
The founder of the Mede state was a man called Arapaxad called Arbaces by the Greeks. In 708BC the Medes gained independence from Assyria, under the leadership of Arphaxad. This name is much like the scythian legend's Arpaxais and the Hurrian city-state of Arpad. In the Scythian vocabulary list we stated that Arpad means leader of men/army. Arpaxad was a dispenser of justice who attracted people toward him as a leader of his people. The Greek records also talk of Deioc(es), 728BC-675BC [Daiukku in Assyr cuneiform] as the founder of the Mede royal house. His name Dayuku is Subartuan in origin./König.
The next ruler who followed Arphaxad was Phraort(es) 675BC-653BC,
(also calling himself Katrites) who also extended his rule over the Iranian plateau as far as the Hindu Kush. He ruled for 22 years, and died in an unsuccessful war against the Assyrians.
The Scythians from the north seized power for 28years next. However they were invited to a great banquet by the Medes and massacred. Somehow this seems very incongrous to the idea that the two nations are closely related! They may have common roots but developed differently. The Scythians were mainly nomads while the Medes were city dwellers. If that is not enough of a cultural clash than nothing is. Just having a similar language is not enough.
Cyaxar(es) was the next Mede ruler (625BC to 653BC) who organized with the Chaldean Nebopalessar an alliance against the Assyrians. Their attack was unsuccessful partly because the Scythians under Madyas sided with the Assyrians. The Scyths were very well paid off too. Given an Assyrian royal bride and the usual lands and wealth to go with it.
Astyag(es) [Istuvgu in cuneiform] (585BC-550BC) is their last ruler, when there was a palace coup in 593BC that took over the power by the Iranians.
In ?550 BC Cyrus, challenged the Median Astyages-his wife's grandfather-and captured the Median Capital Ekbatana ( Hamadan ). Cyrus then made peace with the Medians and consolidated a Persian/ Median Empire by utilizing Median and Persian administrators (satraps).
Achaemenids Persian dynasty
Achaemenes Teispes
The "Teis-pes" name is Hurrian in origin,from Teshub,
Urartuan Tuspa.
Cyrus I (Kurush)
Cambyses I (Kambiz)
Cyrus the Great,
Start of Achaemenid Empire, 559BC - 530BC
A legend remains about a dream of Astyages, before the rule of the Mede Kyros. (Cyrus). In a dream Astyages dreamed that from the womb of his daughter Mandane a river flows and grows into a mighty sea which overwhelms Asia. Later in another dream he dreams that from his daughter a grape vine grows which grows into a great giant tree that covers Asia. This dream foretold of a new Empire which would topple his own but would be an offshoot.
A similar dream is told nearly 1,000 years later about the Arpad dynasty kings of Hungary. Where in a dream Emese, the mother of the clan dreams that a Turul eagle descended upon her (the holy spirit) and from her womb a river flowed which grew in strength and flowed westwards. Overflowing the mountains from it a great golden (royal) tree grew in the west.
//This is from memory I am sure it is not perfect. nor complete. Yet there seems to me a marked similarity in the two legends, one foretelling the end of the Mede Empire and begining of the Persian one and the other foretelling the beginning of a new Central European Hungarian kingdom. Considering that both nations were founded by an "Arpad" seems even more unusual.
If we gather together the names referred to as Median we discover that almost all are non-Iranian, and most are Urartuan and Subartuan in origin. When western historians claim that the Medes are Iranians and also that their language is unknown they make a mockery of the scientific method and base everything on 19th century racist biases, without any proofs. When they ignore the evidence of the turkic names of the Huns and say they are of unknown origin because there is insufficient linguistic data they are also playing a game with no equal rules or standards, because in both cases the remaining words are ignored and twisted to an incorrect direction or are simply claimed to not exist.
Yet I cannot truly believe that the Mede language is not represented in the ancient cuneiform remnants. It is unknown, simply because it does not match with the presumptions. The trilingual inscriptions of Behistun dealing with the so called "Scythian text" of the inscription, which is non Iranian!!! and according to some is distantly related to Ural-Altaic is probably Mede! ( A.J. Booth, The trilingual inscriptions, New York, 62 ).
At the same time, while this group is claimed also to be "Scythic" it is not identical to the "Scythians" of the Black Sea since the Medes have stronger links with the Hurrians and Elamites and by Herodotus time were overrun by Iranians. The northern Scythians however have many links with Hattic speakers whose descendants are also the Kartwelian languages. These in the past were all more alike possibly but not necessarily identical. Yet there were some groups amongst them that were of the same origin and same name, showing a common Anatolian origin of both Scythians and Medes. (Budi/Budini, Paraetakeni/Paralati, Stru-Kat/Katiari?)
Another major evidence against the Iranian origin of the Medes is that Berossus, the Babilonian priest, who wrote down the ancient history of Messopotamia claimed that the Medes were ancient Messopotamians in origin. Indeed his timetables imply that they were much the same as the Sumerians, some of whose remnants came north after the loss of their homeland.
The historic scheme of Berossus vs current knowledge.
1. Kaldeans ?--2286
generally known today as Sumerian [5500-2455, 2256-1900]
2. Medes 234 years (2286-2052BC) // Mede-Elamite
generally known as the Sumerian Ur dynasty.
3 ?? 48 years (2052BC -2004BC)
??
4. Chaldeans 458 years (2004-1546BC)
generally known as Akkad 1930- 1733 Hamurabi
generally known as Elamite 1860-1492 BC "Sea Land"
5. Arabs 245 years (1546-1301BC) // Akkad?Arab
generally known as Kassite-Elamite 1733-1163
Many of these probably overlapped with other Semitic empires.
and therefore their timetables sometimes dont match completely with current understanding of the leading empires.
One must always be careful in accepting such broad sweeping generalizations of identity when talking of events thousands of years earlier. From the Mede ethnic names one can see that these six groups themselves are not the same, else they would share the name. Unless the names imply classes of a common society.. which often are differing origins. Yet there is likely a seed of truth in the statements of Berossus. This may refer to one of the six who are the carriers of ancient traditions and language. It is generally agreed that the Magi are the most likely carriers of a refined form of the early Sumerian religion, which also appears almost unchanged in the religious motifs of the Urartuans, and their neighbors the Mede Magi. They are generally also claimed not to be aryan in origin. However none of the groups needs to be.
The evidence indicates that a portion of the ancient Sumerians also came from the north originally, from the direction of the Caucasus Mtns. Their close relations to the city of Arata near Urartu. Their traditions of the longest and shortest day which indicates their northern origins. Their building mountain like temples to simulate
their ancient northern homelands. The presence of the so called Caucasus type racial element amongst them, now known as "Armenoid", which should be called "Hurrianoid" from its true origin.
What did the historians and linguists of the last century say about the Medes? Almost the opposite of what they say now.
LeNorman: "From the beginning of the earliest times to the Iranian takeover, the Iranians were but a small but powerful racial element. The Akamenian Persian dynasty (558BC) the major portion of the people of Iran were speakers of the ancient (Mede-Elamite) language, which was one of the respected languages of the Persian court." also "The facts relating to Media have a particular importance to us. A very few of the most distinguished scholars hesitate to admit the fact, an unexpectant one I must grant, of the existence in Chaldea of a primitive population from the same stock as the Ugro-Finnic and Tartar nations, which had a large share in Chaldeo-Babylonian civilization."
DeSalcy was the first researcher, who studied the trilingual inscriptions and observed its similarity to the Turkic languages. It was Norris who first showed that the modern languages to which this is related are the so called "Scythian" Volga-Finn languages branch. Oppert in 1847 put forward the idea that the Medes were a branch of the Finno-Ugrians.
Norris showed the pronomial suffixes of the subject and stated that like the Finn languages, it has much more suffixes than an Indo-European language does. He showed that there are no differentiation in the gender of the pronouns, which are used suffixed to the subjects.
[ True of Sumerian, Hurrian, Kartwellian, Uralic, Altaic, Dravidian].
Oppert at this time was the chief expert in cuneiform studies, and he saw the greatest similarity of the Elamite of Susa with Hungarian.
According to Sayce certain words like "dingir and tag" showed a closer link with Turkic and Mongolic. However most other words are closer to Ugrian, which also have the most links to Akkadian (the old name of Sumerian). This may be due to a lack of detailed information on Altaic at the time because as it turns out much of Uralic has links in Altaic. The differences could be simply the divergence of the two groups due to a long time of independent evolution.
Richard Fry, the expert of Persian history summarized the situation as follows:
"The Medes themselves were a mixture of indigenous and Iranian peoples... for their tribal names are also a mixture of Iranian(?) and non-Iranian names, in spite of all the attempts to explain them all from Iranian." - he further writes -
"In Azerbaidzan (N.E. Iran) and Western-Iran, the Iranian newcomers came in contact with a larger settled inhabitants, who were not Indo-Europeans (nor Semites) and these were the Urartuans, Manai, Hurrians. ... These were related to the paleo-Caucasian languages, which are sometimes called Japhetic languages (??). South of them lived the Elamites and further east of them the Dravidian people of Makran, Seistan and Sind (India). According to Richard Fry the founders of the Achamenian dynasty of Persia were very likely Elamites (or Medes).
A researcher of the ancient world of the last century, John Baldwin, stated the problem as follows: "The so called old Iranian documents were forced into being represented as Iranian history, which is illogical and created so much confusion, that it is hard to understand how it could have happened. Those who see nothing else except Persians in the prehistory of Iran and coolly reject dynasties before Gilshah as mere fairy tales, do nothing or worse than nothing with the Pesdadians and then commence the histories with the Kaiani dynasty, and then add to them the most famous of the Pesdadian kings. They contrive this to begin only 600 BC. With such methods all of this becomes Iranian history and Zoroaster is to be from the age of Darius Hystaspes."
While some corrections have been made to timetables the main goal and end results has not really changed, since everything is supposedly Iranian in origin and Iranian presence in areas of Central Asia are claimed long before there is any proof of their presence. Maps of the imagined original Indo-European homeland seem to randomly spot eastern Europe, Central Asia and Anatolia, usually totally ignoring all other groups and their obvious links. Yet there is little evidence of their presence before 2,000 BC in Anatolia or southern or western Europe. My best guess is north eastern Europe, near to the Sauromata of Herodotus.
The many similarities to early Persian names and titles which were seen as the proof of Iranian origin of the Medes may be nothing more than the borrowing of Mesopotamian terms, titles and even gods and names by the Iranians. Once the history of the region was better known these should have become more self evident.
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