7.2 The near east: 1000 to 700 b.c.  (Page 4/4)

Iran: persia

In the early part of this first millennium B.C. the people of western Iran were hassled by Assyria and Urartu as well as by raiding Scythians from the north. At about this time, the Indo-European Medes began to migrate down into Iran from just east of the Caspian and by the ninth century B.C. they started toward Assyria, Babylonia and Elam, as the latter still controlled southern Iran.

Asia minor: anatolia

The Hittite Empire slowly crumbled, pushed from the southeast by the Assyrians and from the west by the Phrygians, newly arrived from Thrace. The last Hittite capital at Carchemish fell to the Assyrians in 717 B.C. But meanwhile the Phrygians with their most famous king, Midas, with a capital city of Gordium (near modern Ankara), contended with Assyria and Egypt for master of the Near East. They worshipped the goddess Cybele and the young god Atys, who like Adoni, annually died and was resurrected, in the inevitable pattern of the mid-east. At the close of the 8th century B.C., bands of Cimmerian horsemen from the steppe of southern Russia raided far and wide in Asia Minor, eventually destroying the Phrygian nation. The Lydians, living between the Cayster and the Hermus rivers were able to repel the invaders and soon took over the entire area. (Ref. 28 )

In Urartu in the east, the Hurrian (Vannic) nation recovered from earlier waves of Assyrian attacks and about 800 B.C. became a very powerful nation known as the Urartian Kingdom with Mount Ararat as its center. Recent excavations near Altinepe, Turkey, have revealed architecture and art that have left heritages in later public buildings in Persia and metallurgy that perhaps had influence as far away as the Etruscan civilization of Italy. (Ref. 161 ) They demonstrated great engineering skill in irrigation works. Prosperous under a succession of kings from Sarduri I (840 B.C.) to Rusa I (714 B.C.), Urartu attained its greatest geographical extent in the reign of Sarduri II (764-735 B.C.), with territory from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. The "Golden Age" may have occurred under Argistis II (708 B.C.) when the country grew rich by mining iron and selling it to Asia and Greece. Some authorities feel that this was the century when the Armenians, who eventually gave their name to this area, migrated across the Euphrates and intermarried with the indigenous Vans and Hurrians. Ozguc (Ref. 161 ), however, dates that migration to the next, 7th century B.C. At the end of this period, the Hurrian nation was weakened by combined Assyrian pressure and invasion of migrating Cimmerian hordes from east of the Black Sea. (Ref. 8 )

Forward to The Near East: 700 to 601 B.C.

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