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Between Prymnessus and Midaëum (Jazili Kaja and Sidi Ghazi), in the valley of Doganlu, lie the tombs of these kings, sepulchral chambers, which are hewn in the perpendicular walls of red sandstone. On the face of the rock there is no trace of any entrance; and the corpses must have been lowered down behind the exterior front. The walls of rock are changed into sculptures, in imitation of the outlines and rudiments of a light wooden building. In low relief a framework of beams is sketched, and over this a low-pitched gable rises. Such are the simplest of these façades, which apparently we must also consider the oldest. Others display a frieze of palm leaves in the upper field of the framework. Others again put the figures of animals in the gable, e. g. two horses, between which is an obelisk, and exhibit traces of Hellenic influence, while another presents a perfect imitation of the Doric arrangement of pillars. Among these sepulchres may once have been the tomb with the maiden of brass. The inscriptions found on some, or in the neighbourhood, are Phrygian, but written in Greek characters. The most important tomb is that of a more ancient Midas at Kümbet. The façade of this monument, which is in framework of the Phrygian style, covers about sixty square feet of the hundred feet of the rock. The space in the field of the framework is entirely filled up with rectangular ornaments and a kind of scroll, while the tympanum of the gable is covered with a key pattern.725
Other remarkable remains of buildings are found in Phrygia. Strabo tells us of a tribe on the borders of Cilicia who lived in the arches and hollows of the rocks above the fruitful valley which they cultivated; till conquered by the Romans the tribe was considered invincible, and Vitruvius remarks that the Phrygians excavated the natural hills, cut passages in them, and extended the spaces into dwellings as far as the nature of the place allowed.726 On the Rhyndakus, in the district of the ancient Prymnessus, at Beibazar, on Lake Egerdir, to the east near Iconium, numerous habitations are found excavated in the rocks, so that it really seems that the Phrygians dwelt in the walls of their mountains.727 Lofty walls of rock, thousands of isolated cones, and some mighty mountain summits are excavated into dwellings, into rock cities – a task which was rendered easier by the softness of the stone (peperino and tufa). Steep and at times wonderfully jagged rocks, overhanging picturesque valleys, are chiselled out for one or two hundred feet in height in such a manner that several galleries of habitations lie one upon the other. These are lighted by openings in the front, and connected with each other by shafts and staircases: of seats, hearths, or couches there is no trace whatever – only niches and recesses are found. Yet in some of the rock cities an advance may be observed. In these the entrances to some extent exhibit indications of pillars, architraves, portals, and the like, so that the habitations of this kind seem to have been built at a later period. The ruins of the cities of the Phrygians, the remains of Gordium, Midaëum, Pessinus, Prymnessus, and Ancyra allow us to see the so-called Cyclopian style.728
Our knowledge of the religious rites of the Phrygians is extremely scanty. They are said to have invoked the god Men, or Manes under various titles,729 and the names of the cities Manegordum and Manesium seem to go back to this deity. Whether this is the god whom the Greeks called the Phrygian Zeus is not clear. The goddess, whom the Greeks called Rhea or Cybele, Dindymene, Agdistis, after the mountains sacred to her, is said to have been called Amma by the Phrygians.730 The chief home of her rites was that sanctuary on Mount Agdus near Pessinus, which the first Midas is said to have dedicated to her (p. 525). Here she was worshipped in a shapeless stone of no great size, not larger than a man could lift. At the side of her statue in the temple lions and panthers are said to have stood.731 Her priests were eunuchs, who waited on the goddess in gaily coloured vestments. The chief priest at Pessinus, or Archigallus, is afterwards found holding a princely position. At the festivals of the goddess, which were celebrated every year, it was the custom for young men to make themselves eunuchs with a sharp shell, crying out at the same time, "Take this, Agdistis." Then they went round the country asking alms in the name of the goddess, and they were known to the Greeks as "Metragyrtes," i. e. "beggars of the mother;"732 for the goddess, whose priests were eunuchs, and whose service demanded the sacrifice of sex, was called by the Greeks the "Great Mother," the "Mountain Mother," the "Nourishing Earth," the "Giver of all." She must, therefore, have been regarded as the maternal power of the earth, the power of nature, which gives life. It is especially stated that she gave increase to the flocks,733 and since she was named after different mountains we may assume that high places and mountains were the chosen seats of her worship. In Greek and Roman art the Phrygian goddess is represented as sitting on a chariot drawn by lions and panthers, with a cymbal in her hand, and wearing on her head the mural crown as the goddess of the earth which supports cities.
By the side of the Great Mother stands the god Atys, whom Herodotus calls a son of Manes.734 He grew up with the shepherds among the goats of the forest. The goddess loved him, but he fled away into the mountains, and there, under a fir-tree, into which his spirit passed, he made himself an eunuch. In search of him Amma roams over the hills in frantic grief, and carries into her cave the tree into which his spirit passed. The emasculation and death of Atys, as also his resurrection, were celebrated by the Phrygians.735 At these festivals a fir-tree was felled, crowned with violets, twined with garlands, and carried into the sanctuary of the goddess. Afterwards Atys was sought in the mountains with wild music and frenzy, as Amma had sought him. The third day of the festival was "the day of blood," i.e. of the mutilation and death of Atys, who was bewailed with despairing grief, amid rending of the hair and beating of the breast. Then followed a happier scene, the festival of "the resurrection," and the washing of the stone of the goddess.736 We learn further that Atys was also called Papas among the Phrygians. He is also entitled the goat-herd and neat-herd; the plastic art of Greece and Rome represents him as a youthful shepherd with the Pan's-pipe, and by his side is a pine and a ram. According to later accounts he was the "shepherd of the bright stars."737 Hence we must assume that in Atys the Phrygians personified the youthful bloom of nature, the bloom of the spring, and they mourned the disappearance of this, just as, according to the Greeks, they sang a piercing wail – the Lityerses – at the time of corn-cutting. They lamented the death of the spring, and the fall of the fruit; the youthful god had resigned his own power; the creative vigour continued only to exist in the tree of Atys, the ever-green fir. In the spring time it awoke again; this was the day of the resurrection with its joy and pleasure. This orgiastic worship, and roaming with wild cries over the heights and in the ravines of the mountains, sometimes in wailing and lamentation, sometimes in joy, is peculiar to the religion of the Phrygians.
The central point of the Phrygian kingdom lay westwards of the great salt plain in the region between Gordium and Ancyra, between Midaëum and Pessinus in the valley of the Sangarius, on whose banks the Homeric poems place the Phrygians, who are the possessors of "well-walled cities."738 If the majority of the Phrygians remained farmers and shepherds, they nevertheless arrived at an early date at a monarchy, and under this they reached a civilisation by no means contemptible, a national culture, with an architecture and music of their own. On the religion of the Phrygians the rites of their Semitic neighbours on the north and south no doubt exercised a strong influence. The combination of the creative power and the power hostile to procreation into one deity, and the custom of mutilation, are conceptions and rites unknown to the Aryan nations. But they are closely connected with the forms and worship of Astarte-Ashera, just as Atys resembles the Adonis of the Syrians. On the other hand, as was remarked above, the Phrygians adopted the Greek alphabet on their monuments, and Greek verses were composed for the tomb of Midas (p. 528). In return the Greeks adopted the Phrygian flute, and along with it the form of the elegy and the Phrygian harmonies. Nor were these all. The wild roaming, the unchecked sorrow and joy, the tambourines and drums of the Phrygian festivals passed without doubt in the first instance to the Greek colonies in the Propontis, and more especially to Cyzicus, and from thence to the mother country at the celebration of certain festivals of Demeter and Dionysus. "Take," says Euripides in the Bacchæ, "take the drums, the invention of the Phrygians and the mother Rhea. Long ago the Corybantes (the attendants of the Great Mother) devised the mighty circle of the stretched hide and placed in Rhea's hand, with the loud, sweet-sounding tone of Phrygian flutes, the thunder for the festal song."739
Towards the east, the south coast of Asia Minor was inhabited by the Cilicians and the Solymi. To the former belonged the slopes of Taurus and the coast to the right bank of the Kalykadnus. Towards the west came the Solymi, in a wild and broken mountain country. They took their name from the Solyma mountains (sallum = steps), which they inhabited, and according to Chœrilus of Samos, they spoke the language of the Phenicians.740 "The pass," so Xenophon tells us, "which leads to Cilicia (from the interior of Asia Minor) is very steep, and only broad enough for a single waggon. On descending from it you come into a well-watered plain by the sea, which is inclosed from one end to the other by lofty and precipitous mountains. But the plain itself is large and beautiful, and filled with trees of every kind, and with vines. It produces much sesame, wheat, millet, and barley."741 In addition to these advantages the slopes of Taurus offered splendid pastures for horses, and on the coast were excellent harbours. The inhabitants of this favoured land, known in Assyrian inscriptions as Chillakai, and on the coins of the district from the Persian times as Chelech,742 belonged, like their neighbours on the Orontes and on the Upper Euphrates, to the Semitic stock. This is proved by the names of their districts and places of their gods, and by the inscriptions on their coins. The Semitic stamp of names of places like Amanus (amana, firm), Adana (eden, delight), Mallus (maa'la, height), Tarsus (tars, dry) is beyond a doubt.743 Herodotus tells us that the Cilicians wore woollen clothes, and peculiar helmets of ox-leather, and carried swords and spears like the Egyptians, and he maintained that they were descended from Cilix, the son of Agenor, a Phenician. Their princes were always styled Syennesis.744 This standing name was, without doubt, the title given by the princes of Cilicia to themselves: it must have been schu'a nasi, i. e. "noble prince."745 Hellanicus tells us that of the two kings of the name of Sardanapalus, who ruled over Assyria, one had built the two cities of Tarsus and Anchiale in Cilicia in one day.746 On the other hand Berosus informs us that Sennacherib (705-681 B.C.) had heard in Assyria that an army of Greeks had landed in Cilicia; against this he marched and defeated it, but with heavy loss. As a memorial of this victory he caused his image to be set up there, and afterwards the city of Tarsus was built in such a way that the Cydnus flowed through the middle of it. The temple at Anchiale (west of Tarsus, on the sea) was also founded by Sennacherib.747 When Alexander of Macedonia reached Cilicia his attendants found that the circuit and towers of the walls of Anchiale proved that the city was planned on a large scale. Near the walls they saw the statue of an Assyrian king. His right hand was raised, and the inscription in Assyrian letters is said to have called him Sardanapalus, the son of Anakyndaraxes.748
No king of the name of Anakyndaraxes or Sardanapalus ever ruled over Assyria, unless perhaps by the latter is meant Assurbanipal (Assurbanhabal), the son of Esarhaddon. On the other hand, the inscriptions of Shalmanesar II. of Asshur (859-828 B.C.) mention the fact that he had overcome "Pikhirim the chief of the land of Chilakku (Cilicia)," and Sargon, king of Assyria (722-705 B.C.), tells us that the Cilicians had not been subject to his father, and that he had transferred the dominion over Cilicia to Ambris, king of Tubal. Hence Cilicia must have become subject to Sargon in the earliest years of his reign. In consequence of the revolt, which Ambris undertook with Urza of Ararat, and Mita, the king of Moschi, as we saw above (p. 520), Ambris was taken captive and dethroned in the year 714 B.C. Sennacherib, the successor of Sargon (705-681 B.C.), informs us that in the very first years of his reign he had caused rebellious Cilicians to be removed: the inscriptions of the later years of his reign remark that the cities of the Cilicians were destroyed and burnt, and the Cilicians in the forests were reduced. After this the inscriptions of Esarhaddon (681-668 B.C.) assure us that he reduced the Cilicians; and Assurbanipal recounts that Sandasarmi of Cilicia, who had not submitted to the kings his fathers, and fulfilled their commands, sent his daughter with many presents to Nineveh for the harem of Assurbanipal, and kissed his feet.749
The fall of the Assyrian kingdom restored their freedom to the Cilicians, and they appear to have maintained it till the times of Cyrus. After that time the princes of Cilicia were merely the viceroys of the kings of Persia. To these sovereigns Cilicia paid each year 500 Babylonian talents of silver and 360 selected horses. The harbours, which carried on a lively trade, were able, at the beginning of the fifth century B.C., to equip and man a hundred ships of war (triremes).750
The coins which have come down to us from the supremacy of the Persians allow us to form some conclusions about the religious rites of the Cilician cities. They represent Baal, the sun-god of the Syrians, on the throne, with grapes and ears of corn in his right hand, and sometimes an eagle at his side. Others exhibit Heracles attacking a lion with his club. The inscriptions name the god thus represented Bal Tars, i. e. Baal of Tarsus. A coin of Mallus also exhibits Heracles strangling the lion, i.e. the beneficent sun-god who overcomes the terrible sun-god in the sign of the lion, the consuming glow of the sun. On other coins we can trace the war-goddess, on others the birth-goddess of the Syrians, or her cow; some coins of Celenderis exhibit the goat of this goddess.751
The land of the Cilicians must at one time have stretched northwards over the Taurus range to the inner table-land as far as the sources of the Sarus, to the watershed between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, or even further. Sargon could not have transferred the sovereignty over Cilicia to the king of Tubal if his territory was not contiguous to Cilicia. And if we assume that the land of Tubal reached at that time as far as the Taurus, we are met by the objection that even Herodotus represents the Halys as passing through the land of the Cilicians on its way from Armenia.752 Hence the land afterwards called Cataonia, between Taurus and Antitaurus and the northern spur of the latter range, must, even in the time of Herodotus, have belonged to Cilicia.
On the north-western slope of the Armenian mountains toward the Black Sea we have already found the Moschi and Tibarenes, whom the Hebrews counted among the sons of Japhet. The western neighbours of the Tibarenes on the coasts of the Black Sea were the Chalybians. It is the land of the Chalybians of which the Homeric poems speak, when they mention the city of Alybe – "where is the birth of silver."753 But it is not only the obtaining of silver that is ascribed by the Greeks to the Chalybians; they are also the discoverers of the working of iron; and steel, which the Greeks obtained from this coast, was named after the Chalybians. Æschylus calls the Chalybians "barbarous workers in brass, men averse to foreigners."754 In the scriptures of the Hebrews Tubal-cain, a name of which the first part seems to denote the Tibarenes, is the father of the smiths in brass and iron. Hence it is clear that the mines of ore and iron in the land of the Tibarenes and Chalybians must have been opened at a very early period. As a fact the ore lies at a very slight depth in the mountains. Even now large masses of copper are discovered along the coast to the west of Trebizond; beside copper, the mines of Gümüsh Khane, two days' journey in the interior from Trebizond, even now yield lead containing silver, which is also found in the mines of Baibut and Tokat, further to the south.755 Hence these districts could furnish not only iron and steel, but silver also; elsewhere silver was only to be got in the mines on Mount Ida till the Phenicians imported this metal in large quantities from Tartessus.
Westward of the Chalybians on the Thermodon, the Iris, and the lower course of the Halys, dwelt a population which, setting aside any later admixture, were of Semitic origin. Herodotus calls the inhabitants of the land which reaches from Armenia on the east to the Halys on the west, from the coast of the Black Sea southwards as far as Cilicia, Syrians, and remarks that this was the name of the people in use among the Greeks.756 Pindar speaks of "a spear-armed Syrian host" on the mouth of the Thermodon.757 The Greek colony of Sinope west of the mouth of the Halys is said to have been founded in the land of the Syrians of noble stock.758 A promontory running into the sea to the north of Sinope is called Syrias.759 The Greeks derived the people in this district from Syrus, a son of Apollo.760 Scylax of Caryanda names the coast of the Black Sea, from the Chalybians to Armene, westward of the promontory of Syrias, Assyria.761 Strabo states that these Syrians, who extended from the Taurus northwards as far as the Pontus, were named Leuco-Syrians, i. e. white Syrians, to distinguish them from the true Syrians, and that the Cataonians (p. 538) spoke the same language with them.762 The coins struck at Sinope (Sanab), Side and Kotyora (Gazir), in the fourth century B.C., have Aramaic legends, and we can trace on them the name and form of the god Baal.763 The Persians called these people Cappadocians (Katapatuka), and extend the name to Cilicia also. If the Phrygians when marching westwards from Armenia not only traversed but took possession of the land, the Phrygians who remained in the country must have retired to the west before the Semitic tribe, which forced its way from Cilicia and the Upper Euphrates, or have been absorbed by them.
In the eighth century B.C. the Syrians between the Lower Halys and Armenia received a peculiar admixture. "On the shore of the Pontus, where the Scythians now dwell" – such is the account of Herodotus – "it is said that the territory of the Cimmerians lay, and in Scythia the Cimmerian Bosporus and Cimmerian walls and harbours remain, and a region which is called Cimmeria. When the Scythians who once dwelt in the east were driven out by the Massagetes or the Issedones, they came into the land of the Cimmerians. The latter took counsel on the river Tyras, and one part were inclined with the kings to fight against the Scythians, but the others wished to abandon the land. Thus a strife arose between the two parties, and those who wished to retire from the land defeated the king and all who were of the same opinion with him, and buried the slain on the Tyras, where their grave is still to be seen. Then the remainder fled before the Scythians along the sea to Asia, and settled on the peninsula, where Sinope, the city of the Greeks, is now built. But the Scythians took their land in possession, and, led by their king Madyas, they pursued the retreating Cimmerians, but missed them, as they took the upper road, which is far longer, and keeps the Caucasus on the right."764
We shall return to the Scythians again; for the present we may leave them out of the question. In Homer the Cimmerians, "miserable men, who are veiled in cloud, darkness, and night, and are never illuminated by the sun," dwell "at the end of earth and Oceanus, where is the opening of the entrance into the under-world."765 As guardians of the under-world Aristophanes calls them after the dog of Hades, Cerberians.766 Following the guidance of the Homeric poems, the Cimmerians were sought in the west, where the sun sinks, and the entrance to the under-world was supposed to be; they were placed in the neighbourhood of the Italic Kyme.767 When the Milesians, about the middle of the eighth century, discovered the north shore of the Black Sea, they found in the extreme north, at the end of the earth, a nation whom the Greeks called Cimmerians. Thus the entrance into Lake Mæotis obtained among the Greeks the name of the Bosporus of the Cimmerians, in contrast to the Bosporus of the Thracians. At a later time the Cimmerians were identified with the Germanic Cimbri and the Celtic Kymri.
Hence the decision would seem to be correct that the Cimmerians ought to be struck out of history as a mythical nation and a mythical name, which was perhaps intended to correspond to the misty, wintry nature of some remote lands, did not the poet Callinus of Ephesus, whose date falls about the year 700 B.C., speak of "the approaching army of the Cimmerians, who achieved mighty deeds: " did not Herodotus himself tell us that the expelled Cimmerians "settled on the peninsula at the place where the Greek city of Sinope now stands"; and also narrate that the Cimmerians, while king Ardys ruled over the Lydians (654-617 B.C.), invaded Lydia, and captured Sardis, the metropolis, except the citadel; and that Alyattes king of Lydia (612-563 B.C.) first expelled the Cimmerians entirely out of Asia Minor:768 did not Aristotle tell us that the Cimmerians had been settled for a hundred years in Antandros, on the Trojan coast, and Scymnus of Chius, that the Milesian Abron, who founded Sinope, was said to have been slain by the Cimmerians, that Coes and Cretines founded the city anew, "after the Cimmerians, when their array traversed Asia"?769
The Cimmerians then were not a legendary fiction: the Cimmerian Bosporus really owed its name to a people who called themselves, or were known to the Greeks, by this name, as also the hamlet of Cimmerikum on the Crimea, and Cimmerium on the peninsula of Kertch. Strabo, the best authority on the Eastern districts of Asia Minor, of which he was a native, says: "The wanderings of the Scythian Madys (it is the Madyas of Herodotus) and of Kobos the Trerian are unknown to most people. The Cimmerians, who are called Treres,770 or a tribe of them, dwelt on the gloomy Bosporus. They came from a far distant region, and are said to have been driven out by the Scythians. They have often attacked the right side, i. e. the eastern side of the Pontus, and fought against the Cappadocians, Paphlagonians, and Phrygians;771 they crossed the Halys, and forced their way as far as the Ionian cities.772 Their first invasion is placed by the chronologers in the time of Midas, who put an end to his life by drinking bull's blood, i. e. as we saw above (p. 528) in the period from 738 to 693 B.C., or according to others, in the time of Homer, or shortly before him.[772] But Lygdamis, with a horde of his own, forced his way to Lydia and Ionia, and conquered Sardis, though he remained in Cilicia.773 Callisthenes says that Sardis was first taken by the Cimmerians, then by the Treres, and finally by Cyrus. The first capture is also proved by Callinus. At length the Treres, under Kobos, are said to have been driven out by the Scythians under Madys."774
From this account it is clear that the Cimmerians, or a part of them, were called Treres, a name also given to a Thracian tribe between the Skomius and Hebrus, on the Bistonian Lake;775 that they made at least two invasions into the west of Asia Minor; that the second of these, which in Strabo is undertaken under the command of Lygdamis, is the same as the invasion of the Cimmerians which Herodotus places in the time of king Ardys of Lydia. In both writers this invasion extends to Sardis and to some of the Greek cities on the coast, and Plutarch expressly establishes the identity of the invasion of the Treres under Lygdamis with that of the Cimmerians in Herodotus, on ancient authorities.776 Justin calls the Cimmerians a part of the Scythians, who, owing to their internal contentions, migrated under the leadership of Ilinus and Scolopitus, and established themselves on the coast of Cappadocia.777
The incursion of the Scythians into Media, with which Herodotus has combined the migration of the Cimmerians, took place, as we shall show from Herodotus' own statement, about the year 630 B.C. But if Alyattes of Lydia was the first to expel the Cimmerians from the west of Asia Minor after they had been settled for a century in Antandros, these Cimmerians must have been in Asia at least as early as 663 B.C., since Alyattes reigned till 563 B.C. Further, if Herodotus only mentions the destruction of Sardis, which took place about 630 B.C., and is wholly silent on the first destruction by the Cimmerians, this first capture must have taken place before the time from which he commences his accurate account of Lydian history, i. e. before the accession of Gyges in the year 689 B.C., or, according to the data of Herodotus, even before 719 B.C. This capture of Sardis is the only one which could have been known to Callinus. Further, the Cimmerians are said to have invaded Phrygia at the time of that Midas who put himself to death in the year 693 B.C. Hence they must have been in Asia Minor before this year, and if they overpowered Phrygia, they could easily at the same time have forced their way as far as the western coast. Moreover, Strabo remarks that the Milesians built Sinope, when they had become acquainted with the favourable position of the place and the weakness of the people, but the people were not weak after the Cimmerians had occupied the mouth of the Halys. The first foundation of Sinope under Abron must therefore be placed before the arrival of the Cimmerians in Asia Minor. The ancient Sinope founded the city of Trapezus in the year 756 B.C.,778 and therefore that city must have been founded at least ten years earlier, and its destruction by the Cimmerians must be placed after the year 756 B.C. Hence the Cimmerians might have reached the mouth of the Halys about 750 B.C., though they cannot have come along the coast from Colchis, but over the sea. With this agrees the statement that the Cimmerians forced their way into Asia Minor in the year 782.779
From this investigation it follows that the Cimmerians once possessed the north shore of the Black Sea on the straits from Kaffa, westward perhaps as far as the mouth of the Danube. Since the Treres, a Thracian nation, are always mentioned in connexion with the Cimmerians, and it is ascertained that Thracian tribes possessed the western coast of Pontus from the Thracian Bosporus northwards as far as the mouth of the Danube, and as the Agathyrsi in Transylvania are also called Thracians, there can hardly be any doubt remaining that the Cimmerians were of Thracian origin, or at least nearly related to the Thracians. According to the account of Herodotus the Cimmerians held a consultation on the Tyras (Dniester), their kings were said to have been killed there, and in confirmation of the story he appeals to the tumuli which were still to be seen on the Dniester. The only certain conclusion to be drawn from this statement is that mounds on the Dniester were shown to Herodotus as coming down from an older population of those districts. The Cimmerians, who arrived in Asia Minor (the Tauri, on the peninsula which was named after them, appear to be a remnant of this nation, who maintained their old settlements, and the modern name Crimea goes back to the Cimmerians), must have been a numerous and martial people, if they were able not only to establish themselves firmly in the East on the Halys, but also to force their way to the western coast, there to settle down in several places and maintain themselves in these, and to capture twice the fortified metropolis of the Lydians, the most warlike nation in Asia Minor.
According to the genealogy in Genesis, Gomer is the eldest son of Japhet. This name is without doubt the Semitic term for the population on the north shore of the Pontus, who were known to the Greeks as Cimmerians. In the sixth century B.C. the prophet Ezekiel mentions Gomer beside Togarmah.780 Esarhaddon, king of Assyria (681-668 B.C.), tells us that Tiuspa from the distant land of the Cimmerians (Gimirai) submitted to him with his army. Assurbanipal (668-626 B.C.) relates: "The Cimmerians were not afraid of my fathers or of me, and would not take the yoke of my sovereignty. Gugu (Gyges), king of Ludi (Lydia), a land beyond the sea, a distant region, of which my fathers had not heard the name, sent a messenger into my presence, in order to implore my friendship and kiss my feet. From the day on which he accepted my yoke, he took Cimmerians, desolators of his land, alive in the battle with his own hand. From the number of the captured leaders he bound two with strong fetters of iron, and sent them with numerous presents to Nineveh, the city of my dominion. He constantly sent messengers to ask for my friendship. He omitted to do so when he disregarded the will of Asshur, the god, my creator, trusted to his own power, and hardened his heart. He sent his forces to aid Pisamilki (Psammetichus), king of Egypt, who had thrown off the yoke of my sovereignty. I heard this, and prayed to Asshur and Istar thus: May his body be cast out to his enemies, and his servants be carried away captive. Asshur answered me: His body shall be cast out to his enemies, and his servants carried away captive. The Cimmerians, whom he had brought under his feet by the renown of my name, conquered and laid waste his whole land. His son (Ardys) sat upon his throne. He sent to me and received the yoke of my supremacy, saying thus: I am thy subject and servant, and my people will do all thy will."781
[A] Strabo, p. 61.
