Cimmerians - Wikipedia

9/25/22, 3:32 PM Cimmerians - Wikipedia
Cimmerians
The Cimmerians (Akkadian: ,
romanized: mat Gimirrāya; [1][2] Hebrew: ‎‫ֹּג ֶמ ר‬, romanized: Cimmerians
Gōmer;[3][4] Ancient Greek: Κιμμεριοι, romanized: unknown–c. 630s BC
Kimmerioi; Latin: Cimmerii[5]) were an ancient
Eastern Iranian equestrian nomadic people
originating in the Caspian steppe who subsequently
migrated into Western Asia and into Central and
Southeast Europe. Although the Cimmerians were
culturally Scythian, they formed an ethnic unit
separate from the Scythians proper, to whom the
Cimmerians were related and who displaced and
replaced the Cimmerians.[6]
The Cimmerians themselves left no written records,

and most information about them is largely derived The Cimmerian migrations across Western Asia
and South-east Europe
from Assyrian records of the 8th to 7th centuries BC
and from Graeco-Roman authors from the 5th century Common languages Scythian
BC and later. Religion Scythian religion (?)
Ancient Iranian religion

(?)
Luwian religion (?)

Contents Government Monarchy
Name King
Identificaton Historical era Iron Age Scythian
Location cultures
• Established unknown
History
• Disestablished c. 630s BC
Origins
In Western Asia
In Transcaucasia
In Iran
In Anatolia
In Europe
Impact
Legacy
In popular culture
Archaeology
Language
Genetics
Cimmerian kings
Kings of the western (Anatolian) Cimmerians
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cimmerians 1/17
See also
References
Citations
Sources
Name
The English name Cimmerians is derived from Latin Cimmerii, itself derived from the Ancient Greek
Kimmerioi (Κιμμεριοι), of an ultimately uncertain origin for which there have been various proposals:
according to János Harmatta, it was derived from Old Iranian *Gayamira, meaning "union of
clans."[7]
Sergey Tokhtasyev and Igor Diakonoff derive it from an Old Iranian term *Gāmīra or *Gmīra,
meaning "mobile unit."[5][8]
Askold Ivantchik derives the name of the Cimmerians from an original form *Gimĕr- or *Gimĭr-, of
uncertain meaning.[9]
Identificaton
The Cimmerians were most likely a nomadic Iranian people of the Eurasian Steppe.[5][10][11][7][12]
Archaeologically, there was no difference between the material cultures of the pre-Scythian
populations living in the areas corresponding to the Caucasian steppe and the Volga and Don river
regions around it, and it appears that there were no other significant differences between the
Cimmerians and the Scythians.[13]
Other suggestions for the ethnicity for the Cimmerians include the possibility of their being
Thracian,[14] or Thracians with an Iranian ruling class, or a separate group closely related to Thracian
peoples, as well as a Maeotian origin.[15] However, the proposal of a Thracian origin of the
Cimmerians has been criticised as arising from a confusion by Strabo between the Cimmerians and
their allies, the Thracian tribe of the Treri.[5][16]
Location
The original homeland of the Cimmerians before they migrated into Western Asia was in the steppe
situated to the north of the Caspian Sea and to the west of the Araxēs river until the Cimmerian
Bosporus, and some Cimmerians might have nomadised in the Kuban steppe; the Cimmerians thus
originally lived in the Caspian and Caucasian steppes, in the area corresponding to present-day
Southern Russia.[16][13][17] The region of the Pontic Steppe until the Lake Maiōtis was instead
inhabited by the Agathyrsi, who were another nomadic Iranian tribe related to the Cimmerians.[18]
The later claim by Greek authors that the Cimmerians lived in the Pontic Steppe around the Tyras
river was a retroactive invention dating from after the disappearance of the Cimmerians.[16]
During the initial phase of their presence in Western Asia, the Cimmerians lived in a country which
Mesopotamian sources called Gamir ( ), that is the Land of the Cimmerians, located
around the Kuros river, to the north and north-west of Lake Sevan and the south of the Darial or
Klukhor passes, in a region of Transcaucasia to the east of Colchis corresponding to the modern-day
Gori, in southern Georgia.[16][19]
The Cimmerians later split into two groups, with a western horde located in Anatolia, and an eastern
horde which moved into Mannaea and later Media.[20]
History
Origins
The Cimmerians were originally part of a larger group of Central

Asian nomadic populations who migrated to the west and formed
new tribal groupings in the Pontic and Caspian steppes, with their
success at expanding into Eastern Europe happening thanks to the
development of mounted nomadic pastoralism and the adoption
Cimmerian invasions of Colchis,
of effective weapons suited to equestrian warfare by these
Urartu and Assyria in 715–713 BC.
nomads. The steppe cultures to which the Cimmerians belonged
in turn influenced the cultures of Central Europe such as the
Hallstatt culture, and the Cimmerians themselves lived in the steppe situated to the north of the
Caspian Sea and to the west of the Araxēs river, while the region of the Pontic Steppe until the Lake
Maiōtis was instead inhabited by the Agathyrsi, who were another nomadic Iranian tribe related to
the Cimmerians.[16][18]
The Cimmerians are first mentioned in the 8th century BC in Homer's Odyssey as a people living
beyond the Oceanus, in a land permanently deprived of sunlight at the edge of the world and close to
the entrance of Hades; this mention is purely poetic and contains no reliable information about the
real Cimmerians. Homer's story might however have used as its source the story of the Argonauts,
which itself focused on the kingdom of Colchis, on whose eastern borders the Cimmerians were living
in the 8th century BC.[16] This corresponds to the 6th century BC records of Aristeas of Proconnesus
and the later writings of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, according to whom the Cimmerians lived in the
steppe to the immediate north of the Caspian Sea, with the Araxēs river forming their eastern border
which separated them from the Scythians.[16][18][5][21] The Cimmerians thus never formed the mass of
the population of the Pontic Steppe, and neither Aristeas nor Hesiod ever recorded them as living in
this area.[13]
The social structure of the Cimmerians, according to Herodotus of Halicarnassus, comprised two
groups of roughly equal numbers: the Cimmerians proper, or "commoners", and the "kings" or "royal
race" – implying that the ruling classes and lower classes originally constituted two different peoples,
who retained distinct identities as late as the end of the 2nd millennium BC. Hence the "kings" may
have originated as an element of an Iranian-speaking people (such as the Scythians), who had
imposed their rule on a section of the people of the Catacomb culture, who were the Cimmerian
"commoners."[22]
In the 8th and 7th centuries BC, the Cimmerians were expelled from their home in the Caspian Steppe
and forced to migrate into Western Asia due to a significant movement of the nomads of the Eurasian
Steppe. This movement started when the Scythians, a nomadic Iranian tribe living in Central Asia
related to the Cimmerians, migrated westwards across the Araxēs river,[13] under the pressure of
another related nomadic Iranian tribe, either the Massagetae[23] or the Issedones,[16] following which
the Scythians moved into the Caucasian Steppe, displaced the Cimmerians and conquered their
territory. This displacement of the Cimmerians by the Scythians is attested archaeologically in a
disturbance of the Chernogorovka-Novocherkassk culture associated with the Cimmerians.[7][23][18]
Under Scythian pressure, the Cimmerians migrated to the south into Western Asia.[5] The story
recounted by Greek authors, according to which the Cimmerian aristocrats, unwilling to leave their
lands, killed each other and were buried in a kurgan near the Tyras river, after which only the
Cimmerian "commoners" migrated to Western Asia, is contradicted by how powerful the Cimmerians
were according to Assyrian sources contemporaneous with their presence in Western Asia; this story
was thus was either a Pontic Greek folk tale which originated after the disappearance of the
Cimmerians[16] or a later Scythian legend reflecting the motif of vanished ancient lost peoples which
is widespread in folk traditions.[24]
In Western Asia
The Cimmerians who migrated into Western Asia fled through the Klukhor, Alagir and Darial Gorge
passes in the Greater Caucasus mountains,[25][16] that is through the western Caucasus and Georgia
into Kolkhis, where the Cimmerians initially settled during the 720s BC.[26] During this period,
Cimmerians lived in a country which Mesopotamian sources called Gamir, the Land of the
Cimmerians, located around the Kuros river, to the north and north-west of Lake Sevan and the south
of the Darial or Klukhor passes, in a region of Transcaucasia to the east of Kolkhis corresponding to
the modern-day Gori, in southern Georgia.[16][19] Transcaucasia would remain the Cimmerians'
centre of operations during the early phase of their presence in Western Asia until the early 660s
BC.[5]
The Scythians later also expanded to the south, appearing in Western Asia forty years after the
Cimmerians, although they followed the coast of the Caspian Sea and arrived in the region of present-
day Azerbaijan.[27][28][16][3]
The inroads of the Cimmerians and the Scythians into Western Asia over the course of the 8th to 6th
centuries BC would destabilise the political balance which had prevailed in the region between the
states of Assyria, Urartu, Mannaea and Elam on one side and the mountain and tribal peoples on the
other.[13]
In Transcaucasia
The Cimmerians might have defeated attacks by the

[Urartian kings against Colchis and the nearby areas
during the 720s BC.[16]
The first mention of the Cimmerians in the records of

the Neo-Assyrian Empire was from between 720 and
714 BC, when Assyrian intelligence by the crown prince
Sennacherib reported to the king Sargon II that the
Cimmerians had attacked Urartu's province of Uasi
through the territory of the kingdom of Mannaea. A
counter-attack against the Cimmerians at Guriania in
what is now Georgia by the Urartian king Rusa I,[5][29] An Assyrian relief depicting Cimmerian mounted
during a campaign where Rusa I himself, his warriors
commander in chief, as well as thirteen governors
united all the armed forces of the kingdom, was
however heavily defeated by the Cimmerians, and the governor of the

Urartian province of Uasi was killed. This defeat weakened Urartu
significantly enough that Sargon II was able to successfully attack
and defeat it, and Rusa I committed suicide in consequence.[19]
During the period corresponding to Rusa II's reign, a section of the

Cimmerians moved into the area of the kingdom of Mannaea.[20]
The Cimmerians' presence in Anatolia might have started around

709 BC, and the king Midas II of Muški (Phrygia), who had
previously been a bitter opponent of the Neo-Assyrian Empire in
Anatolia, consequently ended hostilities with the Assyrians after and
sent a delegation to Rusa II to attempt to form an alliance against the
Cimmerians.[30][31][32]
The Assyrian king Sargon II (left)
In 705 BC, Rusa II died in battle, most likely during a campaign
and the crown prince
Sennacherib (right).
against the Anatolian kingdom of Tabal, or possibly during a battle in
which the Cimmerians were participants in either the region of Tabal
or in Nedia.[33][19][30][31]
After Rusa II's death, his son and successor Sennacherib secured the northwestern Assyrian
borders,[31] and the ceased being mentioned in Assyrian records during the reign of Sennacherib's
reign; the Cimmerians would start being mentioned again by the Assyrians only under the reign of
Sennacherib's own son and successor, Esarhaddon.[20] During this time, the Cimmerians were allied
with the Scythians, and the two groups, in alliance with the Medes, who were an Iranian people of
Western Asia to whom the Scythians and Cimmerians were distantly related, were threatening the
eastern frontier of Urartu during the reign of its king Argishti II.[17] Argishti II's successor, Rusa II,
built several fortresses in the east of Urartu's territory, including that of Teishebaini, to monitor and
repel attacks by the Cimmerians, the Mannaeans, the Medes, and the Scythians.[30]
During the period coinciding with the rule of the Assyrian king Esarhaddon (reigned 681–669 BC),
the bulk of the Cimmerians migrated from Transcaucasia into Anatolia, while a smaller group
remained in the area near the kingdom of Mannaea where they had been settled since the time of
Sargon II, respectively forming a "western" and an "eastern" division of Cimmerians.[20]
In Iran
Between 680/679 and 678/677 BC,[34] the eastern group of Cimmerians allied with the Mannaeans
and the Scythian king Išpakaia to attack Assyria, with the Scythians raiding far in the south till the
Assyrian province of Zamua. These allied forces were defeated by Esarhaddon, who had become the
king of the Neo-Assyrian empire.[35][13]
By 677 BC, the Cimmerians were present on the territory of Mannai,[5] and in 676 BC they were its
allies against an Assyrian attack, after which the eastern Cimmerians remained allied to Mannai
against Assyria.[20] In the western Iranian plateau, these eastern Cimmerians might have introduced
Bronze articles from the Koban culture into the Luristan bronze culture.[36] The Mannaeans, in
alliance with the eastern Cimmerians and the Scythians (the latter of whom attacked the borderlands
of Assyria from across the territory of the kingdom of Ḫubuškia), were able to expand their territories
at the expense of Assyria and capture the fortresses of Šarru-iqbi and Dūr-Ellil. Negotiations between
the Assyrians and the Cimmerians appeared to have followed, according to which the Cimmerians
promised not to interfere in the relations between Assyria and Mannai, although a Babylonian diviner
in Assyrian service warned Esarhaddon not to trust either the Mannaeans or the Cimmerians and
advised him to spy on both of them.[13]
The eastern Cimmerian group later moved to the south, into Media, with the Scythians as their
northern neighbours and occasional allies, and in the mid 670s BC, these eastern Cimmerians were
recorded by the Assyrians as a possible threat against the collection of tribute from Media. Around the
same time, in alliance with the Scythians, the eastern Cimmerians were menacing the Assyrian
provinces of Parsumaš and Bīt Ḫamban, and these joint Cimmerian-Scythian forces together were
threatening communication between the Assyrian Empire and its vassal of Ḫubuškia.[20][35] In 676
BC, Esarhaddon responded by carrying out a military campaign against Mannai during which he
killed Išpakaia.[13]
By the late 670s BC, the Scythians had become the allies of the Assyrians after Išpakaia's successor,
Bartatua, had married a daughter of Esarhaddon, while the eastern Cimmerians remained hostile to
Assyria and were allied to Ellipi and the Medes. When Ellipi and the Medes successfully rebelled
against Assyria under Kashtariti from 671 to 669 BC, the eastern Cimmerians were allied to
them.[20][30]
In Anatolia
By the later 7th century BC, the centre of operations of the

larger, western, division of the Cimmerians was located in
Anatolia.[5][20]
In 679 BC the Cimmerian king Teušpa was defeated and killed

Reproduction of a depiction of Cimmerian
by Esarhaddon near Ḫubušna in Cappadocia.[30][31][5][20][37]
mounted archers from a Greek vase.
Despite this victory, the military operations of the Assyrians
were not fully successful and they were not able to firmly
occupy the areas around Ḫubušna, nor were they able to secure their borders, and the Assyrian
province of Quwê was left vulnerable to invasions from Tabal, Kuzzurak and Ḫilakku;[20] the
Cimmerians had thus ended all Assyrian control in Anatolia.[38]
An Assyrian contract dating to the same as Esarhaddon's victory over Teušpa records of the existence
of a "Cimmerian detachment" in Nineveh, although it is uncertain whether this refers to Cimmerian
mercenaries in Assyrian service, or simply of Assyrian soldiers armed in the "Cimmerian-style", that
is using Cimmerian bows and horse harnesses.[20]
Around 675 BC, the Cimmerians, under their king Tugdammi (the Lugdamis}} of the Greek authors),
in alliance with the Urartian king Rusa II carried out a military campaign to the west, against Muški
(Phrygia), Ḫate (the Neo-Hittite state of Melid), and Ḫaliṭu (either the Alizōnes or the Khaldoi);[30]
this campaign resulted in the invasion and destruction of Phrygia, whose king Midas II committed
suicide.[33][30][29][31][20][16] Although the Cimmerians plundered the Phrygian capital of Gordion and
neither settled there nor destroyed its fortifications,[39] they appear to have consequently partially
subdued the Phrygians, and an Assyrian oracular text from the later 670s BC mentioned the
Cimmerians and the Phrygians, who had possibly been subdued by the Cimmerians, as allies against
the Assyrians' newly conquered province of Melid.[5][20]
A document from 673 BC records Rusa II as having recruited a large number of Cimmerian
mercenaries, and Cimmerian allies of Rusa II probably participated in a military expedition of his in
672 BC.[33] From 671 to 669 BC, Cimmerians in service of Rusa II attacked the Assyrian province of
Šubria near the Urartian border.[36][20]
Between 671 and 670 BC, some Cimmerian divisions were recorded as serving in the Assyrian army,
although these divisions might have instead simply referred to the "Cimmerian style" armed Assyrian
soldiers.[5]
At yet unknown dates, the Cimmerians imposed their rule on Cappadocia, invaded Bithynia,
Paphlagonia and the Troad,[33] and took the recently founded Greek colony of Sinope, whose initial
settlement was destroyed and whose first founder Habrōn was killed in the invasion, and which was
later re-founded by the Greek colonists Kōos and Krētinēs.[40] Along with Sinope, the Greek colony of
Cyzicus was also destroyed during these invasions and had to be later re-founded.[41] In the beginning
of that decade, the Cimmerians attacked the kingdom of Lydia,[33] which had been filling the power
vacuum in Anatolia created by the destruction of Phrygia by establishing itself as a new rising regional
power.[30] The Lydian king Gyges, attempting to find help to face the Cimmerian invasions, contacted
Esarhaddon's successor who had succeeded him as king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, Ashurbanipal,
beginning in 667 BC, and his struggle against Cimmerians soon turned in his favour.[38][42][39] Gyges
soon defeated the Cimmerians in 665 BC without Assyrian help, and he sent Cimmerian soldiers
captured while attacking the Lydian countryside as gifts to Ashurbanipal.[43][5] According to the
Assyrian records describing these events, the Cimmerians already had formed sedentary settlements
in Anatolia.[42]
Assyrian records in 657 BC of a "bad omen" for the "Westland"[39] might

have referred to either another Cimmerian attack on Lydia,[43][38] or a
conquest by Tugdammi of the western possessions of the Neo-Assyrian
Empire, possibly Quwê or somewhere in Syria,[44] following their defeat by
Gyges.[42] These Cimmerian aggressions worried Ashurbanipal about the
security of the north-west border of the Neo-Assyrian Empire enough that
he sought answers concerning this situation through divination,[5] and as a
result of these Cimmerian conquests, by 657 BC the Assyrian divinatory
records were calling the Cimmerian king by the title of šar-kiššati ("King of
the Universe"), a title which in the Mesopotamian worldview could belong
to only a single ruler in the world at any given time and was normally held
by the King of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. These divinatory texts also assured A depiction of a
to Ashurbanipal that he would eventually regain the kiššūtu, that is the Thracian warrior from a
world hegemony, captured by the Cimmerians: the kiššūtu, which was 5th century BC Greek
considered to rightfully belong to the Assyrian king, had been usurped by vase.
the Cimmerians and had to be won back by Assyria. Thus, the Cimmerians
had become a force feared by Ashurbanipal, and Tugdammi's successes
against Assyria meant that he had become recognised in the ancient Near East as equally powerful as
Ashurbanipal. This situation remained unchanged throughout the rest of the 650s BC and the early
640s BC.[42]
As the result of these Assyrian setbacks, Gyges could not rely on Assyrian support against the
Cimmerians and he ended diplomacy with the Neo-Assyrian Empire,[42] and Ashurbanipal responded
to Gyges's disengagement from Assyria by cursing him.[39][45]
The Cimmerians attacked Lydia for a third time in 644 BC:

this time, they defeated the Lydians and captured their
capital, Sardis, and Gyges died during this
attack.[43][38][5][33][29][39] Gyges was succeeded by his son
Ardys, who resumed diplomatic activity with Assyria;[46][43]
Ashurbanipal, whose Anatolian borders were still in a delicate
Painting depicting Cimmerian mounted situation due to the Cimmerians, was himself willing to form
warriors from a Klazomenian alliances with any state in Anatolia which was capable of
sarcophagus. successfully fighting the Cimmerians.[38][39]
After sacking Sardis, Lygdamis led the Cimmerians into

invading the Greek city-states of Ionia and Aeolis on the western coast of Anatolia, which caused the
inhabitants of the Batinētis region to flee to the islands of the Aegean Sea, and later Greek writings by
Callimachus and Hesychius of Alexandria preserve the record that Lygdamis had destroyed the
Artemision of Ephesus.[42] Among the other Greek cities destroyed during these invasions was
Magnesia on the Meander.[41]
After this third invasion of Lydia and the attack on the Asiatic Greek cities,
around 640 BC the Cimmerians moved to Cilicia on the north-west border
of the Assyrian empire, where Tugdammi allied with Mugallu, the king of
Tabal, against Assyria, during which period the Assyrian records called him
a "mountain king and an arrogant Gutian (that is a barbarian) who does not
know how to fear the gods." However, after facing a revolt against himself,
Tugdamme allied with Assyria and acknowledged Assyrian overlordship,
and sent tribute to Ashurbanipal, to whom he swore an oath. Tugdammi
soon broke this oath and attacked the Assyrian Empire again, but he fell ill
and died in 640 BC, and was succeeded by his son Sandakšatru, who
attempted to continue Tugdammi's attacks against Assyria but failed just
like his father.[43][5][38][42][47][48][49] Reproduction of a
depiction of a
By the later part of the 7th century BC, the Cimmerians were nomadising in
Cimmerian archer from
Western Asia together with the Thracian Treri tribe who had migrated
a Greek vase.
across the Thracian Bosporus and invaded Anatolia.[13][16] In 637 BC,
Sandakšatru's Cimmerians participated in another attack on Lydia, this time
led by the Treres under their king Kōbos, and in alliance with the Lycians.[43] During this invasion, in
the seventh year of the reign of Gyges's son Ardys, the Lydians were defeated again and for a second
time Sardis was captured, except for its citadel, and Ardys might have been killed in this attack.[50]
Ardys's son and successor, Sadyattes, might possibly also have been killed in another Cimmerian
attack on Lydia.[50][39]
The power of the Cimmerians had eventually dwindled quickly after Tugdammi's death, and soon
these Cimmerian attacks on Lydia, with Assyrian approval[51] and in alliance with the Lydians,[52] the
Scythians under their king Madyes entered Anatolia, expelled the Treres from Asia Minor, and
defeated the Cimmerians so that they no longer constituted a threat again, following which the
Scythians extended their domination to Central Anatolia[3] until they were themselves expelled by the
Medes from Western Asia in the 600s BC.[43][5] This final defeat of the Cimmerians was carried out
by the joint forces of Madyes, who Strabo credits with expelling the Cimmerians from Asia Minor, and
of Gyges's great-grandson, the king Alyattes of Lydia, whom Herodotus of Halicarnassus and
Polyaenus claim finally defeated the Cimmerians.[42][16]
Following this final defeat,[5] the Cimmerians likely

remained in the region of Cappadocia, whose name in
Armenian, Գամիրք Gamirkʿ, may have been derived
from the name of the Cimmerians.[33] A group of
Cimmerians might also have subsisted for some time
in the Troas, around Antandrus,[33] until they were
finally defeated by Alyattes of Lydia.[53] The remnants
of the Cimmerians were eventually asimilated by the
A relief depicting mounted Lydian warriors on slab populations of Anatolia,[16] and they completely
of marble from a tomb. disappeared from history after their defeat by Madyes
and Alyattes.[5]
In Europe
It has been hypothesised that some Cimmerians might have migrated into Eastern, South-east and
Central Europe, although such identification is presently considered very uncertain.[16]
Impact
The inroads of the Cimmerians and the Scythians into Western Asia over the course of the 8th to 6th
centuries BC had destabilised the political balance which had prevailed in the region between the
states of Assyria, Urartu, Mannaea and Elam on one side and the mountain and tribal peoples on the
other, resulting in the destruction of these former kingdoms and their replacement by new powers,
including the kingdoms of the Medes and of the Lydians.[13]
Legacy
After the end of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, the scribes of the Neo-Babylonian Empire which replaced
it used the term Gimirri indiscriminately to refer to all the nomads of the steppes, including both the
Pontic Scythians and the Central Asian Saka.[6] The Persian Achaemenids who conquered the Neo-
Babylonian Empire continued this tradition of using the name of the Cimmerians to refer to all steppe
nomads in the Akkadian language, as attested in the Behistun inscription.[24] The Byzantines from a
millennium and onwards later similarly referred to the Huns, Slavs, and other populations as
"Scythians."[24]
Homer's mention of the Cimmerians as living deprived from sunlight and close to the entrance of
Hades influenced later Graeco-Roman authors who, writing centuries after the disappearance of the
historical Cimmerians, conceptualised of this people as the one described by Homer, and therefore
assigned to them various fantastical locations and histories:[16][54]
Ephorus of Cyme in the 4th century BC placed the Cimmerians near the city of Cumae in Magna
Graecia, where there was located a Ploutonion and an oracle of the dead, as well as the Lake
Avernus, which possessed strange properties. According to Ephorus's narrative, these
Cimmerians lived underground and would go out only at night because of a tradition of theirs to
never see the Sun.
Hecataeus of Abdera placed the "Cimmerian city" in Hyperborea
Posidonius of Apamea wrote that the Cimmerians who passed into Western Asia were merely a
small body of exiles, while the bulk of the Cimmerians lived in the thickly wooded and sun-less far
north, between the shores of the Oceanus and the Hercynian Forest, and were the same people
known as the Cimbri. Since the names of the Cimmerians and the Cimbri were similar, and both
were perceived by the Greeks as fierce barbarian tribes who had caused significant destruction
for the peoples they had invaded, the Greek traditions progressively equated and then identified
them with each other.
This assertion was criticised by Plutarch as being conjectural rather than based on concrete
historical evidence.
Strabo and Diodorus of Sicily, using Posidonius as their sources, also equated the
Cimmerians and the Cimbri.
The Cimmerians appear in the Hebrew Bible under the name of Gōmer (‎‫)ֹּג ֶמ ר‬, where Gōmer is closely
linked to ʾAškənāz (‫)אשכנז‬, that is to the Scythians.[13][3][4]
In sources beginning with the Royal Frankish Annals, the Merovingian kings of the Franks
traditionally traced their lineage through a pre-Frankish tribe called the Sicambri (or Sugambri),
mythologized as a group of "Cimmerians" from the mouth of the Danube river. The historical
Sicambri, however, were a Germanic tribe from Gelderland in modern Netherlands and are named for
the Sieg river.[55]
Early modern historians asserted Cimmerian descent for the Celts or the Germans, arguing from the
similarity of Cimmerii to Cimbri or Cymry, noted by 17th-century Celticists. But the word Cymro
"Welshman" (plural: Cymry) is now accepted by Celtic linguists as being derived from a Brythonic
word *kom-brogos, meaning "compatriot".[56][57][58][59]
According to Georgian national historiography, the Cimmerians, in Georgian known as Gimirri,

played an influential role in the development of the Colchian and Iberian cultures.[60] The modern
Georgian word for "hero", გმირი gmiri, is said to derive from their name.
It has also been speculated that the modern Armenian city of Gyumri (Arm. Գյումրի [ˈgjumɾi]),
founded as Kumayri (Arm. Կումայրի), derived its name from the Cimmerians who conquered the
region and founded a settlement there.[61]
In popular culture
The character of Conan the Barbarian, created by Robert E. Howard in a series of fantasy stories
published in Weird Tales from 1932, is canonically a Cimmerian: in Howard's fictional Hyborian Age,
the Cimmerians are a pre-Celtic people who were the ancestors of the Irish and Scots (Gaels).
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, a novel by Michael Chabon, includes a chapter
describing the (fictional) oldest book in the world, "The Book of Lo", created by ancient Cimmerians.
Manau's song "La Tribu de Dana" recounts an imaginary battle between Celts and enemies identified
by the narrator as Cimmerians.
Archaeology
Archaeologically, the Cimmerians are associated with the Chernogorovka-Novocherkassk Culture of
the west Eurasian steppe, which itself showed strong influences originating from the east in Central
Asia and Siberia, as well as from the Kuban culture of the Caucasus which contributed to its
development,[18] although an alternative view is that the

Cimmerians instead belonged, materially, to the Early Scythian
culture.[40]
Cimmerian remains from the period of their presence in Anatolia

include a burial from the village of İmirler in the Amasya Province
of Turkey which contains typically Early Scythian weapons and
horse harnesses. Another Cimmerian burial, located at about 100
km to the east of İmirler and 50 km from Samsun, contained 250 Distribution of "Thraco-Cimmerian"
Scythian-type arrowheads.[40] finds. From map in Archaeology of
Ukrainian SSR (rus. Археология
Language Украинской ССР) vol. 2, Kiev

(1986)
According to the historian Muhammad Dandamayev and the

linguist János Harmatta, the Cimmerians spoke a dialect
Cimmerian
belonging to the Scythian group of Iranian languages, and were
able to communicate with Scythians proper without needing Region North Caucasus
interpreters.[62][7] The Iranologist Ľubomír Novák considers Era unknown-7th
Cimmerian to be a relative of Scythian which exhibited similar century BC
features as Scythian, such as the evolution of the sound /d/ into Language Indo-European
/l/.[63] family Indo-Iranian
The recorded personal names of the Cimmerians were either Iranian
Iranian, reflecting their origins, or Anatolian, reflecting the
Eastern Iranian
cultural influence of the native populations of Asia Minor on them
after their migration there.[13] Scythian
Cimmerian
Only a few personal names in the Cimmerian language have
survived in Assyrian inscriptions: Language codes
ISO 639-3 None (mis)
Teušpa:
Linguist List 08i (http://mult
According to the linguist János Harmatta, it goes back to itree.org/codes/
Old Iranian *Tavispaya, meaning "swelling with 08i)
strength",[7] although Askold Ivantchik has criticised this
Glottolog None
proposal on phonetic grounds.[20]
Askold Ivantchik instead posits three alternative suggestions for an Old Iranian origin of
Teušpa:[20]
*Taiu-aspa "abductor of horses"
*Taiu-spā "abductor dog"
*Daiva-spā "divine dog"
Tugdammē or Dugdammē ( ), and recorded as Lugdamis (Λυγδαμις) and Dugdamis

(Δυγδαμις) by Greek authors
According to János Harmatta, it goes back to Old Iranian *Duydamaya "giving happiness."[7]
Edwin M. Yamauchi also interprets the name as Iranian, citing Ossetic Тух-домӕг (Tux-
domæg), meaning "ruling with strength,"[64] although this proposal has been criticised because
Тух-домӕг represents the modern phonetics of Ossetian and its form during the Old Iranian
period when the Cimmerians lived would have been *Tavaʰ-dam-ak.[42]
Askold Ivantchik instead suggests that the name Dugdammê/Lugdamis was a loanword from
an Anatolian language, more specifically Luwian, while also accepting the alternative
possibility of a derivation from a variant of the name of the Hurrian deity Teyśəba/Tešub.[42]
Ľubomír Novák has noted that the attestation of this name in the forms Dugdammê and
Tugdammê in Akkadian and the forms Lugdamis and Dugdamis in Greek shows that its first
consonant had experienced the change of the sound /d/ to /l/, which is consistent with the
phonetic changes attested in the Scythian languages.[63]
Sandakšatru: this is an Iranian reading of the name, and Manfred Mayrhofer (1981) points out that
the name may also be read as Sandakurru.
According to János Harmatta, it goes back to Old Iranian *Sandakuru "splendid son."[7]
Askold Ivantchik derives the name Sandakšatru from a compound term consisting of the
name of the Anatolian deity Šanta, and of the Iranian term -xšaθra.[42]
Isaac Asimov attempted to trace various place names to Cimmerian origins. He suggested that
Cimmerium gave rise to the Turkic toponym Qırım (which in turn gave rise to the name
"Crimea").[65]
Genetics
A genetic study published in Science Advances in October 2018 examined the remains of three
Cimmerians buried between around 1000 and 800 BC. The two samples of Y-DNA extracted belonged
to haplogroups R1b1a and Q1a1, while the three samples of mtDNA extracted belonged to haplogroups
H9a, C5c and R. [66]
Another genetic study published in Current Biology in July 2019 examined the remains of three
Cimmerians. The two samples of Y-DNA extracted belonged to haplogroups R1a-Z645 and R1a2c-
B111, while the three samples of mtDNA extracted belonged to haplogroups H35, U5a1b1 and
U2e2.[67]
Cimmerian kings
Kings of the western (Anatolian) Cimmerians

Teušpa (?-679 BC)
Tugdamme (679-640 BC)
Sandakšatru (640-c. 630s BC)
See also
Agathyrsi
Scythians
Scythian cultures
Umman Manda
Medes
Cimbri
References
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9/25/22, 3:32 PM Cimmerians - Wikipedia

The Cimmerians themselves left no written records,

Ancient Iranian religion

Luwian religion (?)

The Cimmerians were originally part of a larger group of Central

The Cimmerians might have defeated attacks by the

The first mention of the Cimmerians in the records of

however heavily defeated by the Cimmerians, and the governor of the

During the period corresponding to Rusa II's reign, a section of the

The Cimmerians' presence in Anatolia might have started around

By the later 7th century BC, the centre of operations of the

In 679 BC the Cimmerian king Teušpa was defeated and killed

Assyrian records in 657 BC of a "bad omen" for the "Westland"[39] might

The Cimmerians attacked Lydia for a third time in 644 BC:

After sacking Sardis, Lygdamis led the Cimmerians into

Following this final defeat,[5] the Cimmerians likely

According to Georgian national historiography, the Cimmerians, in Georgian known as Gimirri,

development,[18] although an alternative view is that the

Cimmerian remains from the period of their presence in Anatolia

Language Украинской ССР) vol. 2, Kiev

According to the historian Muhammad Dandamayev and the

Tugdammē or Dugdammē ( ), and recorded as Lugdamis (Λυγδαμις) and Dugdamis

Kings of the western (Anatolian) Cimmerians

15. Sulimirski & Taylor 1991, p. 555.

40. Ivantchik, Askold (2010). "Sinope et les Cimmériens" (https://www.academia.edu/915035) [Sinope

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