Astyages
According to Herodotus, Astyages was the last king of the Median Empire. He most probably ruled from 584 to 550 BCE. Astyages was overthrown by his grandson Cyrus II the Great, the founder of the Persian Achaemenid state who incorporated Media and its various vassal states into his own newly emerging empire. Herodotus stated that Astyages was the son of the Median king Cyaxares. Under Cyaxares, the Median state reached the apex of its power, transforming itself from a kingdom struggling for its survival against Scythians and Assyrians into a vast and powerful empire. The Medes expelled the Scythians and soon after captured Nineveh, subduing the Assyrians (Herodotus: 1.106). The destruction of the Assyrian Empire allowed the Medes to emerge as a major political and military power and a neighbor of the powerful kingdom of Lydia. Between 590 and 585 BCE, the two new neighbors fought several inconclusive battles. In 585 BCE, the king of the Medes, Cyaxares, and the ruler of Lydia, Alyattes, finally agreed to cease all hostilities and establish the Halys River (Kizil Irmak or Red River in today’s eastern Turkey) as the boundary between the two powers. To solidify the new peace treaty, the son of Cyaxares, Astyages, married a daughter of Alyattes. Shortly after this, the Median king died and was succeeded by his son, Astyages.
According to Herodotus, Astyages was the grandfather of Cyrus, the founder of the Persian Achaemenid Empire through his daughter, Mandane. Herodotus writes that Astyages had dreamt one night that his daughter, Mandane, “urinated in such enormous quantities that it filled his city and swamped the whole of Asia” (Herodotus: 1.107). When the magi interpreted the meaning of the dream, Astyages was sufficiently alarmed to disallow his daughter to marry a Mede of noble rank. Instead, Astyages married his daughter to Cambyses, a Persian from a “good family, and quiet habits though he [Astyages] considered him [Cambyses] much below a Mede even of middle rank” (Herodotus: 1.107). But dreams kept on coming, haunting the Median king. After Mandane had been married to Cambyses for a year, Astyages had another dream in which “a vine grew out of his daughter’s private parts and spread over Asia” (Herodotus: 1.108). When Astyages shared the dream with his dream interpreters, they told him that a son would be born from his daughter who would overthrow the king and seize the Median throne. To prevent such an outcome, Astyages recalled his daughter Mandane to the Median court and put her under strict watch. According to Herodotus, when the child (Cyrus) was born, Astyages asked his closest confidant, Harpagus, to kill the baby. Harpagus could not bring himself to murder an innocent child, so he passed the baby Cyrus to Mithridates, a shepherd whose wife had given birth to a stillborn. Instead of murdering Cyrus, Mithridates and his wife decided to adopt him and raise the child as their own. Some years later when the child had grown up to be a fine young boy, Astyages, who did not have a son of his own, met the young Cyrus and recognized him as his own grandson. Astyages decided to spare Cyrus’s life, but he nonetheless punished his confidant Harpagus by ordering his men to kill his son, cook his body, and feed it to the boy’s father. When Harpagus discovered what Astyages had done to his son, he did not display any emotions. The minister, however, refused to forgive his royal master and awaited for an opportunity to exact his revenge. According to Herodotus, Harpagus established contact with Cyrus after the young prince had succeeded his father, Cambyses, on the throne of Persia and hatched a conspiracy to remove Astyages from the Median throne and replace him with Cyrus. In the absence of reliable historical sources, the story told by Herodotus cannot be verified. Indeed, it is impossible to know the exact nature of the relationship between Astyages and Cyrus.
The end of the Median Empire came when Cyrus, now the ruler of Persia, revolted against Astyages. According to Herodotus, Astyages summoned Cyrus to his court after he learned that the Persians intended to revolt and free themselves from the Median yoke. Cyrus, however, responded by sending a threatening message to the Median king that “he would be there a good deal sooner than Astyages liked” (Herodotus: 1.127). Plyaenus reported that Cyrus was defeated in three different battles with the Medes (Plyaenus: 7.6.1). Despite these setbacks, Cyrus rallied his men and led them into a fourth battle with the Medes at Pasargadae in present-day southern Iran near the city of Shiraz (Plyaenus: 7.6.1). The Persians were defeated again and fled the battlefield, but when they saw their wives and children, they were “ashamed of themselves and turned around to face the enemy,” routing the Medes, “who were pursuing in disorder,” and winning “so great a victory that Cyrus no longer needed another battle against them” (Plyaenus: 7.6.1). Another source, namely Ctesias, claims that after the conquest of the Median capital, Ecbatana, Astyages was captured while hiding in the attic or vaults of the royal palace together with his daughter Amytis and her husband Spitamas (Ctesias’ History of Persia: 170). The Neo-Babylonian Chronicle of Nabonidus contradicts the Greek accounts and reports that the king of Media “marched against Cyrus, the king of Anshan,” but his army “revolted against him” and delivered him “in fetters” to Cyrus, who attacked the Median capital and seized all the silver, gold, and other valuables of the country as booty and carried them off back to Anshan (Pritchard: 235). According to Herodotus, after his victory over the Median king, Cyrus treated Astyages with kindness and compassion and allowed him to live at his court until he passed away (Herodotus: 1.130).
See also: K&Q, Achaemenid: Cyrus II the Great; K&Q, Median: Cyaxares/Huvakhshtra; Peoples: Media, Medes, and the Median Empire
Further Reading
Ctesias’ History of Persia: Tales of the Orient. Translated by Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones and James Robson. London: Routledge Taylor and Francis Group, 2010.
Grayson, Kirk A. Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2000.
Herodotus. The Histories. Translated by Aubrey De Sélincourt. London: Penguin, 2003.
Luckenbill, Daniel David. Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia. 2 vols. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1926.
Plyaenus. Stratagems of War. Edited and translated by Peter Krentz and Everett L. Wheeler. Chicago: Ares Publishers, 1994.
Cyaxares/Huvakhshtra
According to the Greek author Herodotus, Cyaxares was a king of the Median Empire. Herodotus portrayed Cyaxares as a brilliant diplomat, politician, and military commander who unified the Medes and unleashed their power against neighbors in all directions, converting the Median state from a small kingdom into a powerful empire. In Neo-Babylonian sources, the Median king who destroyed the Assyrian Empire is Huvakhshtra.
The death of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal in 627 BCE signaled the beginning of the end for the Assyrian kingdom. A fierce civil war erupted shortly after the passing of the Assyrian monarch. Local rulers who had been intimidated by the power of Assyria rose in rebellion and proclaimed their independence. In the midst of this turmoil, the Chaldaean general Nabopolassar emerged as the leader of the Babylonian revolt against Assyrian domination. By 626/625 BCE, he had established himself as the independent ruler of Babylon. Between 616 and 615 Assyria and Babylonia fought several wars, with the Babylonians targeting the allies of Assyria, particularly the Mannaean and Aramaean tribes, while the Assyrians, with military support from Pharaoh Necho II of Egypt, responded with their own offensive. In 615 BCE, Nabopolassar felt sufficiently confident to march against Ashur, the first capital of the Assyrian state and in political and economic importance second only to Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian Empire. The Babylonians, however, failed to capture the city. Initially the closest ally of the Babylonians was Elam, but starting in 615, Media joined the campaign against Assyria. Before moving against Assyria, however, the Medes had to subdue the Scythians, who in the past had allied themselves with Assyria. Once the Scythian threat had been neutralized, the Medes were finally prepared to move against their old nemesis. But the destruction of the Assyrian kingdom required an alliance with the Neo-Babylonian Empire.
In the autumn of 615, the Medes crossed the Zagros Mountains and captured Arrapha (present-day Kirkuk in northeastern Iraq). Then in the s
ummer of 614 Huvakhshtra, the Median king, captured Tarbisu (modern-day Sherif Khan in northern Iraq) near Nineveh, the Assyrian capital. He then invaded and sacked Ashur. The Median army slaughtered the inhabitants of Ashur, destroyed their temples, and plundered their state treasures before razing the city to the ground. Those who survived the massacre were carried off as prisoners. The king of Babylonia, who had reached Ashur with his army after it had been seized and destroyed by the Medes, met with the Median monarch Huvakhshtra (Cyaxares?) outside the city, and the two kings concluded a treaty of peace and friendship.
The Assyrians responded to the destruction of Ashur by attacking Babylonia, but they failed to neutralize the threat posed by Nabopolassar and his army. In the summer of 612, the Babylonians and Medes joined forces and marched against the Assyrian capital, Nineveh. The Assyrian king Sennacherib had founded the city at the end of the eighth century and the beginning of the seventh century BCE. Nineveh’s size and grandeur were unparalleled in the ancient world. Dominated by the high citadel at Kuyunjik and by a royal palace that towered above the city, Nineveh displayed the supreme power and prestige of Assyrian kings. The attack on Nineveh was coordinated by Nabopolassar and Huvakhshtra. After joining forces, the two kings marched upstream along the embankment of the Tigris and stormed the Assyrian capital. After a long siege and several fierce battles, they finally conquered the city. The victors plundered and destroyed Nineveh, massacring its population and carrying off into slavery those whose lives they spared.
The fall of Nineveh was a deathblow to the Assyrian state. The Assyrian king Sin-sharr-ishkun (r. 627–612 BCE) was most probably killed during the final assault, but parts of his army under the command of Ashuruballit (r. 612–609 BCE) escaped to Harran in upper Mesopotamia near the present-day village of Altinbashak in southeastern Turkey. Once in Harran, Ashuruballit sat on the throne as the king of Assyria. He intended to regroup his forces with assistance from Necho II, the pharaoh of Egypt. In 610 the Medes and the Babylonians, who were determined to prevent the resurgence of the Assyrian state, merged their forces again and marched against Ashuruballit, who abandoned Harran and retreated to Carchemish on the western bank of the Euphrates River on the present-day border between Turkey and Syria. But the Assyrians refused to accept defeat. In 609 BCE, with assistance from Egypt, Ashuruballit attacked Harran but failed to recapture the city after Nabopolassar arrived with his army to rescue the besieged garrison. Ashuruballit was most probably killed sometime during this campaign, because his name is not mentioned again. The remnants of the Assyrian army, with support from Egypt, fought desperately to expel the enemy, but they were defeated for the last time in 605 BCE at Carchemish and Hamath in Syria. After three centuries of domination the Neo-Assyrian state ceased to exist, and its territory was divided between Babylonia and Media. The territory of the Assyrian state, which incorporated the three important Assyrian urban centers of Nineveh, Ashur, and Arbela, were divided between the Babylonian and Median Empires.
The fall of the Assyrian Empire signaled the rise of the Medes as a major power in the Near East. The Medes followed their victory against the Assyrians by annexing the kingdom of Urartu, which was centered around Lake Van in eastern Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey), as well as the land of the Mannaeans and the Scythian kingdom. The destruction of Urartu allowed the Medes to emerge as the dominant power in eastern Asia Minor and a neighbor to the powerful kingdom of Lydia. From 590 to 585 BCE, the two new neighbors fought several inconclusive battles. According to Herodotus, the king of Media, Cyaxares, and the ruler of Lydia, Alyattes, finally agreed to cease all hostilities and establish the Halys River (Kizil Irmak or Red River in present-day eastern Turkey) as the boundary between the two states. To solidify the new peace treaty, the son of Cyaxares, Astyages, married a daughter of Alyattes. Shortly after this, Cyaxares died and was succeeded by his son, who appears in Herodotus’s account as Astyages, the last ruler of the Median Empire and the grandfather of Cyrus II the Great, the founder of the Persian Achaemenid Empire.
See also: K&Q, Achaemenid: Cyrus II the Great; K&Q, Median: Astyages; Phraortes; Peoples: Media, Medes, and the Median Empire; Primary Documents: Document 4
Further Reading
Grayson, A. Kirk. Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2000.
Lumsden, Stephen. “Power and Identity in the Neo-Assyrian World.” In The Royal Palace Institution in the First Millennium BC, edited by Inge Nielsen. Athens: Danish Institute at Athens, 2001.
Pritchard, James B. Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969.
Strabo. The Geography of Strabo. Translated by Horace Leonard Jones. London: William Heinemann, 1930.
Deioces
According to the Greek historian Herodotus, Deioces (Old Iranian: Dahyuka) was the founder of the kingdom of Media in western Iran. Herodotus describes Deioces as a Median leader “of great ability and ambitions” who revolted against the authority of the Assyrian state in an attempt to free his people (Herodotus: 1.96). Herodotus claims that Deioces was the son of a Median by the name of Phraortes and named his own son Phraortes after his father. According to Herodotus, Deioces was therefore the grandfather of Cyaxares, the greatest of all Median kings, who conquered Nineveh and destroyed the Assyrian Empire. Herodotus portrays Deioces as a highly intelligent and shrewd leader who was troubled by the fragmentation and weakness of his people. Early in his career, Deioces built a solid reputation for himself as an honorable, fair-minded, and impartial judge. As his reputation as an enforcer of strict justice spread beyond his district, “everyone was glad to submit cases to his judgment, until he became the only person they would turn to” (Herodotus: 1.96–97). Because he had distinguished himself as a just and fair-minded arbiter and judge, when the Medes came to recognize the need for a government, they chose Deioces as their first king. Deioces used his newly acquired power to compel his people first to build a palace and then to build a capital city for their new ruler. Thus, Herodotus attributed the founding and construction of the Median capital Ecbatana (Old Persian: Hagmatana; New Persian: Hamedan) in present-day western Iran to Deioces. The Greek author described Ecbatana as a city “of great size and strength fortified by concentric walls,” designed in such a way that “each successive circle was higher than the one below it by the height of the battlements” (Herodotus: 1.98). Once the construction of the new capital was completed, Deioces introduced his people, the Medes, to the ceremonies attendant to royalty: “admission to the king’s presence was forbidden, and all communication had to be through messengers. Nobody was allowed to see the king, and it was an offence for anyone to laugh or spit in the royal presence” (Herodotus: 1.99). The Median king also consolidated his power by the “strict administration of justice” and the creation of a network of spies who “were busy watching and listening in every corner of his dominions” (Herodotus: 1.100). Having unified the various Median rural communities and townships under his authority, Deioces died after a long reign of 53 years (Herodotus: 1.101). He was succeeded by his son Phraortes (Old Persian: Fravartish), who had been named after his grandfather.
Recent scholarship has questioned the accuracy of Herodotus’s account, which most probably relied on oral and legendary sources. Neo-Assyrian texts mention a certain Daiukku, and indeed a Mannaean governor named Deioces does appear on an Assyrian inscription dating back to the reign of the Assyrian king Sargon II (r. 721–705 BCE). It is nonetheless impossible to confirm with any certainty that the Daiukku of Sargon’s time and the Deioces mentioned in Herodotus’s account are the same leader (Schmitt: Deioces). As a result, an increasing number of scholars have concluded either that the king known as Deioces belonged to the realm of oral and legendary tradition or that he was in fact a king of Media, but he most probably ruled sometime after Phraortes and not prior to him.
See also: K&Q, Median: Astyages; Cyaxares/Huvakhshtra; Phraortes; Peoples: Media, Medes, and the Median Empire
; Further Reading
Cameron, George G. History of Early Iran. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976.
Diakonoff, I. M. “Media.” In The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol. 2, edited by I. Gershevitch, 36–148. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
Herodotus. The Histories. Translated by Aubrey De Sélincourt. New York: Penguin, 1996.
Schmitt, Rüdiger. “Deioces.” Encyclopaedia Iranica, 1994, http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/deioces.
Mandane
According to the Greek historians Herodotus (Herodotus: 1.107.1) and Xenophon (Cyropaedia: 1.2.1), Mandane was the daughter of Astyages, the last ruler of Media and the mother of Cyrus II the Great, the founder of the Persian Achaemenid Empire. Herodotus wrote that Astyages had dreamt one night that Mandane “urinated in such enormous quantities that it filled his city and swamped the whole of Asia” (Herodotus: 1.107). When the magi interpreted the meaning of the dream, Astyages was sufficiently alarmed to disallow his daughter to marry a Mede of noble rank. Instead, Astyages married his daughter to Cambyses, a Persian from a “good family, and quiet habits though he [Astyages] considered him [Cambyses] much below a Mede even of middle rank” (Herodotus: 1.107). After Mandane had been married to Cambyses for a year, Astyages had another dream in which “a vine grew out of his daughter’s private parts and spread over Asia” (Herodotus: 1.108). When Astyages shared the dream with his dream interpreters, they told him that a son would be born from his daughter who would overthrow the king and seize the Median throne. To prevent such an outcome, Astyages recalled Mandane to the Median court and put her under strict watch. According to Herodotus, when the child (Cyrus) was born, Astyages asked his closest confidant, Harpagus, to kill the baby. Harpagus could not bring himself to murder an innocent child, so he passed the baby Cyrus to Mithridates, a shepherd whose wife had given birth to a stillborn. Instead of murdering Cyrus, Mithridates and his wife decided to adopt him and raise the child as their own. Several years later when the child was a full-grown boy, Astyages, who did not have a son of his own, met the young Cyrus and recognized him. When Cyrus’s father, Cambyses, died, Cyrus ascended the throne of Anshan, which was a vassal kingdom of Media. As Astyages’s dream had foretold, Cyrus revolted against his grandfather. After several fierce battles Cyrus defeated Astyages; seized the Median capital, Ecbatana; and incorporated Media into his emerging empire.
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