Cyaxares

We have two main sources. One is the Babylonian “Fall of Nineveh” tablet (ABC 3) in the British Museum, written year by year at the time and naming Cyaxares (Umakishtar). The other is Herodotus, a Greek historian writing about 150 years later. Diakonoff (Iranica) says the other Greek accounts, derived from Berossus and Ctesias, have “little value”.

Wherever the Babylonian tablet speaks, we treat it as secure. Wherever only Herodotus speaks, we label it “according to Herodotus”. Diakonoff says some of Herodotus’ stories, such as the 28 years of Scythian rule, contradict the eastern sources.

We know the first great Iranian king through others: a Babylonian scribe and a Greek. No writing by the Medes themselves survives.

1. According to Herodotus he was the son of Phraortes; Diakonoff suggests his father may have been Xšaθrita (below).

2. Around 615 BCE he reached Assyrian soil and took Arrapha (Kirkuk).

3. In 614 BCE he captured Assur, the religious city of the Assyrians, and made a pact with Nabopolassar of Babylon.

4. In 612 BCE, with the Babylonians, he took Nineveh after a three-month siege.

5. In 610 BCE, with the Babylonians, he took Harran, the last Assyrian stronghold.

6. According to Herodotus he fought Lydia for five years; after an eclipse peace was made and the Halys became the frontier.

7. He died in 585/584 BCE and his son Ishtumegu (Astyages) succeeded him.

Diakonoff says Cyaxares is “the only historically attested Median king named Cyaxares”. The supposed “Cyaxares I” of the 8th century is, in his words, “a phantom”.

In under ten years a mountain kingdom helped bring down the greatest empire of its age.

Herodotus says Cyaxares was the first to organise the army by arms: spearmen, archers and cavalry apart. The Babylonian chronicle says nothing about how the Median army was organised; it only shows that this army could take large walled cities.

This claim cannot be checked against another source. Herodotus may be explaining Cyaxares’ great victories by an “innovation”. So we treat it as Herodotus’ account, not a secure fact.

Taking Assur and Nineveh was the work of an organised army; how it was organised we do not know.

The Babylonian chronicle tells it step by step: in 614 the Medes took Tarbisu and Assur; Nabopolassar arrived late and the two kings made a pact by the city. In 612 the two armies advanced along the Tigris and besieged Nineveh for three months. The city fell, the king of Assyria died and the city was plundered. In 610 the Medes and Babylonians marched on Harran and the Assyrians and Egyptians abandoned it.

Diakonoff says “a huge amount of booty” was carried off to Media after Assur, turning it from “a poor and semidemocratic country into a rich oriental empire”. Whether the Medes also fought at Carchemish (605) is unclear. According to Berossus the pact was sealed by a marriage; whether the bride was Cyaxares’ daughter or granddaughter is disputed.

The ruins of Nineveh lie by modern Mosul. The rebuilt gates of its wall recall a city that was once the capital of the Near Eastern world.

Herodotus says that while Cyaxares was besieging Nineveh, the Scythians under Madyes attacked him and ruled Asia for 28 years. Then Cyaxares invited their leaders to a feast, made them drunk and killed them.

Diakonoff says this report “contradicts the evidence of the oriental sources” and may rest on an error: the Scythians may have beaten the Medes during the war of Cyaxares’ father with Assyria. The Babylonian chronicle does not confirm 28 years of Scythian rule.

Herodotus himself sees the evil of Scythian rule in their seizing people’s property. His judgement is simple: tribute is one thing, plunder another.

According to Herodotus, the Medes and Lydians fought for five years. In the sixth year, during a battle, day turned to night and both armies stopped fighting. Syennesis of Cilicia and the king of Babylon mediated. The river Halys became the frontier and Alyattes gave his daughter Aryenis in marriage to Astyages, son of Cyaxares.

Diakonoff accepts the war itself and the Halys frontier and says Cyaxares finally drove the Lydians into the interior of Asia Minor. The year 585 comes from identifying the eclipse with that of 28 May 585; Diakonoff puts it with an “if”. That Thales foretold it is also only Herodotus’ story.

A war ended by a sign in the sky was settled by an agreement: a clear border between two kingdoms. A clear border is the basis of peace and trade.

The Babylonian chronicle speaks of plunder again and again: at Assur the Medes “plundered and sacked”; at Nineveh they carried off “the vast booty of the city and the temple”. Diakonoff says this booty turned Media from “a poor and semidemocratic country into a rich oriental empire”. No economic document from Media itself, such as a contract or tax record, survives.

This is our reading: wealth that comes from plunder, not from production and exchange, concentrates power in the king’s hands. If Diakonoff is right, that same booty turned a semi-democratic Median society into a centralised monarchy. This interpretation is disputed, because we know very little about Median society before 614.

An empire built on booty must always find new booty. Media fell to Cyrus sixty years after Nineveh.

Father: Herodotus makes him the son of Phraortes. Diakonoff says no Phraortes is attested in 7th-century Media and his real father may have been Xšaθrita (Kaštariti), who led a successful revolt against Assyria about 673 BCE.

Son: Ishtumegu (Astyages), the last Median king. According to Herodotus he married Aryenis, daughter of the king of Lydia.

The Babylonian link: according to Berossus, Nebuchadnezzar, son of Nabopolassar, married Amytis, daughter (or granddaughter) of the Median king.

Identifying Cyaxares’ father with Xšaθrita is a proposal of Cameron and Diakonoff and is disputed. The “Hanging Gardens” that later stories say were built for Amytis are not in the contemporary sources; we leave them out here.

Three royal marriages, three alliances: Media, Babylon and Lydia were bound by kinship.