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The Historians' History of the World 02 [Israel, India, Persia, Phoenicia, Minor Nations of Western Asia]
- Автор: Gutenberg
- Год: 1905
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: История
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These monuments enable us to perceive clearly the extent of the Hittite conquests. From now on Carchemish, instead of the valley of the Orontes, forms the centre of the Hittite realm, and evidently becomes the residence of the kings. Aside from this, however, only very uncertain reports of these wars have come down to us.
One passage in the Odyssey says that Neoptolemus killed Eurypylus, the son of Telephus, prince of the Κήτειοι, who is later always called prince of Teuthrania; evidently a trace of the name of the Hittites has been preserved here.
Perhaps we may also detect a reminiscence of their campaigns in the Greek legend of the Ethiopian Memnon, son of the dawn, who undertook great campaigns and hastened to the aid of Priam. Herodotus (II, 106) says that the reliefs of Nymphæum, which he claims for Sesostris, were declared by others to be portraits of Memnon. In other respects, however, the dim tradition that the Greeks preserved of these conquests was transferred to the Egyptians (expeditions of Sesostris to Asia Minor and Thrace) and the Assyrians. Moreover, when Lydian tradition connects the royal family of the Heraclidæ with Ninus the son of Belus, the legendary representatives of the Assyrians have perhaps here taken the place of the Hittites, for the Assyrians did not come into direct contact with the Lydians until the seventh century.
A further reminiscence of the wars of the Lydians and the Hittites is perhaps contained in two fragments of the Lydian Xanthus, which refer to the expeditions of the Lydian hero Mopsus (Moxos?) and Askalus, brother of Tantalus, to Syria and especially to Askalon.
The effects of the Syrian conquest upon Asia Minor were permanent in an unusual degree. It has long been recognised that the names of the Lydian kings Sadyattes and Alyattes, and also Myattes, are Semitic forms; now we may perhaps venture the conjecture that the Lydian royal family of the Heraclidæ was of Hittite origin. Furthermore, we can now identify the god Attes (Attys) of Asia Minor directly with the Syrian Ate and ascribe to him a foreign origin. In fact, the religion of Asia Minor shows a very intimate connection with that of the Semites, which, however, could not hitherto be explained with certainty.d
Hittite Bas-relief at Ibreez, Lycaonia
CHAPTER II. SCYTHIANS AND CIMMERIANS
THE SCYTHIANS
Scythian is a word of somewhat vague application, designating the barbaric tribes of middle Asia and northern Europe, who from time to time invaded the territories of their more civilised neighbours of the south. They are most prominently noticed in Asiatic history with the conquests of Darius I, who made a memorable invasion of Scythia, as recorded by Herodotus a few centuries later. The Scythians were so powerful as to demand the attention of Alexander the Great before he could feel free to undertake his Asiatic invasion. At a still later period the Scythian hordes invaded Greece itself and even captured Athens. In a word we must recall that at almost every historic period of antiquity the Scythian hordes were hovering about the northern bounds of the oriental civilised world, and from time to time harassing even such powerful nations as the Assyrians and Persians.
Yet if we strive to place the Scythian in the ethnic scale, we find ourselves quite unable to do so. The Scythians were barbarians, and barbarians have no history in the narrower sense of the word. That these same barbarians were the progenitors, in the direct line, of nations that were to make themselves felt at later periods of history can hardly be in question, but the fact is not susceptible of proof.
For our present purpose it will suffice, after a brief citation of two modern authorities, to view the Scythians through the eyes of the ancient Greeks, chiefly Herodotus, recognising that their rôle was a subordinate one in the scheme of Ancient history, and remembering that modern historians have been able to do little but paraphrase the ancient accounts, and to criticise them from various personal standpoints.
The Scythians in their emigration into Asia were careful to avoid the powerful country of Assyria. The stream parted at the northern frontier, one branch passing to the east, the other to the west. The eastern branch will come into prominence later, when we treat of the Manda, under the history of Persia.a
Scythian Influences in Asia Minor
The powerful invasion of Scythian influence into historical life and historical development, and its great influence on the intellectual life of the peoples of Asia Minor (which may be traced in the so-called Hittite monuments, in the Amazonian myths, in the worship of the Chalybian Jupiter or Ares, and in the transformation of the Greek hero, Hercules, into the hero of Asia Minor, confused with the sun-god of the Scythians and the peninsula) cannot be without its influence in the domain of true history. It is impossible to think of the Chalybian-Cimmerian or the Amazonian expeditions as achieving momentary destruction but leaving no trace in the historical life of the nations. On the contrary, everything points to the conclusion that over and above these warlike expeditions a permanent state of affairs was called into being in Asia Minor.
The new conditions form the life and character of the post-Homeric section of the ancient history of Asia Minor before the Persian empire. And in regard to these new conditions in the eastern half of the peninsula, we find there the powerful kingdoms of Moschi and Tubal, which stretched from Pontus as far as Cilicia and Mesopotamia, and for centuries obstinately vindicated their independence against the overwhelming power of Assyria. Still more important, though also more complicated, are the ethnological, political, and the general historical conditions of the post-Homeric world in the western half of Asia Minor.
Not to mention the changes introduced into the countries along the coast by the founding of numerous Greek colonies, we see that the Homeric Asia Minor of the ancient Pelasgian peoples, the Trojans, Ascanians, Mæonians, Esionians, and the pre-Homeric or Homeric Phrygians, shows in the post-Homeric world a shape which differs from the former in many aspects. Thus we come across new names of peoples and countries, as the Lydians, Thynians, Bithynians, Lasonians, Chalybians, Hygennes; names of new dynasties, as the Sandonids (Heraclids) and Mermnadæ of Lydia; new names of kingdoms and towns, as Lydia, Sardis, Smyrna, Ephesus, and new names of gods, new cults, new names of demon-gods or of priests. The “man-equalling” Amazons, who are referred to in Homer as a host dwelling beyond Phrygia and inimical to the peoples of western Asia Minor, now appear as native to western Asia Minor, as allies of Troy and founders of towns in that part of the peninsula.
This new post-Homeric world of western Asia Minor at last finds its centre and culmination on the soil of true history, in the founding and development of the Lydian empire. In this world the Scythian expeditions play much the same part as the Doric immigration in the post-Homeric Greece; and as there that immigration ends with the creation of new states, so also the Scythian immigrations into Asia Minor have an important result in the foundation of a great kingdom in the west of that peninsula, namely the Lydian kingdom.b
Scythian Movements