23 Facts About Alyattes

Alyattes, sometimes described as Alyattes I, was the fourth king of the Mermnad dynasty in Lydia, the son of Sadyattes, grandson of Ardys, and great-grandson of Gyges.

Alyattes died after a reign of 57 years and was succeeded by his son Croesus.

Alyattes was the first monarch who issued coins, made from electrum.

Alyattes is therefore sometimes mentioned as the originator of coinage, or of currency.

Alyattes was the son of the king Sadyattes of Lydia and his sister and queen, Lyde of Lydia, both the children of the king Ardys of Lydia.

Alyattes ascended to the kingship of Lydia during period of severe crisis: during the 7th century BCE, the Cimmerians, a nomadic people from the Eurasian Steppe who had invaded Western Asia, attacked Lydia several times but had been repelled by Alyattes's great-grandfather, Gyges.

Alyattes thus succeeded his father Sadyattes amidst extreme turmoil in 635 BCE.

Alyattes started his reign by continuing the hostilities with the Ionian city of Miletus started by Sadyattes.

Herodotus's account of Alyattes's illness, caused by Lydian troops' destruction of the temple Athena in Assesos, and which was cured after he heeded the Pythia and rebuilt two temples of Athena in Assesos and then made peace with Miletus, is a largely legendary account of these events which appears to not be factual.

One of the daughters of Melas the Younger might have in turn married Alyattes and become the mother of his less famous son, Pantaleon.

Alyattes's offering to Delphi might have been sent to please the sanctuary of Apollo and the Delphains, especially the priests, to impress the Greek visitors of the sanctuary, and to influence the oracle to advise to Periander of Corinth, an ally of Thrasybulus of Miletus, to convince the latter to make peace with Alyattes.

Alyattes too held her son back as much as she could and placated those who were insulted with kind words and actions.

Alyattes showed all his compassion to her son and made him feel great love for himself.

Immediately after this first victory of his over the Cimmerians, Alyattes expelled from the Lydian borderlands a final remaining pocket of Cimmerian presence who had been occupying the nearby city of Antandrus for one century, and to facilitate this he re-founded the city of Adramyttium in Aeolis.

Alyattes installed his son Croesus as the governor of Adramyttium, and he soon expelled these last remaining Cimmerians from Asia Minor.

At some point in the later years of his reign, Alyattes conducted a military campaign in Caria, although the reason for this intervention is yet unknown.

Alyattes was thus able to acquire a port which gave the Lydian kingdom permanent access to the sea and a stable source of grain to feed the population of his kingdom through this attack.

Smyrna was placed under the direct rule of a member of the Mermnad dynasty, and Alyattes had new fortification walls built for Smyrna from around 600 to around 590 BCE.

Alyattes initially initiated friendly relations with the Ionian city of Colophon, which included a military alliance according to which the city had to offer the service of its famous and feared cavalry, which was itself made up of the aristocracy of Colophon, to the Lydian kingdom should Alyattes request their help.

Alyattes died shortly after the Battle of the Eclipse, in 585 BCE itself, following which Lydia faced a power struggle between his son Pantaleon, born from a Greek woman, and his other son Croesus, born from a Carian noblewoman, out of which the latter emerged successful.

The tomb of Alyattes is located in Sardis at the site now called Bin Tepe, in a large tumulus measuring sixty metres in height and of a diameter of two hundred and fifty metres.

The tomb of Alyattes was excavated by the Prussian Consul General Ludwig Peter Spiegelthal in 1853, and by American excavators in 1962 and the 1980s, although by then it had been broken in and looted by tomb robbers who left only alabastra and ceramic vessels.

Alyattes created the first coins in history made from electrum, a naturally occurring alloy of gold and silver.