21 Facts About Cimmerians

Cimmerians were an ancient Eastern Iranian equestrian nomadic people originating in the Caspian steppe who subsequently migrated into West Asia.

Cimmerians themselves left no written records, and most information about them is largely derived from Assyrian records of the 8th to 7th centuries BC and from Graeco-Roman authors from the 5th century BC and later.

Cimmerians were most likely a nomadic Iranian people of the Eurasian Steppe.

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.

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.

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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 of effective weapons suited to equestrian warfare by these nomads.

Cimmerians are first mentioned in the 8th century BC in Homer's 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.

Cimmerians who migrated into West Asia fled through the Klukhor, Alagir and Darial Gorge passes in the Greater Caucasus mountains, that is through the western Caucasus and Georgia into Kolkhis, where the Cimmerians initially settled during the 720s BC.

Cimmerians might have defeated attacks by the Urartian kings against Colchis and the nearby areas during the 720s BC.

In 705 BC, Sargon II died in battle, most likely during a campaign 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.

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 Parsumas and Bit Hamban, and these joint Cimmerian-Scythian forces together were threatening communication between the Assyrian Empire and its vassal of Hubuskia.

At yet unknown dates, the Cimmerians imposed their rule on Cappadocia, invaded Bithynia, Paphlagonia and the Troad, and took the recently founded Greek colony of Sinope, whose initial settlement was destroyed and whose first founder Habron was killed in the invasion, and which was later re-founded by the Greek colonists Koos and Kretines.

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.

Gyges was succeeded by his son Ardys, who resumed diplomatic activity with Assyria; Ashurbanipal, whose Anatolian borders were still in a delicate situation due to the Cimmerians, was himself willing to form alliances with any state in Anatolia which was capable of successfully fighting the Cimmerians.

In 637 BC, Sandaksatru's Cimmerians participated in another attack on Lydia, this time led by the Treres under their king Kobos, and in alliance with the Lycians.

The remnants of the Cimmerians were eventually asimilated by the populations of Anatolia, and they completely disappeared from history after their defeat by Madyes and Alyattes.

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.

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:.

Cimmerians appear in the Hebrew Bible under the name of, where is closely linked to, that is to the Scythians.

Character of Conan the Barbarian, created by Robert E Howard in a series of fantasy stories published in 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 .