Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The Medes [N 1] were an ancient Iranian people who spoke the Median language [N 2] and who inhabited an area known as Media between western and northern Iran. Around the 11th century BC, they occupied the mountainous region of northwestern Iran and the northeastern and eastern region of Mesopotamia in the vicinity of Ecbatana (present-day ...
Media (Old Persian: 𐎶𐎠𐎭, romanized: Māda, Middle Persian: Mād) is a region of north-western Iran, best known for having been the political and cultural base of the Medes. [ N 1 ] During the Achaemenid period, it comprised present-day Iranian Azerbaijan , Iranian Kurdistan and western Tabaristan .
Astyages succeeded his father in 585 BCE, following the Battle of Halys, which ended a five-year war between the Lydians and the Medes. He inherited a large empire, ruled in alliance with his two brothers-in-law, Croesus of Lydia and Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon , whose wife, Amytis , Astyages' sister, was the queen for whom Nebuchadnezzar was ...
Cyaxares [a] was the third king of the Medes.He ascended to the throne in 625 BCE, after his father Phraortes lost his life in a battle against the Assyrians.. Cyaxares collaborated with the Babylonians to destroy the Assyrian Empire, and united most of the Iranian peoples of ancient Iran, thereby transforming Media into a major power.
Biblical scholars have generally identified Madai with the Iranian Medes of much later records. The Medes, reckoned to be his offspring by Josephus and most subsequent writers, were also known as Madai, including in both Assyrian and Hebrew sources. [citation needed] Also linked with Madai is the Iranian city of Hamadan. [citation needed]
The Medes were an Iranian people who had become a major political power in the Near East by 612 BCE, when they joined the Babylonians in overthrowing Assyria. [6] Their kingdom came to an end in 550 BCE (or 553 BC according to some sources), when it was conquered by Cyrus the Great, the Persian king of Anshan in south-western Iran.
In the first sense (Histories 1.101 [12]), Herodotus speaks of the magi as one of the tribes/peoples (ethnous) of the Medes. In another sense (1.132 [13]), Herodotus uses the term "magi" to generically refer to a "sacerdotal caste", but "whose ethnic origin is never again so much as mentioned."
Median (also Medean or Medic) was the language of the Medes. [3] It is an extinct ancient Iranian language and classified as a distinct language belonging to the Northwestern Iranian subfamily, which includes many other much more recently attested and different languages such as Kurdish, Old Azeri, Talysh, Gilaki, Mazandarani, Zaza–Gorani and Baluchi.