Early on in their occupation of West Asia, the Scythians, led by their king Išpakaia, formed an alliance with the Cimmerians. Together, these two groups of people, along with the Medes—an Iranian people who lived in the region and were remotely related to both the Scythians and the Cimmerians threatened the eastern frontiers of the kingdom of Urartu and the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Together the combined forces, however, were defeated by Esarhaddon, the Assyrian King and Išpakaia was later assassinated in a military operation by Esarhaddon as a retaliation. Išpakaia was replaced by Bartatua, who attempted to mend the relations with the Assyrians by marrying Serua-eterat, a daughter of Esarhaddon. Wedding of Bartatua to Serua-eterat required him to swear allegiance to Assyria as a client state, with the lands he ruled being his fiefdom bestowed by the Assyrian king. This made the Scythian influence in West Asia an enhanced version of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, and from that point on, the Scythians stayed coalition partners of the Assyrian Empire, with Bartatua aiding the Assyrians to overcome the state of Mannai and implementing Scythian control over it. Bartatua was replaced by Madyes, his son with Serua-eterat, who attacked the Medes in 653 BC while they were fighting Assyria. This began the time period when Herodotus of Halicarnassus referred to as the period of -- Scythian reign over Asia. Assyrian consent and an agreement with the Lydians allowed the Scythians led by Madyes to invade Anatolia and conquer the Cimmerians shortly after 635 BC. Madyes also quickly extended the Scythian control to the realm of Urartu. Thus, under Madyes, Scythian authority in West Asia reached its apex. The Scythians ruled over an area that stretched from Transcaucasia in the north to the northern borders of the Neo-Assyrian Empire in the south, from the Halys river in Anatolia in the west to the Caspian Sea and the eastern borders of Media in the east. After the passing of Ashurbanipal, son of Esarhaddon and successor, the Assyrian Empire started to fall apart in the early 620s BC. The Scythians quickly took advantage of the power vacuum left by the collapse of the power of their former Assyrian partners to swamp the Levant and Palestine until the borders of Egypt. Their progress was halted by the marshlands of the Nile Delta and the pharaoh Psamtik I met them and persuaded them to turn back by proposing them gifts. The Scythians joined Cyaxares and the Medes in their conflict with Assyria beginning around 615 BC. [Information and Image Credit: Scythians, Wikipedia] [Image: The Scythian kingdom in West Asia reached its height of power during the rule of King Madyes] [Image Availed Under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International; Image Author: Antiquistik; (Please Also Relate to Individual Image URL for More Usage Property)] [License-Link: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ ] [Original Source Image URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Scythian_Kingdom_in_Western_Asia.jpg ]
Old World
_vector.svg.png)
.jpg)
