Medes
A confederation of Iranian-speaking tribes in northwestern Iran that formed the first major Iranian state and helped destroy the Assyrian Empire in the 7th–6th centuries BCE, before being absorbed by the Achaemenids.
Read in context →At a glance
- Period
- c. 678–550 BCE
- Capital
- Ecbatana (Hamadan)
- Key achievement
- Fall of Assyria (612 BCE)
- End
- Astyages defeated by Cyrus
Detail
The Medes were an Iranian (Indo-European) people who migrated onto the Iranian plateau in the second millennium BCE and settled in the northwest, in a land centered on Ecbatana (modern Hamadan). According to Herodotus, Deioces was the first king and unifier of the Median tribes, though this account is treated with historical caution. Pressured by Assyria and the Scythians, the Medes coalesced into a kingdom and, under Cyaxares (Huvakhshatra), allied with Babylon to overthrow Nineveh, the Assyrian capital, in 612 BCE, transforming Media into a major regional power. In 550 BCE the last Median king, Astyages, was defeated by Cyrus II the Achaemenid (who was his grandson through his mother), ending the dynasty. The Medes founded the first great Iranian state, and their administrative and military legacy laid the groundwork for the Achaemenid Empire.
Related entities
Sources
- Encyclopædia Iranica, "Media"
- Herodotus, Histories, Book I
- I. M. Diakonoff, in The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol. 2