Cimmerian Invasions of Anatolia and the Fall of Phrygia

The Cimmerian invasions of Anatolia were a series of raids and migrations by mounted nomads from the Eurasian steppe in the late 8th and 7th centuries BC. The Cimmerians fought Urartu and Assyria, broke the power of the Phrygian kingdom of King Midas, killed King Gyges of Lydia and sacked Sardis and Ionian Greek cities. Their attacks reshaped the political map of Asia Minor and paved the way for the rise of Lydia.

Who were the Cimmerians?

The Cimmerians were horse-riding pastoralists, known in Assyrian texts as Gimirri and to the Greeks as Kimmerioi. Most scholars think they spoke an Iranian language, like the later Scythians. Herodotus says they originally lived north of the Black Sea and were pushed south by the Scythians, crossing into Asia along the coast; the story is plausible in outline, though its details are legendary.

Their strength lay in mobility. Mounted archers using compact composite bows could strike quickly, plunder and withdraw, which made them dangerous both as enemies and as mercenaries. Little Cimmerian archaeology can be identified with certainty in Anatolia, so they are known almost entirely through the writings of their victims.

First contacts: Urartu and Assyria

The earliest dated references come from Assyrian intelligence letters of around 714 BC, sent by the crown prince Sennacherib to his father Sargon II. They report that the Urartian king Rusa I had suffered a heavy defeat in the land of Gamir. The Kingdom of Urartu, weakened by both Assyria and the nomads, never fully recovered its earlier reach.

Sargon II was killed in battle in 705 BC in Tabal, in south-central Anatolia. Some historians have linked his death to the Cimmerians, but the enemy is not clearly named, and the connection is uncertain. Under Esarhaddon (r. 681-669 BC) Assyria fought a Cimmerian leader called Teushpa around 679 BC, and Assyrian oracle queries reveal deep anxiety about Cimmerian movements on the northern frontier.

The fall of Phrygia

Phrygia, with its capital at Gordion, was the leading kingdom of central Anatolia in the late 8th century BC. Greek tradition holds that the Cimmerians overran it and that King Midas killed himself by drinking bull’s blood, a story recorded by Strabo. The ancient chronicle of Eusebius dates this to 696 or 695 BC, while another chronographer, Julius Africanus, gives about 676 BC. Modern scholars treat both as approximate.

Archaeology at Gordion does not show a single destruction layer that can be tied to the Cimmerians; a great fire once attributed to them is now dated about a century earlier. Phrygian culture, language and rock monuments such as the Midas Monument at Yazılıkaya continued. What ended was Phrygia’s role as a great power.

Lydia under attack

The Cimmerians then turned west. Gyges, founder of the Mermnad dynasty of Lydia (r. c. 680-644 BC by one common reckoning), at first beat them. Inscriptions of Ashurbanipal of Assyria, the king who also assembled the great library at Nineveh, say that Gyges sent an envoy to Nineveh after a dream, then defeated the Cimmerians and sent two captured chiefs to Assyria in chains.

Gyges later backed an Egyptian revolt against Assyria, and Ashurbanipal’s texts record with satisfaction that the Cimmerians then overran his land and killed him, around 650 BC; dates from the late 650s to 644 BC are proposed. Herodotus adds that under Gyges’s son Ardys the Cimmerians took Sardis except for its citadel. The Greek poet Callinus of Ephesus wrote of the Cimmerian host advancing, and later sources say the Cimmerian leader Lygdamis, the Dugdamme of Assyrian texts, attacked Ephesus.

Expulsion and aftermath

Lygdamis died around 640 BC in Cilicia; Assyrian texts describe his death as divine punishment after an illness. Cimmerian groups remained active in Anatolia for several decades. Herodotus credits the Lydian king Alyattes (r. c. 610-560 BC) with finally driving them out of Asia, probably around 600 BC.

With the nomads gone and Phrygia weakened, Lydia became the dominant power west of the Halys River. Its wealth and its invention of coinage made Sardis famous across the Greek world.

Myths and facts

The word “Cimmerian” later took on a life of its own. Homer’s Odyssey places a Cimmerian people in a land of perpetual mist and darkness at the edge of the world, and “Cimmerian darkness” became a literary phrase. In the 20th century Robert E. Howard made his fictional Conan “the Cimmerian”. These literary uses have little to do with the historical nomads who raided Anatolia.

Timeline

• c. 714 BC: Assyrian letters report that Rusa I of Urartu was defeated by the Cimmerians.
• 705 BC: Sargon II dies in battle in Tabal; a Cimmerian link is possible but uncertain.
• c. 696-676 BC: Cimmerians overrun Phrygia; traditional date of Midas’s death.
• c. 679 BC: Esarhaddon of Assyria defeats the Cimmerian leader Teushpa.
• c. 665 BC: Gyges of Lydia defeats the Cimmerians and sends captives to Ashurbanipal.
• c. 650 BC: Gyges is killed by the Cimmerians; Sardis is later sacked except for its citadel.
• c. 640 BC: Death of the Cimmerian leader Lygdamis in Cilicia.
• c. 600 BC: Alyattes of Lydia expels the Cimmerians from Asia Minor.

Why it matters

The Cimmerian invasions were the first major intrusion of steppe nomads into the civilisations of the Near East recorded in writing, a pattern repeated later by Scythians, Huns and Mongols. They ended Phrygia’s ascendancy and indirectly made possible the rise of Lydia, whose kings would later be conquered by Cyrus the Great.