Mushki

The Mushki (Muški) were an Iron Age people of Anatolia, known from Assyrian sources. They do not appear in Hittite records.identification with the Kaskas was tentatively suggested by Goetze (Diakonoff 1984:116) Several authors have connected them with the Moschoi (Μόσχοι) of Greek sources and the Georgian tribe of the Meskhi. Josephus Flavius identified the Moschoi with the Biblical Meshech. According to Professor James R. Russell of Harvard University, the Georgian designation for Armenians Somekhi, preserves the old name of the Mushki.

Two different groups are called Muški in the Assyrian sources (Diakonoff 1984:115), one from the 12th to 9th centuries, located near the confluence of the Arsanias and the Euphrates ("Eastern Mushki"), and the other in the 8th to 7th centuries, located in Cilicia ("Western Mushki"). Assyrian sources identify the Western Mushki with the Phrygians, while Greek sources clearly distinguish between Phrygians and Moschoi.

Identification of the Eastern with the Western Mushki is uncertain, but it is of course possible to assume a migration of at least part of the Eastern Mushki to Cilicia in the course of the 10th to 8th centuries, and this possibility has been repeatedly suggested, variously identifying the Mushki as speakers of a Georgian, Armenian or Anatolian idiom.

Eastern Muški

Originally, these "Eastern Mushki" may have occupied a territory in the area of Urartu. They appear to have moved into Hatti in the 12th century, completing the downfall of the collapsing Hittite state, establishing themselves in a post-Hittite kingdom in Cappadocia. Allied with the Hurrians and Kaskas, they invaded the Assyrian provinces of Alzi and Puruhuzzi in about 1160, but they were pushed back and defeated, along with the Kaskas, by Tiglath-Pileser I in 1115 BC, who until 1110 advanced as far as Milid.

Western Muški

In the 8th century, Tabal became the most influential of the post-Hittite polities, and the Mushki under Mita entered an anti-Assyrian alliance with Tabal and Carchemish. The alliance was soon defeated by Sargon of Assyria, who captured Carchemish and drove back Mita to his own province. Ambaris of Tabal was diplomatically married to an Assyrian princess, and received the province of Hilakku, but in 713 BC, Ambaris was deposed and Tabal became an Assyrian province.

In 709, the Mushki re-emerged as allies of Assyria, Sargon naming Mita as his friend. It appears that Mita had captured and handed over to the Assyrians emissaries of Urikki, king of Que, who were sent to negotiate an anti-Assyrian contract with Urartu, as they passed through his territory.

In 714 the Cimmerians invaded Urartu, breaking through the Caucasus. From there they turned west along the coast of the Black Sea as far as Sinope, and then headed south towards Tabal, in 705 defeating an Assyrian army in central Anatolia, resulting in the death of Sargon. Macqueen (1986:157) and others have speculated that the Mushki under Mita may have participated in the Assyrian campaign and were forced to flee to western Anatolia, disappearing from Assyrian accounts, but entering the periphery of Greek historiography as king Midas of Phrygia.

Rusas II of Urartu in the 7th century fought the Mushki-ni to his west, before he entered an alliance with them against Assyria.

Moschoi

Hecataeus (c. 550 - 476 BCE) speaks of the Moschi as "Colchians" (perhaps, Georgian speaking), situated next to the Matieni (Hurrians).Fragmenta historicorum graecorum I, fragm. 228.

According to Herodotus, the equipment of the Moschoi was similar to that of the Tibareni, Macrones, Mossynoicoi and Mardae, with wooden caps upon their heads, and shields and small spears, on which long points were set. All these tribes formed the 19th satrapy of the Achaemenid empire, extending along the southeast of the Euxine, or the Black Sea, and bounded on the south by the lofty chain of the Armenian mountains.

Strabo locates the Moschoi in two places. The first location is somewhere in modern Abkhazia on the eastern shore of the Black Sea, in agreement with Stephan of Byzantium quoting Hellanicus. The second location Moschice (Moschikê) – in which was a temple of Leucothea, once famous for its wealth, but plundered by Pharnaces and Mithridates – was divided between the Colchians, Armenians, and Iberians (cf. Mela, III. 5.4; Pliny VI.4.). These latter Moschoi were obviously the Georgian Meskhi or Mesx’i (where Greek χ, chi, is Georgian ხ, x). Procopius calls them Meschoi and says that they were subject to the Iberians (i.e., Georgians), and had embraced Christianity, the religion of their masters.

Pliny in the 1st century AD mentions the Moscheni in southern Armenia ("Armenia" at the time stretching south and west to the Mediterranean, bordering on Cappadocia). Moschoi was a name equivalent to "Cappadocians" in Byzantine Empire historiography.

Biblical Meshech

Josephus Flavius identified the Moschoi with the Biblical Japhetic tribe descended from Meshech in his writings on the Genealogy of the Nations in Genesis 10. Meshech is named with Tubal as a principality of the prince of Gog and Magog in Ezekiel 38:2 and 39:1.

Notes

References

J.G. Macqueen, The Hittites and their contemporaries in Asia Minor (1986), ISBN 0-500-02108-2.
I. M. Diakonoff, The Pre-History of the Armenian People (revised, trans. Lori Jennings), Caravan Books, New York (1984), ISBN 0-882067-039-2, pp. 115-119.
Anne-Maria Wittker, Mušker und Phryger. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte Anatoliens vom 12. bis zum 7. Jh. v. Chr., Wiesbaden (2004), ISBN 3-89500-385-9.
This article incorporates text from the Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854), a publication now in the public domain.

External links

A History of Armenia by Vahan M. Kurkjian (1958)

Ancient peoples | History of Anatolia | History of Armenia | History of Georgia (country)

Muschki

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