OLD TESTAMENT RELATED TOPICS

Summary of Tribes, Lands, and Kingdoms

Anatolia

Anatolia also Asia Minor is the peninsula with Black Sea to north and Mediterranean sea to south with Ankara as the centroid. To the south is Syria. West is Greece. North is black Sea then Russia. To the East is Iran. South East Iraq. Anatolia is bounded to the east by the Euphrates river which runs south into Mesopotamia and Persian Gulf. The earliest populations were the Hattians ‘Land of Hattie’ central Anatolia and Hurrians further to the east. Organized trade between Anatolia and Mesopotamia started during the Akkadian Empire, and continued during the Old Assyrian Empire, between the 21st and the 18th centuries BCE. They were speakers of an Indo-European language, the Hittite language. The Hittites originated from local ancient cultures that grew in Anatolia, in addition to the arrival of Indo-European languages. From the 10th to late 7th centuries BCE, much of Anatolia (particularly the southeastern regions) fell to the Neo-Assyrian Empire, including the Cimmerians and Scythians. Much of the region then fell to the short-lived Iran-based Median Empire followed by Babylonians. From the late 8th century BCE, a new wave of Indo-European-speaking raiders entered northern and northeast Anatolia: the Cimmerians and Scythians. During the 6th century BCE, all of Anatolia was conquered by the Persian Achaemenid Empire, the Persians having usurped the Medes as the dominant dynasty of Persia. In 499 BCE.

Galatia

Galatia was an ancient area in the highlands of central Anatolia roughly corresponding to the provinces of Ankara in modern Turkey. Galatia was named after the Gauls who settled in the 3rd century BC, following the Gallic invasion of the Balkans in 279 BC. Josephus related the Biblical figure Gomer to Galatia (or perhaps to Gaul in general): ‘For Gomer founded those whom the Greeks now call Galatians, [Galls], but were then called Gomerites.’[15] Others have related Gomer to Cimmerians. Although originally possessing a strong cultural identity, by the 2nd century AD, the Galatians had become assimilated (Hellenization) into the Hellenistic civilization of Anatolia.The fate of the Galatian people is a subject of some uncertainty, but they seem ultimately to have been absorbed into the Greek-speaking populations of Anatolia.

Pontic-Caspian Steppe

A steppeland is a wet grass land region without trees. The Pontic-Caspian Steppe is vast 384,000 sq. mi area from the north west coast of the Black Sea over to and between the Caspian Sea to its East and extending to the north and east of the Caspian Sea. The portion above the Back Sea is known and Pontic Steppe (from Pontus Euxinus of antiquity) and the portion with the Caspian sea the Caspian Steppe and the whole steppe grassland area the Pontic-Caspian Steppe.

Cimmerians and Scythians

The Cimmerians in the Hebrew Bible גֹּמֶר‎ (Gōmer) is closely linked to אשכנז (ʾAškənāz) (Ashkenaz son of Gomer) that is to the Scythians. The Cimmerians originated in the Pontic-Caspian steppe region between the Black and Caspian Sea. Their closely related Scythian neighbors were also in the steppe region but to the north above Caspian Sea. The ancient Babylonians, Persians and ancient Greeks respectively used the names ‘Cimmerian,’ ‘Saka,’ and ‘Scythian’ for all the steppe nomads. During the earliest phase of their presence in West Asia, the Scythians were allied with the Cimmerians, and the two groups, in alliance with the Medes, who were an Iranian people of West Asia to whom the Scythians and Cimmerians were distantly related, as well as the Mannaeans, were threatening the then superpower of West Asia, the Neo-Assyrian Empire. There was a marital alliance between the Scythian king and the Assyrian ruling dynasty placing the Scythians under the strong influence of Assyrian culture. Scynthian King Madyes in 653 BC invaded the Medes, who were engaged in a war against Assyria, thus starting a period which Herodotus called the ‘Scythian rule over Asia.’ Madyes soon expanded the Scythian hegemony to the state of Urartu, and, soon after 635 BC, with Assyrian approval and in alliance with the Lydians, the Scythians under Madyes entered Anatolia and defeated the Cimmerians. Scythian power in West Asia thus reached its peak under King Madyes ca. 635 BC with the territories ruled by the Scythians extending from Anatolia (Turkey) in the west to the Caspian Sea (north to Russia) and the eastern borders of Media in the east, and from Transcaucasia in the north to the northern borders of the Neo-Assyrian Empire in the south.  The Scythians were finally expelled from West Asia by the Medes in the 600s BC, after which they retreated to the Pontic Steppe. In the late 2nd or early 3rd century AD, the Greek physician Galen writes that Scythians, Sarmatians, Illyrians, Germanic peoples and other northern peoples have reddish hair. The fourth-century bishop Gregory of Nyssa wrote that the Scythians were fair skinned and blond haired. The 5th-century physician Adamantius, who often followed Polemon, describes the Scythians as fair-haired.

Celts & Gauls

Celt is a term applied to the tribes who spread across Europe, Asia Minor and the British Isles from their homeland in south central Europe. Most archeologists date their emergence around 800 b.c., though some feel the date should be extended to 2000 b.c. Caesar says the Gauls called themselves Celtae and this is where the confusion sets in. Gaul was a geographic area (modern France and northern Italy) and ‘Gauls’ were the people who lived there according to the Romans. Linguistically, the people who lived in Gaul were Celts, and this was the main distinction made by the early historians. Tacitus says that there was no difference between the Celts and the Gauls, they were the same people. The Gauls are considered Celts, with the same or similar deities, social practices, dress, and other cultural factors as the Celts in Britain. Like those Celts, the Gauls spoke dialects of a Celtic language. The Celts settled throughout Europe, the British Islands, and Ireland. The Celts who settled in modern-day France were called Galli (Gauls) in Latin by the Romans. Gaul, French Gaule, Latin Gallia, the region inhabited by the ancient Gauls, comprising modern-day France and parts of Belgium, western Germany, and northern Italy. A Celtic race, the Gauls lived in an agricultural society divided into several tribes ruled by a landed class.

Celts

By the 5th century BC vigorous tribes are spreading outwards from their original homeland east of the Rhine, in places such as Hallstatt and La Tène. With the advantage of iron weapons, they are able to press east into the Balkans (all area north and east of Greece) and west into France and Spain. Considerably later, in about 300 BC, they cross the Channel to Britain. From 700-100 BC they occupied all of Europe Great Britain and Ireland and as far down as France (Gauls) to the northern part Iberian peninsula west to edge Black sea but not including southern areas such as Italy, Greece, Macedonia rather Serbia and Bulgaria to north of them. They are the Celts. The Celts are great story-tellers, great drinkers and great fighters - with a liking for single combat, after which the victor proudly displays the severed head of his opponent. Soon they begin to trouble their very different neighbours, the sober and disciplined Romans. The Celts push south through the Alps, raiding and marauding. In about 390 they even reach and sack Rome. Many of them stay in Italy, settling in an area from the Alps to south of Milan. The Romans call them Gauls, and distinguish their two nearest territories as Cisalpine Gaul ('this side of the Alps', as seen from Rome) and Transalpine Gaul ('across the Alps'). The Celtic languages are a branch of the Indo-European languages. All living Celtic languages today belong to the Insular Celtic languages, derived from the Celtic languages spoken in Iron Age Britain and Ireland. By the time Celts are first mentioned in written records around 400 BC, they were already split into several language groups, and spread over much of western mainland Europe, the Iberian Peninsula, Ireland and Britain. The languages developed into Celtiberian, Goidelic and Brittonic branches, among others. Today, the term 'Celtic' generally refers to the languages and cultures of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, the Isle of Man, and Brittany; also called the Celtic nations. Continental Celts are the Celtic-speaking people of mainland Europe and Insular Celts are the Celtic-speaking people of the British and Irish islands, and their descendants. Distribution of Y-chromosomal Haplogroup R-M269 in Europe. The majority of ancient Celtic males have been found to be carriers of this lineage. Genetic studies on the limited amount of material available suggest Celts carried a substantial amount of steppe ancestry, which is derived from Yamnaya pastoralists who expanded westwards from the Pontic–Caspian steppe during late Neolithic and early Bronze Age

Gauls

The Gauls were a group of Celtic peoples of mainland Europe in the Iron Age and the Roman period (roughly 5th century BC to 5th century AD). Their homeland was known as Gaul (Gallia). They spoke Gaulish, a continental Celtic language. The Gauls emerged around the 5th century BC north and west of the Alps. By the 4th century BC, they were spread over much of what is now France, Belgium, Switzerland, Southern Germany, Austria, and the Czech Republic, by virtue of controlling the trade routes along the river systems of the Rhône, Seine, Rhine, and Danube. They reached the peak of their power in the 3rd century BC. During the 4th and 3rd centuries BC, the Gauls expanded into Northern Italy (Cisalpine Gaul), leading to the Roman–Gallic wars, and into the Balkans, leading to war with the Greeks. These latter Gauls eventually settled in Anatolia, becoming known as Galatians. The Gauls were made up of many tribes many of whom built large fortified and minted their own coins. Gaul was never united under a single ruler or government. By the 5th century BC, the tribes later called Gauls had migrated from Central France to the Mediterranean coast. Gallic invaders settled the Po Valley in the 4th century BC, defeated Roman forces in a battle under Brennus in 390 BC, and raided Italy as far south as Sicily. In the early 3rd century BC, the Gauls attempted an eastward expansion, toward the Balkan peninsula. At that time it was a Greek province, and the Gauls' intent was to reach and loot the rich Greek city-states of the Greek mainland. But the Greeks exterminated the majority of the Gallic army, and the few survivors were forced to flee. They were repelled to the Gallic area of settlement in Asia Minor called Galatia; there they created widespread havoc. They were checked through the use of war elephants and skirmishers by the Greek Seleucid king Antiochus I in 275 BC, after which they served as mercenaries across the whole Hellenistic Eastern Mediterranean, including Ptolemaic Egypt, where they, under Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285-246 BC), attempted to seize control of the kingdom. In the first Gallic invasion of Greece (279 BC), they defeated the Macedonians and killed the Macedonian king Ptolemy Keraunos. They then focused on looting the rich Macedonian countryside, but avoided the heavily fortified cities. The Macedonian general Sosthenes assembled an army, defeated Bolgius and repelled the invading Gauls.

Cappadocia

Cappadocia is a historical region in eastern central Anatolia, with Galatia to northwest, now Turkey. According to Herodotus, in the time of the Ionian Revolt (499 BC), the Cappadocians were reported as occupying a region from Mount Taurus to the vicinity of the Euxine (Black Sea). Cappadocia, in this sense, was bounded in the south by the chain of the Taurus Mountains that separate it from Cilicia, to the east by the upper Euphrates, to the north by Pontus, and to the west by Lycaonia and eastern Galatia. Cappadocia was known as Hatti in the late Bronze Age, and was the homeland of the Hittite power centred at Hattusa. The kingdom of Cappadocia lived in peace until the death of Alexander. The previous empire was then divided into many parts, and Cappadocia fell to Eumenes. The earliest record of the name of Cappadocia; Hittite dates from the late 6th century BC appears in Achaemenid kings, Darius I and Xerxes, as part of the Persian Empire. In these lists of countries, the Old Persian name is Katpatuka. It was proposed that Kat-patuka came from the Luwian language, meaning ‘Low Country’. Subsequent research suggests that the adverb katta meaning 'down, below' is exclusively Hittite. Herodotus wrote that the name of the Cappadocians was applied to them by the Persians, while they were termed by the Greeks ‘White Syrians’ (Leucosyri), who were most probably descendants of the Hittites. One of the Cappadocian tribes he mentions is the Moschoi, associated by Flavius Josephus with the biblical figure Meshech, son of Japheth: ‘and the Mosocheni were founded by Mosoch; now they are Cappadocians’. AotJ I:6. Cappadocia appears in the biblical account given in the book of Acts 2:9. The Cappadocians were named as one group (among ‘Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia’) hearing the Gospel account from Galileans in their own language on the day of Pentecost shortly after the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Acts 2:5 states ‘Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven,’ seeming to suggest that some of the Cappadocians were Jews, or part of the diaspora of Jews present in Jerusalem at the time. The region is also mentioned in the Jewish Mishnah, in Ketubot 13:11, and in several places in the Talmud, including Yevamot 121a. In 314, Cappadocia was the largest province of the Roman Empire, and was part of the Diocese of Pontus. With the rise of Turkish power in Anatolia, Cappadocia slowly became a tributary to the Turkish states that were established to the east and to the west; some of the native population converted to Islam with the rest forming the remaining Cappadocian Greek population.

Goths

The Goths came much later into AD period and were an East Germanic tribe (German language) and were part of the Barbarian Kingdoms which included also Celts (Ireland), the British, Angels, Picts, Jutes (England), Picts (Scotland), Franks (France), Vandals (NE Africa), Frisians, Saxons (N. Germany), Burgundies (S. France), Slavs (near east), and norths, swedes, finns, baltics (E-W coast Baltic Sea), and Huns (far east). Thus Jutland (Denmark peninsula west to west across North Sea is Briton and to right is Sweden-Norway and on other side Baltic Sea and mainland Poland, Lithuania, Estonia). Goths can be traced to today's northern Poland, and even in the distant past to their origins in Scandinavia and the Baltic area. The Vikings or Norsemen from Sweden, Norway, Denmark (Scandinavia) came centuries later and were also Germanic.  Goths were called many names, gutans, gutani, Gutes, Geats even possibly ‘Butones’, Gutone’. The first references to the Goths in the 3rd century call them Scythians, as this area, known as Scythia, had historically been occupied by that name. On the Pontic steppe the Goths quickly adopted several nomadic customs from the Sarmatians (Persians). They excelled at horsemanship, archery and falconry, and were also accomplished agriculturalists and seafarers.  The Goths were similar to that of the early Mongols, who migrated southward and came to dominate the eastern Eurasian steppe around the same time as the Goths in the west. The Goths controlled all of Europe and Near East in 500 AD driving Rome to small south east corner Mediterranean and Anatolia. Ostrogoths and Visigoths ruled Spain and Italy. Their spread across northern Europe and near east was as great as the Celts 500 years earlier. Without the recruitment of Germanic warriors in the Roman Army, the Roman Empire would not have survived for as long as it did. Around 375 the Huns successfully subdued many of the Goths who subsequently joined their ranks a portion of his people allowed to settle on the south bank of the Danube. In ancient sources, the Goths are always described as tall and athletic, with light skin, blonde hair and blue eyes. Swedish scholars considered Swedes to be the direct descendants of the Goths. The Spanish retorted that it was only the ‘lazy’ and ‘unenterprising’ Goths who had remained in Sweden, whereas the ‘heroic’ Goths had left Sweden, invaded the Roman empire and settled in Spain.

Dacians

The Dacians or (Greek) Getae was in current day Romania and area north of Danube (Danube flows from Black Sea across eastern Europe to Germany) that had not yet been conquered by Greece or Rome.  The Dacians are a subgroup of the Thracians. Opinions on the origins of the name Daci are divided. Some consider it Indo-European others Iranian Scythian groups part of larger Thracian-speaking population. From roughly 500 BC (the second Iron Age), the Dacians developed a distinct civilization, which was capable of supporting large centralised kingdoms by 1st BC and 1st AD. Since the writings of Herodotus in the 5th century BC, Getae/Dacians are acknowledged as belonging to the Thracian sphere of influence. Despite this, they are distinguished from other Thracians by particularities of religion and custom. Dacians absorbed the Celtic influence from the northwest in the early third century BC. The Goths, a confederation of east German peoples, arrived in southern Ukraine no later than 230 and replaced native Dacian-speakers as the dominant force around the Carpathian mountains. The language was extinct by the 4th century AD.

Medes and Persian / Achaemenian Empire

Media, ancient country of northwestern Iran, generally corresponding to the modern regions of Azerbaijan, Kurdistan, and parts of Kermanshah. Media first appears in the texts of the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III (858–824 BC), in which peoples of the land of ‘Mada’ are recorded. The inhabitants came to be known as Medes. Although Herodotus credits ‘Deioces son of Phraortes’ (probably c. 715) with the creation of the Median kingdom and the founding of its capital city at Ecbatana (modern Hamadan), it was probably not before 625 BC that Cyaxares, grandson of Deioces, succeeded in uniting into a kingdom the many Iranian-speaking Median tribes. In 614 he captured Ashur, and in 612, in alliance with Nabopolassar of Babylon, his forces stormed Nineveh, putting an end to the Assyrian empire. The victors divided the Assyrian provinces among themselves, with the Median king taking over a large part of Iran, northern Assyria, and parts of Armenia. Since no Median written documents of any kind have ever been uncovered, their spiritual and economic life is also a matter of conjecture. By the victory in 550 of the Persian Cyrus II the Great, the Medes were made subject to the Persians. In the new Achaemenian Empire they retained a prominent position; in honour and war they stood next to the Persians. Alexander the Great occupied Media in 330, and in the partition of his empire, southern Media was given to the Macedonian commander Peithon and eventually passed to the Seleucids. Southern Media remained a province of the Seleucid empire for a century and a half, and Hellenism was introduced everywhere. Later the Medes had lost their distinctive character and had been amalgamated into the one nation of the Iranians.

Sarmatian

Sarmatian, member of a people originally of Iranian stock who migrated from Central Asia to the Ural Mountains (run N-S between Black and Caspian Russia on west side and Siberia Asia on East side) between the 6th and 4th century BC and eventually settled in most of southern European Russia and the eastern Balkans. Like the Scythians to whom they were closely related, the Sarmatians were highly developed in horsemanship and warfare. By the 5th century BC the Sarmatians held control of the land between the Urals (above Caspian) west to the Don River (Black Sea north). In the 4th century they crossed the Don and conquered the Scythians who occupied land to the north west of Black Sea, replacing them as rulers of almost all of southern Russia by the 2nd century. In the final centuries of their existence the Sarmatians invaded Dacia (Romania) and the lower Danube region, only to be overwhelmed by the Goths during the 3rd century AD, though many of them joined their conquerors in the Gothic invasion of western Europe. Sarmatia perished when hordes of Huns migrated after AD 370 into southern Russia. By the 6th century their descendants had disappeared from the historical record. The Scythian gods were those of nature, while the Sarmatians venerated a god of fire to whom they offered horses in sacrifice. In contrast to the reclusive, domestic role of Scythian women, unmarried Sarmatian females, especially in the society’s early years, took arms alongside men. Sarmatian female warriors may have inspired the Greek tales of the Amazons.

Bithynia

Bithynia is an ancient district in northwestern Anatolia running east-west from southwest end Black Sea to southeast end, thus occupying an important position between East and West. Late in 1000 BC, Bithynia was occupied by warlike tribes of Thracian origin who harried Greek settlers and Persian envoys alike. Their remarkable pugnacity kept them from complete Persian domination after the 6th century; in addition, they never submitted to Alexander the Great or his Seleucid successors. By the 3rd century BC the small but powerful state had evolved from tribal government to Hellenistic kingship and reached the height of its power early in the 2nd century BC. Bithynia’s last king, Nicomedes IV, little more than a Roman puppet, bequeathed his kingdom to the Romans in 74 BC.

Indo-European Languages

Indo-European is the largest language family on Earth, encompassing languages spoken by about 3.2 billion people, or 42% of the world's population. All Indo-European languages descend from a language known as Proto-Indo-European (PIE), which was spoken in a region north of the Black Sea and Caspian Sea (Pontic Steppe region) between 4500 BC and 2500 BC. As speakers of this language migrated to various parts of Europe and Asia, their language gradually changed and split into different branches. These include Persian, Hind-Uri, Slavic, Baltic, Germanic, Romance, and Celtic languages. There also Indo-European languages which form single-language branches, namely Armenian, Albanian, and Greek.