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Fall of Colchis
historical polity and region of Antiquity
- 164 BCE
- Kutaisi
- Middle East
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historical polity and region of Antiquity
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In classical antiquity and Greco-Roman geography, Colchis (; Ancient Greek: Κολχίς) was an exonym for the Georgian polity of Egrisi (Georgian: ეგრისი) located on the eastern coast of the Black Sea, centered in present-day western Georgia also including the region of Abkhazia.
Its population, the Colchians, are generally believed to have been primarily early Zan-speaking tribes, ancestral to the modern Laz and Mingrelian peoples. According to David Marshall Lang: "one of the most important elements in the modern Georgian nation, the Colchians were probably established in the Caucasus by the Middle Bronze Age."
It has been described in modern scholarship as "the earliest Georgian formation", which, along with the Kingdom of Iberia, would later contribute significantly to the development of the Kingdom of Georgia and the Georgian nation.
Colchis is known in Greek mythology as the destination of the Argonauts, as well as the home to Medea and the Golden Fleece. It was also described as a land rich with gold, iron, timber and honey that would export its resources mostly to ancient Hellenic city-states. Colchis likely had a diverse population. According to Greek and Roman sources, between 70 and 300 languages were spoken in Dioscourias (modern Sukhumi) alone.
Colchis territory is mostly assigned to what is now the western part of Georgia and encompasses the present-day Georgian provinces of Samegrelo, Imereti, Guria, Adjara, Svaneti, Racha; Abkhazia; modern Russia's Sochi and Tuapse districts; and present-day Turkey’s Artvin, Rize, and Trabzon provinces.
Colchis, Kolkha, Qulḫa, or Kilkhi, which existed from the c. 13th to the 1st centuries BC, is regarded as an early ethnically Georgian polity; the name of the Colchians was used as the collective term for early Kartvelian tribes which populated the eastern coast of the Black Sea in Greco-Roman ethnography.
Ronald Grigor Suny identifies Colchis as an early Georgian state formation. Suny emphasizes that the Colchians were among the early Kartvelian-speaking tribes, the linguistic ancestors of modern Georgians. He highlights the cultural and political continuity between Colchis and later Georgian states, noting that Colchis, along with the eastern Georgian kingdom of Iberia, played a significant role in the ethnogenesis of the Georgian people.
Giorgi Melikishvili and Donald Rayfield believes that Colchis and their kings are mentioned in several Assyrian inscriptions. In several inscriptions about the campaigns of Tukulti-Ninurta I (1243–1207 BC), it is written that he defeated 40 kings of Nairi and watered the mountains and valleys with blood, and also mentions that he marched through the most difficult mountains that no Assyrian king had seen before. Other Assyrian inscriptions about this campaign mention "the 40 kings of the Nairi countries and the countries on the shores of the Upper Sea[Black Sea]" instead of "Nairi countries". In the inscriptions of Tiglath-Pileser I (1114–1076 BC), it is mentioned that 60 other kings came to the aid of the 23 kings of Nairi, who were too late and could not participate in the battle, so they retreated near the shores of the Upper Sea. Later, Tiglath-Pileser I went to fight the kings of the shores of the Upper Sea. In the Yonjalu inscription, Tiglath-Pileser I refers to himself as "the conqueror of the land of Nairi from Tume to Daiaeni[Diauehi], and from Gilḫi to the Upper Sea[Black Sea]". According to the author, Gilḫi should be read as Kilḫi, which means Kolkhis/Colchis.
According to Donald Rayfield, the ethnic makeup of Colchis is "obscure" and Kartvelian names "are conspicuously absent from the few anthronyms found in Colchian burials." Instead, Greek, Anatolian, Iranian, and possibly Abkhaz names are present.
The name Colchis is thought to have derived from the Urartian Qulḫa. In the mid-eighth century BC, Sarduri II, the King of Urartu, inscribed his victory over Qulḫa on a stele; however, the exact location of Qulḫa is disputed. Some scholars argue the name Qulḫa (Colchís) originally referred to a land to the west of Georgia. Others argue Qulḫa may have been located in the south, near modern Göle, Turkey.
According to Levan Gordeziani, while the Greek Colchis etymologically descends from Urartian Qulḫa, the Greeks may have applied the name to a different region (and/or cultures) than the preceding Urartians had. Further confusion rests in possible differences in the Greeks' own usage of the name Colchis in political and mythological contexts (i.e. the relationship between "Aia-Colchis" and "the land of Colchis").
According to the scholar of Caucasian studies Cyril Toumanoff:
Colchis appears as the first Caucasian State to have achieved the coalescence of the newcomer. Colchis can be justly regarded as not a proto-Georgian, but a Georgian (West Georgian) kingdom. ... It would seem natural to seek the beginnings of Georgian social history in Colchis, the earliest Georgian formation.
According to most Classical-era sources, Colchis was bordered on the south-west by Pontus, on the west by the Black Sea, as far as the river Corax. To its north was the Greater Caucasus, beyond which was Sarmatia. On its east it bordered the Kingdom of Iberia and Montes Moschici (now the Lesser Caucasus). The south of Colchis bordered Armenia. The westward extent of the country is considered differently by different authors: Strabo makes Colchis begin at Trabzon, while Ptolemy, on the other hand, extends Pontus to the Rioni River.
Although some ancient authors consider Dioscurias to be the extreme northern settlement point of Colchians (in an ethnic sense), nevertheless "they consider it as a point located on the territory of non-Colchian tribes (Heniochi, Sanigs)". Since in a later era the name "Colchians" was organically connected with the name "Lazi", it should be remembered that Byzantine sources saw the northern limit of the spread of Laz people somewhere between the Phasis (modern. Poti) and Dioscurias".
The Greek name Kolchís (Κολχίς) is first used to describe a geographic area in the writings of Aeschylus and Pindar. Earlier writers speak of the "Kolchian" (Κολχίδα) people and their mythical king Aeëtes (Αἰήτης), as well as his eponymous city Aea or Aia (Αἶα), but don't make explicit references to a Kolchis nation or region. The main river was known as the Phasis (now Rioni) and was, according to some writers the southern boundary of Colchis, but more probably flowed through the middle of that country from the Caucasus west into the Euxine, and the Anticites or Atticitus (now Kuban). Arrian mentions many others by name, but they would seem to have been little more than mountain torrents: the most important of them were Charieis, Chobus or Cobus, Singames, Tarsuras, Hippus, Astelephus, Chrysorrhoas, several of which are also noticed by Ptolemy and Pliny. The chief towns were Dioscurias or Dioscuris (under the Romans called Sebastopolis, now Sukhumi) on the seaboard of the Euxine, Sarapana (now Shorapani), Phasis (now Poti), Pityus (now Pitsunda), Apsaros (now Gonio), Surium (now Vani), Archaeopolis (now Nokalakevi), Macheiresis, and Cyta or Cutatisium or Aia (now Kutaisi), the traditional birthplace of Medea. Scylax mentions also Mala or Male, which he, in contradiction to other writers, makes the birthplace of Medea.
In physical geography, Colchis is usually defined as the area east of the Black Sea coast, restricted from the north by the southwestern slopes of the Greater Caucasus, from the south by the northern slopes of the Lesser Caucasus in Georgia and Eastern Black Sea (Karadeniz) Mountains in Turkey, and from the east by Likhi Range, connecting the Greater and the Lesser Caucasus. The central part of the region is Colchis Plain, stretching between Sukhumi and Kobuleti; most of that lies on the elevation below 20 m (66 ft) above sea level. Marginal parts of the region are mountains of the Great and the Lesser Caucasus and Likhi Range.
Its territory mostly corresponds to what is now the western part of Georgia and encompasses the present-day Georgian provinces of Samegrelo, Imereti, Guria, Adjara, Abkhazia, Svaneti, Racha; the modern Turkey’s Rize, Trabzon and Artvin provinces (Lazistan, Tao-Klarjeti); and the modern Russia’s Sochi and Tuapse districts.
The climate is mild humid; near Batumi, annual rainfall level reaches 4,000 mm (160 in), which is the absolute maximum for continental western Eurasia. The dominating natural landscapes of Colchis are temperate rainforests, yet degraded in the plain part of the region; wetlands (along the coastal parts of Colchis Plain); subalpine and alpine meadows.
Colchis has a high proportion of Neogene and Palaeogene relict plants and animals, with the closest relatives in distant parts of the world: five species of Rhododendrons and other evergreen shrubs, wingnuts, Caucasian salamander, Caucasian parsley frog, eight endemic species of lizards from the genus Darevskia, the Caucasus adder (Vipera kaznakovi), Robert's snow vole, and endemic cave shrimp.
Millet was the main staple crop in Colchis. Wheat grew in certain regions and was also imported by sea. Similarly, local wines were produced and some wines were brought from overseas. The Colchian plain provided ample grazing land for cattle and horses, with the name of Phasis associated with fine horses. The wetlands were a home for waterfowl, while Colchian pheasants were exported to Rome and became a symbol of excess condemned by Roman moralists. The Colchian hinterland lacked salt and demand was satisfied partially by local production on the coast and partially by imports from the northern coast of the Black Sea.
Colchis provided slaves as a tribute to the Achaemenid Empire and Colchian slaves are also attested in Ancient Greece.
The eastern Black Sea region in antiquity was home to the well-developed Bronze Age culture known as the Colchian culture, related to the neighbouring Koban culture, that emerged toward the Middle Bronze Age. In at least some parts of Colchis, the process of urbanization seems to have been well advanced by the end of the second millennium BC. The Colchian Late Bronze Age (fifteenth to eighth century BC) saw the development of significant skill in the smelting and casting of metals. Sophisticated farming implements were made, and fertile, well-watered lowlands and a mild climate promoted the growth of progressive agricultural techniques.
The earliest attestations of the name of Colchis can be found in the 8th century Greek poet Eumelus of Corinth as Κολχίδα and earlier, in Urartian records as Qulḫa mentioned by the Urartian kings. The polity of Kilkhi/Qulha warred first against Assyrians under the rule of Tiglath-pileser I and then with Urartians under the reigns of Argišti I and Menua.. Historian Askold Ivanchik states: "Based on cuneiform texts and archeological data, Qulḫa must have existed as an independent flourishing state during the second half of the eighth century BCE, but hardly survived the end of the century". According to Svante Cornell, "What could be conceived as the proto Georgian statehood emerged mainly in the Western parts of today's Georgia, with the kingdom of Colchis (Kolkheti) in the sixth century BC."
Colchis was inhabited by a number of tribes whose settlements lay along the shore of the Black Sea. Chief among those were the Machelones, Heniochi, Zydretae, Lazi, Chalybes, Tibareni/Tubal, Mossynoeci, Macrones, Moschi, Marres, Apsilae, Abasgoi, Sanigae, Coraxi, Coli, Melanchlaeni, Geloni and Soani (Suani). The ancients assigned various origins to the tribes that inhabited Colchis.
Herodotus, who is thought to have never been to Colchis, imagined Colchians as "dark-skinned (μελάγχροες) and woolly-haired" and calls them Egyptians. Furthermore, he claimed that the Colchians, with the Ancient Egyptians and the Ethiopians, were the first to practice circumcision, a custom that according to him was inherited by Colchians from remnants of the army of Pharaoh Sesostris (Senusret III). These claims have been widely rejected by modern historians. It is in doubt if Herodotus had ever been to Colchis or Egypt, and no Egyptian army ever set foot in the Caucasus, a region shielded by states to the south of the Caucasus too powerful for any Egyptian army to pass through, such as Urartu, Hittia, Assyria and Mitanni.
According to Pliny the Elder:
The Colchians were governed by their own kings in the earliest ages, that Sesostris king of Egypt was overcome in Scythia, and put to flight, by the king of Colchis, which if true, that the Colchians not only had kings in those times, but were a very powerful people.
Many modern theories suggest that the ancestors of the Laz-Mingrelians constituted the dominant ethnic and cultural presence in the region in antiquity, and hence played a significant role in the ethnogenesis of the modern Georgians.
Pausanias, a 1st-century BC Greek geographer, citing the poet Eumelos, assigned Aeëtes, the mythological first king of Colchis, a Greek origin.
Starting from the 8th century BC, Colchis was invaded by Scythians and Cimmerians migrating from Central Asia into the Pontic steppes Scythians would go on to establish a base on the former territory of the kingdom, from where they performed raids and campaigns in Media and Anatolia.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Colchis”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.