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A favorite story of modern Georgians relates how God came
upon the Georgians only after he had parceled out all the countries of the world
to other nationalities. The Georgians were in a typically festive mood and
invited the Creator to Join them in wine and song. The Lord so enjoyed
himself that He decided to give these merry and carefree people the one spot
on the earth that He had reserved for Himself—the valleys and hills that lie
to the south of the great Caucasus Mountains.
Unfortunately, the actual ethnogenesis of the Georgian people is far more
obscure than this anecdote allows, and to probe its mysteries scholars have
used linguistic as well as historical and archaeological evidence. The Georgians
call themselves kartveli and their country sakartvelo, "the place of the
Georgians." But the latter term was not used until the eleventh century,
when Georgia
was first united. Unity was brief, however, and for most of histon- the lands
in which Georgian speakers have lived have been divided into two principal
parts, separated by the Surami mountain range. Western Georgia, lying in the
basin of the Rioni (Phasis) River, was in ancient times known as Colchis and later as Lazica, Abasgia, or Imeretia.
Among the Georgians western Georgia
was first referred to as Egrisi, later as Abkhazeti. and most recently as
Imereti. Eastern Georgia, larger in territory and running along the Kura
(Cyrus) River, was called Iberia
(Hiberia) b-v the classical world and Kartli by the Georgians. Less well
known but historically a part of Georgia
is an area lying to the southwest of Imereti, in the valleys of the Chorokhi
and the upper Kura, a land referred to as Zemo Kartli (Upper
Iberia) or Meskhla. The lands to the south of the Kura but east
or Upper Iberia are sometimes referred to as Kvemo Kartli (Lower
Iberia) . while the lands to the north, on the other side of the
Kura, are called Shida Karth (Inner Iberia).
Upper Iberia consisted of the lands in the basin of the Chorokhi—Achara,
Nigali or Ligani, Shavsheti, Cholarzene or Klarjeti, and Tao—and the lands in
the basin of the Kura—Samtskhe or Meskhia,
Javakheti, Artani, and Kola. Lower Iberia
included the lands of Trialeti, Gachiani, Gardabani, Tashiri, and Abotsi.1 To
the east of Kartli proper lie the regions of Kakheti and Kukheti, the
easternmost territories historically inhabited by Georgians. As the eminent
scholar of Caucasian history, Cyril Toumanoff, points out: "Most of
these lands were, historically no less than geographically, Georgio-Armenian
marches, and so a battlefield between two neighboring monarchies. The
struggle over them is still going on—on the battlefield of historiography."2
The languages of the Georgian peoples are not part of the Indo-European,
Altaic, or Finno-Ugric language families. Rather they belong to the southern
Caucasian language group known as Kartvelian (kartveluri) and have descended
from an original, proto-Georgian language that began to break into several
distinct but related languages about four thousand years ago. The first to
break away was the Svan language (svanuri), in about the nineteenth century
B.C., and by the eighth century B.C. zanuri, the basis of Mingrelian
(megruli) and Laz (chanuri), had become a distinct language.3 On the basis of
language it has been established that the Georgians were made up of three
principal, related tribes—the Karts, the Megrelo-Chans (Zvans), and the
Svans—but in addition there were other Georgian-speaking tribes in Asia
Minor, among them the Kashkai (Gashgai, Gashgash, Kashku, Kaska), the Mushki
(Moskhi, Moschi, Meskhi), and the Tibal (Tabal, Tibar). The distinguished
Soviet investigator of ancient Georgia, G. A. Melikishvili, writes that the
peoples speaking these Ibero-Caucasian languages "in all probability
have been settled in the territory
of Transcaucasia and the North Caucasus from the most ancient times."
Ancient place names testify to their presence in the earliest records, and
archaeological research does not indicate any great changes in the ethnic
composition of the peoples of Caucasia.4
The antiquity of the division into myriad language groups is testified to by
Herodotus, Strabo, and Pliny. The mountainous terrain tended to separateand
isolate related peoples from one another and encouraged the development of
dozens of separate languages and dialects. Strabo, for example, writes that
in the Greek port of Dioscurias in western Georgia seventy tribes gathered
to buy and barter: "All speak different languages because of the fact
that by reason of their obstinacy and ferocity, they live in scattered groups
and without intercourse with one another."5
Evidence indicates that primitive peoples have been living in Georgia
since the early Paleolithic period, more than fifty thousand years ago.
Insouthern Oseti and along the Black Sea
coast, in Abkhazeti, crude stone tools have been unearthed. Archaeologists
have investigated late Paleolithic cave dwellings in Devis Khvreli, Sakazhia,
Sagvarjile, and Gvarjilas klde. 6 There have been settlements in the Kura basin since the fifth millennium B.C
Radiocarbon dating at Shulaveri indicates that the earliest settlements there
-ate from 4659 B.C., plus or minus 210 years. Signs of Neolithic culture, and
the transition from foraging and hunting to agriculture and stockraising, are
found in Georgia from 5000 B.C., and settlements such as those at Tsopi,
Aruchlo, and Sadachlo along the Kura in eastern Georgia are distinguished by
a "culture marked by its long duration, its distinctive architecture and
its relativity crude but easily recognizable pottery, with its considerable
skill in stoneworking."7 In a very real sense, then, the highlands of
eastern Anatolia and Transcaucasia were one of the "cradles of
civilization," for in those areas the right combination of domesticable
animals and sowable grains and legumes made possible the earliest
agriculture. "In short," the Cambridge Ancient History states,
"the highland zones of the Near (and Middle) East turn out to be the
areas in which these earliest developments occurred, and those in the lowland
plains date from later periods, thus reversing the old theories that
Mesopotamia and Egypt were the birthplaces of civilization”. 8
The entire area of Transcaucasia and eastern Anatolia was, in the period beginning in the last
quarter of the fourth millennium B.C., inhabited by people who were probably
ethnically related and of Hurrian stock. (The Hurrians, a people spread
throughout the Near East in the third
millennium B.C., spoke a non-European language closely related to what later
became Urartian.) The ethnic and cultural unity of these two thousand years
is characterized by some scholars as Chalcolithic or Eneolithic. British
scholars Charles Burney and David Marshall Lang refer to these years as the
period of "Early Transcaucasian Culture," although some Soviet
paleohistorians prefer the term "Kuro-Araxes Culture." Whatever the
label applied, it is clear that during this era economic stability based on
cattle and sheep raising was achieved, and as a result there was noticeable
cultural stability as well. About 2300 B.C. this unified and flourishing
culture went into a gradual decline, and after a period of stagnation it
broke up into a number of regional cultures. By 2300 B.C. the peoples of the
Kura-Araxes area had already made contact with the more advanced civilization
of Akkadian Mesopotamia.9
At the end of the third millennium, the Indo-European Hittites entered
eastern Anatolia and established their rule over Asia
Minor and Svria, a dominion that lasted over a thousand years.
During the Hittite period Georgia entered the Bronze Age (the Middle Bronze
Age in Transcaucasia is dated from 2000 B.C. to 1200 B.C.), and there is
evidence of considerable economic development and increased commerce among
the tribes. In western Georgia and Abkhazeti, a unique culture known as
Colchidic developed between 1800 and 700 B.C., and in eastern Georgia
the kurgan (tumulus) culture of Trialeti reached its zenith around 1500 B.C.
The earliest written records of people living in Armenia come from Hittite
tablets. which tell of wars fought by two Hittite kings, Suppiluliumas
(1388?-1347 B.C.) and his son Marsilis I (1347?-1320 B.C.), against tribes
inhabiting the Armenian plateau. 10 No written records mention the lands of
Georgia, but the national epic of Amirani may have originated in this early
period.11 Late in the Hittite era, by the last centuries of the second
millennium, ironworking made its appearance in Transcaucasia but, as Burney
and Lang point out, "the true Iron Age only began with the introduction
of tools and weapons on a large scale and of superior quality to those
hitherto made of copper and bronze, a change which in most of the Near East
may not have come before the tenth or ninth centuries B.C."12
The Hittite kingdom fell about the year 1190 B.C. under the attack of the
mysterious "peoples of the sea" (so called in the sources) and of
Indo-Europeans—Thracians, Phrygians, and proto-Armenians—moving from the
west into Asia Minor. The political vacuum
left by the Hittite collapse was quickly filled by the Phrygians in the west
and the Assyrians in the east. The Assyrian king, Tiglath-pileser I
(1115-1077 B.C.), led several expeditions into the lands of Nairi, later to
be central Armenia.
There the Assyrians fought and defeated the Phrygians, whom they called
Mushki or Tabal, driving them to the north and west, where they came under
the cultural influence of the waning Hittites. In the view of Melikishvili,
the Mushki, who settled in the upper Euphrates
and along the Murad-su, were Georgian speakers, one of the Kart tribes. After
the fall of the Hittites, the Mushki formed their own state in east-central Anatolia, a relatively strong formation, known in the
Bible as Mosoch. 13
Other tribes mentioned in the Assyrian inscriptions may
also have been proto-Georgian tribes, notably the Kashkai and the Tibal (the
biblical Thubal), who lived in eastern Anatolia.
The Kashkai had participated in the destruction of the Hittite empire, then
moved westward, where they came up against the Assyrians. The Tibal were,
like the Mushki, known for their metallurgy, and the people of Tibal were
vassals of the great Assyrian empire from the eleventh century. 14
The most important tribal formation of possible proto-Georgians in the
post-Hittite period was that of the Diauehi (Diauhi, Daiaem), formed about
the twelfth century B.C. southwest of Transcaucasia, in the region to the
north of present-day Erzerum. The Diauehi coalition was powerful enough to
resist attacks by Assyria, although in 1112
B. C. their king was captured by Tiglath-pileser I. In the ninth and early
eighth centuries B.C., Diauehi was the nucleus around which many tribes of
southern Transcaucasia gathered, and it was therefore the target not only of Assyria but also of the rulers of the emerging state of
Urartu. In 845 B.C., Shalmaneser III of Assyria
defeated King Arame of Urartu, and King Asia of the Diauehi became his
vassal. 15 Sometime in the early eighth century, both Menua and Argishti I
ofUrartu campaigned against the Diauehi, defeating their king,
Utupurshini, and forcing him to pay tribute. The southernmost regions of
the Diauehi wee annexed by Urartu, and by the middle of the century the blows
from Urartu in the east and from the tribes of western Georgia destroyed the Diauehi.
This left the tribal formation of Colchis
bordering directly on Urartu, and conflict soon developed between these two
political coalitions. 16 The eminent Soviet prehistorian, Igor D'iakonov,
believes that Georgian‑speaking tribes were already in eastern Pontus (Colchis) in the ninth century B.C.
Homer mentions the Halizones in Pontus, and it is supposed that
this tribe is the same as the later Chalybes, a proto-Georgian tribe. 17
The fragility of the various "empires" of the eighth century became
evident about 720 B.C. when nomadic peoples from the northern shore of the
Black Sea, the Cimmerians, swept down the coast, passing through Colchis and into Urartu. About the same time, the
Scythians poured through the Daryal Pass into central Georgia and down the western
coast of the Caspian into Urartu. The Cimmerians destroyed the southern
Colchian state, known as Kulkha in Urartian inscriptions. Whole regions were
emptied of people as the Cimmerians moved south to Syria,
Palestine, and the borders of Egypt.
Some Mushki and Tibal, pushed aside by the Cimmerians, moved northeast into
the Pontic regions, where by the fifth century they had made contact with
Greek colonists. For a short time a distinct "kingdom of the
Mushki" to the west, a state closely connected with the Phrygians,
reigned as the strongest state in Asia Minor.
Ruled by Mitas, whom some scholars identify with the legendary Midas of the
golden touch, the kingdom of the Mushki had its capital at Gordion, and its
people spoke Phrygian, an Indo-European language. The brief ascendancy of
the Phrygian-Mushki state came to an end at the hands of the Cimmerians, who
were probably allied with Rusa II of Urartu (685-645 B.C.). 18 Some of the
Mushki assimilated with local peoples, but others moved northwest out of the
area known as Speri. taking With them their Hittite religion and culture.
By the Late Bronze Age, a period that in Caucasia
included the end of the second millennium and the first centuries of
the first millennium B.C.., differentiations in wealth within the tribes are
evident in the burial sites. Soviet scholars, including Melikishvili, argue
that this “was the period of the disintegration of primitive communal
relations among the population of Georgia" and the transition
to "class society”. Following the linear scheme set out by Friedrich
Engels in The Origin of the Family,
Private Property, and the State, Melikishvili proposes that the primitive
communal society was replaced by "military democracy" and firm
alliances of tribes , which in turn may be seen as the beginning of the
formation of a Georgian nationality. 19
Tempting as this theoretical model of Georgian social
evolution may be, it must be remembered that there is little available
evidence to illuminate thesocial structure of the tribal societies of this
ancient period. It is known that the proto-Georgian tribes (then centered in
the Chorokhi basin north of Erzerum) and the proto-Armenian tribes (probably
located to the south in th region bordering the Murad-su) were not under a
central, unified political authority once the Cimmerians had swept throughout
the area. 20
The second half of the seventh century B.C. marked the
rise of significant political formations that can be identified with
proto-Georgian tribes. Some of these tribes, living in the upper reaches of
the Chorokhi River, were united under the name sasperi.21 Based in the
former territory of the Diauehi, the Sasperi had much of southern
Transcaucasia under their sway bythe early sixth century and participated in
the destruction of the Urartian empire, only to disintegrate under the
expansionist thrusts of the Medes in the east.
The Sasperi merged with the Urartians in their lands, and,
Melikishvili conjectures, borrowed Urartian words that found their way into
the Georgian language.22 At
approximately the same time, a new “kingdom” of Colchis was formed in western
Georgia, extending from
the mouth of the Chorokhi northward but not reaching as far as the Caucasus Mountains. The political center of the kingdom of Egrisi,
as it was known to eastern Georgians, was on the Rioni River.
Greek migrants from Miletus settled in coastal
towns at Trebizond, Kerasunt, Phasis,
Dioskuri, and Pitiunt and traded with the native population.23
Early in the sixth century, the Urartian empire fell to
the Medes, Scythians, and Sasperi, and
the Median empire replaced it as the principal political power in Asia Minor. 24
The destruction of Assyria, Urartu and, not long afterward, of Media
created a fluid situation in which tribes of language groups migrated and
settled in nevw areas that proved to be relatively permanent homes. Armenian
tribes moved eastward and occupied Hurrian lands west of Lake Van and to the
south of what is today the city of Mush.
These lands had been called Arme or Armeni by Urartians, and this may be the
source of the name by which Armenians are known to the world.25 Sometime in the sixth and fifth centuries
B.C. some Georgian-speaking tribes, probably the Mushki and Tibal, made their
way northeast and settled in the Kura
valley, where they formed the nucleus of the
Iberian or east Georgian nation.26 Burney and Lang note the violence
that accompanied this migration:
"To judge by the abundance of warrior graves of the period the supremacy
of the Iberians over the Scythians, Cimmerians and other Indo-European
invaders of the Kura Valley was not
won without a struggle. Living in troglodytic towns like Uplistsikhe (near
Gori), the Iberians moved later to Mtskheta on the Kura.
This capital was defended by the fortresses of Armazi on Mount Bagineti
and Sevsamora on the Aragvi
River.
This transitional phase of Georgian and Armenian national formation is not
well illuminated by local historical evidence, and scholars are forced to
rely on later classical sources to
produce the barest outlines. Herodotus
provides us with much of what we know
about Caucasia in the sixth and fifth
centuries B.C. The first great "world empire," that of the Persians
under Achaemenid dynasty, covered most of Asia Minor and Transcaucasia.
The Armenians made up the thirteenth satrapy of the empire; the Sasperi,
Matieni, and Alarodi (Urartian and other Hurrian remnants) formed the
eighteenth satrapy; and the proto-Georgian Mushki (Moschi), Tibal (Tibareni),
Macrones,IMossynoeci, and Mares were included in the nineteenth.28
In his descriptions of the military dress of the
“Asian" peoples, Herodotus mentions that the various proto-Georgian
tribes were similar in uniform and weaponry:
The Moschi wore
wooden helmets on their heads, and carried shields and small spears with long
points. The Tibareni and Macrones and Mossynoeci in the army were equipped
like the Moschi ... The Mares wore on their heads the plaited helmets of
their country, carrying small shields of hide and javelins. The Colchians had
wooden helmets and small shields of raw oxhide and short spears, and swords
withal.29
The Persian hold over these Georgian tribes was fairly
firm until the second half of the fifth century B.C. Georgians marched in the
Persian campaigns against the Greeks, and Persian terms in Georgian political
vocabulary are eloquent testimony to the depth of Iranian influence in
government. Not included in the empire as a satrapy, the kingdom of Colchis
was an autonomous vassal state of the Achaemenids. Herodotus tells us:
Gifts were also required from the
Colchians and their neighbors far as far as the Caucasian mountains (which is
as far as the Persian rule reaches, the country north of the Caucasus paying
no regard to the Persians : these were rendered every five years and are
still so rendered, namely, one hundred boys and as many maidens.30
Colchis in Achaemenid times thus was a
tributary state, largerly agricultural, with some ironworks, slaves, and
commerce in its Greek ports. s. As a semi-independent kingdom, Colchis-Egrisi
existed until the third century B.C. Melikishvili characterizes it as an
"early slaveowning society,… a relatively underdeveloped class society
in which there still were strong remnants of primitive communal society and
where the quantity of slaves and the area in which they were used were
insignificant”. 31
By the time Xenophon marched through Asia Minor to the Black Sea (401-400 B.C.), the Colchians and other
Georgian tribes had freed themselves from Achaemenid rule. As Xenophon and
his thousands moved closer the sea, they came to a mountain pass leading down
into the coastal plain. Their path was blocked there by peoples whom Xenophon
called the Chalybes, Taochi, and Phasians.32
The Greeks attacked the defenders of the pass from above, strove them
off, and then "descended into the plain on the father army and reached
villages full of many good things."
Xenophon’s army proceeded deeper into the country of the Taochi, who
lived in strong fortifications. The Greeks, in need of provisions, attacked
one of the fortresses were held off for a time by defenders hurling stones
and boulders. Once the fortress was taken, "then came a dreadful spectacle:
the women threw their little children down from the rocks and then threw
themselves down after, and the men did likewise.” 33
Without many prisoners but with great numbers of oxen,
asses, and
TO BE CONTINUED
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Notes
1.
Cyril Toumanoff, "The Bagratids of Iberia from the VIII to the XI
century," Le Museon 74
(1961): 234-38, and Studies in Christian
Caucasian History (hereafter, Studies)
(Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1963), pp. 437-40.
2.
Toumanoff, Studies, p. 440.
3.
G. A. Melikishvili, K istorii drevnei
Gruzii (Tbilisi, 1959), p. 100;
and Hans Vogt, Grammaire de la langue
georgienne (Oslo:
Universitetsforlaget, 1971, p. 2. See also J. C. Catford, "Mountain of Tongues: The Languages of the
Caucasw.- Annual Review of Anthropology
6 (1977): 283-314; and G. A. Klimov. Kavkazskie
iazyki (Moscow, 1965), and Etimologicheskii slovar' kartvel'sklkh iazykov (Moscow, 1964).
4.
Melikishvili, K istorii drevnei Gruzii,
pp. 95, 97; and Cyril Toumanoff, "Introduction to Christian Caucasian
History: The Formative Centuries (IVth-VIIIth)," Traditio 15 (1959): 18-19, 95.
5.
Horace Leonard Jones, trans., The
Geography of Strabo, vol.5, Loeb Classical Library (New
York, 1928), p. 211.
Today standard Georgian serves as a lingua franca for the
mountaineers, who in each major valley have their own dialect. In eastern Georgia kartluri,
the speech of Georgia's
political center, is broken down into meskhuri
and javakhuri. To the east of Kakheti,
natives speak both kakhuri and kiziquri. In the mountains the rugged shepherds
and farmers communicate in pshauri,
khevsuruli, tushuri, mokheuri, mtiuluri, and gudamagruli. In western Georgia, besides the related
languages of Mingrelian and Svan, one can hear the imeruli dialect (with lech-khumuri),
rachuli, guruli, and acharuli.
In Azerbaijan, a Georgian
dialect called ingiluri is spoken;
in Iran, Georgian settlers
speak pereidnuli, and in Turkey,
imerkheuri (Vogt, Grammaire, pp.
2-3). On Georgians in contemporary Iran,
see P. Oberling, "Georgians and the Circassians in Iran," Studia Caucasica 1 (1963): 127-43.
6.
Melikishvili, K istorii drevnei Gruzii,
p. 141; and N.A. Berdzenishvili et al.,
Istoriia Gruzii: S drevneishikh vremen do 60-kb godov XIX veka, vol. 1
(Tbilisi, 1962), pp. 7-8.
7.
Charles Burney and David Marshall Lang, The
Peoples of the Hills: Ancient Ararat and Caucasus
(New York: Praeger, 1972), pp. 40, 35.
8.
J. Mellaart, "The Earliest Settlements in Western Asia from the Ninth to
the End of the Fifth Millennium B.C.,: in The
Cambridge Ancient History, 3d ed., 12 vols. (Cambridge, England:
Cambridge University Press, 1970-75), vol. 1, pt. 1, p. 251.
9.
Burney and Lang, Peoples of the Hills,
pp. 43-85; and J. Mellaart, "Anatolia, c. 4000-2300 B.C.," Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 1, pt. 2, pp.
401-3.
10.
Dates for monarchs indicate reigns. For a discussion in English of this
period, see David Marshall Lang, The
Georgians (London: Thames and Hudson, 1966), pp. 36-53; and J. Mellaart,
"Anatolia, c. 2300-1750 B.C.," Cambridge
Ancient History, vol. 2, pt. 2, pp. 688-90.
11.
Melikishvili writes: "The epic of Amiriani has with time undergone many
changes. The succeeding centuries left on it a number of additions, but ...
the tales which lay at the basis of this epic undoubtedly were spread among
the Georgian tribes already in the era of Bronze culture"
(Berdzenishvili et al., Istoriia Gruzii,
p. 27,,.
12.
Burney and Lang, Peoples of the Hills,
p. 114.
13.
Melikishvili, K istorii drevnei Gruzii,
p. 111; and Toumanoff, Studies, p.
56.
14.
Melikishvili, K istorii drevnei Gruzii,
p. 175; and Toumanoff, Studies, pp.
5556.
15.
Melikishvili, K istorii drevnei Gruzii,
pp. 179, 203. On Urartu, see B. B. Piotrovskii, Vanskoe tsarstvo (Urartu) (Moscow,
1959), and Urartu: The Kingdom of Van
and Its Art, trans. and ed. Peter S. Gelling (New York: Praeger, 1967).
16.
Berdzenishvili et al., Istoriia Gruzii,
pp. 28-31; Melikishvili, K istorii
drevnei Gruzii, pp. 204-17. In the mid-eighth century B.C. Sarduri II of
Urartu reporte_ invading Colchis several times and once taking the city of Ildamusha.
17.
I. M. D'iakonov, Predistoriia
armianskogo naroda: Istoriia
armianskogo nagor'ia s 1500 po 500 g. do N. E. Khurrity, Luviitsy,
Protoarmiane (Erevan, 196 . pp. 119-20. Recently an English translation
has appeared: I. M. Diakonoff, The Pre-history
of the Armenian People, trans. Loni Jennings (Delmar, N.Y.: Caravan
Book,. 1984).
18.
Melikishvili, K istorii drevnei Gruzii,
pp. 112, 225-29. Melikishvili says that this kingdom was known as Phrygia to the Greeks but as the "kingdom of the
Mushki" to the Urartians (p. 255).
19.
Ibid., pp. 102, 197.
20.
G. A. Melikishvili, Nairi-Urartu (Tbilisi, 1954), pp.
418-19. The Armenian area was known as Sokhmi or Sukhmi and is the source of
the Georgian words t-07 Armenian (somekhi)
and Armenia
(somkheti).
21.
Berdzenishvili et al., Istoriia Gruzii,
pp. 33-34.
22.
Melikishvili, K istorii drevnei Gruzii,
p. 233.
23.
Burney and Lang, Peoples of the Hills,
pp. 193-94.
24.
Melikishvili, K istorii drevnei Gruzii,
p. 231; B. B. Piotrovskii has established that Teishebaini (Karmir Blur) was
destroyed by the Scythians.
25.
Melikishvili, K istorii drevnei Gruzii,
p. 234; see also Toumanoff, Studies,
pp. 61-62 n. 58.
26.
On the complex question of whether the Mushki were proto-Georgians or
proto-Armenians (Melikishvili and D'iakonov disagree) see the discussion in
D'iakonov, Predistoriia, pp.
214-24.
27.
Burney and Lang, Peoples of the Hills,
p. 194.
28.
Toumanoff, "Introduction to Christian Caucasian History: The Formative
Centuries," p. 23n; A. D. Godley, trans., Herodotus, vol. 2, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge,
Mass., 1938), pp. 121, 123.
29.
Godley, Herodotus 2:387, 389.
30.
Godley, Herodotus 2:125.
31.
Berdzenishvili et al., Istoriia Gruzii,
p. 41.
32.
O. J. Todd, trans., Xenophon, Anabasis,
Books IV--VII, Loeb Classical Library (New York, 1922), pp. 59-67.
These were probably all Georgian-speaking peoples. The Chalybes may not have
been a distinct ethnic group but simply people identified by the Greek used
word to describe the ironworking tribes of the area (khalyps means "steel" in
Greek). Melikishvili argues that the Chalybes mentioned by Xenophon as living
in two different places and later by Strabo were not a separate ethnic group
but were probably the Khaldi, known to the Armenians as Khaghtik, who in fact
were the Chans (Sans) (Melikishvili, K istorii
drevnei Gruzii, pp. 70-72, 258). The Taochi (Taokhoi) were the
people known formerly to the Urartians as Diauehi (Diauhi, Daiaeni) and are
mentioned in Sarduri 11's records as ironworkers (Lang, The Georgians, pp. 59-60).
33.
Todd, Xenophon, pp. 67, 73.
34.
Todd, Xenophon, pp. 73, 75.
35.
Todd, Xenophon, p. 131.
36.
Melikishvili, K istorii drevnei Gruzii,
p. 264.
37.
Ibid., p. 263.
38.
Lang, The Georgians, pp. 57,
75-76; and Melikishvili, K istorii drevnei Gruzii, p. 45.
39.
Melikishvili, K istorii drevnei Gruzii,
pp. 125-26. Kartlosi is described in the chronicles as mamatmtavari ("father of his
people") and targamosis dze
("born of Targamosi," the great-grandson of the biblical Noah) (karths tskhovreba, ed. S. Qaukhchishvili
[Tbilisi,
1955], vol. 1, pp. 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, 11, 26, 60). The name Parnavaz is Iranian
(F. Justi, Iranisches Namenbuch
[Marburg, 1895; Hildesheim, 1962], p. 92). I am grateful to Professor Peter
Golden for these references.
40.
Melikishvili, K istorii drevnei Gruzii,
p. 126.
41.
Cyril Toumanoff, "Chronology of the Kings of Iberia," Traditio 25 (1969): 9.
42.
W. E. D. Allen, A History of the Georgian
People from the Beginning down to the Russian Conquest in the Nineteenth
Century (London, 1932; New York: Barnes and Noble, 1971), p. 41.
43.
Melikishvili, K istorii drevnei Gruzii,
pp. 131, 279, 290.
44.
Cyril Toumanoff, "Iberia
on the Eve of Bagratid Rule: An Enquiry into the Political History of Eastern Georgia Between the IV and the IX
Century," Le Museon 65
(1952): 28-30.
45.
Melikishvili, K istorii drevnei Gruzii,
p. 125.
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