The Medes were an Iron Age Iranian people who spoke the Median language and who inhabited an area known as Media between western and northern Iran. Around the 11th century BC, they occupied the mountainous region of northwestern Iran and the northeastern and eastern region of Mesopotamia in the vicinity of Ecbatana (present-day Hamadan). Their consolidation in Iran is believed to have occurred during the 8th century BC. In the 7th century BC, all of western Iran and some other territories were under Median rule, but their precise geographic extent remains unknown.
Although widely recognized as playing an important role in the history of the ancient Near East, the Medes left no written records to reconstruct their history. Knowledge of the Medes comes only from foreign sources such as the Assyrians, Babylonians, Armenians and Greeks, as well as a few Iranian archaeological sites, which are believed to have been occupied by Medes. The accounts related to the Medes reported by Herodotus convey the image of a powerful people, who would have formed an empire at the beginning of the 7th century BC that lasted until the 550s BC, played a pivotal role in the fall of the Assyrian Empire, and competed with the powerful kingdoms of Lydia and Babylonia.
The state remains difficult to perceive in the documentation, which leaves many doubts about its extent. A recent reassessment of contemporary sources from the Median period has altered scholars' perceptions of the Median state, with some specialists even suggesting that there never was a powerful Median kingdom. In any case, it appears that after the fall of the last Median king against the Persian king Cyrus the Great, Media became an important province and was prized by the empires which successively dominated it (Achaemenids, Seleucids, Parthians and Sasanids).
Etymology The original source for their name and homeland is a directly transmitted Old Iranian geographical name which is attested as the Old Persian "" (). The meaning of this word is not precisely known. However, the linguist W. Skalmowski proposes a relation with the proto-Indo European word "med(h)-", meaning "central, suited in the middle", by referring to the Old Indic "madhya-" and Old Iranian "maidiia-" which both carry the same meaning. The Latin medium, Greek méso, Armenian mej, and English mid are similarly derived from it.
Herodotus claimed that Greek legends, especially when similarities in names familiar to Greeks and used by foreign peoples were observed, could explain the origin of such an ethnonym. According to his Histories (ca.440 BC):Herodotus 7.62
Archaeology
The discoveries of Median sites in Iran happened only after the 1960s. Prior to the 1960s, the search for Median archeological sources has mostly focused in an area known as the "Median triangle", defined roughly as the region bounded by Hamadan and Malayer (in Hamadan province) and Kangavar (in Kermanshah province). Three major sites from central western Iran in the Iron Age III period (i.e. 850–500 BC) are: Tepe Nush-i Jan (a primarily religious site of Median period), The site is located 14 km west of Malāyer in Hamadan province. The excavations started in 1967 with David Stronach as the director. The remains of four main buildings in the site are "the central temple, the western temple, the fort, and the columned hall" which according to Stronach were likely to have been built in the order named and predate the latter occupation of the first half of the 6th century BC. According to Stronach, the central temple, with its stark design, "provides a notable, if mute, expression of religious belief and practice". A number of ceramics from the Median levels at Tepe Nush-i Jan have been found which are associated with a period (the second half of the 7th century BC) of power consolidation in the Hamadān areas. These findings show four different wares known as "common ware" (buff, cream, or light red in colour and with gold or silver mica temper) including jars in various size the largest of which is a form of ribbed pithoi. Smaller and more elaborate vessels were in "grey ware", (these display smoothed and burnished surface). The "cooking ware" and "crumbly ware" are also recognized each in single handmade products. Godin Tepe (Godin Tepe's Level II: a fortified palace of a Median king or tribal chief), The site is located 13 km east of Kangāvar city on the left bank of the river Gamas Āb". The excavations, started in 1965, were led by T. C. Young, Jr. According to David Stronach, the evidence shows an important Bronze Age construction that was reoccupied sometime before the beginning of the Iron III period. The excavations of Young indicate the remains of part of a single residence of a local ruler which later became quite substantial. This is similar to those mentioned often in Assyrian sources. Babajan (probably the seat of a lesser tribal ruler of Media). The site is located in northeastern Lorestan with a distance of roughly 10 km from Nūrābād in Lorestan province. The excavations were conducted by C. Goff in 1966–69. The second level of this site probably dates to the 7th century BC. These sources have both similarities (in cultural characteristics) and differences (due to functional differences and diversity among the Median tribes). The architecture of these archaeological findings, which can probably be dated to the Median period, show a link between the tradition of columned audience halls often seen in the Achaemenid Empire (for example in Persepolis) and Safavid Iran (for example in Chehel Sotoun from the 17th century AD) and what is seen in Median architecture.
The materials found at Tepe Nush-i Jan, Godin Tepe, and other sites located in Media, together with the Assyrian reliefs show the existence of urban settlements in Media in the first half of the 1st millennium BC which functioned as centres for the production of handicrafts and also of an agricultural and cattle-breeding economy of a secondary type. For other historical documentation, the archaeological evidence, though rare, together with Assyrian cuneiform records makes it possible, regardless of Herodotus' accounts, to establish some of the early history of the Medians.
History Origins At the end of the 2nd millennium BC, the Iranian tribes emerged in the region of northwest Iran. These tribes expanded their control over larger areas. Iranian tribes were present in western and northwestern Iran from at least the 12th or 11th centuries BC. But the significance of Iranian elements in these regions were established from the beginning of the second half of the 8th century BC. By this time the Iranian tribes were the majority in what later become the territory of the Median Kingdom and also the west of Media proper. A study of textual sources from the region shows that in the Neo-Assyrian period, the regions of Media, and further to the west and the northwest, had a population with Iranian speaking people as the majority.
In western and northwestern Iran and in areas further west prior to Median rule, there is evidence of the earlier political activity of the powerful societies of Elam, Mannaea, Assyria and Urartu. There are various and updated opinions on the positions and activities of Iranian tribes in these societies prior to the "major Iranian state formations" in the late 7th century BC. One opinion (of Herzfeld, et al.) is that the ruling class were "Iranian migrants" but the society was "autonomous" while another opinion (of Grantovsky, et al.) holds that both the ruling class and basic elements of the population were Iranian.
The Medes first appear on the historical scene in the 9th century BCE, when they are mentioned in contemporary Assyrian texts. By this time, it is highly likely that Indo-Iranian-speaking peoples had already settled in Western Iran at least some 500 years — if not 1,000 years — prior to this period. Most scholars believe that the arrival of Indo-Iranian speaking populations into Western Iran was not the result of one mass migration, but instead small groups of nomadic pastoralists gradually infiltrated the region from the northeast over a long period of time, perhaps dating back to the early 2nd millennium BCE. These pastoralist groups gave rise to diverse cultural and linguistic groups, with one such group eventually coalescing into the people referred to by the Assyrians as the Medes. From the 9th century BCE onwards the Medes were well established in Western Iran and frequently clashed with the Assyrians, their powerful neighbors to the west.
Assyrian intervention in Median territories
At the start of the Iron Age, Zagros Mountains and the Iranian Plateau were politically fragmented in the extreme. The Assyrian sources of the 8th and 7th centuries BCE tell of a bewildering number of kings and chieftains who ruled areas of different sizes, most of which seem to have been very small. In referring to the Median rulers, the Assyrian texts use the title bēl āli (meaning "city lord"), a term for petty rulers who were not important enough to be called kings. Since there's no very large settlements in Median territory, bēl āli is sometimes translated as "chief" or "chieftain". From the Assyrian perspective, the Medes were a strange people living beyond the eastern fringes of the civilized world. Shalmaneser III (858-824 BC) was the first Assyrian king who made serious efforts to extend the power of his kingdom beyond the reaches of northern Mesopotamia, and he was the first Assyrian king to reach the Iranian Plateau. Although his army operated near Median territories in 843, 827, and 826 BCE, the Medes are not mentioned in the reports on these campaigns. Only once, in 834, did Shalmaneser sally forth from Parsua in order to attack four settlements in the regions of "Messi, Amadaya, Araziaš and Harhar." Among these, Amadaya can be identified as Media. Shalmaneser's attack was, however, a mere side show without any consequences since Media was not the focus of Shalmaneser's attention.