Massagetae

MASSAGETAE (Gk. Massagétai), a mighty nomadic tribe reckoned to be Scythians already by Herodotus (1.201, 1.204.1; see also Stephanus Byzantius, s.v.), who settled somewhere in the wide lowlands to the east of the Caspian Sea and the southeast of the Aral Sea on the Ust-Urt Plateau and the Kyzylkum Desert, in particular probably between the Oxus (Āmū Daryā) and Jaxartes (Syr Daryā) rivers. But the exact localization of the Massagetae is rather problematic for a number of reasons: e.g., the information of the ancient authors mentioning them is not always precise enough; the last source cannot be ascertained in every particular case; Herodotus’ report, our main source, seems to be based partly on Hecataeus of Miletus and partly on oral informants, and the whole is often mixed up. One main point in issue is the question what river is meant by the name Aráxēs, which is often given as the northern frontier of the Achaemenid Empire, beyond which the Massagetae lived: the Oxus (thus, e.g., Herrmann, 1914, p. 8; 1930, cols. 2125 f.), the Jaxartes, or even the Volga (but maybe also the Aras [see ARAXES]; see Herrmann, 1914, p. 18 n. 1); and this question is further complicated by the fact that the course of the Oxus in antiquity is not absolutely clear, since some sources speak of its flow into the Caspian Sea. Therefore scholars localize the Massagetae partly around the Oxus delta or the Jaxartes delta, partly between the Caspian Sea and the Aral Sea or even more to the north or northeast, but in any case without really conclusive arguments. Wherever they may have lived, obviously they had invaded that land from the east, since they are said to have besieged the Scythians, who then withdrew westwards (Herodotus 4.11.1).

The information on the Massagetae given by Greek (or Graeco-Roman) sources is of greatly varying value (although it is to be obtained in any case from the reports on Cyrus’s campaign against them, as we read already in Strabo 11.6.2, 11.8.6) and is often contradictory. The most detailed description is found in Herodotus, who, however, does not reveal his sources. He expounds his account about the Massagetae in the section (esp. 1.202–14), where Cyrus II waged war on them (possibly to make safe former conquests in Chorasmia and Sogdiana). The course of that campaign is not known in detail (but cf. Iustinus 1.8; Polyaenus, Strategica 8.28). After first having asked for their queen Tomyris’s hand in vain, Cyrus crossed the frontier and in the end fell in the decisive battle, when also the major part of his army has been destroyed by Tomyris (Herodotus 1.214.2–3). They seem to have been subjugated by Darius I (thus Polyaenus 7.11.6) and from then on were part of the Achaemenid Empire, but they are not mentioned as such in the various lists of lands or peoples. They must be included in one of the diverse Saka groups distinguished there, maybe the Sakā tigraxaudā “with the pointed caps” (thus Junge, 1939, p. 80, etc.). But one should not overlook that among the 24 nations depicted on the plinth of the famous Darius statue as no. 12 are listed “Saka of the marshes and Saka of the plains” with an expression that reminds one of Strabo 11.8.6, who distinguishes four groups of Massagetae living on the islands, the marshes, the mountains, and the plains.

The name Massagétai mostly and most plausibly is explained as the plural form (containing the suffix East Ir. *-tā, reflected in Gk. -tai) of *Masi̯a-ka-, which can be understood as a regular derivation with Ir. *-ka- from *masi̯a- “fish” (= YAv. masiia-, Ved. mátsya- “id.”; cf., i.a., Marquart, 1905, p. 78 and 240). This lexeme does not describe the people explicitly, however, as “fish-eaters”; owing to the basic function of the suffix (and to parallel formations) one may just as well think of “being concerned with fish, i.e., fishing, fisherman”. Also the other objection raised, that instead of *masi̯a- a derivation from Ir. *kapa- “fish” (cf. Oss. kæf) would be expected, is not decisive. More important is that the Massagetae are expressly said to eat primarily (raw) fishes, plenty of which are found in the Oxus river (see also Schmitt, 2006, p. 251). Other interpretations of the name that can be found here and there (see Kothe, pp. 58f.), are linguistically unacceptable. Moreover it should be added that Massagé-tai looks like the Grecized plural form of the personal name Masságēs (Herodotus 7.71; see Schmitt, 2011, p. 247; Humbach and Faiss, p. 12).

Later the Massagetae seem to have become absorbed into the Dahae, who once appear in an inscription of Xerxes (XPh 26), but are known to the Greeks only from Alexander’s time on, and finally they are no more mentioned at all, since those Dahae became the most influential power of that region. In Roman times the Massagetae are only known and mentioned as one of the notable Scythian tribes (Pliny, Natural History 6.50; Pomponius Mela 1.13), and Ammianus Marcellinus (22.8.38, 23.5.16, 31.2.12) identifies them with the Alans of his time (cf. also Cassius Dio 69.15). For Stephanus Byzantius (s.vv.) the Apasiákai (who already Polybius 10.48 has between Oxus and Tanais) and the Augásioi are Massagetian subdivisions, and probably also the Dérbikes were part of them, because according to Ctesias (frag. 9, par. 7) Cyrus’s campaign was directed against that tribe.

P. Briant, État et pasteurs au Moyen-Orient ancien, Cambridge and Paris, 1982.

A. Herrmann, Alte Geographie des unteren Oxusgebiets, Berlin, 1914.

Idem, “Massagetai,” in Pauly–Wissowa, RE XIV/2, 1930, cols. 2123–29.

H. Humbach and K. Faiss, Herodotus’s Scythians and Ptolemy’s Central Asia: Semasiological and Onomasiological Studies, Wiesbaden, 2012.

J. Junge, Saka-Studien: Der ferne Nordosten im Weltbild der Antike, Leipzig, 1939 (Klio, Beiheft 41).

Cited and Credit:

Rüdiger Schmitt, “MASSAGETAE,” Encyclopædia Iranica, online edition, 2018, available at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/massagetae (accessed on 11 April 2018).Massagetae