User:HistoryofIran/Medes

The Medes

History
Until the late 21th-century, scholarship generally agreed that the emergence of a Median "empire" took place following the collapse of the Assyrian Empire. The Median "empire" was said to have ruled over a vast chunk of the Ancient Near East until its last king, Astyages, was overthrown by his own vassal, Cyrus the Great. The historicity of these events were first put into question by the modern historian Heleen Sancisi‐Weerdenburg, whose works has revealed many of its complications and flaws. She especially criticized the asserted "imperial" system and style of the Medes, which she noted had noticeable contrasts with other imperial kingdoms of the Ancient Near East. She also highlighted that practically only Greek sources were used by modern historiography to construct Median history, and that Ancient Near Eastern sources were almost fully ignored. However, the majority of scholarship did not support her suggestions. In 2001, an international symposium was held in Padua to review all accessible sources in order to present an accurate as possible account of Median history. Due to the lack of sources, no consensus was reached. However, it was generally agreed that there was no proof of the existence of a Median "empire" and that it should therefore be considered a hypothesis.

The Medes (called Mādāya) are first attested in 834 BC by Assyrian texts, in relation to the invasion of Namri by the Neo-Assyrian king Shalmaneser III. During his

The Medes are afterwards repeatingly mentioned in Neo-Assyrian sources, particularly in royal inscriptions, where they are mostly represented as rivals of the Assyrians, as well as their vassals sometimes. The Medes also later appear in texts composed under the Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid empires, but no native Median text has survived, which portrays their point of view and agenda.