Introduction -

Mesopotamia housed distinct local populations belonging to the linguistic groups of Dravidian (agglutinative), Hurro-Urartian, (agglutinative), Sumeria (agglutinative) and later Semitic (Babylonian, Assyrian, Chaldean, flexive) languages. In the whirlwind of history, in the 5th mill. BC Sumerians entered the stage, no later than the 3rd mill. BC the Turkic tribes came to the fore, Indo-Aryan migrants started showing up at about 1500 BC, between 1000 and 900 BC Medians moved in, with their recurved bows attesting that they brought over the steppe nomadic technology never mastered by the Indo-Aryan migrants.

Between 1000 and 500 BC major upheavals shook the area, with Cimmerians and Scythians from the north assailing Assyrians, Babylonians, Medes, and the Assyrian tributaries Chaldeans, Egyptians, Lydians and Arameans. The scepter of local domination passed from Babylonians to Assyrians to Guties to Assyrians to Medes, to Scythians, back to Medes, back to the Iranian Achaemenid Empire, to Macedonian Greeks, Parthians, and finally to the Iranian Sassanid Empire. That clear and unambiguous sequence of events was successfully mangled by the European kulturträgers of the 19th c. that injected Iranian myths into the falsified Iranian prehistory, replacing real players with effigies of the pseudo-Iranian heroes. At every turn of the history, scientific research debunked falsification, but the unfading legends invented in the Sassanid time continue to serve nationalistic purposes of the politicians.

Terminology:

Iran - A name of a country from 1934, after the Turkic officer Reza Khan, title-name Reza Khan Mirpanj (رضا خان میرپنج), a commander of the Cossack Cavalry Brigade, staged a coup against the Qajar dynasty, and took a title-name Reza Khan Sardar Sepah (رضا خان سردار سپه). Upon being proclaimed a Shah, Reza Khan took a throne name Reza Shah Pahlavi (رضا پهلوی) (r. 1925 – 1941), and proclaimed his son Mohammad Reza a Crown Prince of Persia. Americans know him as their puppet the Shah of Iran. In 1935 the ancient official name of Persia was changed to Iran. In shaping history, Reza Khan followed in steps of the Achaemenid Cyrus II (Achaemenids, 550 – 330 BC), Partho-Sassanian Ardashir I (Sassanids, 224–651 AD), and Saman-Khudat (Samanids, 819–999), who shamelessly exploited the local Iranian patriotism for their ends.
Iranian - A western branch of Indo-Iranians, aka Indo-Aryans and Aryans, a group of E. European tribes of the 3rd mill. BC who migrated south-east to the Hindustan peninsula and Iranian plateau, reaching them ca 2000 BC and 1500 BC respectively. The term is collective supra-tribal and supra-political, its origin lays in the modern linguistic taxonomy of the Iranian linguistic branch, a subfamily of the Indo-European linguistic family. The genetic origin other than the native components is still undecipherable. They only became noticeable after 700 BC, so that the earlier dates are exaggerated guesses.
Semitic - An eastern branch of Afro-Asiatic languages of the people marked by predominant Y-DNA haplogroup J1c3 associated with Middle Eastern origins that spread from southwest Asia to Africa in a series of reciprocative movements
Dravidian - The exonym Dravidian refers to the native population of the Iranian Plateau marked by predominant haplogroups L1 Y-DNA and HV14 and U1a mtDNA. Nearly extinct in their native area, Dravidians migrated to and flourished in the Hindustan peninsula. Reportedly, Dravidians of the 5th mill. BC and later migrations brought agriculture to India. Some experts claim that they were the basis of the Mohenjo Daro and Harrapa civilization. On the Iranian Plateau, Dravidian languages were largely supplanted by dominant Persian languages by the 10th c. AD, while their culture and art gained monikers of “Sassanid art”, “Persian art”, etc.
Persians - Confederation of 10 tribes after Indo-Aryan peasant migrants reached Fars and coalesced in Fars ca 500BC. Fars is an allophone of Pars and Parth, a branch of the nomadic Dahae (Tokhars), that gave its name to the Persian coalition. Some of the native tribes were the Elamites of Fars. The term Persian originated as a toponym, it was a supra-ethnic term. The allied tribes encounter literate population and enter historical period as:
– leading tribes Pasargadai - most noble and hence nomadic including Achaimenidai clan, Maraphians, Maspians;
– peasant tribes Panthaliaians, Derusiaians, Germanians (Kerman, Karmania, Καρμανία, Kermania, Germania, Carmonia, Žermanya, Go'asheer, Bardesheer, translated as “bravery and combat”, i.e. Tr. “fortress” is likened to Tr. er “fortress”. Geographers have recorded Kerman's ancient name as "" (). );
– nomadic tribes Daoi, Mardians, Dropicans, Sagartians, Yautiyans, Uxians.

Mede history is a link between the old Mesopotamians like the Sumerians, Hurrians, Elamites and the later Semitic people from the south, who were then followed by the ancestors of the Persians. This is a critical attempt to find how this nation fits into the scheme of Mesopotamian history before the Persians came to power. Media originally was a northern Mesopotamian country located at first between the Caspean Sea on the north and the great rivers of Mesopotamia on the west. The area changed as a results of it's growth in power to become the Mede Empire (728 to 550BC) and later it's loss to the Persians. The people of course continued much longer in the area. The province of Atropane was it's center. The ties between the Medes and the Scythians are also very important as it caused the exodus of various tribes to the north and east, perhaps to escape Persian rule. I bring up various problems with the current presumption that the Medes were closely related to Iranian and therefore are considered to be IndoEuropeans. My goal is not to substitute an alternate solution, but to show that no solution is truly available due to lack of information about their language. Much of what we know is inconclusive presumptions.

When we talk about ancient history, we are not talking about hard and provable scientific facts, especially when discussing the events that occurred in the ancient world. We base much of our assumptions and modern interpretation of fragments, tainted by our current views and what we think we know about the past. If we are wrong about some things it can affect our judgment about many other of our assumptions as well. True there are few records of certain events that can be partially trusted, but even dates using various calendars are not always reliable. Our current Christian calendar was only introduced around 1000AD, long after the death of Christ. There were many dating methods in the past and we can't be sure that their relationships to one another is always correct. In the case of many languages of the area of Iran and Azerbaijan, such as the language of the Medes, not a single contemporary document nor a single monument remains from Media itself. Based on such a vacuum of data, the Medes were claimed to be IndoEuropeans. Hopefully this will explain why I have some reservations about the commonly propagated and "accepted" history and language of the Medes. To me the modern version of Mede history is more of a myth than facts. This also occurred with the earlier Mittani, who probably gave the name of the territory which later changed to Media.

The term Mede appears to be a geographical designation originally, rather than an ethnic one. It is rarely mentioned, but there was an earlier Mittani Empire (1500 to 1300BC) in roughly the same area as Media. These names are obviously very similar and perhaps they were related. The Mittani were aboriginal Hurrian -Subarian in language and in their time, there started a slow infiltration of IndoEuropean type speakers into the region. The predecessors of the later Persians were a multi-lingual coalition formed after 1000BC, and only became significant after 700BC. The Persian language could only have developed around this time frame into a unique language.

Old legends from Mesopotamia about the Mittani claim that their 40 clans came from the south, to escape growing Semitic tyranny at home. The same happened with some of the Sumerians who had to leave their homelands. The Babilonian Berossus, who translated the history of Mesopotamia into Greek, for Alexander the Great, apparently also equated the Mittani and Medes for some reason, in his timeline of history. It was Strabo in the 1st century AD that mentioned the similarity of Mede and Persian, long after the independence of Media was lost. As subjects of Persia they naturally would have learned the language of their rulers, even if they didn't abandon their own. Speaking multiple languages was the rule not the exception in the past. Even George Syncellos (?-810AD), who lived many years in Palestine and later moved to Byzanteum , in his great work Chronologia, wrote that there were two Mede empires one before the Assyrians and one after.

The Mittani

The belief that the Mittani were IndoEuropean is based upon a few Hindu deities mentioned in a Hittite document from the Mittani area, by a charriot horse trainer Kikkuli around 1400 BC, deities such as Mithra, Varuna, Indra, Nasatya,[¹] along with many other local gods that were not IndoEuropean. These Hindu gods are not known in Europe so that they cannot be IndoEuropean, but only Iranic at best which has been blown totally out of proportion. IndoEuropean is a purely linguistic category, and since the language of the Mittani was Hurrian, according to even the Hittites, they cannot possibly be called IndoEuropean just because the Hittite author was stationed in Mittani territory. It's a repeat of the old story of the tail waging the dog. That their treaties included gods of the their various ethnic communities is not unusual. This strangely lead to the conclusion that the Mittani rulers were also IndoEuropeans rather than Hurrian, even though their language and their documents were not in IndoEuropean nor Semitic language but in Hurrian. Most reference to the Mittani claim them to be IndoEuropean, even though at best this element was insignificant. The Mittani Empire did not last until the beginning of the Mede empire, because of their conquest and subjugation by the Hittites and Assyrians, however there is no reason to think that the people of the region could not have survived, even if there were other ethnic elements in Media. There is good reason to presume that the infiltration of Iranic and Hittite elements did over time affect their ethnic makeup, even though its not certain at all that it replaced their culture and language. Subjugation is paying tribute and some political control and not a demographic change. From the following information we can not prove that some amount of change did not happen, but we can show that since the names of Mittani rulers did not have Indo European names, a complete language replacement could not and did not happen. But that's just my politically incorrect opinion, it takes very little to convince our IndoEuropanists friends of the opposite, regardless of their lack of tangible evidence. They have done this with a host of other historic people in ancient history, so they can be made to appear to rule everywhere.The I.E. categorization of the Medes follows a similar method as was the case with the Mittani and is just as unjustifiable.

AN OUTLINE OF MEDIAN HISTORY

In their early history the Medes lived under various chiefs rather than a single king, just like their neighbors the Urartuans or even the Sumerians who had city states like the Greeks.

880 BC Arbaces destroyed the Assyrian capital Niniveh. /Diod. ii. 32 sqq
836 BC Assyrian conqueror Shalmaneser II, receives tribute from the Amadai during the wars against the tribes of the Zagros Mtns.
829 BC Urartu Hurrians win control of Mannai and Mada from Shasi Adad V.

812-782 BC Adad-nirari III claims subjection of Madai and Parsua.
800 BC Hadad-nirary defeated Kana-ziruka, the ruler of the Matiene region Medes

730 BC The Assyrian Tiglathpileser III encounters Parsua (Persian) folk in central Zagros mountains.

719 Sargon II establishes central Parsuash (Kirmansah) as an Assyrian province.

715. Diaukku (Herodotus' Deioces), a Mannaean or Median chieftain, joins Urartu in an anti Assyrian alliance. He is later captured by Sargon and exiled.

The Greek Herodotus also writes of Deioc(es), 728BC-675BC [Daiukku in Assyrian cuneiform documents] as the founder of the Mede royal house. His name Dayuku is Subartuan in origin according to König. The Subar, Supri were the natives of northern Mesopotamia, who probably preceded the Sumerian settlement in the south, from northern Mesopotamia. The Subarian name later was applied to the Sumerians through a *b>m sound shift by their neighbors, even though the Sumerians never called themselves, their land or their language by anything like that. The implication is that they were viewed somehow to be related or similar to Subarians. Later the Subarians remained in northern Mesopotamia in the land of Subartu, where they eventually allied with the western Huns, mentioned in the Avesta and became known as Sabirs, then becoming the basis of the Bulgars and Magyars as reported by the Byzanteen Emperor, Porpurogenitos concerning the Magyars . The source of the emperors statements derived from a visiting Magyar prince visiting his court.

712 Ukshatar (Cyaxares I), a rebellious chieftain of north Zagros, pays tribute to the Akkadian Sargon.

710 onwards Medes form extensive kingdom in north Iran.

The founder of the Mede state was a man called Arphaxad who was called Arbaces by the Greeks. In 708BC the Medes gained independence from Assyria, under the leadership of Arpha-xad. This name is much like the Scythian legend's Arpaxa(is), mentioned by Herodotus, and the Hurrian city-state of Arpad. In an article about Scythian vocabulary list, I wrote that Arpad means leader of men/army. Arpaxad was known as a dispenser of justice, who attracted people toward him as a leader of his people. A variant of the name Arbat or Árpád is commonly used in Turkic and Hungarian. 

700-650 Pursua (Persian) folk move south into Parsumash (Bakhtiari hills):

In 692, Sennacherib lists Anshan and Parsu-mash amongst his foes.

700-668 Cimmerian invasion of the Near East from Eastern Europe. They are also considered to be IndoEuropean for no known reason.

Mannai revolt joined by Ishpakaia, a Scythian (or Cimmerian)

678 BC Teushpa, a Cimmerian leader, breaks Assyrian hold on Kurdistan.

675?BC Teispes (Chishpish), son of Hakamanish of Parsumash, takes the land of Anshan.

674 BC Kashtaritu/Khshathrita (Pharaortes son of Deioces?) leads a coalition of Medes, Mannai and Cimmerians against Esarhaddon, the Assyrian ruler.

The next ruler who followed Arphaxad was Phraort(es) 675BC-653BC, who was also called Katrites. He extended his rule over the Iranian plateau as far as the Hindu Kush. He ruled for 22 years, and died in an unsuccessful war against the neighboring Assyrians. 

670 BC Khshatrhrita takes the land of Parsumash and reduces Teispes to vassalage.

660 BC The Assyrian king Assurbanipal regains Mannaean territory. 

653?BC Khshathrita dies, eventually succeeded by his son Khuvakh-shatra (Cyaxares II)

653-625 BC Scythian domination of western Iran and actually much of the Near East.

The Scythians from the north seized power for 28years. However at the end of this time their leaders were invited to a great banquet by the Medes and massacred. During the Scythian occupation the Medes reorganized their armies into independent units of horsemen, archers and infantry. Cyaxares added the Urartuan (Hurrian speaking) lands around lake Urmia and strengthened his power. Later they won a decisive victory over the Scyhians.

639 BC Cyrus I succeeds Teispes in Parsumash/Anshan; Ariaramnes succeeds Teispes, and becomes king of Parsa.

Cyaxar(es) was the next Mede ruler (625BC to 653BC) who organized an alliance against the Assyrians with the aid of the Chaldean Nebopalesar. Their attack on Assyria was unsuccessful partly because the Scythians under the leadership of Madyas sided with the Assyrians. The Scythians were very well paid off for their timely help. Madyas was given an Assyrian royal bride and the usual lands and wealth to go with it. 

625-585 BC Cyaxares II (Khuvakhshatra) rules Media and with the help of the Chaldean Nabopolassar, the Chaldean defeats Assyria and Urartu in 612 BC. The Medes then spread their control over northern Mesopotamia, Armenia and Cappadocia. When Cyaxares attacked Lydia, the kings of Cilicia and Babylon intervened and negotiated a peace in 585 BC, whereby the Halys river was established as the Mede's frontier with Lydia in 585BC.

584-550 BC Astyages suceeds Cyaxares in Media.
Astyag(es) [Istuvgu in cuneiform texts] (585BC-550BC) was the last Mede ruler, that was deposed by a palace coup in 593BC when the Persians took over as rulers. There were several Mede attempts after this, to regain independence from the Persians, but none succeeded. 

553-550 BC The Persian king Cyrus rebelled against the Mede king Astyages, son of Cyaxares and won a decisive victory in 550BC. He captured the Median capital city of Ekbatana (modern Hamadan). The Mede king was the grandfather of the wife of Cyrus. The Persian king Cyrus II (Kurus) was mentioned in Nabonidus' chronicle as King of Anshan. Cyrus then made peace with the Medians and consolidated a Persian - Median Empire by utilizing Median and Persian administrators known as "satraps".

Start of Achaemenid Persian Empire, 559BC - 530BC

549 BC Cyrus II subjugates his cousin Arsames and thereafter is mentioned by Nabonidus as king of Anshan and Parsu.

547 BC onwards Cyrus conquers Lydia and establishes Achaemenid Persian Empire.

409 BC A rebellion against Persian rule of Darius II.

The non Persian tribes of the north, especially the Cadusii were always troublesome and many expeditions of later Persian kings are recorded.

(Kad=tribe, Usi or Uzi are Turkic tribal names.)

330 BC Alexander the Great occupied Media.

In 328 Alexander appointed as satrap of Media a former general of Darius called Atropates (Atrupat), whose daughter was married to Perdiccas in 324, according to Arian.

Persian kings

Achaemenes Teispes
The "Teis-pes" name is Hurrian in origin, from their deity Teshub. Tuspa is a Urartuan-Hurrian name.

Cyrus I (Kurush) a name similar to an Assyrian title for governor. The kur, chur title was also a tribal ruler of the Huns and was also found in Türkic KÜR to mean courageous and fearless. Whether there was any link between the later and the Kurush name is unknown, but is not impossible since the Huns were in the vicinity of Iran according to the Avesta (ca 1000BC) , long before the documented appearance of the Huns next to China around 300BC.

Cambys(es) I (Kambiz)

Cyrus the Great, (Kyros)

THE MEDE LANGUAGE REMAINS

Richard Fry, the expert of Persian history summarized the situation as follows: "The Medes themselves were a mixture of indigenous and Iranian peoples... for their tribal names are also a mixture of Iranian(?) and non-Iranian names, in spite of all the attempts to explain them all from Iranian." To me all of the tribal names can be explained without the use of Persian although since we cannot know what the names signified, even this is nothing more than an educated guess just as the Iranic explanation.

Richard Fry further writes: "In Azerbaidzan (N.E. Iran) and Western-Iran, the Iranian newcomers came in contact with a larger settled inhabitants, who were not Indo-Europeans and these were the Urartuans, Manai, Hurrians. ... These were related to the "paleo-Caucasian" languages, which are sometimes called Japhetic languages.[²] South of them lived the Elamites and further east of them the Dravidian people of Makran, Seistan (aka Scythians) next to Sind (India)." None of these were Indo-European and yet Japhetic is being appropriated to mean IE, erasing with this euphemism the oldest Near Eastern languages. The Sumerians, Urartuans, Hurrians, Manai, Dravidians fell out of the Biblical story of the sons of Noah, even though they created the first great civilizations. According to Richard Fry the founders of the Achamenian dynasty of Persia were very likely Elamites. The Elamite language which was also the language of the written records in Persia was also not Semitic nor IndoEuropean, even though for some unknown reason the Bible links the Elamites to the sons of Shem, perhaps due to a later subjugation or political union.

The researcher of the ancient world, John Baldwin (1929-2015), stated the problem as follows: "The so called old Iranian documents were forced into being represented as Iranian history, which is illogical and created so much confusion, that it is hard to understand how it could have happened. Those who see nothing else except Persians in the prehistory of Iran and coolly reject dynasties before Gilshah as mere fairy tales, do nothing or worse than nothing with the Pesdadians and then commence the histories with the Kaiani dynasty, and then add to them the most famous of the Pesdadian kings. They contrive this to begin only in 600 BC. With such methods all of this becomes Iranian history and Zoroaster is to be from the age of Darius Hystaspes." Since the pre-Sasanian history of the Avesta didn't exist except as oral tradition, and was written down in the 9th through the 11th century in the so called Pahlavi books, it was written in the language of the latest times. Its original could have been anything else.

Persian experts like Richard Fry claim that at best some of the Mede ethnic elements were Iranians, but many were not. In the beginning, none of the Mede ethnic elements were Iranians, but eventually at the end of the Achaemenid period they would have been diluted by Iranic immigrants. The Greek historian Herodotus also separates the Persians as "artai" and the Medes as "aryan". This term "aryan" has nothing to do with a race or even a language group, and has been hijacked by the Europeans, especially the Germans, to give the word an unintended new meaning. The literature of the time of these nations used the term independent of the language type! It just refers to the ruling elite, of any type of ethnic group or language.

The Uralic, Altaic, Sumerian, Dravidian term URU for blood, town (clan residence), clan relations, power and strength etc are linked to the term ary/er/erim for clan chief so that the term "aryan" is nothing more than a variation of this term for blood lines, clans/family and their strongman, ruler.  Slaves of course did not have clan affiliations or a chief.

The Persians took over the Mede Empire by means of a palace coup over their Mede rulers, however even the so called first Persian royal house "achamenian" were partly of Mede descent, with Hurrian-Mede names.

THE SIX MEDIAN TRIBES MENTIONED BY HERODOTUS

Herodotus mentioned the 6 Mede ethnic "tribes", some of which are similar to the Scythian tribal names. For this reason the two groups are often associated to each other. Scythians with origins from the area of Media included the famous Amazons, Sarmatians, Paralati. They too have been hijacked by the Europeans to be singularly Indo-European on equally unproven grounds. The following explanations of the tribal names are by no means conclusive and simply illustrate how guessing based on linguistics can produce a great variety of results, without any of it being certain.

1. The "Busae" group supposed to derive from the Persian term "buza" which means the aboriginals < not Iranians>. We know that the aboriginals couldn't have called themselves by such meaningless name and that the aboriginals of Iran were not Indo-Europeans. It may very well be their name which was later used to refer to them as natives. However in that case it had a different meaning to the natives themselves. Was this really based on an originally Iranian term or their own designation is not known for certain. I believe that there may be a relation to the Scythian "pasi-ani" which in Turkic became "petchegen ", which in Hungarian is Besenyö. This tribe was often allied with the Parthians. The Turkic "Petchegen" from Bečenek meant "inlaws" and was the marital partner tribe of the Kangars in the area bordering the Aral Sea.

2. The second group is called " Parae-tak-(eni)" in Persian and it supposedly came to mean nomads. This name is much like the Scythian "Para-la-ti", one of the royal tribes ruled by the Scythian Kolaxis[³], but its doubtful that it meant simply nomads. Similarly in Sumerian the term bar=rib, boundary, wastelands. It was in such lands that were useless for cultivation that the "nomads" and shepherds worked their flocks. (Hungarian "par-lag", Sumerian "par-im", Scythian "para-la-ti" perhaps are linked). Generally the nobility did not have anything to do with farmers and lived a semi nomadic life, which offered a lot more leisure and freedoms from repetitive chores. By no means was this "nomadic" culture" a lower culture than those of the simple settled farmers as European scholars of the past have claimed. Perhaps there is also a link to Turkic paraltto shine, make shining (rendered in English “Sublime”); because of their homophony. The Etruscans also originated, before their move into Europe, from North Western Anatolia, and in their language their ruler or commander was called a "parnix" which reminds me of Hungarian "parancs" that means a command, in other words a commander. Could the prince of Troy, called Paris, be related to this? All of these are nothing but guesses and have little historic substance, without local validation, since words can be twisted and turned to fit many situations.

3.The third group is called "Stru­-khat". Here the term "Chat, Khat, Had, Geta" can mean clan or clan territory as in Scythian "xoda", Uralic "xonta", Turkic "guz", Hungarian "had" and Dravidian languages or "KAATI" which means the royal house of the Hatti. The term STRU in Mesopotamia meant to cover, while Turkish "chatir" and Hungarian "shátor" or Sumerian "sudug" means a simple tent or a temporary cover or shelter. If this is relevant then these people also lived in a portable shelters in a nomadic way. We can't be certain however that the interpretation is valid, since we don't know anything about Median vocabulary, let alone grammar.

4. The fourth tribe was the "Ari-­zan-ti" Note that the "-ti" suffix is the plural suffix in proto Uralic and proto Turkic languages. The " hari, ari, khari" name may derive from the name of the highlands and mountains of northern Mesopotamia and was also the ethnic name of the Hurrians. A similar name in Hurrian is "iuri" that meant lord. This word is usually latched onto by I.E. scholars as "aryan", which they misinterpret to be unique to Iranic and IndoEuropean. Yet Herodotus does not even call the Persians "aryan", but the Medes! The term is found all over the Near East to mean the same thing strength, power, dominance, rule in non IE languages.

Sumerian ur "sir,lord, title of kings and gods", uru "strong, mighty"
Hungarian ur "sir, lord, master", erö=strength, erös "strong"
Hurrian iuri "lord, king"
FinnoUgrian *uras "strong dominant male"
Turkic erik "strong male", iri "big, mighty"
Dravidic ur-am "force, bravery"

The term "zanti" however could refer to a tribal name and if we take into consideration the centum/kentum dialectal variation then Zanti can be Khanti or Hanti or Hun, which is also a tribal designation that doesn't refer to any specific tribal group. There were Khanti in Ugrian and there were Xiung Nu near China and there are Kion Huns mentioned in the Avesta and Hunas written on the walls of Persepolis, the old capital of Persia. These need not be identical related people, but they are likely to be the predecessors or even close relations of the later Turko-Hun people. That of course is also speculative, but less ridiculous than the unexplained reason for calling Medes Iranians ethnically. Iran should be used as a geographical term, which is still inhabited by a large number of diverse ethnic elements with their own languages. This was even more like that in the distant past, before the infiltration from the north of the ancestors of the Persians who were probably greatly diluted by the locals. We know that even the oldest native peoples living there were not related to the old Persians linguistically. Yet they were Iranians in the sense that their homeland was Iran.

5. The fifth group was the "Budii". A similar name was mentioned by the Greek historian Herodotus living amongst the Scythians north of the Black Sea by the name "Budi-ni" as well as the eastern Saka. The -ni ending is another type of plural suffix. Budha was of the tribe "Budha"., which was Scythian "sakiya" in Sanskrit documents. The name could also be related to BUDIN the non noble masses in Turkic languages. They were serfs and workmen, rather than nobles and warriors. We can't be sure that the name did not go through some distortions causing us to misinterpret it based on our currently inadequate knowledge of history, nor can we be sure that the proper language we use to interpret is valid. Ancient history after all is 90% biased guesses and a sprinkling of reliable evidence. A name taken out of context can be interpreted in many ways.

6.The sixth tribe, which is also stated by many experts to be non Iranian, is the Magi. They were a priestly class, who were the carriers of not Iranian religion but ancient Mesopotamian religion deriving possibly from the Sumerians, Babylonians and Hurrians. This religion was later reformed by Zoroaster, who some have claimed to be of Median origin [⁴], who introduced his reforms in Iran, before there was a Persia. Zoroaster's date of birth is not known but is estimated by Avesta experts to be in the range of 1000BC to 800BC. The Magi name implies also a link with the language of the Sumerians, who called their language "Emegir", which is usually translated from the Sumerian language to mean the "princely or noble tongue". Simplified, over time to Magi. The old religion of the Sumerians was adopted all over Mesopotamia and its priestly tongue remained emegir or emegi, or Magi. The Magian religion had spread into Central Asia probably as early as the time of Sumerian rule. The later schism between Zoroastreanism, which was adopted by the Persians and the old Magian religion was one of the main reasons for the long standing feud between Iran and Turan, which is described in their religious books known as the Avesta. This change eventually resulted in changing the local Magian religious language to an early form of Persian when it was finally written down in the 9th century AD. Generally the eastern areas of Iran and beyond as well as some of the Medes clung to the older form of the Magian faith. Although many of the Medes eventually became Zoroastreans as did many western Huns living in Turan. Zoroaster may have originated in Media, although apparently his countrymen rejected his new religion at first, which attempted to eliminate certain "negative" features of their ancient faith, much like Protestanism reformed the Catholic faith. That also didn't go smoothly and caused Christian infighting.

MEDE PERSONAL NAMES

König writes that there are no Mede basic words that are known for sure, only personal names or titles. However there are a handful which are perhaps from Mede that were recorded by Herodotus (484-425BC). Words like "spaka" (k/s and p/b alteration Turkicköbäk) for dog, "čithra" for divine glory, "zura" for evil (Turkic. šär for evil, Hungarian szörnyü=horrible),while "zura-ka" for evil doer. ( Hungarian and Sumerian -ik, -og are verbative suffixes) Obviously there must be more remaining words from Mede, although we have no way of recognizing them. Early Mede names are known from two Assyrian military reports. The first from 800BC that lists 28 names. Of these 19 are certainly not Iranian and 4 are Chaldean-Urartuan-Hurrian, 4 are unknown, leaving one which "might be" Iranian. The second report is from ca. 700 BC and lists 26 names. Of these 5 sound "sort of" Iranian, the others are not. It would be interesting to know what names they are referring to in many articles that claim that the Mede rulers were mainly IndoEuropeans. The reason for this claim is not explained in the articles I have seen. Even if true the few Persian sounding names only proves the possibility of Persian allies. It's quite obvious that there was a strong Mede influence on the Persians, so that Mede personal names were also present in Persia, which replaced the Median Empire. These could then become interpreted later to be Persian. The question might be considered whether these words have a meaningful Persian etymology? Here are examples of Mede names.

Gobrias was the governor of Kurdistan and a Mede.
Mazares and Harpagos were Medes who conquered Ionia for Cyrus.

It was the Assyrians who first recorded the name of the new Mede nation as "Mata", which is based on an ancient Mesopotamian word for a land area rather than any IndoEuropean or Iranian word. The name Mada however is presumed to come from Indo-European for "middle". The question is, middle of what? This label has little value in defining a people and therefore it is unacceptable. I propose that it may have represented the land, where the 6 tribal names coexisted. The Mata word and its use is found in many old languages such as:

Ancient Anatolian ma =earth

Sumerian ma-ta, ma=land+ta=locative suffix,
Finnugor maGhe=land, (Finn,Estonian,Chuvash,Zurjen,Vogul etc ma=land)
Parthian megala=province,
Old Hungarian magha =land and megye=province. gy is similar to dj.
Old Egyptian mat =land.
Old Japanese ma =country, land
Maidu Indian(of California) ma=place, land of
Maya Indian (of Mexico) ma =land

Obviously we are dealing with a very ancient word because it is so widely spread. To my expected critics of including American Indian languages to this comparison, let me reassure them that these similarities are not singular coincidences, but have a broader vocabulary base in the Americas than they could imagine.[⁵]

A legend remains about a dream of the Mede king Astyages, before the rule of the Persian Cyrus. In a dream Astyages dreamed that from the womb of his daughter Mandane a river flows and grows into a mighty sea, which overwhelms Asia. Later in another dream he dreams that from the womb of his daughter a grape vine grows, which grows into a great giant tree that covers Asia. This dream foretold of a new empire, which would topple his own but would be an offshoot of it.

A similar dream is told over 1,000 years later about the Árpád dynasty kings of Hungary. Where in a dream Emese, the mother of the royal clan dreams that a sacred Turul eagle descended upon her (the holy spirit) to impregnate her and from her womb a river flowed, which grew in strength and flowed westwards. Overflowing the mountains and then from it a great golden (royal) tree grew in the west. This prophesized the rule of the Arpad house kings in Central Europe, but also having bloodlines in France, Spain, England, Germany, Poland, Greece, often as local saints.

There seems to me a marked similarity in the two legends, one foretelling the end of the Mede (Mada) Empire and the beginning of the Persian one and the other foretelling the beginning of a new central European Magyar kingdom. Considering that both nations were founded by an "Arpad/Arpoxad" and both share a similar name Mada/Madja~ Magya seems even more curious, but certainly not conclusive. There is however plenty of proof that Magyars also lived in this area long ago found in later Armenian and Papal records as well as the presence of many military and administrative titles that have Assyrian origin. These titles were used by the Magyars during their occupation of Hungary in the 10th century. Horka (Harku a minor king), Tarján &Turkic Tarkhan? (Tartan the engineering corps of the army), Kündü (Kundu is the link or emmisary to god), Kádár (Kudur to do with law and judgement ), Solt & Zsolt (Salat noble from kings family), Kusan (Khasánu vice king), Vezér (Vizir =military commander), zakan a title of Arpád (Zakhanu a form of magistracy, governing) possibly linked to khagan. All of these had similar meaning./⁶ A province of the Magyars was known as Lebedi, which the Greeks mistook to originate from a Magyar prince named Lebedi, although it originated in Mesopotamia where Labuttu means a province in Assyrian. The presence of so many common terms with similar meaning cannot be a coincidence. Some of this is explained as Turkic borrowings but here we have something quite early and in the vicinity of Subartu, which was claimed to be the homeland of the Magyars in the 9th century. If you look at our maps you can see that early forms of the name Turk is also to be found there. This is identical to the claims of the origin of the Magyars by the Magyar prince visiting Byzanteum. 

The image from the old Persian capital, Persepolis showing a Mede and a Persian. It is worth noting that the Mede is dressed as a horseman with boots and riding pants, while the Persian and most IndoEuropeans were dressed in flowing robes that were not convenient for horse riding. The Mede also carries a Scythian style bow & arrow case hanging from his belt. These trappings were common among the Scythians, Huns, Turks and Hungarians. Early Hungarian clothes culture has many ties to northern Iranian apparel and many carry their old names as well.

If we gather together the names referred to as Median, we discover that almost all are non-Iranian, and most are Urartuan, Hurrian or Elamite in origin. When western historians claim that the Medes are Persian type of Iranians and also that their language is unknown, they make a mockery of science and base everything on 19th century racist biases, without conclusive proofs. Since Europeans spend the most money on historic research and most others very little, they have rewritten much of the world's history to aggrandize themselves, with little effective opposition.

Yet I cannot truly believe that the Mede (Mada) language is not represented in the ancient records, since they were an important element in the Persian Empire. Perhaps it is undetected, simply because it does not agree with the presumptions of biased historians. The trilingual inscriptions of Behistun dealing with the so called "Scythian text", which is non Iranian and according to some is distantly related to Ural-Altaic, is probably Mede, since it was a prominent language in the Persian Empire! [⁷] This evaluation was from before modern times, before the Scythians were recast into a new Indo European image, by modern European historians, who threw the older history books into the garbage and ignored even the claims of their own early orientalists. I don't claim that these old references were completely reliable, but then nothing is.

At the same time, while this group is claimed also to be "Scythic" it is not identical to the "Scythians" of the Black Sea, since the Medes have many ties to the Hurrians and Elamites and by Herodotus time were overrun by Iranian immigrants.

Yet there were some groups amongst the Scythians of Eastern Europe that were claimed to originate from Media, with the same names as the Mede tribes, showing a common Mesopotamian origin of both the Scythians and Medes. (Budi/Budini, Paraetakeni/Paralati, the Amazons ) etc. Herodotus also mentioned the coming of the Scythians into Eastern Europe from south of the Caucasus Mtn. Some of the Magyars also moved to these same areas in Eastern Europe along with them.

Another major evidence against the Iranian origin of the Medes is that Berossus, the Babylonian priest, who wrote down the ancient history of Mesopotamia for the benefit of Alexander the Great, claimed that the Medes were ancient Mesopotamians in origin. Perhaps he was referring to the Mittani in this case rather than the Medes. That is possible. Indeed his timetables imply that they were much the same as the Sumerians, some of whose remnants came north after the loss of their homeland to the Semitic Akkadians. This could be interpreted as associating the Magi tribe's origin to the rest of the Mede tribes.

CONCLUSION

One must always be careful in accepting broad sweeping generalizations of identity when talking of events thousands of years earlier. From the Mede ethnic names alone one can see that these six Mede tribes are not the same nor Iranian, else they would share a common name. The exception being that the names imply classes of a common society.. which sometimes also have different origins. Yet there is likely a seed of truth in the statements of Berossus even if his lists seem to be so different from our current understanding of history. The view of Berossus may be based on one of the six Mede groups, who are the carriers of ancient traditions and language. It is generally agreed that the Magi are the most likely carriers of a reformed form of the early Sumerian religion, which remained almost unchanged in the religious motifs of the Hurrians-Urartuans. However none of these early groups needs to be prePersian or Iranian. Just like the Hittites were not the same as the local native Hatti. Their name was simply taken over by their new masters. Even the Hittite language was less than 20% indo European. Even this percentage can be an exaggeration, since terms that are more than just IE cannot be claimed to be IE in origin as is generally done.

The evidence indicates that a portion of the ancient Sumerians also came from the north originally, from the direction of the Caucasus Mtns. Their close relations to the northern Mesopotamian city of Arata near Urartu implies this. Their traditions of the longest and shortest day, also indicates their northern origins. Their building mountain like temples to simulate their sacred mountains in their ancient northern homelands, in the Caucasus could be seen as a possibility. The presence of the so called Caucasus type racial element amongst them, now known as "Armenoid" as well as so called "Asianic" types set them apart from the curly haired and hairy Semites and Persians. Unfortunately we cannot definitively place the Medes to belong to a single linguistic group with trustworthy facts to support it and must admit that they were perhaps a mixture or simply of an unknown types of natives. Often it is much better to say that we don't know something than to invent something, which then becomes a dogma.