Tugdamme

Around 675 BCE, the Cimmerians under Tugdammi, in alliance with the Urartian king Rusa II carried out a military campaign to the west, against Muški (Phrygia), Ḫate (the Neo-Hittite state of Melid), and Ḫaliṭu (either the Alizōnes or the Khaldoi);[12] this campaign resulted in the invasion and destruction of the kingdom of Phrygia, whose king Midas II committed suicide.[13][9][6] The Cimmerians appear to have consequently partially subdued the Phrygians, and an Assyrian oracular text from the later 670s BCE mentioned the Cimmerians and the Phrygians, who had possibly been subdued by the Cimmerians, as allies against the Assyrians' newly conquered province of Meliddu.[11][9] A document from 673 BCE records Rusa II as having recruited a large number of Cimmerian mercenaries, and Cimmerian allies of Rusa II probably participated in a military expedition of his in 672 BCE.[13] From 671 to 669 BCE, Cimmerians in service of Rusa II attacked the Assyrian province of Šubria near the Urartian border.[14][9]

At yet unknown dates, the Cimmerians imposed their rule on Cappadocia, invaded Bithynia, Paphlagonia and the Troad,[13] and took the recently founded Greek colony of Sinope, whose initial settlement was destroyed and whose first founder Habrōn was killed in the invasion, and which was later re-founded by the Greek colonists Kōos and Krētinēs.[15] Along with Sinope, the Greek colony of Cyzicus was also destroyed during these invasions and had to be later re-founded.[16]

In the beginning of that decade, the Cimmerians attacked the kingdom of Lydia,[13] whose king Gyges contacted the Neo-Assyrian Empire beginning in 667 BCE.[17] Gyges soon defeated the Cimmerians in 665 BCE without Assyrian help, and he sent Cimmerian soldiers captured while attacking the Lydian countryside as gifts to Esarhaddon's successor, Ashurbanipal.[18][11] According to the Assyrian records describing these events, the Cimmerians already had formed sedentary settlements in Anatolia.[17]

Assyrian records in 657 BCE of a "bad omen" for the "Westland" might have referred to either another Cimmerian attack on Lydia,[18] or a conquest by Tugdammi of the western possessions of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, possibly Quwê or somewhere in Syria,[19] following their defeat by Gyges.[17] These Cimmerian aggressions worried Esarhaddon about the security of the north-west border of the Neo-Assyrian Empire enough that he sought answers concerning this situation through divination,[11] and as a result of these Cimmerian conquests, by 657 BCE the Assyrian divinatory records were calling the Cimmerian king by the title of šar-kiššati ("King of the Universe"), a title which in the Mesopotamian worldview could belong to only a single ruler in the world at any given time and was normally held by the King of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. These divinatory texts also assured to Esarhaddon that he would eventually regain the kiššūtu, that is the world hegemony, captured by the Cimmerians: the kiššūtu, which was considered to rightfully belong to the Assyrian king, had been usurped by the Cimmerians and had to be won back by Assyria. Thus, the Cimmerians had become a force feared by Esarhaddon, and Tugdammi's successes against Assyria meant that he had become recognised in the ancient Near East as equally powerful as Esarhaddon. This situation remained unchanged throughout the rest of the 650s BCE and the early 640s BCE.[17]

As the result of these Assyrian setbacks, Gyges could not rely on Assyrian support against the Cimmerians and he ended diplomacy with the Neo-Assyrian Empire.[17]

The Cimmerians under Tugdammi attacked Lydia for a third time in 644 BCE: this time, they defeated the Lydians and captured their capital, Sardis, and Gyges died during this attack.[18][11][13] After sacking Sardis, Lygdamis led the Cimmerians into invading the Greek city-states of Ionia and Aeolis on the western coast of Anatolia, which caused the inhabitants of the Batinētis region to flee to the islands of the Aegean Sea, and later Greek writings by Callimachus and Hesychius of Alexandria preserve the record that Lygdamis had destroyed the Artemision of Ephesus during these invasions.[17]

After this third invasion of Lydia and the attack on the Asiatic Greek cities, around 640 BCE the Cimmerians moved to Cilicia on the north-west border of the Assyrian empire, where Tugdammi allied with Mugallu, the king of Tabal, against Assyria, during which period the Assyrian records called him a "mountain king and an arrogant Gutian (that is a barbarian) who does not know how to fear the gods." However, after facing a revolt against himself, Tugdammi allied with Assyria and acknowledged Assyrian overlordship, and sent tribute to Esarhaddon, to whom he swore an oath. Tugdammi soon broke this oath and attacked the Assyrian Empire again, but he fell ill and died in 640 BCE, and was succeeded by his son Sandakšatru, who attempted to continue Tugdammi's attacks against Assyria but failed just like his father.[18][11][17][20][21][22]

Due to the fame of Tugdamme, or possibly due to intermarriages between Cimmerian and Carian rulers at the time when the Cimmerians were operating in western Anatolia in the 7th century BCE, the name of this king was adopted by Carians, such as the satrap Lygdamis I of Halicarnassus and his great-grandson, the tyrant Lygdamis II of Halicarnassus. From Caria, this name also spread among the ancient Greeks, and was borne by the tyrant Lygdamis of Naxos, as well as by a champion of the Olympic Games from the city of Syracuse in Sicily who was also named Lygdamis.[23]