Chalybes

Background and history

The Chaldoi, Chalybes, Mossynoikoi, and Tibareni, are counted among the first ironsmith nations by classical authors. Χάλυψ, the tribe's name in Ancient Greek, means "tempered iron, steel", a term that passed into Latin as chalybs, "steel". Sayce derived the Greek name grc from Hittite hit, "land of Halys River". More than an identifiable people or tribe, "Chalybes" was a generic Greek term for "peoples of the Black Sea coast who trade in iron" or "a group of specialised metalworkers".

The main sources for the history of the Chaldoi are accounts from classical authors, including Homer, Strabo, and Xenophon. Xenophon encountered them during the march of the Ten Thousand to the Black Sea and describes them in his Anabasis as "the most valiant of all the peoples [the Ten Thousand] passed through, and would come to hand-to-hand encounter." He reports that they dwelt in strongholds. In Xenophon's Cyropaedia, Cyrus the Great helps the Armenians and Chaldians resolve a dispute over agricultural land.

In Roman times, the Chaldaei (homonymous but unrelated to the Semitic Chaldeans) and Chalybes are mentioned by Plutarch (Lucull. c. 14) as settled in Pontus and Cappadocia, or the Pontus Cappadocicus section of the Roman province of Pontus.

Pliny the Elder mentioned the Armenochalybes, a tribe residing between Trebizond and Armenia.

Despite the ancient Greeks connecting the Chalybes to Scythians, some modern historians argue the Chalybes were a Georgian tribe. Historian Kalistrat Salia claims the Georgian ethnicity of the Chalybes is "indisputable". According to Sallia, the Zans, a Kartvelian ethnic group from present-day Turkey, are their descendants. According to the 7th-century Geography of Armenia, the Chaldians called the Black Sea Kakamar, which may have an Indo-European etymology (the Greek root kak- 'ill' + mar, the Indo-European root for 'sea').

References

Bibliography

References

1. Apollonius Rhodius. "The Argonautica".
2. [[Strabo]], xi., 14.5
3. Vassaleva, Maya. (31 December 1998). "The Greek Colonisation of the Black Sea Area". Franz Steiner Verlag.
4. Diakonoff, I. M.. (1984). "The Pre-History of the Armenian People". Caravan Books.
5. (2020). "The metal behind the myths: iron metallurgy in the south-eastern Black Sea region". Antiquity.
6. Xenophon. ''Anabasis''. Book 4, Chapter 7, [https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0202%3Abook%3D4%3Achapter%3D7%3Asection%3D15 Sections 15–17]
7. Xenophon. ''Cyropaedia''. Book 3, [http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0204%3Abook%3D3%3Achapter%3D2 Chapter 2]
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9. Pliny. ''The Natural History''. Book 6. [http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Plin.%20Nat.%206.4&lang=original Chapter 10]
10. Salia, Kalistrat. (1983). "History of the Georgian Nation". University of Wisconsin.
11. Hewsen, Robert H.. (2001). "Armenia: A Historical Atlas". University of Chicago Press.