Tomyris

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Tomyris

Tomyris (the Greek form of Tahm-Rayiš, her original Iranian name) was the queen who reigned over the Massagetae

Massagetae

The Massageteans or Massagetaeans were an Ancient Iranian peoples of antiquity known primarily from the writings of Herodotus. Their name was probably akin to Getae and Thyssagetae....
, an Iranic people

Iranian peoples

Caspian Sea

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Tomyris Plunges the Head of the Dead Cyrus Into A Vessel of Blood By Alexander Zick

Tomyris (the Greek form of Tahm-Rayiš, her original Iranian name) was the queen who reigned over the Massagetae

Massagetae

Iranian peoples

Caspian Sea

The Caspian Sea is the largest enclosed body of water on Earth by area, variously classed as the List of lakes by area or a full-fledged sea. It has a surface area of 371,000 square kilometers and a volume of 78,200 cubic kilometers ....
, at approximately 530 B.C. In Persian texts, ????????, is the way her name is written.

The names of Tomyris and her son, Spargapises, who was the head of her army, are of Iranian

Iranian peoples

The Iranian peoples are an ethnic and linguistic branch of Indo-European peoples, living mainly in Iranian plateau and beyond in central-, southern-, and southwestern Asia and southeastern Europe....
origin. Since the historians who first wrote of her were Greek and theirs was the language of the educated for centuries, however, so the Hellenic form of her name is used most frequently.

The Greek historians recorded that she "defeated and killed" the Persian

Persian Empire

The 'Persian Empire' was a series of successive Iranian or Persianization empires that ruled over the Iranian plateau, the original Persian homeland, and beyond in Southwest Asia, South Asia, Central Asia and the Caucasus....
emperor Cyrus the Great

Cyrus the Great

Cyrus the Great , , also known as Cyrus II of Persia and Cyrus the Elder, was a Persian people Shah . He was the founder of the Persian Empire under the Achaemenid dynasty, an empire, perhaps the most wealthy and magnificent in history....
during his invasion and attempted conquest of her country. Herodotus

Herodotus

Herodotus of Halicarnassus was a Greeks historian who lived in the 5th century BC and is regarded as the "Father of History" in Western culture....
, who lived from approximately 484 B.C. to 425 B.C., is the earliest of the classical writers to give an account of her career, writing almost one hundred years later. Her history was well known and became legendary. Strabo

Strabo

Strabo was a Ancient Greeks history, geography and philosophy....
, Polyaenus

Polyaenus

Polyaenus or Polyenus was a 2nd century Macedonian author, known best for his Stratagems in War , which has been preserved. The Suda calls him a rhetorician, and Polyaenus himself writes that he was accustomed to plead causes before the emperor....
, Cassiodorus

Cassiodorus

Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator , commonly known as Cassiodorus, was a Roman Empire statesman and writer, serving in the administration of Theodoric the Great, king of the Ostrogoths....
, and Jordanes

Jordanes

Jordanes , was a 6th century Roman bureaucrat , who turned his hand to history later in life.Though he also wrote Romana , a book about the history of Rome, his most known work is his Getica, written in Constantinople about AD 551 ....
(in De origine actibusque Getarum, The Origin and Deeds of the Goths) also wrote of her.

According to the accounts of Greek historians, Cyrus was defeated in his initial assault on the Massagetae and was forced to retreat. His advisers suggested laying a trap for the pursuing Scythians: the Persians left behind them an apparently-abandoned camp, containing a rich supply of wine. The pastoral Scythians were not used to drinking wine—"their favored intoxicants were hashish

Hashish

Hashish is a preparation of cannabis composed of the compressed trichomes collected from the cannabis plant. It contains the same active ingredients but in higher concentrations than other parts of the plant such as the buds or the leaves....
and fermented mare's milk"—and they drank themselves into a stupor. The Persians attacked while their opponents were incapacitated, slaughtering the Massagetae and capturing Tomyris's son, Spargapises, the general of her army. Supposedly, when sober again, he committed suicide.

Tomyris then sent a message to Cyrus, denouncing his treachery and challenging him to an honorable battle. In the fight that ensued, the Persians were defeated again with high casualties. Cyrus was killed and Tomyris had his corpse beheaded. She allegedly kept his head with her at all times and drank wine from it until her death. Persian and Central Asian folklore maintain a rich store of other tales about Tomyris.

The history of Tomyris has been incorporated into the tradition of Western art; Peter Paul Rubens

Peter Paul Rubens

Peter Paul Rubens was a prolific seventeenth-century Flemish Baroque painter, and a proponent of an exuberant Baroque style that emphasized movement, color, and sensuality....
, Francesco Allegrini, Luca Ferrari

Luca Ferrari

Luca Ferrari was an Italy painter of the Baroque period.Also called Luca da Reggio. He was reputedly initially a trainee of Ludovico Tiarini, but later worked with Leonello Spada, Alessandro Tiarini, and Carlo Bononi in the 1610 - 1620s were decorating the basilica of the Basilica della Ghiara in his native city of Reggio Emilia....
, Mattia Preti

Mattia Preti

Mattia Preti was an Italian Baroque artist who worked in Italy and Malta....
, Gustave Moreau

Gustave Moreau

Gustave Moreau was a France Symbolist painters whose main focus was the illustration of Bible and mythological figures. As a painter of literary ideas rather than visual images, Moreau appealed to the imaginations of some Symbolism writers and artists, who saw him as a precursor to their movement....
, and the sculptor Severo Calzetta da Ravenna

Severo Calzetta da Ravenna

Severo da Ravenna or Severo di Domenico Calzetta was an Italian sculptor of the High Renaissance and Mannerism, who worked in Padua, where he is likely to have finished his training, in Ferrara and in Ravenna, where he first appears in a document of 1496....
are among the many artists who have portrayed events in the life of Tahm-Rayiš and her defeat of Cyrus and his armies.

The name "Tomyris" also has been adopted into zoological

Zoology

Zoology is the branch of biology concerned with the study of animals. The most common pronunciation of "zoology" is ; however, an alternative pronunciation is ....
taxonomy

Taxonomy

Taxonomy is the practice and science of classification. The word comes from the Greek language ', taxis and ', nomos .Taxonomies, or taxonomic schemes, are composed of taxonomic units known as taxa , or kinds of things that are arranged frequently in a hierarchical structure....
, for the tomyris species-group of Central Asian Lepidoptera

Lepidoptera

Lepidoptera is an order of insect that includes moths and butterfly. It is one of the most speciose orders in the class Insecta, encompassing moths and the three superfamilies of butterfly, skipper , and Hedylidae....
.

It is believed that the word Tomis, present-day Constanta

Constanta

Constanta is the oldest living city in Romania, founded around 600 BC. The city is located on the Black Sea coast. Constan?a is part of the group of four equal size cities which ranks after Bucharest, Romania's capital, Timisoara, Cluj-Napoca and Ia?i....
, comes from Tomyris.

Tomyris

Footnotes

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