- Lydians
Lydians (Maeonians) — an extinct people who spoke the Lydian language of the Luwian subgroup of the Anatolian group (or branch) of Indo-European languages. They were called Lydians by the Assyrians and Greeks, while their self-name was "Maeonians," and another self-name was "Sfardens." In Hittite chronicles, the country was called Masa, and scholars see in this a more ancient form of the name Maeonia (World History, vol. 3, p. 87). According to Xanthus the Lydian, the first king of the Maeonians was Atys, who had two sons: Lydus and Torrebus. They split into Lydians and Torrebians. In the historical period, the Lydians lived in the region of Lydia in western Anatolia. R. Beekes believed that during the Trojan War, the Lydians, known to Homer as Maeonians, lived much further north, in northwestern Anatolia, in the region of Masa, whose localization remains a subject of debate to this day.
In a broader sense, the term "Lydians" included the entire population of Lydia in the ancient period, including the autochthonous pre-Hittite peoples. Thus, ancient Greek authors also included the Etruscans among the Lydians, whose origin from Asia Minor, according to Herodotus and modern research, seems quite probable, although their language has nothing in common with Lydian. In any case, the Lydians — descendants of one of the post-Hittite states — were the dominant people in Lydia until the conquest of Lydia by the Persians. The rise of the Lydians' power began with the destruction of the Phrygian kingdom in the 7th century BC. Under the rule of the Mermnad dynasty, which began in 680 BC with the reign of Gyges, the Lydians extended their dominion from the eastern Ionian coast to the Halys River. The capital of the Lydians was the city of Sardis. In 630 BC, the Lydians were attacked by the Cimmerians, who managed to capture Sardis around 652 BC. Gyges died during the defensive campaign.
At the beginning of the 6th century BC, during the reign of King Alyattes, the Lydian kingdom reached the culmination of its development. The war against the Medes was halted due to a solar eclipse in the summer of 585 BC (recently historians have disputed this date). After this war, the Halys River became the border between the Lydians and the Medes. In the west, Alyattes conquered territories as far as Lycia. By this time, Lydia could rival Media, Babylon, and Egypt in power. Alyattes' heir, King Croesus, crossed the Halys in 547 BC and attacked the Persians, who had by then captured Media. As Herodotus reports (I, 53), who devoted considerable space to the Lydians in his "History," the Delphic oracle promised Croesus that he would destroy a great kingdom — which turned out to be Lydia itself. In 546 BC, the Persians captured Lydia and turned it into their satrapy.
In ancient sources, the Lydians are credited with minting the first coins. The first coins discovered in Lydia date to the 7th century BC.
The Lydians mainly belonged to haplogroup R1b-L23. [Maciamo Hay 2008]
VARIANT NAMES: Russian. Lydians, Greek. Λυδοί.
Sources:
Ethnogenesis of the Abkhazians. D.A. Arshba, 2015