[22][23][24][25] In modern archaeology, the term "Scythians" is used in its original narrow sense as a name strictly for the Iranic people who lived in the Pontic and Crimean Steppes, between the Danube and Don rivers, from the 7th to 3rd centuries BC.

[118][119] Surrounding the Neo-Assyrian Empire were several smaller polities:[120][119] Beyond the territories under the direct Assyrian rule, especially in its frontiers in Anatolia and the Iranian Plateau, were local rulers who negotiated for their own interests by vacillating between the various rival great powers.

[121][125][126] Their activities would over the course of the late-8th to late-7th centuries BC disrupt the balance of power which had prevailed between the states of Elam, Mannai, the Neo-Assyrian Empire and Urartu on one side and the mountaineer and tribal peoples on the other, eventually leading to significant geopolitical changes in this region.

[149] Beginning in the 7th century BC itself, the Scythians initiated a long period of military conflict by attempting to impose their rule over the forest steppe tribes, in response to which these latter peoples built large numbers of fortified settlements to repel these attacks.

Therefore, the Mannaean king Aḫšeri (r. c. 675 – c. 650 BC) welcomed the Cimmerians and the Scythians as useful allies who could offer both protection and favourable new opportunities to Mannai, which in turn allowed him to become an opponent of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, with him subsequently remaining an enemy of Sennacherib and his successors Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal.

[160] Meanwhile, Mannai, which had been able to grow in power under Aḫšēri, possibly because it adapted and incorporated steppe nomad fighting technologies borrowed from its Cimmerian and Scythian allies,[167] was able to capture the territories including the fortresses of Šarru-iqbi and Dūr-Illil from the Neo-Assyrian Empire and retain them until the c. 650s BC.

[80][181] The Neo-Assyrian Empire under Esarhaddon saw the then Kushite-ruled Egypt as its main military concern, and therefore chose to avoid spending resources on the other imperial borders by securing good relations with Tabal, Elam, Urartu, and the Median city-states.

[246] After sacking Sardis, Lydgamis and Kobos led the Cimmerians and the Treres into invading the Greek city-states of the Troad,[247][80] Aeolia and Ionia on the western coast of Anatolia,[248] where they destroyed the city of Magnesia on the Meander as well as the Artemision of Ephesus.

[244][252] Dugdammî soon broke his oath and attacked the Neo-Assyrian Empire again, but during his military campaign he contracted a grave illness whose symptoms included paralysis of half of his body and vomiting of blood as well as gangrene of the genitals, and he consequently committed suicide in 640 BC[253] in Ḫilakku itself.

[242] It was also around this time that the last still-existing Syro-Hittite and Aramaean states in Anatolia, which had been either independent or vassals of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, Phrygia, Urartu, or the Cimmerians, also finally disappeared, although the exact circumstances of their end are still very uncertain.

[287][288]) Thanks to the Median integration of these influences, Cyaxares was able to combine Scythian and Neo-Assyrian military practices and create an organised army composed of distinct divisions of spearmen, archers, and cavalry, thus transforming Media into the dominant power of the Iranian Plateau again like Phraortes had done before.

[300] According to later Graeco-Roman authors, this the shrine of Ascalon was considered to be the most ancient of all temples to that goddess, as a result of which the perpetrators of this sacrilege and their descendants were allegedly cursed by ʿAštart with a "female disease" causing them to become a class of transvestite diviners called the Anarya (lit.

[359] In the Pontic Steppe, the Greek colonists also found appealing opportunities to trade with the Scythians[280] by selling them wine, olive oil, textiles, metal vessels, high quality ceramic, and luxury goods in exchange for furs, raw materials, fish, animal products, slaves, and grains:[360] Pontic Olbia especially supplied the Scythians with luxury goods such as personal ornaments, gold and silver vases, glyptic, wine, and oil, as well as defensive and offensive weapons produced in workshops located in Olbia itself or imported from mainland Greece.

[112] However, in the period from c. 550 to c. 500 BC, the various Sauromatian communities living from the region stretching from the Ural Mountains to the Caspian Steppe came pressure from the Massagetae of Central Asia[81] as a result of the campaigns of Cyrus II against this latter people.

[418] During the 5th century BC, Scythian rule over the forest steppe people became increadingly dominating and coercive, leading to a decline of their sedentary agrarian lifestyle, especially in the region of the right bank of the Borysthenēs, where their settlements disintegrated and became fewer in number.

[484] By around some time between c. 220 and c. 210 BC, the Protogenes inscriptions recorded the Scythians as one of the minor groups who, along with the Sarmatian tribes of the Thisamatae and Saudaratae, were seeking shelter from the allied forces of the Celtic Galatae and the Germanic Sciri in the region of the Borysthenēs river near Pontic Olbia.

[446] The 1st century AD Jewish historian Flavius Josephus identified the Biblical Gog and Magog with the Scythians, or more generally with nomadic peoples from the north who were held back by the Caucasus Mountains and by the Gates of Alexander the Great.

[519] The Romans confused the peoples whom they perceived as archetypical "Barbarians," namely the Scythians and the Celts, into a single grouping whom they called the "Celto-Scythians" (Latin: Celtoscythae) and supposedly living from Gaul in the west to the Pontic steppe in the east.

[533] According to the Lebor Gabála Érenn, the Scythians fled from Egypt when pharaoh drowned after Moses parted the Red Sea during the flight of the Israelites, and went back to Scythia, and from there to Ireland via Africa and Spain[533] while Nel's and Scota's son, Goídel Glas, became the eponym the Gaelic people.

[540] Therefore, the image of the Scythians among Hungarians was shaped into one of "noble savages" who were valorous and honest, uncouth and hostile to "Western refinement," but at the same time defended "Christian civilisation" from aggression from the East, such as from the Pechenegs, Cumans, and Tatars in the Middle Age, and from the Ottomans in the early modern period.

Such structures were also present among:[621] Within the Pontic Steppe, the incoming Scythian conquerors established themselves as the ruling elite over the local population and assimilated them into a single tribal identity while allowing them to continue their various lifestyles and economic organisations.

[408] During the 1st millennium BC, the wet and damp climate prevailing in the Pontic Steppe constituted a propitious environment which caused grass to grow in abundance, in turn allowing the Scythians to rear large herds of horse and cattle.

[71] The nomadic Scythians were able to rear large flocks and herds because of the grass growing abundantly on the treeless steppe thanks to the propitious climate then prevailing to the north of the Black Sea,[37][626] and they especially grew barley to provide feed for their animals.

[363] Aside from the consumed milk and meat, other parts of the animals reared by the Scythians were used to make skins and wool:[625] The native sedentary Thracians populations who lived in Scythia manufactured products such as pottery, woodwork, and weaving, as well as bronze metal-working made out of raw materials imported from Transylvania.

[433] The ancient Greeks had first been starting to make expeditions in the Black Sea in the 8th century BC, and encounters with friendly native populations quickly stimulated trade relations and the development of more regular commercial transits.

[579] The importance of the Greek colonies of the north Black Sea coast drastically increased in the later 6th century BC following the Persian Empire's conquest of Egypt, which deprived the states of Greece proper of the Egyptian grain that they depended on.

[576][580] During the 1st millennium BC, the wet and damp climate prevailing in the Pontic Steppe constituted a propitious environment which caused grass to grow in abundance, in turn allowing the Scythians to rear large herds of[626] a small but very swift breed of horse that they rode directly and also used for drawing carts.

[653] Scythian dress consisted of combination of various leathers and furs designed for efficiency and comfort on horseback, and was expensively and richly decorated with brightly coloured embroidery and applique work as well as facings of pearl and gold.

[628] According to Herodotus of Halicarnassus, Scythian men however did not wash their bodies with water, and instead cleaned themselves in a steam bath in a small tent where the flower buds of cannabis were thrown on hot stones to induce intoxication.

[706] The 2nd-century BC Han Chinese envoy Zhang Qian described the Sai (Saka), an eastern people closely related to the Scythians, as having yellow (probably meaning hazel or green) and blue eyes.