Page:Herodotus and the Empires of the East.djvu/74

68 Saḫi ["Sacians?], revolted, and that seventy-five towns of Birisḫadri were conquered and pillaged by the Assyrians. The fact that this Median chief (if Mat-a-a is Media) had authority over seventy-five towns points to an advanced political union of the Medes. Since Ashurbanipal was more needed in other parts of his great empire than in the northeast, the opportunity was most favorable for the Medes to obtain their independence. And if some decades later in spite of their previous losses at the hands of the Scythians, they were in a condition to destroy the Assyrian power, we must believe that during the reign of Ashurbanipal the political union of the Median tribes was perfected. In the last two decades of the reign of Ashurbanipal Herodotus also puts the founding of the Median power under Phraortes (646–624).

The name of the Median king, Phraortes, the predecessor of Cyaxares, has not yet been found in any cuneiform text. We may explain this fact by the events which happened in the reign of Ashurbanipal. If this monarch was prevented from waging war in the east by trouble in the other provinces of his kingdom, and especially in Babylon, he would have no exploits to record in Media and in other eastern provinces. We need not suppose, as Winckler does, that Phraortes is an unhistorical character.

Cyaxares, the son of Phraortes according to Herodotus, is called, in the Behistan inscription, a legitimate Median king. Says Darius the king: " There was a man Fravartish by name, a Mede; he rose up in Media: thus he said to the people: c I am Khshathrita, of the family of Uvakhshtra' (Cyaxares). Afterwards the Median state, which was in clans, became