Cimmerians | |||||||||||||
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 The Cimmerian migrations across West Asia | |||||||||||||
| Common languages | Scythian | ||||||||||||
| Religion | Scythian religion (?) Ancient Iranic religion (?) Luwian religion (?) | ||||||||||||
| Government | Monarchy | ||||||||||||
| King | |||||||||||||
• Unknown–679 BC | Teušpâ | ||||||||||||
• 679–640 BC | Dugdammî | ||||||||||||
• 640–630s BC | Sandakšatru | ||||||||||||
| Historical era | Iron Age | ||||||||||||
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The Cimmerians were an ancient Eastern Iranic equestrian nomadic people originating in the Pontic–Caspian steppe, part of whom subsequently migrated into West Asia. Although the Cimmerians were culturally Scythian, they formed an ethnic unit separate from the Scythians proper, to whom the Cimmerians were related and who displaced and replaced the Cimmerians.[1]
The Cimmerians themselves left no written records, and most information about them is largely derived from Neo-Assyrian records of the 8th to 7th centuries BC and from Graeco-Roman authors from the 5th century BC and later.
- ^ Tokhtas’ev 1991: "As the Cimmerians cannot be differentiated archeologically from the Scythians, it is possible to speculate about their Iranian origins. In the Neo-Babylonian texts (according to D’yakonov, including at least some of the Assyrian texts in Babylonian dialect) Gimirri and similar forms designate the Scythians and Central Asian Saka, reflecting the perception among inhabitants of Mesopotamia that Cimmerians and Scythians represented a single cultural and economic group"