page_title: Tomyris
section_title: Legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Tomyris / Legacy
context_page_description: Tomyris, also called Thomyris, Tomris, Tomiride, or Queen Tomiri, reigned over the Massagetae, an Iranian people from Scythian pastoral-nomadic confederation of Central Asia east of the Caspian Sea, in parts of modern-day Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, western Uzbekistan, and southern Kazakhstan. Tomyris led her armies to defend against an attack by Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenid Empire, and, according to Herodotus, defeated and killed him in 530 BC.
context_section_description: Eustache Deschamps added Tomyris to his poetry as one of the nine Female Worthies in the late 14th century.
  In Shakespeare's earliest play King Henry VI (Part I),  the Countess of Auvergne while awaiting Lord Talbot's arrival speaks these lines (Act II, Sc.iii):
  The plot is laid: if all things fall out right,
  I shall as famous be by this exploit
  As Scythian Tomyris by Cyrus' death.
  — Henry VI ptI, act II, sc.iii.
  Shakespeare's reference to Tomyris as 'Queen of the Scythians', rather than the usual Greek designation 'Queen of the Massagetae', points to two possible likely sources, Marcus Junianus Justinus' "Abridged Trogus Pompeius" in Latin, or Arthur Golding's translation (1564).
  The history of Tomyris has been incorporated into the tradition of Western art; Rubens, Allegrini, Luca Ferrari, Mattia Preti, Gustave Moreau and the sculptor Severo Calzetta da Ravenna are among the many artists who have portrayed events in the life of Tahm-Rayiš and her defeat of Cyrus and his armies. She is one of the subjects grouped under the Power of Women topos by art historians.
  In 1707 the opera Thomyris, Queen of Scythia was first staged in London.
  The name "Tomyris" also has been adopted into zoological taxonomy, for the Tomyris species group of Central American moths and the Tamyris genus of skipper butterflies.
  590 Tomyris is the name given to one of the minor planets.
caption: Mattia Preti, Tomyris Receiving the Head of Cyrus, 1670–72
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