Medes

The Medes were an ancient Iranian people and the ancestors of modern Iranian people"Mede." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2008. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 16 January 2008  <http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9051719>.Andrew Dalby, Dictionary of Languages: the definitive reference to more than 400 languages, Columbia University Press, 2004, pg 278.Gwendolyn Leick, Who's Who in the Ancient Near East, Routledge, Published 2001. pg 192Ian Shaw, Robert Jameson, A Dictionary of Archaeology, Blackwell Publishing, 1999.Sabatino Moscati, Face of the Ancient Orient, Courier Dover Publications, Published 2001. pg 67John Prevas, Xenophon's March: Into the Lair of the Persian Lion, Da Capo Press, 2002.  pg 20. who lived in the northwestern portions of present-day Iran. This area was known in Greek as Media or MedeaΜηδία, Old Persian ;  adjective Median, antiquated also Medean). Under Assyrian rule, the Medes were known as Mādāyu. They entered this region with the first wave of nomadic Iranian tribes, in the late second millennium BC (at the end of the Bronze Age).Daniel J Hopkins, Merriam-Webster's Geographical Dictionary, p. 527, 1997,  

By the 6th century BC, the Medes were able to make their own empire. It stretched from southern shore of the Black Sea and Aran province (in modern Azerbaijan) to north and central Asia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

The Medes are credited with the foundation of the first Iranian empire, the largest of its day until Cyrus the Great established a unified Iranian empire of the Medes and Persians, often referred to as the Achaemenid Empire.

 Controversy 
Modern scholars question whether a Median empire even existed. It is argued that even if it existed, it must have been just a political alliance among highland neighbors of the Assyrians. The alliance might include Armenia in southeastern Anatolia, Sagartians in modern northern Iraq, and the actual Medians in the area between what is today Hamadan-Kirmanshah in cental Zagros. Neither cuneiform sources, archaeological evidence, or biblical accounts,Liverani, Mario, "The rise and fall of Media", in : G. B. Lanfranchi, M. Roaf, R. Rollinger, eds., Continuity of Empire: Assyria, Media, Persia. Padova, Editrice e Libreria, 2003, pp. 1-12 support Herodotus, who claimed there really was a Median empire.

 Median language 
Strabo mentions the affinity of Median with other Iranian languages  in his "Geography":

Herodotus, mentions the word "Spaga" ("Dog",P. Lecoq, Les inscriptions de La Perse achémenide, Paris, 1997, pp. 46-49 still present in current Iranian languages such  as Tat and Talysh, and different from Persian). Much like these languages and Kurdish, the Median language belonged to the Northwestern branch of the Iranic languages.

 References and Notes 

Category:1st millennium BC
Category:History of Iran
Category:6th-century BC disestablishments
Category:Former monarchies of Asia
Category:Former countries in the Middle East
Category:620s BC