Cambysene
Cambysene was a region first attested in the Geographica ("Geography") of the ancient geographer and historian Strabo (64/3 BC – c. 24 AD). According to Strabo, it comprised one of the northernmost provinces of the ancient Kingdom of Armenia, and bordered on the Caucasus Mountains and a rough and waterless region through which a pass connecting Caucasian Albania and Iberia passed.[1]
Name
The spelling Cambysene is the
Geography
The precise boundaries of Cambysene are difficult to demarcate, but it is known that it constituted a border land between Armenia, Iberia and Caucasian Albania at the time of the 65 BC Roman military campaign in the region led by the general and statesman Pompey.[2][1] The German historian Wilhelm Fabricius (1861–1920) believed that it just comprised the territory between the Cambyses and Alazonius (modern Alazan) rivers; the modern-day consensus is that it was much larger, and probably stretched all the way from the Cyrus river in the west to the Alazonius river in the east.[1] Regardless of what Cambysene's precise boundaries actually were, the road(s) that passed through the region accorded to the region's geo-political importance.[1]
History
It is unknown whether Cambysene was incorporated into the Achaemenid Empire.
The 7th-century Armenian Geography written by Pseudo-Movses of Khoren, locates Kʿambēčan on the Kur river in Caucasian Albania, which reveals that Kʿambēčan must have been smaller than the Cambysene of the Classical authors.[1] The 10th-century historian Movses Kaghankatvatsi also mentioned the province of Kʿambēčan.[1]
The Kʿambēčan of Armenian historiography was conquered by the
References
Sources
- Chaumont, Marie Louise (1990). "CAMBYSENE". In ISBN 978-0-71009-130-7.
- Sherwin-White, A. N. (1994). "Lucullus, Pompey and the East". In Crook, J. A.; Lintott, A.; Rawson, E. (eds.). The Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 9: The Last Age of the Roman Republic, 146–43 BC (2 ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.