Meshech

Meshechs (Meshekhs/Mosokhs/Mushki, Mushku in Akkadian, Moschoi in Greek) were an ancient, non-Indo-European and non-Semitic, indigenous tribe of Asia Minor of the 3rd - 1st millennias BC , said to be the offspring of Meshech, son of Japheth . They were among the first people to introduce iron smelting there at the end of the 2nd millennium BC . They are considered a Proto-Iberian tribe. They occupied a territory somewhere to the south of present-day Georgia , possibly in Cappadocia . The tribal name Meshech is believed to be the source of Meskheti , the name of a south-western Georgian province. Most likely, the Mushki heartland including Cappadocia, was adjacent to territories held by the Hayasa (ancestors of the Armenians ) - generally, the lands from where the Indo-European peoples migrated, leaving some indigenous peoples at the original place. Hayasa and Mushku are referred to frequently in Hittite sources, as well as in Assyrian sources as tribes threatening them from the north-west. Hayasa may have moved into the Mushki heartland soon after the defeat of the Hittites by the Sea Peoples at around 1200 BC, when Mushki occupied Central Anatolia, establishing their own state there on the ruins of the Hittites. The Mushki lost connection with their relatives, the proto-Kartvelian (see Georgia ) tribes, when in the 700's BC they were forced to move farther west, establishing the joint Phrygian-Moschoi state in Phrygia . And though this was a very short-lasting formation that collapsed within one generation, yet it became the reason for confounding the toponyms Moschoi and Phrygia in later times. Ancient Greeks ( Hellenes ) somewhat contributed to this misleading, as they retained in memory most recent contiguity to the Moschoi in their final incarnation in Phrygia. However Moschoi art, especially music, had a notable influence on Ancient Greek art, an influence that reached Hellas long before Moschoi authority was established on the east coast of the Aegean Sea .¹