Maeotae or Mæotæ or Maeotici (Greek: Μαιῶται) were an ancient people dwelling along the Palus Maeotis (to which they lended their name) in antiquity. (Pseudo-Scylax; Strabo Geographica (Strabo) 11.; Plin. 4.7.26; Pomp. Mela, 1.2.6, 1.19.17). William Smith considers Maeotae a collective name which was given to the peoples about the Palus Maeotis. It is not clear whether they spoke an Iranian language or were related to the modern-day Adyghe. The best attested tribe among them was the Sindi. The Periplus of Pseudo-Scylax is a 4th or 3rd Century BCE Greek periplus. ... The Greek geographer Strabo in a 16th century engraving. ... The Geographika is an extensive work by Strabo, spanning 17 volumes, and can be regarded as an encyclopedia of the geographical knowledge of his time; except for parts of Book 7, it has come down to us complete. ... Pliny the Elder: an imaginative 19c portrait. ... Pomponius Mela, who wrote around AD 43, was the earliest Roman geographer. ... Sir William Smith (1813 - 1893), English lexicographer, was born at Enfield in 1813 of Nonconformist parents. ... The Adyghe or Adygs are a people of the northwest Caucasus region, principally inhabiting Adygeya (23 %) (now a constituent republic of the Russian Federation) and Karachay-Cherkessia (11 %) (where they are named as Cherkes). Shapsug National District, an autonomous district founded for Shapsigh (or Shapsugh) tribe living on the Black... Ancient terracotta vessels unearthed at the Sindian necropolis near Phanagoria. ...

Strabo describes them as living among the Dandarii, Toreatae, Agri, Arrechi, Tarpetes, Obidiaceni, Sittaceni, Dosci, and Aspurgiani, among others. (Strab. xi. 2. 11) The earliest reference may be the logographer Hellanicus, if we read with his editor Sturz (for Μαλιῶται, Μαιῶται). According to Strabo (l. c.) they lived partly on fish, and partly tilled the land, but were no less warlike than their nomad neighbors. These wild hordes were sometimes tributary to the factory at the Tanais (modern Don River), and at other times to the Bosporani, revolting from one to the other. The kingdom of the Cimmerian Bosporus in later times, especially under Pharnaces, Asander, and Polemon, extended as far as the Tanais. Hellanicus of Lesbos (in Ancient Greek ) (born in Mytilene on the isle of Lesbos in 490 BC) was an ancient Greek logographer who flourished during the latter half of the 5th century BC. He is reputed to have lived to the age of 85. ... Sarmatian cataphract from Tanais. ... The Don (Дон) is one of the major rivers of Russia. ... The Cimmerian Bosphorus of Antiquity, shown on a map printed in London, ca 1770 The Cimmerian Bosporus (Bosporus Cimmerius) was the ancient name for the Strait of Kerch that connects the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. ... Pharnaces is the name of two kings of Pontus: Pharnaces I of Pontus, first important ruler of the kingdom Pharnaces II of Pontus, famous for having made an unfortunate attempt to reconquer Pontus, crushed by Julius Caesar This is a disambiguation page: a list of articles associated with the same... Asander (in Greek ΆσανδρoÏ‚; lived 4th century BC) was son of Philotas and brother of Parmenion. ... Polemon is the name of several eminent ancient Greeks: Polemon of Athens, a 2nd century BC Platonic philosopher, also referred to as Polemon of Ilium Polemon (general), a Macedonian officer of Alexander the Great Polemon (Cilicia), the name of a king of Cilicia in Anatolia. ...

There are speculations that the Maeotes and the Sindes may have been Indo-Aryans, connected with the Mitanni rulers of Assyria one millennium before Herodotus.[1] One princess of the Maeotes, a wife of a Sindic king, from the tribe of Ixomates, was called Tirgatao by Polyaenus (Stratagems, 8.55), comparable to Tirgutawiya, a name from a tablet found in Hurrian Alalakh (AT 298 II.11). Karl Eichwald (Alt Geogr. d. Kasp. M. p. 356) even proclaimed them to have been a Hindu colony, but this view was rejected by the vast majority of scholars. (Comp. Bayer, Acta Petrop. ix. p. 370; St. Croix, Mem. de l'Ac. des Inscr. xlvi. p. 403; Larcher, ad Herod. vii. p. 506; Ukert, vol. iii. pt. 2. p. 494, etc.) The Indo-Aryans who make up around 74% of Indias population (Hindustani: इन्दो-आर्यन, اِندو آریایی) are a wide collection of peoples united by their common status as the ethno-linguistic descendents of the Indic branch of the ancient Indo-Iranians (also known as Aryans). ... Mitanni or Mittani (in Assyrian sources Hanilgalbat, Khanigalbat) was a Hurrian kingdom in northern Mesopotamia (in what is today Syria) from ca. ... Polyaenus (died 278 BC), born in Macedonia, was a Greek rhetorician who served as military commander in the Roman army. ... The word Hurrian may refer to: An ancient people of the Near East, the Hurrians. ... Alalakh is the name of an ancient city and its associated city-state of the Amuq River valley, located in the Hatay region of southern Turkey near the city of Antakya (ancient Antioch), and now represented by an extensive city-mound known as Tell Atchana. ... Karl Eduard Von Eichwald (July 4, 1795 – November 10, 1876), Russian geologist and physician, was born at Mitau in Courland. ...

References

• This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography by William Smith (1857).
• Strabo's book 11 on-line
• Trubachov, Oleg N., 1999: Indoarica, Nauka, Moscow.