Moschia

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Moschia (Meskheti, possibly related to Mushki) is a mountainous region of Georgia between Iberia, Armenia, and Colchis. The Moschian Mountains were the connecting chain between the Caucasus and Anti-Taurus Mountains. The people of that area were known as the Moschi. They may have been connected to the Mushki. Wilhelm Gesenius suggested that the Moschi were descended from the Biblical Meshech tribe. Strabo mentions the Moschian Mountains as joining the Caucasus (Geography, 11.2.1). He says that the Moschian country lay above the rivers Phasis, Glaucus, and Hippus (Geography, 11.2.17). In it "lies the temple of Leucothea, founded by Phrixus, and the oracle of Phrixus, where a ram is never sacrificed; it was once rich, but it was robbed in our time by Pharnaces, and a little later by Mithridates of Pergamum." (ibid). According to the renowned scholar of the Caucasian studies Cyril Toumanoff, the Moschians were the early proto-Georgian tribes which were integrated into the first early Georgian state of Iberia. Mushki are mentioned in the cuneiform tablets of Tiglath-Pileser I of Assyria dating to 1115–1100 B.C. He led a campaign against them in the North of Commagene and mountains of Georgia and Armenia. According to Igor Diakonoff, the Mushki possibly were speakers of Proto-Armenian, who carried their language from the Balkans across Asia Minor, mixing with Hurrians (and Urartian

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