The Maeotians (; Greek, Ancient (to 1453);: Μαιῶται|translit=Maiōtai; Latin: Maeōtae[1]) were an ancient people dwelling along the Sea of Azov, which was known in antiquity as the "Maeotian marshes" or "Lake Maeotis".[2] They are often considered to be the ancestors of the Urums, Circassians, Abkhazians, and Abazins.
The etymology of the name and the identity of the people remain unclear. Edward James[2] and William Smith were of the opinion that the term "Maeotian" was applied broadly to various peoples around the Sea of Azov, rather than the name of the sea deriving from a certain people. Their subdivisions included the Sindi, the Dandarii, the Toreatae, the Agri, the Arrechi, the Tarpetes, the Obidiaceni, the Sittaceni, the Dosci, and "many" others.[3] Of these, the Sindi are the best attested, and were probably the dominant people among the Maeotians. The language of the Maeotians - and even its language family - is uncertain. One princess of the Ixomates was called Tirgatao,[4] comparable to Tirgutawiya, a name on a tablet discovered in Hurrian Alalakh.[5]
Ukrainian archaeologists and modern Hellenists claim that Maeotians were ancient Greeks who established colonies in Maeotia. A Greek historian Apostolos Vakalopoulos claimed that Greeks settled in the south of present-day Donbass and later established colonies on the coast of Kuban. He did not contest the possibility of Greeks intermixing with the local Sarmatians. The Maeotians named themselves after the name of the region, Maeotia, as the Greeks named it.
Karl Eichwald claimed that the Maeotians originated as a "Hindu" (Indian) colony,[6] but this view is rejected by the majority of scholars.[7] [8] [9] [10] Soviet archaeologists, historians, and ethnographers concluded that the Maeotians were one of the Circassian tribes. The Cambridge Ancient History classifies the Maeotians as either a people of Cimmerian ancestry or as Caucasian aboriginals.
The earliest known reference is from the logographer Hellanicus of Lesbos.[11] According to Strabo, the Maeotians lived partly on fish and partly from agriculture but were as warlike as their nomadic neighbors. These wild hordes were sometimes tributary to the factor at the River Tanais (the present-day Don) and at other times to the Bosporani. In later times, especially under Pharnaces II, Asander, and Polemon I, the Bosporan Kingdom extended as far as the Tanais.