Note 676 — Chapter XXX

The name Kimmerii (on the Assyrian inscriptions Gimirrai) is connected with Gomer. The Persians call them Sakai or Scyths. The nomad Scyths had driven the Kimmerii from the Dniester while Psammetichus was King of Egypt. For allusions to this see Jer. vi. 22 seq., viii. 16, ix. 10. The first notice of them is in an inscription of Esarhaddon, b.c. 677, who says that he defeated "Tiushpa, the Gimirrai, a roving warrior, whose own country was remote." Zephaniah and Jeremiah were certainly thinking of the Scythians (Eichhorn, Hitzig, Ewald; and more recently Kuenen, Onderzoek, ii. 123; Wellhausen, Skizzen, 150). In b.c. 626 they could not have consciously had the Chaldæans in view, though, twenty-three years later, Jeremiah may have had.