Meshech
From Freepedia
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 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. Some authors thus consider them to have been an early Proto-Kartvellian people, similar to the Tabal.
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. Mushki may have moved into the Hayasa 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.
From about 850 to 695 BCE they established a joint Phrygian-Moschoi state in Phrygia under a line of kings alternatively named Gordius (Greek) or Gurdi (Assyrian) or Midas (Greek) or Mita (Assyrian). 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 reading, 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.
