The Foundation of Kingship in the History of Medians

The ancient history of the Eastern Iranians, as it appears in Avestā and Pahlavi texts, is an evidence of the emergence of the idea of kingship and kingdom in Eastern Iran. After the Aryan migration, the Kavī or Eastern Iranian kings, founded the oldest kingdom structure in Eastern Iran, and what is called Kīānied history is the ancient history of Eastern Iranians which is mixed with a legendary tint. In the history of Iran, the foundation and the emergence of the idea of kingship and kingdom during the Median Era in the west of Iran Plateau is much later than the emergence of the kingdom for the Eastern Iranians. Although the Medes and, in general, the Western Iranians, have been influenced by the established Mesopotamian patterns in the founding of the kingship institution, they themselves have had a long tradition of kingship, and the importance of this Iranian background in the emergence of the kingship institution for the Medes and other Western Iranians should not be ignored. In connection with the history of the kingship of the Medes, the problem is that Assyrian sources from the ninth to seventh centuries B.C referred to several big and small castles and realms of certain governors all over the west and north-west of Iran Plateau and revealed that Medians resided in Media and have a tribal life structure, but Greek records referred to Median kingdom as a powerful and well-organized kingdom with developed cultural institutions and administrative organizations.