The Empires of the Bible from the Confusion of Tongues to the Babylonian Captivity

MESHECH

43. In the Scriptures Meshech and Tubal are always mentioned together, with a single exception. They are named, and can be traced, in the Assyrian inscriptions “from the commencement of the twelfth to the middle of the seventh century B. C.” In these inscriptions they are called Muskai, and are placed in the vicinity of the Tuplai, with whom they are constantly associated, as in the Bible. By Herodotus they are called Moschi, and are always mentioned in connection with the Tibareni—Meshech and Tubal. Their troops and those of the Tibareni were under the same commander in the great expedition of Xerxes against Athens, 484-479 B. C. The country of Meshech—the Moschi—was in Cappadocia, Colchis, and Armenia, about what is now the vicinity of Kars and Erzeroum. Those of the people of Meshech and Tubal who dwelt there were not all that there were of either nation; for, about 650 B. C., the Cappadocians, a people of Persian origin, forced their way into the country of the Moschi and Tibareni, and pressed them back to narrow limits on the Black Sea and about the foot of the Caucasus Mountains, and some of both peoples crossed the Caucasus into the steppe country on the north—Scythia, now the Russian possessions. There the Moschi become known as Muskovs and then “Muscovites, who built Moscow and who still give name to Russia [Moscovy] throughout the East.”—Rawlinson. ¹⁷ The Tibareni—people of Tubal,—who went with the Moschi—people of Meshech,—settled on, and gave name to, the River Tobol and the place Tobolsk, another portion of the Russian possessions, east of the Ural Mountains. ¹⁸ EB 17.2