These contingents participated in the battle of Carchemish in 605 BC,[130] while clay figurines depicting
Scythian riders, as well as an Ionian shield and a Neo-Hittite battle-axe similar to those found in Scythian
remains in the Pontic steppe, suggest that actual Scythian mercenaries had also participated at the final
Neo-Babylonian victory over the Egyptians at Carchemish.[69]
The Scythian or Scythian-style contingents also participated in the Neo-Babylonian campaigns in the
southern Levant, including in the Babylonian annexation of the kingdom of Judah in 586 BC.[130]
Expulsion from West Asia
The rise of the Medes and their empire allowed them to finally expel the Scythians from West Asia in
the c. 600s BC,[131] after which, beginning in the later 7th and lasting throughout much of the 6th century
BC, the majority of the Scythians migrated from Ciscaucasia into the Pontic Steppe, which became the
centre of Scythian power.[106][100][41]
The inroads of the Cimmerians and the Scythians into West Asia over the course of the 8th to 6th
centuries BC had destabilised the political balance which had prevailed in the region between the states
of Assyria, Urartu, Mannaea and Elam on one side and the mountaineer and tribal peoples on the other,
resulting in the destruction of these former kingdoms and their replacement by new powers, including
the kingdoms of the Medes and of the Lydians.[46]
Some splinter Scythian groups nevertheless remained in West Asia, in the southeast Caucasus, and
settled in Transcaucasia, especially the area corresponding to modern-day Azerbaijan[41] in eastern
Transcaucasia,[42] due to which the area where they lived, and which corresponded to the core regions
of the former West Asian Scythian realm, was called Sakašayana , meaning "land inhabited by the Saka
(i.e. Scythians)," by the Medes after they had annexed this region to their empire.[132] The Median name
for this territory was later recorded by Titus Livius under the form of Sacassani , and
as Sakasēnē by Ptolemy, while the country was called the “Land of the Skythēnoi ” by Xenophon.[47]
One such splinter group joined the Medes and participated in the Median conquest of Urartu, with
Scythian arrowheads having been found in the destruction layers of the Urartian fortresses
of Argištiḫinili and Teišebani, which were conquered by the Medes around c. 600 BC.[133][100] One group
formed a kingdom in what is now Azerbaijan under Median overlordship, but eventually hostilities broke
out between some of them and Cyaxares, due to which they left Transcaucasia and fled to Lydia.[134]
By the middle of the 6th century BC, the Scythians who had remained in West Asia had completely
assimilated culturally and politically into Median society and no longer existed as a distinct group.[135]
Meanwhile, other Transcaucasian Scythian splinter groups later retreated northwards to join the West
Asian Scythians who had already previously moved into the Kuban Steppe.[47]
Pontic Scythian kingdom
Early phase
Red-figured amphora with a Scythian warrior, 480-470 BC, from Athens
After their expulsion from West Asia, and beginning in the later 7th and lasting throughout much of the
6th century BC, the majority of the Scythians, including the Royal Scythians, migrated into the Kuban
Steppe in Ciscaucasia around 600 BC,[89] and from Ciscaucasia into the Pontic Steppe, which became the
centre of Scythian power,[41] Although Herodotus of Halicarnassus claimed that the Scythians retreated