Kaŝka Research

"A short paper that links Greek period personal name Tibios used as a generic name for Paphlagonians with Hittite period city/province Tibia.  Tibia was famous because the king of Kashkians who attacked Hittites was from that place.  Forlanini is inclined to believe that Tibia was a Mossinoico term, but the Nairi dictionary links it with Tibaren.  Whatever it was, it seems that the legacy of Bronze Age Kashkians was present in North Anatolia in Greek period, but with different names." - Aram Palyan

Strabo and Tibios
by George Huxley

https://grbs.library.duke.edu/article/viewFile/12071/4027?fbclid=IwAR3Q5Zxts-iARyWc9-zuDsL7ZtivWADv_kBK9yLN5IVmyxh5-4YpVK35eOo

Strabo remarked that the Athenians named their slaves after the country they came from, calling them for instance "Lydos" or "Syros": or they gave them names common in their country of origin, so that a Phrygian would be called "Manes" or "Midas", and a Paphlagonian "Tibios". Later the geographer states (12.553) that Paphlagonian names are common amongst the Cappadodans, and amongst his examples gives Tibios and Manes. Manes, then, is not simply Phrygian but is also at home in Pontus; and Herodotos shows that the name is also linked with Lydia, where a king Manes once reigned.! Tibios, however, seems to be peculiar to Paphlagonia and to Cappadoda nearby. That the name was not confined to slaves is shown by its having been borne by a kinsman of Strabo, whose family enjoyed great distinction in those parts A variant of the name Tibios is also found in the Pontic country as a place name. According to Arrian, Thiba was a place in Pontus named after an Amazon killed by Herakles.3 The people of Thiba, who were called Thibeis or Thibii,4 evidently impressed Greek imaginations as being thoroughly disagreeable barbarians. Anyone they looked at or breathed upon or spoke with, fell ill; their eyes had double pupils; and their bodies would not sink in water even when weighted down. Even allowing for exaggeration, we can see that the Thibii, Thibeis, or Tibioi must in their wild homeland have long resisted the advance of Hellenism.

It seems, moreover, that already in the time of the Hittite empire the Tibians were causing trouble to their neighbours in Pontus. The annals of the Hittite emperor, Mudilis II, state that in the time of his father Suppiluliumas, a certain Pikhuniyas, the Tibyan, had plundered the Upper Land and brought his booty down to the Gasgas region.6 Now the Upper Land of the Hittites lay due east of their capital at Ijattusas in the Halys bend, while the territory of the barbarian Gasgas, who caused trouble throughout Hittite history and may have helped to overthrow the Hittite empire about 1200 B.C., lived to the north of HattuSas between the Hittite heartland and the Black Sea, in the wild country east of the Halys mouth which was later called Pontus. Hence Tibya, the city of the marauder Pikhuniyas, lay in the same general area as the later Thiba, and we can suggest that the two names are connected. Thus the Thibii, whose barbarity Phylarchos expounded, seem to be historical successors of the Gasgas with their city at Tibya; these enemies of the Hittites were active more than 1300 years before the time of the urbane Strabo, who, since he had a kinsman called Tibios, may well have been descended from them.

THE QUEEN'S UNIVERSITY, BELFAST
July, 1963

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Itamar Singer (Tel Aviv)
Phasis: Greek and Roman Studies Vol 10 - 2007

The Archaeology of the Kaška
Jak Yakar - Tel Aviv