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DEIOCES (O771.6rc17s)

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Originally appearing in Volume V07, Page 933 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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DEIOCES (O771.6rc17s)  , according to Herodotus (i . 96 ff.) the first king of the Medes . He narrates that, when the Medes had rebelled against the Assyrians and gained their independence about 710 B.C., according to his chronology (cf . Diodor. ii . 32), they lived in villages without any
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political organization, and therefore the whole country was in a state of anarchy . Then Deioces, son of
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Phraortes, an illustrious man of upright character, was chosen judge in his
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village, and the justness of his decisions induced the inhabitants of the other villages to throng to him . At last the Medes resolved to make an end of the intolerable state of their country by erecting a
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kingdom, and chose Deioces king . He now caused them to build a
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great capital, Ecbatana, with a royal palace, and introduced the ceremonial of
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oriental courts; he surrounded himself with a guard and no longer showed himself to the
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people, but gave his judgments in writing and controlled the people by officials and spies . He
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united all the Median tribes, and ruled fifty-three years (c . 699-647 B.C.), though perhaps, as G . Rawlinson supposed, the fifty-three years of his reign are exchanged by mistake with the twenty-two years of his son Phraortes, under whom the Median conquests began . The narration of Herodotus is only a popular tradition which derives the origin of kingship from its judicial functions, considered as its
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principal and most beneficent aspect .

We know from the

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Assyrian inscriptions that just at the time which Herodotus assigns to Deioces the Medea were divided into numerous small principalities and subjected to the great Assyrian conquerors . Among these petty chieftains,
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Sargon in 715 mentions Dayukku, "
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lieutenant of Man " (he probably was, therefore, a vassal of the neighbouring king of Man in the mountains of south-eastern Armenia), who joined the Urartians and other enemies of
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Assyria, but was by Sargon transported to Hamath in
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Syria with his clan." His
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district is called " bit-Dayaukki," " house of Deioces," also in 713, when Sargon invaded these regions again . So it seems that the dynasty, which more than
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half a century later succeeded in throwing off the Assyrian yoke and founded the Median
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empire, was derived from this Dayukku, and that his name was thus introduced into the Median traditions, which contrary to
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history considered him as founder of the kingdom . (ED .

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