ABSTRACT

According to Greek tradition, India (a term I shall throughout use for the Indian subcontinent, not for the state at present using that name) was conquered by the Assyrian queen Semiramis, at least up to the Indus. Thus Ctesias reported, and Arrian accepts the Assyrian conquest as such, adding that India was taken over by the Medes and from them by the Persians. 1 Semiramis is clearly a figure largely built up by myth, and traditions on her achievements in India vary. 2 Indian tradition, which of course is also myth and not history, is of no help. Assyriologists are divided as to whether there was ever any claim regarding Assyrian (or earlier) control of parts of India. (How much, if anything, was in fact controlled is irrelevant to later history.) It depends on the much-debated interpretation of references to Meluhˇhˇa in a document usually referred to as the ‘geography of Sargon’ and of Magan/Makkan in various documents from the late third millennium BC on.