Aryenis

Daughter of the Lydian king Alyattes

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Aryenis
Spouse	Astyages
Issue	Mandane (?) Amytis (?)
Father	Alyattes

Aryenis (Ancient Greek: Αρυηνις, romanized: Aruēnis; Latin: Aryenis) was, according to Herodotus, the daughter of King Alyattes of Lydia and the sister of King Croesus of Lydia.^[1]

Name

The name Aryenis comes from the Latin transliteration of the Ancient Greek Aruēnis (Αρυηνις), which was itself the Hellenised form of a Lydian name cognate with the Hittite term arawanni- (𒂖), which meant "free", that is a free person, as opposed to an enslaved or unfree person.^[2]^[3]

Family

Following the Battle of the Eclipse, was married to Astyages, son of the Median king Cyaxares as part of a diplomatic marriage to seal a peace treaty between Cyaxares and Alyattes. Aryenis became the Queen consort of Astyages when he succeeded Cyaxares.^[4]

Herodotus does not clearly identify her as the mother of Mandane (the wife of Cambyses I of Anshan)^[5] and there is speculation that she may have been born to an earlier wife of Astyages.^[1]

Sources

^ ^a ^b Alyattes. Livius.org. Retrieved 08 May 2015
^ Weeks, David Michael (1985). Hittite Vocabulary:An Anatolian Appendix to Buck's Dictionary of Selected Synonyms in the Principal Indo-European Languages. Los Angeles, United States. p. 222.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^ Puhvel, Jaan (1984). Hittite Etymological Dictionary. Vol. 1. De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 119–120. ISBN 978-9-027-93049-1.
^ Schmitt, Rüdiger (1987). "ASTYAGES". Encyclopædia Iranica. Retrieved 2022-05-08.
^ Histories of Herodotus, Book I, 107-111.[1]. Retrieved 06 December 2015.