Colchis

In classical antiquity and Greco-Roman geography, Colchis ('kɒlkɪs; Κολχίς) was an exonym for the Georgian polity of Egrisi (ეგრისი) located on the eastern coast of the Black Sea, centered in present-day western Georgia. Its population, the Colchians, are generally thought to have been an early Kartvelian-speaking tribe ancestral to contemporary western Georgians, namely Svans and Zans. According to David Marshall Lang: "one of the most important elements in the modern Georgian nation, the Colchians were probably established in the Caucasus by the Middle Bronze Age." It has been described in modern scholarship as "the earliest Georgian formation", which, along with the Kingdom of Iberia, would later contribute significantly to the development of the Kingdom of Georgia and the Georgian nation. Colchis is known in Greek mythology as the destination of the Argonauts, as well as the home to Medea and the Golden Fleece. It was also described as a land rich with gold, iron, timber and honey that would export its resources mostly to ancient Hellenic city-states. Colchis likely had a diverse population. According to Greek and Roman sources, between 70 and 300 languages were spoken in Dioscourias (modern Sukhumi) alone. Abkhaz, Scythian, Anatolian, and Greek names have all been identified in Colchis. Any of these groups could have constituted the ruling class. According to Rayfield, the first mention of Colchis is during the reign of the Assyrian king Tukulti-Ninurta I of the Middle Assyrian Empire(1245–1209 BC) when he mentions "40 kings by the Upper [Black] Sea". Its geography is mostly assigned to what is now the western part of Georgia and encompasses the present-day Georgian provinces of Samegrelo, Imereti, Guria, Adjara, Svaneti, Racha; Abkhazia; modern Russia's Sochi and Tuapse districts; and present-day Turkey’s Artvin, Rize, and Trabzon provinces. Colchis, Kolkha, Qulḫa, or Kilkhi, which existed from the 13th to the 1st centuries BC, is regarded as an early ethnically Georgian polity; the name of the Colchians was used as the collective term for early Kartvelian tribes which populated the eastern coast of the Black Sea in Greco-Roman ethnography.