Lydia

Lydia was an Iron Age kingdom in western Anatolia, centred on Sardis in the Hermus valley, which flourished from the eighth to the sixth century BC. The Lydians spoke an Indo-European language related to Luwian and Hittite and had their own religious system. Their capital, Sardis, was a terraced city whose layout influenced other multi-level settlements, and the royal burial mounds at Bin Tepe are among the largest in the ancient world. Lydia is best known for producing some of the world's first coinage, struck in electrum in the seventh century BC, and for the wealth of its kings, which funded cultural, economic and diplomatic contacts with the Greek cities to the west and with Assyria, Babylonia and Egypt. In the seventh century the kingdom expanded under the Mermnad dynasty. Gyges, the first king attested in contemporary records, allied with Assyria against the Cimmerians, intervened in Egypt and attacked the Ionian Greeks, but died when Sardis was sacked in 644 BC. His successors Ardys and Sadyattes fought the Cimmerians and Miletus. Alyattes, ruling from about 635 BC, expelled the Cimmerians with Scythian help, conquered much of western Anatolia and fought the Medes until the eclipse of 585 BC ended the war. His son Croesus, famed for his wealth, ruled until the Persian king Cyrus the Great captured Sardis in 546 BC; Lydia then became the Achaemenid satrapy of Sparda.