Lydia

Lydia (Assyrian: Luddu; Greek: Λυδία, Turkish: Lidya) was an Iron Age kingdom of western Asia Minor located generally east of ancient Ionia in the modern western Turkish provinces of Uşak, Manisa and inland İzmir. Its population spoke an Anatolian language known as Lydian. At its greatest extent, the Kingdom of Lydia covered all of western Anatolia. Lydia (Sparda in Old Persian) was a satrapy of the Achaemenid Persian Empire, with Sardis as its capital. Tabalus, appointed by Cyrus the Great, was the first satrap. Lydia was later the name of a Roman province. Coins are said to have been invented in Lydia around the 7th century BC. 2Defining Lydia The endonym Śfard (the name the Lydians called themselves) survives in bilingual and trilingual stone-carved notices of the Achaemenid Empire: the satrapy of Sparda (Old Persian), Aramaic Saparda, Babylonian Sapardu, Elamitic Išbarda, Hebrew סְפָרַד. These in the Greek tradition are associated with Sardis, the capital city of King Gyges, constructed during the 7th century BC. The region of the Lydian kingdom was during the 15th-14th centuries part of the Arzawa kingdom. the Lydian language is not part of the Luwian subgroup (as are Carian and Lycian). An Etruscan/Lydian association has long been a subject of conjectur