DARIUS' SAGARTIA AND SARGON'S ZIKIRTU: WERE THEY THE SAME PLACE?

Following the decipherment of the Behistun Inscription, researchers began proposing that Sagartia, one of the rebellious countries mentioned in the inscription, might be the same as Zikirtu, a land mentioned in Assyrian texts. For over a century, most researchers working on this topic seem to have more or less accepted the equation Sagartia = Zikirtu. Additionally, efforts have been observed to separately associate both Sagartia and Zikirtu with Zakruti, a city likely located in the Central Zagros region, as mentioned in Assyrian texts. Some researchers who equate Sagartia with Zikirtu have attempted to bring the two geographically closer (or even merge them) in their proposed locations. Others, considering references from various sources, have accepted that while these two lands might occupy different geographical locations, they represent the same ethnic community. To frame this tendency within a logical context, hypotheses have been constructed suggesting that the same people were dispersed across several regions or that they migrated during different periods in history. In this study, we critically examined the hypothesis that equates the two lands and their peoples by taking into account the historical texts that contain information about these two lands, as well as the views of researchers who have worked on this topic from past to present. We also presented our own proposals regarding the probable locations of these lands. Our conclusion is that Zikirtu and Sagartia were not the same in terms of geography, nor were their populations identical in cultural or ethnographic terms. At the very least, it is clear that we do not possess convincing evidence to support such an equivalence.