Tubal

Tubals (Tabals) and Meshechs (or Meshekhs/Mosokhs) were most ancient, non-IndoEuropean and non-Semitic indigenous tribes of Asia Minor and the Caucasus of the 3rd-1st millennias BC. They were Proto-Iberian tribes. Descendants of Tubals and Meshekhs are Georgians.

The Book of Genesis (chap. 10) gives us the descendants of Noah's three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. We are told that the sons of Japheth were Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshech, and Tiras.

Tubals, Khalibs, Mosiniks were founders of metallurgy.

According to majority of scholars the ancient country of Tubal (Tabal) comprised the area of Great Cappadocia (now territory of Turkey). Already the modern scholars identified the term Tubal with Tabal, Tobal, Jabal and Tibarenoi. Many authors, following Josephus (1st century AD), related the term to Iber. Concerning the question of the ethnic affinity of the population of Tubal, Josephus wrote: "Tobal gave rise to the Tobals, which are now called Iberians". This version was repeated by Eustathius of Antioch, Bishop Theodoret and others. Iberians were Georgians, the population of the Kingdom of Iberia (Eastern and South-Eastern Georgia).

One of greatest Georgian historians of the 20th century, Ivane Javakhishvili, considered Tabal, Tubal, Jabal and Jubal to be ancient Georgian tribal designations.

On the evidence of Hecataeus, Herodotus, Xenophon, Strabo and others, the Georgian (Kartvelian) tribe of Tibarenoi lived in the north of the territory of Tubal.

Main sources of the history of Tubal are also Assyrian texts of the 9th- 7th centuries BC, the Cappadocian tablets and the hieroglyphic-Luwian inscriptions of the 9th - 8th centuries BC.

Literature

• Ivane Javakhishvili. "Historical-Ethnological problems of Georgia, the Caucasus and the Near East" (a monograph), Tbilisi, 1950, pp. 130-135 (in Georgian)
• Giorgi Melikishvili. "About history of ancient Georgia" (a monograph), Tbilisi, 1959, pp. 9, 13, 14, 18, 72-78, 108-110, 121, 175, 226, 227, 253 (in Russian)
• Simon Janashia. "Works", vol. III, Tbilisi, 1959, pp. 2-74 (in Georgian)
• Guram Kvirkvelia. "Foreign scientists about the metallurgy of the ancient Georgian tribes" (a monograph), Tbilisi, 1976, pp. 3-90 (in Georgian, Russian summary).
• Nana Khazaradze. "The Ethnopolitical entities of Eastern Asia Minor in the first hale of the 1st millennium BC" (a monograph), Tbilisi, 1978, pp. 3-139 (in Georgian, Russian and English)