A view has been widely accepted that state-formation was based upon a nation in Media and Persia. But, the existence of a nation before state-formation is questionable in the Iranian areas in the first half of the first millennium B. C. The Neo-Assyrian cuneiform documents show the lack of ethnic identy among the Medes. “Media” is apparently not self-named, since the attempts have not succeeded to interprete it by any Indo-European languages. An explanation is most convincing that the name is derived from the Akkadian appellation KUR (Mad/t)-a-a “men of the mountains, frontier” to the Medes. The Medes was really men of the frontier, a people of aboriginal and Iranian origins in the central Zagros. They were incorporated to a nation in the process of forging political unity (cf. T. C. Young, CAH IV², 21f.). A similar phase is described by de Miroschedji (ZA 75, 265-306) in pre-Empire Persia. He considers the ethnogeny of the Persians in accordance of the rise of Persian monarchy in the last seventh century. He asserts persuasively that the Achaemenian rule is started by Darius the Great. In this paper, it is emphasized that the real formation of the Persians was promoted by the founder of Achaemenian rule.

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