GYNDES
GYNDES (
Γύνδης,
Hdt. 1.189;
5.52), a river which has been considered to belong in part to both Assyria and Susiana; as the upper course of its stream, from the mountains of Matiene, in which it takes its rise, passes through part of the former country, while the latter part belongs to Susiana, if its identification with the
Kerkhah is admissible. Herodotus is not clear in his account of the river: in one place (1.189), where he speaks of Cyrus's crossing it, his account would answer best with the position of the modern
Diala, which enters the Tigris near the ancient Ctesiphon: in another place (5.52), he seems to imply a river at no great distance from the Choaspes and Susa. Hence the most contradictory views of geographers. Rennell (
Geogr. of Herod. vol. i. p. 266) has, in one place, conjectured that the Gyndes is the present
Diala; in another, the
Mendeli. Larcher has thought that Herodotus means only one and the same river, and that the
Mendeli best represents it. D'Anville appears to have thought there were three rivers of the name. On the whole, it is probable that the
Mendeli was the ancient Gyndes; while it can hardly have been the
Kerkhah, as Forbiger has supposed.
It is clear that Herodotus had himself a very indistinct notion of it, as he makes the Gyndes and Araxes (the
Aras) both flow from the mountains of Matiene (1.202).
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