Anankhast

Anankhast was an envoy who travelled between the western Göktürks and Constantinople in the years before 576.^[1] Menander names him once, in his account of the embassy of Valentinos.^[1]

Valentinos set out for the Göktürks in 576. He took with him 106 Göktürks who had lived in Byzantium for a long time.^[1] Their tribes had sent them on various occasions.^[1] Menander says that Anankhast had brought some of them with him “when he had come to Byzantium on an embassy”.^[1] Others had come with Eutychius, with Valentinos himself on an earlier journey, and with Herodian and Paul the Cilician.^[1]

Identity

The Greek does not make clear whether Anankhast’s embassy went to the Göktürks or came to Byzantium.^[2] He may have been a Göktürk envoy who came to Constantinople after the embassy of Zemarchos.^[3] Menander’s translator inclines to this view, because the words used of his arrival are the words the sentence uses for arrivals in Byzantium.^[2] The name may instead be a variant of the Germanic Anagast, which would make him a Roman sent to the Göktürks.^[2] A third judgement leaves his identity open. It notes that the name looks Germanic and allows that he may have been in Roman service.^[4] The other leaders of embassies whom Menander names in the same sentence were Romans. They are Eutychius, Valentinos, Herodian and Paul the Cilician.^[3]

Either way, Anankhast belongs to the years of regular exchange between the Göktürks and the empire that followed the alliance of 568.^[4]

References

^ a b c d e f Menander Protector; Blockley 1985, fr. 19.1
^ a b c Blockley 1985, p. 275
^ a b Chavannes 1903, p. 239
^ a b Golden 1992, p. 130

Sources

Menander Protector

Literature

R. C. Blockley, The History of Menander the Guardsman: Introductory Essay, Text, Translation, and Historiographical Notes (1985)
Ludwig Dindorf (ed.), Historici Graeci minores, Bd. II: Menander Protector et Agathias (1871)
Karl Müller (ed.), Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum, Bd. IV (darin: Menandri Protectoris fragmenta, griechisch mit lateinischer Übersetzung) (1851)
Édouard Chavannes, Documents sur les Tou-Kiue (Turcs) occidentaux (1903)
Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)