See also Tabal.

Tubals (Tabals, Tibarenoi in Greek) and Meshechs (Meshekhs/Mosokhs, Moschoi in Greek) were ancient, non-Indo-European and non-Semitic, indigenous tribes of Asia Minor of the 3rd-1st millennias BC. They were Proto-Iberian tribes. The modern Georgians claim descent from the Tubals and Meshechs.

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 .

The Tubals, or Tibarenoi, and other related tribes, the Chalybes (Khalib /Khaldi) and the Mossynoeci (Mossynoikoi in Greek), were the founders of metallurgy. These three tribes still neighbored each other, along the Black Sea coast of Anatolia (ancient Pontus), as late as in Roman times (known in Latin as Tibareni, Chalybes, and Mossynoeci/Mosynoeci).

According to a majority of scholars, the ancient country of Tubal (Tabal) comprised the area of Great Cappadocia (now part of Turkey). Already the ancient scholars identified the term Tubal with Tabal, Tobal, Jabal and Tibarenoi. Many authors, following the Romanized Jewish author 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, who are now called Iberians". This version was repeated by Eustathius of Antioch, Bishop Theodoret, and others. The 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 tribe of the Tibareni (Tibarenoi in Greek) lived in the north of the territory of Tubal.

The main sources for 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)