In Greek mythology, Memnon (Greek: Mέμνων) was an Ethiopian king and son of Tithonus and Eos. As a warrior he was considered to be almost Achilles' equal in skill. At the Trojan War, he brought an army to Troy's defense and was killed by Achilles in retribution for killing Antilochus. The death of Memnon echoes that of Hector, another defender of Troy whom Achilles also killed out of revenge for a fallen comrade, Patroclus. After Memnon's death, Zeus was moved by Eos' tears and granted her immortality. Memnon's death is related at length in the lost epic Aethiopis, composed after The Iliad circa the 7th century BC. Quintus of Smyrna records Memnon's death in Posthomerica. His death is also described in Philostratus' Imagines.
While Roman writers and some later classical Greek writers such as Diodorus Siculus believed Memnon hailed from the country that is today called Ethiopia in Africa, earlier Greek writers believed Memnon was from an "Asiatic Ethiopia", which most of them equated with "Cissia", which corresponds to the Bronze Age Kassite state and to modern Khuzestan in southwest Iran. These Greek writers also widely credited Memnon with founding Khuzestan's main city, Susa. For example, Aeschylus (cited by Strabo) and Ctesias (summarized by Diodorus Siculus) both identified Memnon as a Cissian and founder of Susa, whereas Herodotus called Susa "the city of Memnon" (5:54, 7:151), but distinguished between Cissia and Asiatic Ethiopia, which he placed in the 17th Persian satrapy together with Paricanians (3:94), which can be deduced to be somewhere in what is now Iran, as he also included Paricanians in the 11th satrapy along with the Medes (3:92). Similarly, many Biblical scholars believe that the name Cush as used in the Bible sometimes refers to Ethiopia and sometimes to Khuzestan, which they call "Asiatic Cush".
It is also possible to interpret Memnon as having been a king of the Kaska in north-central Anatolia, which is by some scholars identified as the country called Cush in chapter two of the Book of Genesis. This country of Cush is said to be surrounded by the river Gihon, said to be one of the four rivers flowing out of Eden along with the Tigris, Euphrates and Pishon. Among the rivers that have sources near those of the Tigris and Euphrates is the Yesilirmak, which flows west across Anatolia and then north into the Black Sea, roughly encompassing where ancient Kaska was located. No rivers with sources near those of the Tigris and Euphrates, other than those rivers themselves, reach anywhere near Khuzestan, while Ethiopia lies on a different continent.
Finally, there is a passage in Herodotus which points to a possible identification of Memnon as Hittite. Herodotus describes two similar tall carved human figures in separate locations in western Anatolia, one of them on the road from Smyrna to Sardis, which Herodotus said were believed by some of his contemporaries to represent Memnon, although Herodotus himself believed they represented an Egyptian pharaoh (2:106). A carved figure matching his description has been found near the old road from Smyrna to Sardis, and it is Hittite.[1]
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