By 546, however, Cyrus had annexed the whole country to the Persian Empire, in the continuous history of which it shared until the advent, in B.C. 324, of Alexander, who once more established the supremacy of the West. With his death the tribal struggles of antiquity reappear in new guise, and history is occupied chiefly with the varying fortunes of the kingdoms of Pergamum, of Pontus, and of the Seleucids, until in the first century B.C. Roman organisation gathered together the loose threads of independence and retied the knot in a manner that remained firm, in fine, for several hundred years. The next great landmark is not till 668 A.D., when, forty-six years after the flight of Mohammed, the Saracen army laid siege to Constantinople. In 1067 the Seljûks appeared from the east, followed two centuries later by the Osmanli-Turks, though these were not finally re-established in power, after the Mongol invasions, until 1413 A.D. [Illustration: PLATE XXIV MONUMENTS OF PHRYGIA BEY-KEUI: THE ROYAL ROAD TRACED BY RUTS IN THE SURFACE ROCK (_See pp. 24, 38._) DIMERLI: A FALLEN LION (_See p. 60._)] Of the monarchies that arose as the Hittite power declined, and in their turn passed away, that of the Phrygians first attracts our attention by its proximity in time and place. When the Muski first appeared in the twelfth century B.C. upon the north-west frontier of Assyria,[85] they gave warning of a tide of Aryan immigration setting in from the north-west. This first wave, after beating vainly against the ramparts of the Assyrian Empire, seems to have retreated; but it left its traces behind in a group of people, whether colonists or prisoners settled on the soil in the Assyrian manner, who by the same name reappear some centuries later[86] as a small state on the east of the Euphrates opposite Malatia. We know nothing of the early history of this movement, but, so far as can be seen, the rolling of this wave across Asia Minor was coeval with the submergence of the Hatti seated at Boghaz-Keui as the dominant power among the Hittite states. Nor is it clear to what cause we must attribute the retiring of this vanguard. Probably, as in Syria with the Hittites,[87] and in Asia Minor with the Cimmerians, the migratory movement was intermittent; and historically we may see in the repulse by the Assyrians on the one hand, and in the development of the rival state of Lydia and the Greek colonies on the other, coupled with a certain recuperative vitality latent in the Hittite states of the centre, various active causes tending to the consolidation of the Phrygians at the focus of least resistance, in the fertile tracts to which they gave their name. However that may be, at the dawn of Greek history we find them already a fading power, but one which had left an indelible impression in Greek tradition and romance, obscuring entirely the old-time Hatti power of which no memory remained.