Second Chotarian Empire

The Second Chotarian Empire is the period of Chotarian history from around 930 to 359 BCE. The traditional historiography of the successive empires, inherited from Chotar itself, views this Empire as a single dynasty that existed continuously from 934 to 359, which transferred its court from the city of Ukmai in modern Low Lacre to the more westerly Lomortok in the 9th century. The factual existence of such political continuity is doubtful. The surviving archaeological evidence testifies instead to a comparatively short-lived cultural revival in the late 10th and early 9th centuries, as Chotarian civilisation recovered from the conditions of the First Interdynastic, followed by a severe period of crisis and decline in general literacy in the 9th century, and a subsequent, more durable recovery from the 8th century onward.

History of Chotar
This article is part of a series
First Empire (c. 1600–1030 BCE)
Dark Age (c. 1030–760 BCE)
First Interdynastic (c. 1030–930 BCE)
Ukmai Empire (c. 930–850 BCE)
Second Empire (c. 930/760–359 BCE)
City and Kingdom era (359–220 BCE)
Third (Urumen) Empire (220–54 BCE)
Third Interdynastic (54 BCE – 58 CE)
Fourth Empire (58–324 CE)
Equinox era (324–586)
Fifth Empire (586–1052)

Ukmai is now lost—some scholars have identified the city with an early layer of Kozrat, but the argument on this point is inconclusive—but some scattered records survive from the earlier period of revival, particularly in the form of temple inscriptions and fragmentary ledgers, letters, and administrative accounts on tablets. These, which include references to the Emperor, suggest some measure of political centralisation. Such records disappear almost entirely after the mid-9th century, a circumstance that has been linked to the Hilima Eruption in c. 855 BCE. The attestation of the classical Second Empire which emerges in around the 760s shows a markedly different geographic distribution, with similarly variant cultural characteristics. Together, this suggests that the earlier period is more accurately described as a separate Chotarian Empire. Contemporary Chotariologists hence typically bracket the First Interdynastic together with the first two centuries of the traditional Second Empire as the Chotarian Dark Age, while the intermediate state that ruled from Ukmai in the middle of this period is distinguished as the Ukmai Empire (also the Sesquialteral Empire, Chotar IIa, or Chotar Ibis).

The paucity of records from the Ukmai Empire is unfortunate, as the Second Empire is associated with the introduction of many of the social and cultural features typically associated with Chotarian civilisation in their recognisable forms, including the cult of the hereditary Emperor, the Ishtinist temple hierarchy, the regulation of trade across the Gulf of Joriscia, and the foundation of Chotarian colonies in different parts of the continent under imperial patronage. In the form it assumed in c. 750–500 BCE, the Second Empire was the primary model for all subsequent Chotarian governments, yet little has yet been understood of the origins of some of its decisive features, which presumably developed from the conditions of the Chotarian Dark Age. In the 7th century, the Second Empire extended broadly from the middle of the Joriscian Lowlands in the north down to the southern coast and to the southwest, where it bordered the Mardoan cities west of the Varudine mountains; it additionally exercised suzerainty over the smaller states in Pạmā to the east, and sponsored a great number of Chotarian colonies as far afield as Petty-Lestria and modern Doyotia, which were almost wholly autonomous of the imperial government.

From the late 6th century onwards, and at an accelerating rate after around 450 BCE, the Second Empire was subject to a series of raids and invasions, associated particularly with the migration of the Gergotes, Argotes, and Old Axiovy into imperial territory from the north, and the obscure Urumen from the west, who displaced the Mardoans permanently after settling in modern Terophan in the late 5th century and conducted numerous incursions into the heartland of Chotar from their new base. The Emperors themselves found it increasingly difficult to exert control over their Empire in the face of these invasions, and the combination of these new forces with growing discontent in the Chotarian provinces proved fatal for the Empire. In 359, a large Gergote army led by the general Risab sacked Lomortok at the behest of Chotarian rebels who had camped south of the capital; this event brought the Second Empire to an end, and as the tributaries and component parts of the Empire consolidated their newfound independence the Empire gave way to the City and Kingdom era.

Preceded by First Interdynastic c. 1030–930 BCE

Chotarian history Second Empire c. 930–359 BCE (traditional)

Succeeded by City and Kingdom era 359–220 BCE