In classical antiquity and Greco-Roman geography, Colchis (; ) was an exonym for the Georgian polity of Egrisi () located on the eastern coast of the Black Sea, centered in present-day western Georgia also including the region of Abkhazia.
Its population, the Colchians, are generally believed to have been primarily early Zan-speaking tribes, ancestral to the modern Laz and Mingrelian peoples. According to David Marshall Lang: "one of the most important elements in the modern Georgian nation, the Colchians were probably established in the Caucasus by the Middle Bronze Age."
It has been described in modern scholarship as "the earliest Georgian formation", which, along with the Kingdom of Iberia, would later contribute significantly to the development of the Kingdom of Georgia and the Georgian nation.
Colchis is known in Greek mythology as the destination of the Argonauts, as well as the home to Medea and the Golden Fleece. It was also described as a land rich with gold, iron, timber and honey that would export its resources mostly to ancient Hellenic city-states. Colchis likely had a diverse population. According to Greek and Roman sources, between 70 and 300 languages were spoken in Dioscourias (modern Sukhumi) alone.
Colchis territory is mostly assigned to what is now the western part of Georgia and encompasses the present-day Georgian provinces of Samegrelo, Imereti, Guria, Adjara, Svaneti, Racha; Abkhazia; modern Russia's Sochi and Tuapse districts; and present-day Turkey’s Artvin, Rize, and Trabzon provinces.
Geography and toponyms
right|thumb|A collection of Colchian gold bracelets and necklaces found in [[Vani, western Georgia]]
Colchis, Kolkha, Qulḫa, or Kilkhi, which existed from the to the 1st centuries BC, is regarded as an early ethnically Georgian polity; the name of the Colchians was used as the collective term for early Kartvelian tribes which populated the eastern coast of the Black Sea in Greco-Roman ethnography.
Ronald Grigor Suny identifies Colchis as an early Georgian state formation. Suny emphasizes that the Colchians were among the early Kartvelian-speaking tribes, the linguistic ancestors of modern Georgians. He highlights the cultural and political continuity between Colchis and later Georgian states, noting that Colchis, along with the eastern Georgian kingdom of Iberia, played a significant role in the ethnogenesis of the Georgian people.
Giorgi Melikishvili and Donald Rayfield believes that Colchis and their kings are mentioned in several Assyrian inscriptions. In several inscriptions about the campaigns of Tukulti-Ninurta I (1243–1207 BC), it is written that he defeated 40 kings of Nairi and watered the mountains and valleys with blood, and also mentions that he marched through the most difficult mountains that no Assyrian king had seen before. Other Assyrian inscriptions about this campaign mention "the 40 kings of the Nairi countries and the countries on the shores of the Upper Sea[Black Sea]" instead of "Nairi countries". In the inscriptions of Tiglath-Pileser I (1114–1076 BC), it is mentioned that 60 other kings came to the aid of the 23 kings of Nairi, who were too late and could not participate in the battle, so they retreated near the shores of the Upper Sea. Later, Tiglath-Pileser I went to fight the kings of the shores of the Upper Sea. In the Yonjalu inscription, Tiglath-Pileser I refers to himself as "the conqueror of the land of Nairi from Tume to Daiaeni[Diauehi], and from Gilḫi to the Upper Sea[Black Sea]". According to the author, Gilḫi should be read as Kilḫi, which means Kolkhis/Colchis.
According to Donald Rayfield, the ethnic makeup of Colchis is "obscure" and Kartvelian names "are conspicuously absent from the few anthronyms found in Colchian burials." Instead, Greek, Anatolian, Iranian, and possibly Abkhaz names are present.
right|thumb|The Statue of [[Nike (mythology)|Nike, the Goddess of Victory, from the Vani archaeological site]]
The name Colchis is thought to have derived from the Urartian Qulḫa. In the mid-eighth century BC, Sarduri II, the King of Urartu, inscribed his victory over Qulḫa on a stele; however, the exact location of Qulḫa is disputed. Some scholars argue the name Qulḫa (Colchís) originally referred to a land to the west of Georgia. Others argue Qulḫa may have been located in the south, near modern Göle, Turkey.
According to Levan Gordeziani, while the Greek Colchis etymologically descends from Urartian Qulḫa, the Greeks may have applied the name to a different region (and/or cultures) than the preceding Urartians had. Further confusion rests in possible differences in the Greeks' own usage of the name Colchis in political and mythological contexts (i.e. the relationship between "Aia-Colchis" and "the land of Colchis").
According to the scholar of Caucasian studies Cyril Toumanoff: