Scythia
 |
Scythian warriors, drawn after figures on an electrum cup from the Kul'Oba kurgan burial near Kerch. The warrior on the right strings his bow, bracing it behind his knee; note the typical pointed hood, long jacket with fur or fleece trimming at the edges, decorated trousers, and short boots tied at the ankle. Scythss apparently normally wore their hair long and loose, and all adult men apparently wore beards. The gorytos appears clearly on the left hip of the bare-headed spearman; his companion has an interesting shield, perhaps representing a plain leather covering over a wooden or wicker base. (Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg) |
Scythia comprised an area in
Eurasia whose location and extent varied over time. Scythians at various times inhabited:
* the
Caucasus area, including
Azerbaijan,
Georgia * Central Asian
steppes:
Uzbekistan,
Turkmenistan,
Tajikistan,
Afghanistan* the
Altay Mountains region where present-day
Mongolia,
China,
Russia, and
Kazakhstan come together
* the plains of
Indus (
Sinthos),
Jehlum (
Hydaspes),
Chenab (
Acesines) and
Sutlej (
Zaradros) rivers in
Pakistan and North-Western India.
* the southern
Ukraine with the lower
Danube river area and
Bulgaria.
Scholars generally regard the Scythians as
Iranian nomadic peoples, speaking an
Iranian language.
The Scythians first appear in
Assyrian annals as
Ishkuzai, reported as pouring in from the north some time around
700 BC and settling in
Ascania and modern
Azerbaijan as far as to the southeast of
Lake Urmia. The Scythian tribes mentioned in the Greek sources resided in the steppe between the
Dnieper and
Don rivers.
The
ancient Greek historian Herodotus of
Halicarnassus describes the
Kimmerioi or
Cimmerians (
Gimirru in
Assyrian annals) as a distinct autochthonous tribe, expelled by the Scythians, of the northern
Black Sea coast (
Hist. 4.11-12). Herodotus then goes further to state that "the Hellenes gave them" the name
Scythians, and that the Scythians called themselves
Scolotoi; and that
Scolotoi, in turn, referred in general to several distinct tribes:
Auchatai,
Catiaroi,
Traspians, and finally
Paralatai or "Royal Scythians". Throughout his work Herodotus specifically distinguished between the
nomadic Scythians in the South and
agricultural Scythians to the North.
[As of 2006]] no consensus exists regarding these different Scythian subdivisions. The Western school of thought generally ignores Herodotus' distinction, and views all Scythians as a single group that spread throughout Greater Scythia, and eventually split into distinct cultures.
The pro-Slavic school of thought, following
Boris Rybakov, claims that the nomadic Scythians of Herodotus had Iranian origins, while seeing the northern agricultural Scythians as proto-Slavs, ruled by Scythian chieftains. Rybakov points out the incompatibility in life-styles with boundaries between nomads and farmers and their distinct burial customs remaining constant throughout the centuries of the Scythians' existence. Rybakov also stresses the similarities between the agricultural Scythian culture and the later Slavic culture. The Scythian
creation-myth recorded by Herodotus also points to farmers rather than nomads, as it centers around a plough; and while it has no parallels within Iranian folklore, folklorists recorded a virtually unchanged version as a Russian folktale in the 19th century.
Archaeological remains of the Scythians include
kurgan tombs (ranging from simple exemplars to elaborate "Royal kurgans" containing the "Scythian triad" of weapons, horse-harness, and Scythian-style wild-animal art),
gold,
silk, and animal sacrifices, in places also with suspected
human sacrifices.
Mummification techniques and
permafrost have aided in the relative preservation of some remains. Scythian archaeology also examines the remains of North Pontic Scythian cities and fortifications.
Carbon-14 dating of the Scythian kurgans has allowed archaeologists to trace their emergence in the
Sayan-Altay mountainous area from about 3,000 BC to about 500 BC, and their westward spread starting about 900 BC.
Archaeologists can distinguish three periods of ancient Scythian archaeological remains:
* 1st period - pre-Scythian and initial Scythian epoch: from the 9th to the middle of the 7th centuries BC
* 2nd period - early Scythian epoch: from the 7th to the 6th centuries BC
* 3rd period - classical Scythian epoch: from the 5th to the 4th centuries BC
From the 8th century BC to the 2nd century BC archeology records a split into two distinct settlement areas: the older in the Sayan-Altai area in Central Asia, and the younger in the North Pontic area in Eastern Europe (A. Yu. Alekseev
et al., "Chronology of Eurasian Scythian Antiquities...").
Tamgas
Scythian tribes and clans have left behind them as important ethnological markers - their
tamgas, or brand marks which identify individual possession " a must for pastoral societies with shared grazing ranges. Tamgas allow reconstruction of movements and family links where no written records have survived.
Besides identifying property, tamgas marked participation of members of the clan in collective actions (treaties, religious ceremonies, fraternization, public functions), and served as symbols of authority for minting coins. The tamga forms stayed unchanged for about 2000 years within kindred ethnic groups, but after the decline of some famous clan another clan would adopt its tamga.
Wide use of tamgas originated from western
Turkestan and
Mongolia no later than the beginning of 6th сentury 'С. Analysis of tamgas for most powerful clans and for the kings of the
Bosporus has allowed scholars to define precisely their genealogy and their relations with territories from where their forefathers migrated to Europe:
Chorasm,
Kang-Kü,
Bactria,
Sogdiana (S. A. Yatsenko,
Tamgas ...).
There is an alternative point of view. Tamgas are a real script consisting of syllables and several logograms. The language (dialects) of the Scythians, Sarmatians and Meotians (Sindi) is closely related to the Old Indian (Sanskrit, Indo-Aryan) language, though some elements of this language are connected with the Iranian and other Indo-European languages (S. V. Rjabchikov,
Skify ...).
Kurgans
Kurgans
[ The word kurgan comes from Turkish. The Scythian name for kurgans remains unknown. ] appear frequently as Scythian historical phenomena. Well-known kurgans include the "royal kurgan" groups, Arjan in
Tuva,
Pazyryk in Central Asia, Seven Brothers in the
Kuban, Ust-Khadynnyg, Kelermess and Novozaved, Steblev group, Uash-khitu (Europe), Bashadar and Tuekta kurgans in Sayan-Altai, Maiemir and Issyk kurgans in eastern
Kazakhstan, Khystaglar, Large Erba, Kazanov-3 and Shaman Mountain kurgans in Southern Siberia. Most of the ancient kurgans, regarded by people with kurgan traditions as permanent cemeteries, saw re-use again after their original owners abandoned them. Kurgan Issyk preserved a silver dish with a Scythian inscription (A. Amanjolov, "History Of The Ancient...")
Herodotus (
Hist, book 4) specifically records that European Scythians spoke multiple languages. Some scholars ascribe certain "runic" inscriptions found in
Eastern Europe and
Central Asia to the Scythians, but apart from that no Scythian texts survive; however, the personal names found in the contemporary Greek literary and
epigraphic texts suggest that the language of the Scythians and the
Sarmatians (who spoke a dialect of Scythian according to Herodotus,
Hist. 4.117) has strong similarities to well-attested Eastern Iranian dialects such as
Sogdian, modern
Ossetic and
Pashto.
Contemporaries also commonly referred to the subject peoples in the periphery
steppes as "Scythians", but that does not necessarily mean that they spoke
Iranian languages as did the Scythians proper.
Priscus, the Byzantine emissary to
Attila, referred to Attila's followers repeatedly as "Scythians"; some of the
Huns may have had Scythian ancestry.
According to
Herodotus (
Hist. 4.6), the Scythians called themselves
Skolotoi. The Greek
Skyth"s probably reflects an older rendering of the very same name,
Skuδa- (whereas Herodotus transcribes the unfamiliar as
Λ;
-toi represents the North-east Iranian plural ending
-ta). The word originally means "shooter, archer", and it ultimately derived from the
Proto-Indo-European root
skeud- "to shoot, throw" (compare
English shoot).
[Oswald Szemerényi, "Four old Iranian ethnic names: Scythian - Skudra - Sogdian - Saka" (Sitzungsberichte der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 371), Vienna, 1980 = Scripta minora, vol. 4, pp. 2051-2093.]The
Sogdians' name for themselves,
Swγδ, probably represents the same name (
Skuδa >
Suγuδa with an
anaptyctic vowel). The name also occurs in
Assyrian in the form
Aškuzai or
Iškuzai "Scythian". This name may have provided the source of biblical
Hebrew Ashkenaz (original *אשכוז
škuz got misspelled as אשכנז šknz), later a Jewish name of the Germanic areas of Central Europe and hence a self-descriptor of the
Central European Jews who lived there among the Ashkenazim (Germans).
The Old Persians used another name for the Scythians, namely
Saka, which perhaps derived from the Iranian
verbal root
sak- "to go, to roam", i.e. "wanderer, nomad".
The Chinese knew the
Saka (Asian Scythians) as
Sai (
Chinese character: 塞, Old Sinitic
*sək).
Scythians lived in confederated tribes, a political form of voluntary association which regulated pastures and organized a common defence against encroaching neighbors for the pastoral tribes of mostly
equestrian herdsmen. While the productivity of domesticated animal breeding was much higher than of the settled agricultural societies, the pastroral economy also needed a supplemental agricultural produce, and stable nomadic confederations developed either symbiotic, or forced alliances with sedentiary peoples, in exchange for animal produce and military protection. They invaded many areas in the
steppes of
Eurasia, including areas in present-day
Kazakhstan,
Azerbaijan, southern
Ukraine and southern
Russia. Ruled by small numbers of closely-allied élites, Scythians had a reputation for their
archers, and many gained employment as
mercenaries.
Scythian élites had
kurgan tombs: high barrows heaped over chamber-tombs of
larch-wood " a deciduous conifer that may have had special significance as a tree of life-renewal, for it stands bare in winter. Burials at
Pazyryk in the
Altay Mountains have included some spectacularly preserved Scythians of the "Pazyryk culture" " including the "Ice Maiden" of the
5th century BC.
Scythian women dressed in much the same fashion as the men, and at times fought alongside them in battle. A Pazyryk burial found in the
1990s confirms this. It contained the skeletons of a man and a woman, each with weapons, arrowheads, and an axe. "The woman was dressed exactly like a man. This shows that certain women, probably young and unmarried, could be warriors, literally
Amazons. It didn't offend the principles of nomadic society", according to one of the
archaeologists interviewed for the
1998 NOVA documentary "Ice Mummies".
Scythian warrior-women have become popular contenders for the honour of having inspired the
Greek myths of the
Amazons. The work of Jeannine Davis-Kimball (
Secrets of the Dead August 4, 2004) provides archaeological and genetic evidence that the
Sarmatians may have provided the source of the Greek tales.
As far as we know, the Scythians had no
writing system. Until recent archaeological developments, most of our information about them came from the
Greeks. The
Ziwiye hoard, a treasure of gold and silver metalwork and ivory found near the town of
Sakiz south of Lake Urmia and dated to between
680 and
625 BC, includes objects with Scythian "
animal style" features. One silver dish from this find bears some inscriptions, as yet undeciphered and so possibly representing a form of Scythian writing.
Homer called the Scythians "the mare-milkers".
Herodotus described them in detail: their costume consisted of padded and quilted leather trousers tucked into boots, and open tunics. They rode with no
stirrups or saddles, just saddle-cloths. Herodotus reports that Scythians used
cannabis, both to weave their clothing and to cleanse themselves in its smoke (Hist. 4.73-75); archaeology has confirmed the use of cannabis in funeral rituals. The Scythian philosopher
Anacharsis visited
Athens in the
6th century BC and became a legendary sage. Scythians also had reputations for their usage of barbed and poisoned arrows of several types, for a
nomadic life centered around horses " "fed from horse-blood" according to Herodotus " and for skill in
guerrilla warfare. Some see the Scythians as the first to tame the horse and to use it in combat as well (compare
Domestication of the horse).
Overview
To date, no widely-accepted explanation exists for the origin of the Scythians, nor of how they migrated to the
Caucasus and
Ukraine; but many scholars conjecture that they migrated westward from
Central Asia between
800 BC and
600 BC.
Herodotus gives the name of the land where the Scythians originated as
Gerrhos. They would prepare their dead and travel with them long distances to bring them for burial in Gerrhos.
The first Assyrian records to mention the
Iskuzai date from around the end of the
8th century BC. Herodotus even confirms that the Scythian king
Partatua had an alliance with Assyria, and that the
Mannai recognized him. In
653 BC, Partatua's son
Madius (Madyes), at the request of
Ashurbanipal of Assyria, defeated the king of the
Medes,
Phraortes (Kshathrita), assuming control over the Medes until
625 BC. By the end of his reign he had led the Scythians and the
Cimmerians (apparently close relatives) on a pillaging spree, overrunning and plundering
Assyria,
Anatolia, Northern
Syria,
Phoenicia,
Damascus, and
Philistia. They plundered the Temple of Venus in
Ashkelon.
After 625, however, the Scythians left the
Median Empire " historians debate whether they did so voluntarily, or suffered expulsion. At any rate, following the Mede sack of
Assur in
614 BC, they had to switch sides and ally themselves with the Medes. They comprised part of the force that sacked
Nineveh 612 BC. Some time afterwards, the Scythians returned to the steppes.
In 512 BC, when king
Darius the Great of Persia attacked the Scythians, he apparently reached them by crossing the
Danube. Herodotus relates that as nomads, the Scythians succeeded in frustrating the designs of the Persian army by letting them march through the entire country without an engagement. According to Herodotus, Darius in this manner reached as far as the
Volga river.
During the
5th to
3rd centuries BC the Scythians evidently prospered. When Herodotus wrote his
Histories in the 5th century BC, Greeks distinguished a 'Greater Scythia' that extended a 20-day ride from the
Danube River in the west, across the steppes of today's Ukraine to the lower
Don basin, from '
Scythia Minor'. The Don, then known as
Tanaïs, has served as a major trading route ever since. The Scythians apparently obtained their wealth from their control over the
slave trade from the north to Greece through the Greek
Black Sea colonial ports. They also grew grain, and shipped
wheat, flocks, and
cheese to Greece.
The Crimean Scythians created a kingdom extending from the lower
Dnieper to the
Crimea. Their capital city,
Scythian Neapol, stood on the outskirts of modern
Simferopol. (The
Goths destroyed it much later, in the
5th century AD.)
|
The Hermitage Museum has preserved by far the greatest collection of Scythian gold, including one of the most famous of all Scythian finds: the golden comb, featuring a battle-scene, from the 4th century Solokha royal burial mound. |
In the southeasternmost corner of the plains, north of the woods of
Thrace,
Philip II of Macedon settled
Macedonian trading towns along routes as far north as the Danube during the
330s BC (Fox 1973). Greek craftsmen from the colonies north of the Black Sea made spectacular Scythian-style gold ornaments (see below), applying Greek realism to depict Scythian motifs of lions, antlered reindeer and
gryphons. Hellenic-Scythian contact focused on the Hellenistic cities and settlements of the
Crimea (especially in the
Bosporan Kingdom).
Shortly after
300 BC, the
Celts seem to have displaced the Scythians from the
Balkans, while in south Russia a kindred tribe, the
Sarmatians, gradually overwhelmed them.
Scythians in Classical sources
|
Approximate extent of Scythia and Sarmatia in the 1st century BC. |
In the
1st century BCE, the Greek geographer
Strabo gives an extensive description of eastern Scythians, whom he located in northeastern Asia beyond
Bactria and
Sogdiana:
"Then comes Bactriana, and Sogdiana, and finally the Scythian nomads." (
Strabo, Geography, 11.8.1)
He goes on to list the names of the various tribes among the Scythians, probably making an amalgam with some of the tribes of eastern Central Asia (such as the
Tochari):
''"Now the greater part of the Scythians, beginning at the
Caspian Sea, are called
Dahae, but those who are situated more to the east than these are named
Massagetae and
Sacae, whereas all the rest are given the general name of Scythians, though each people is given a separate name of its own. They are all for the most part nomads. :''But the best known of the nomads are those who took away
Bactriana from the Greeks (i.e.
Greco-Bactrians), I mean the
Asii,
Pasiani,
Tochari, and
Sacarauli, who originally came from the country on the other side of the
Jaxartes River that adjoins that of the
Sacae and the
Sogdiani and was occupied by the Sacae.
And as for the Däae, some of them are called Aparni, some Xanthii, and some Pissuri. Now of these the Aparni are situated closest to Hyrcania and the part of the sea that borders on it, but the remainder extend even as far as the country that stretches parallel to Aria." (Strabo, Geography'', 11.8.1)
Sakas
Asians, especially
Persians, knew the Scythians in Asia as
Sakas. The Indo-Scythians had the name "Shaka" in
South Asia, an extension on the name "Saka".
Herodotus describes them as Scythians, called by a different name:
"The Sacae, or Scyths, were clad in trousers, and had on their heads tall stiff caps rising to a point. They bore the
bow of their country and the dagger; besides which they carried the battle-axe, or
sagaris. They were in truth Amyrgian (Western) Scythians, but the Persians called them Sacae, since that is the name which they gave to all Scythians." (Herodotus VII. 64)
Shakas receive numerous mentions in texts like the
Puranas, the
Manusmriti, the
Ramayana, the
Mahabharata, the
Mahabhasiya of
Patanjali, the
Brhat Samhita of
Vraha Mihira, the
Kavyamimamsa, the
Brihat-
Katha-
Manjari, the
Katha-
Saritsagara and several other old texts. The accounts typically group Scythians as part of an amalgam of other war-like tribes from the northwest.
Although the Shakas had a reputation as fierce and war-like, one of the greatest sages of peace, the
Buddha, descended from this tribe: he had the title
Shakyamuni which means "Shaka monk".
Indo-Scythians
A group of Scythian tribes migrated into
Bactria,
Sogdiana,
Arachosia,
Gandhara,
Kashmir, and finally into the
Punjab and the northwest of the
Indian subcontinent, between the middle of the 2nd century BC and the 1st century BC. The literature eventually came to refer to these peoples as
Indo-Scythians.
The migrations in
175-
125 BC of the White Hun (Kushan) (
Chinese "Yuezhi") tribes, who originally lived in modern
Gansu before the
Huns (
Chinese "Xiongnu") tribes disloged them, displaced the Indo-Scythians from
Central Asia. Led by their king
Maues, they ultimately settled in modern-day
Pakistan from around
85 BC, where they replaced the kingdom of the
Indo-Greeks by the time of
Azes II (reigned circa 35 - 12 BCE). Kushans again overran in the
1st century, but the Indo-Scythian rule persisted in some areas of Central
India until the
5th century.
See main article:
Invasion of India by Scythian TribesScythians and China
Ancient influences from Central Asia became identifiable in China following contacts of metropolitan China with nomadic western and northwestern border territories from the 8th century BC.
Gold entered China from Central Asia between the 8th and the 7th centuries, and Chinese jade-carvers began to make imitations of the designs of the
steppes. The Chinese adopted the Scythian-style animal art of the steppes (descriptions of animals locked in combat), particularly the rectangular belt-plaques made of gold or bronze, and created their own versions in
jade and
steatite.
Following their expulsion by the
Yuezhi, some Scythians may also have migrated to the area of
Yunnan in southern China. Excavations of the prehistoric art of the
Dian civilization of Yunnan have revealed hunting scenes of Caucasoid horsemen in Central Asian clothing (Mallory and Mair,
The Tarim Mummies: Ancient China and the Mystery of the Earliest Peoples from the West, 2000).
Scythians in the Bible
The people mentioned briefly as "Ashkenaz" " perhaps as a result of ancient
Hebrew alphabet misreading:
אשכנז instead of the correct
אשכוז (=
Ashkūz), in
Genesis x. 3 and
I Chronicles i. 6 " trace back through
Gomer to
Noah's third son,
Japheth. The Book of
Jeremiah li. 27, 28, mentions
Ashkenaz in connection with the kingdoms of
Ararat and
Minni (in the
Taurus Mountains), together with the
Medes " and portrays them all as hostile to Babylon. In the
Middle Ages Jewish communities revived the name
Ashkenaz to mean first the
Teutons, then the
Ashkenazi Jews. Biblical connections with Scythians rest on a number of assumptions.
The term "Scythian" itself also appears in the
1st Century AD Epistle of St. Paul to the
Colossians (3:11).
Putative Scythian peoples
Although the Scythians had allegedly disappeared in the
1st century BC, Eastern Romans continued to speak conventionally of "Scythians" to designate mounted
Eurasian nomadic barbarians in general: in
448 AD two mounted "Scythians" led the emissary
Priscus to
Attila's encampment in
Pannonia. The Byzantines in this case carefully distinguished the Scythians from the Goths and
Huns who also followed Attila.
The
Sarmatians, the
Alans, and finally the
Ossetes counted as Scythians in the broadest sense of the word " as speakers of Northeast Iranian languages " but nevertheless remain distinct from the Scythians proper. The Ossetes, the only Iranian people presently resident in Europe, call their country
Ironiston or
Iron, though
North Ossetia now officially has the designation
Alania. They speak an North-Eastern Iranian language
Ossetic, whose more widely-spoken dialect,
Iron or
Ironig (i.e. Iranian), preserves some similarities with the
Gathic Avestan language, another Iranian language of the Eastern branch. At the same time, it has a number of words remarkably similar to their modern
German equivalents, such as THAU (
tauen, "to thaw, as snow") and
GAU ("district", "region").
Traditions of the Turkic
Kazakhs and
Yakuts (who call themselves
"Sakha"), the
Pashtuns and
Gujjars in Pakistan and Afghanistan and the
Marathas of India connect these peoples to Scythian origins. Some legends of the
Picts; the
Gaels; the
Hungarians;
Serbs and
Croats (among others) also include mention of Scythian origins.
One cannot say with certainty that all of those variously referred to as
Scythians or
Saka spoke Iranian languages, or that they descended genetically from the stock of Iranian's original speakers. They may have only had an Iranian-speaking élite, with the peoples they dominated speaking
Proto-Germanic,
Proto-Slavic,
Indo-Aryan, and/or even
Tocharian (this could explain the presence of Tocharian in the east). See
Non-Indo-European roots of Germanic languages and
Mathematical approaches to comparative linguistics.
* See Fox, Robin Lane, 1973.
Alexander the Great. ISBN 0-14-008878-4.
The genetic argument
Genetic research in modern populations reveals that the same paternal
Y-chromosome haplogroup (R1a) represents a genetic lineage currently found in
central,
western and
south Asia, and in
Slavic populations of
Europe. The simplest explanation of this distribution involves this Y-chromosome mutation originating in people of the
kurgan-building culture of traditional Scythia (see link).
However, haplogroups H, J2, R1b and L also appear in populations of
Iran,
Pakistan,
Central Asia and
India, and the idea that R1a1 originates from Kurgan Culture remains questionable, since haplogroups I and E appear completely absent in India (although common in
Europe, particularly in
Ukraine).
"Pazyryk culture"
 |
Horseman, Pazyryk felt artifact, c.300 BC. |
For further information see Pazyryk.Some of the first
Bronze Age Scythian burials documented by modern archaeologists include the
kurgans at
Pazyryk in the
Ulagan district of the
Altay Republic, south of
Novosibirsk in the
Altay Mountains of southern
Siberia. Archaeologists have extrapolated the
Pazyryk culture from these finds: five large burial mounds and several smaller ones between
1925 and
1949, one opened in
1947 by Russian archeologist
Sergei Rudenko. The burial mounds concealed chambers of larch logs covered over with large
cairns of boulders and stones.
Pazyryk culture flourished between the
7th and
3rd centuries BC in a mountain fastness known as territory belonging to a group of Scythians who may have called themselves
Sacae. It formed the seat of the larger of two related Scythian groups.
All the things a Scythian might use or need in this life went into the tomb as grave goods for use in the next. The rich or powerful had horses sacrificed and buried with them. Ordinary Pazyryk graves contain only common utensils, but in one, among other treasures, archaeologists found the famous
Pazyryk Carpet, the oldest surviving wool-pile
oriental rug. Rudenko summed up the cultural context at one point:
All that is known to us at the present time about the culture of the population of the High Altay, who have left behind them the large cairns, permits us to refer them to the Scythian period, and the Pazyryk group in particular to the
fifth century BC. This is supported by
radiocarbon dating.
In the
Soviet climate of 'science' used as propaganda, Rudenko could not stress the cultural similarities between Pazyryk culture and the Scythians from the
Kuban in European Russia and the lower
Dnieper Valley in Ukraine. Even in modern times the obvious blond hair and white skin on the frozen
"Ice Maiden" and other burials do not get a mention in the
Nova segment devoted to these burials. The
Altay Republic today takes considerable pride in the likelihood that the ancient culture studied by Rudenko formed the ethnic stock ancestral to many nomadic tribes of today, including modern
Altaic peoples,
Kirgiz, and
Kazakhs.
Scythian Gelonus (modern Bel'sk near Poltava)
Herodotus tells of an enormous city,
Gelonus, in the northern part of Scythia (4.108):
"The Budini are a large and powerful nation: they have all deep blue eyes, and bright red hair. There is a city in their territory, called Gelonus, which is surrounded with a lofty wall, thirty furlongs [ = ca. 5,5 km] each way, built entirely of wood. All the houses in the place and all the temples are of the same material. Here are temples built in honour of the Grecian gods, and adorned after the Greek fashion with images, altars, and shrines, all in wood. There is even a festival, held every third year in honour of Bacchus, at which the natives fall into the Bacchic fury. For the fact is that the Geloni were anciently Greeks, who, being driven out of the factories along the coast, fled to the Budini and took up their abode with them. They still speak a language half Greek, half Scythian." (transl. Rawlinson)
Recent digs in
Bel'sk near
Poltava (
Ukraine) have uncovered a vast city identified by
Boris Shramko as Gelonus. The city's commanding ramparts and vast area of 40 square kilometers exceeded even the outlandish size reported by Herodotus. Its location at the northern edge of the Ukrainian steppe would have allowed strategic control of the north-south
trade route. Judging by the finds dated to the
5th and
4th centuries BC, craft workshops and Greek pottery abounded, as well as slaves perhaps destined for Greece.
A
letopys (chronicle) describes Slavic groups departing to Greece around the Gelonus area in 907.
The Ryzhanovka kurgan
A
kurgan or burial mound near the village of Ryzhanovka in Ukraine, 75 miles south of
Kyiv, has revealed one of the few unlooted tombs of a Scythian chieftain, one who ruled in the forest-steppe area on the western fringe of Scythian lands. There, at a date late in Scythian culture (ca.
250 -
225 BC), a formerly nomadic aristocracy had gradually started to adopt the agricultural lifestyle of its subjects: the tomb contained a mock hearth, the first ever found in a Scythian context, symbolic of the warmth and comfort of a farmhouse.
"Scythian gold"
Scythian contacts with craftsmen in Greek colonies along the northern shores of the Black Sea resulted in the famous Scythian gold adornments that feature among the most glamorous prestige artifacts of world museums.
Ethnographically extremely useful as well, the gold depicts Scythian men as bearded, long-haired
Caucasoids. "Greco-Scythian" works depicting Scythians within a much more
Hellenic style date from a much later period, when Scythians had already become thoroughly mixed with Greeks, clouding the issue of their origins.
Scythians had a taste for elaborate personal jewelry, weapon-ornaments and horse-trappings. They executed Central-Asian animal motifs with Greek realism: winged
gryphons attacking horses, battling
stags,
deer, and
eagles, combined with everyday motifs like milking
ewes.
In
2000 the touring exhibition 'Scythian Gold' introduced the North American public to the objects made for Scythian nomads by Greek craftsmen north of the
Black Sea, and buried with their Scythian owners under burial mounds on the flat plains of present-day
Ukraine, most of them unearthed after
1980.
In
2001, the discovery of an undisturbed royal Scythian burial-barrow illustrated for the first time Scythian animal-style gold that lacks the direct influence of Greek styles. Forty-four pounds of gold weighed down the royal couple in this burial, discovered near
Kyzyl, capital of the
Siberian republic of
Tuva.
Owing to their reputation as promulgated by Greek historians, the Scythians served as the epitome of savagery and barbarism in the early modern period. Specifically, early modern English discourse on
Ireland frequently resorted to comparisons with this people in order to confirm that the indigenous population of Ireland descended from these ancient "bogeymen", and showed themselves as barbaric as their alleged ancestors.
Edmund Spenser wrote that "the Chiefest [nation that settled in Ireland] I Suppose to be Scithians ... which firste inhabitinge and afterwarde stretchinge themselves forthe into the lande as theire numbers increased named it all of themselues Scuttenlande which more brieflye is Called Scuttlande or Scotlande" (
A View of the Present State of Ireland, c. 1596). As proofs for this origin Spenser cites the alleged Irish customs of blood-drinking, nomadic lifestyle, the wearing of mantles and certain haircuts and "Cryes [or wailings] allsoe vsed amongeste the Irishe which savor greatlye of the
Scythyan Barbarisme".
William Camden, one of Spenser's main sources, comments on this legend of origin that "to derive descent from a Scythian stock, cannot be thought any waies dishonourable, seeing that the Scythians, as they are most ancient, so they have been the Conquerours of most Nations, themselves alwaies invincible, and never subject to the Empire of others" (
Britannia, 1586 etc., Engl. transl. 1610). Spenser's contemporary
Shakespeare alluded to the legend that Scythians ate their parents in his play
King Lear:
The barbarous Scythian:Or he that makes his generation messes:To gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom:Be as well neighbour'd, pitied, and relieved,:As thou my
sometime daughter. - (Act I, Scene i)
In the second paragraph of the 1320
Declaration of Arbroath the élite of Scotland claim Scythia as a former homeland of the Scots.
In the
19th century, romantic revisionists transformed the "
barbarian" Scyths of literature into the wild and free, hardy and democratic ancestors of all blond
Indo-Europeans. Aside from the findings of modern archaeology and genetics, most of what subsequent generations "knew" of Scythia and Scythians remained second-hand, a series of literary conventions.
Some modern groups still claim descent from the Scythians. The Scythians feature in the national origin legends of the Celts. Archaeologists discovered in 2000 that Scythians landed several miles outside St Austell in
Cornwall and their presence had an influence on the
Cornish language. Some
romantic nationalist writers claim that they figured in the formation of the empire of the
Medes and likewise of
Caucasian Albania, the precursor in antiquity of the modern-day
Azerbaijan Republic. Most famously of all, the
Russians sometimes saw themselves as Scythians in
18th-century poetry, as some contemporary scholars sought to demonstrate their descent from the ancient warriors described by Herodotus.
Alexander Blok drew on this tradition in his last major poem,
Yes, We Are the Scyths (1920).
* Amanjolov, A. S., "History Of The Ancient Türkic Script", Almaty, "Mektep", 2003 (in Russian)
* Davis-Kimball, Jeannine. 2002.
Warrior Women: An Archaeologist's Search for History's Hidden Heroines. Warner Books, New York. 1st Trade printing, 2003. ISBN 0-446-67983-6 (pbk).
* Torday, Laszlo (1998).
Mounted Archers: The Beginnings of Central Asian History. Durham Academic Press. ISBN 1-90-083803-6.
* Alekseev, A. Yu.
et al., "Chronology of Eurasian Scythian Antiquities Born by New Archaeological and 14C Data".
Radiocarbon, Vol .43, No 2B, 2001, p 1085-1107.
* Rjabchikov, S. V., "The Scythians, Sarmatians, Meotians and Slavs: Sign System, Mythology, Folklore". Rostov-on-Don, 2004 (in Russian)
* Yatsenko, S. A., "Tamgas of Iranolingual antique and Early Middle Ages people". Russian Academy of Science, Moscow Press "Eastern Literature", 2001 (in Russian)
* Boris Rybakov. "Paganism of Ancient Rus". Nauka, Moscow, 1987 (in Russian)
*
Jats*
"Coins of Barbarous Tribes of the Northern Black Sea Region"* Rjabchikov, Sergei V.
"The Slavonic Antiquity: Scythians, Sarmatians, Meotians and Slavs" A collection of articles on deciphering of the Scythian/Sarmatian language and script.
*
Rjabchikov, S.V., 2005. On Scythian, Sarmatian and Meotian Records about Thunderstorm. AnthroGlobe Journal, 2005 *
Rjabchikov, S.V., 2001. The Scythian and Sarmatian Sources of the Russian Mythology and Fairy-Tales. AnthroGlobe Journal, 2001 *
Scythians overview by Chris Bennet
*
Livius website articles on ancient history, entry on Scythians/Sacae by Jona Lendering
*
"The ethnic of the Sakas (Scythians)" by I. P'iankov
*
The early burial in Tuva*
Scythian myth and culture; map*
Color illustrations of Scythian gold*
Published excavations of royal Scythian kurgan (barrow) at Chertomlyk reviewed*
Herodotus, Histories, Book IV - translated by Rawlinson, the 1942 edition**
Livio Stecchini, "The Mapping of the Earth: Scythia": reconstructing the map of Scythia according to the conceptual geography of
Herodotus**
Livio Stecchini, "The Mapping of the Earth: Gerrhos"*
1998 NOVA documentary: "Ice Mummies: Siberian Ice Maiden" Transcript
*
on Sarmatian (a related Iranian group) trade and ethnic connections*
Scythia Group (a Yahoo group for discussing the Scythians)*
Online Encyclopedia (Britanica 11th EditionRyzhanovka links
*
Archaeology abstract of 1997 article *
the Ryzhanovka Kurgan in UkraineGenetic links
*
Haplogroups in India (PDF file)
*
Y-Chromosome Biallelic Haplogroups
