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2 Scythian Language 3 History 4 Archaeology and Artifacts 5 "Scythian gold" 6 External links and notes |
Scythian Society
The Scythians formed a network of nomadic tribes of horse-riding conquerors. They invaded many areas in the steppes of Eurasia and southern Europe, riding across the Caucasus into Mesopotamia and Asia Minor. Ruled by small, closely-allied élites, Scythians had a reputation for their archers, and many gained employment as mercenaries. Scythian elite were buried in kurgans, high barrows heaped over chamber-tombs of larch-wood, which may have had special significance as a tree of life-renewal, since it is is a deciduous conifer that stands out starkly in winter against other evergreens, but returns to life every spring. Burials at Pazyryk in the Altai Mountains have included some spectacularly-preserved Scythians of the "Pazyryk culture" including the "Ice Maiden" of the 5th century BCE.
Scythian warrior-women may have inspired tales of the Amazons in Greek myth. A Pazyryk burial found in the 1990s seems to confirm at least part of the legend. It contained the skeletons of a man and a woman each with weapons, arrowheads, and an ax. "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 "The Ice Mummies."
(A false pan-Turkic theory has recently eminated from Turkey that seeks to find a Turkish origin for the Scythian language, but this does not hold up under serious scholarly consideration, and the vast majority of scholars in the field agree Scythian was an Iranian tongue.)
History
To date no certain explanation exists to account for the origin of the Scythians or how they migrated to the Caucasus and the Ukraine; but the majority of scholars believe that they migrated westward from Central Asia between 800 B.C. and 600 B.C..
The Scythians never had a written language, so until recent archaeological developments most of our information about them came from the Greeks. Homer called them "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 saddlecloths. Herodotus' histories allegedly report that Saka Scythians used marijuana. The Scythian Anacharsis visited Athens in the 6th century BCE and became a legendary sage.
During the 5th to 3rd centuries BC the Scythians 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 been 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 -- a patronage due to their control of the slave trade.
Philip II of Macedon delivered a setback in 339 BCE.
But the rich Scythian-settled farmlands tempted new waves of nomads from the Central Asian steppes. In the 3rd century BCE the wilder Iranian Sarmatians forced the Scythians into 'Scythia Minor' ('Little Scythia'), the Crimea and the Dobruja south of the Danube delta.
Although the Scythians allegedly disappeared in the 1st century BC, some scholars believe that the Sarmatians, Alans and subsequently the Ossets (Ossetians), the only Iranians who still live in Europe, descend from them. Ossets call their country Iron, and are mostly Christians. They speak an Eastern Iranian language Ossetic, which they call Ironig or Ironski (Iranian). It maintains some remarkable features of Gathic Avestan language. 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). Celtic legends also include mention of Scythian origins and a few Celtic nations still call themselves 'Cimmeri'.
Archaeology and Artifacts
Archaeological remains of the Scythians include elaborate tombs containing gold, silk, horses and human sacrifices. Mummification techniques and permafrost have aided in the relative preservation of some remains.
"Pazyryk culture"
One of the first Bronze Age Scythian burials documented by a modern archaeologist were the kurgans at Pazyryk, Ulagan district of the Gorno-Altai Republic, south of Novosibirsk. The name "Pazyryk Culture" was attached to the finds, Five large burial mounds and several smaller ones between 1925 and 1949 opened in 1947 by a Russian archeologist, Sergei I. Rudenko, Pazyryk is in the Altai Mountains of southern Siberia. The burial mounds concealed chambers of larch logs covered over by large cairns of boulders and stones.
It flourished between the 7th and 3rd Centuries BCE mountain fastness of a group of Scythians that may have called themselves Sacae. It was the seat of the larger of two related Scythian groups,
All the things a person might use or need in this life were placed in the tomb as grave goods for use in the next. Among the rich or powerful, horses were sacrificed and buried with them. With the ordinary Pazyryks were only ordinary utensils, but in one was found among other treasures the famous Pazyryk Carpet, the oldest surviving wool pile oriental rug. Rudenko summed up the cultural context at one point:
Scythian Gelonus (Belsk)
Recent digs in Belsk, Ukraine uncovered a vast city believed to be the Scythian capital Gelonus described by Herodotus. The city's commanding ramparts and vast 40 square kilometers exceeded even the outlandish size reported by Herodotus. Its location at the northern edge of Ukraine's steppe would have allowed strategic control of the north-south trade. Judging by the finds dated to the 5th and 4th centuries BCE, craft workshops and Greek pottery abounded, and perhaps so did slaves destined for Greece.
The Ryzhanovka kurgan
A kurgan or burial mound near the village of Ryzhanovka in Ukraine, 75 miles south of Kiev, has revealed the only unlooted tomb of a Scythian chieftain, who was ruling in the forest-steppe area of the western fringe of Scythian lands. There at a late date in Scythian culture (ca. 250 - 225 BCE), a recently nomadic aristogratic class was gradually adopting the agricultural life-style of their subjects: the tomb contained a mock hearth, the first ever found in a Scythian context, symbolic of the warmth and comfort of a farmhouse.
Scythians had a taste for elaborate personal jewelry, weapon ornaments and horse trappings. They executed Central Asian animal motifs with Greek realism: winged griffins attacking horses, battling stags, deer and eagles, combined with everyday motifs like milking ewes.
In 2000 the touring exhibition 'Scythian Gold' introduced North Americans 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 what is now Ukraine, most of which researchers unearthed after 1980.
In 2001 a discovery of an undisturbed royal Scythian burial barrow illustrated for the first time Scythian animal-style gold that lacked 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.
External links and notes