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December 1976

29th year2.80 French

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THE SCYTHIANnomad goldsmithsof the opensteppes

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TREASURES

OF

WORLD ART

Greece

The saint with a dog's headThere are many legends about St. Christopher, including one that he once carried Christ across ariver, thus earning his name (Christofàros in Greek, meaning ''bearer of Christ"). According to someaccounts he was a giant with a dog's face, only receiving human features at baptism. Other storiesrelate that St. Christopher, an exceptionally good-looking man who lived in the 3rd century,received such frequent attentions from the fair sex that he begged God to save him from temptation.His prayer was answered by a miracle: from then on women who looked upon his handsome facesaw only the head of a dog. St. Christopher was thus often depicted with a dog's head, as inthis fresco painted in 1779 by a Greek artist in a 13th-century Byzantine church at Lindos, onthe island of Rhodes.

Photo O Hannibal Slides. Athens

CourierDECEMBER 1976 29TH YEAR

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Page

15

THE SCYTHIAN WORLD

A dynamic culture on the steppes of. Eurasia 2,500 years agoBy Boris B. Piotrovsky

ANTIQUITY'S GREAT REPORTER-HISTORIANAMONG THE SCYTHIANS

Modern archaeology confirms the stories of HerodotusBy Yaroslav V. Domansky

THREE VASES RECOUNT THE LEGENDOF KING TARGITAUS

By Dimitri S. Raevsky

17 FOUR UKRAINIAN ARCHAEOLOGISTS

PRESENT THEIR LATEST FINDS

By Ivan Artemenko

17 THE GOLDEN CUP OF GAÏMANOV

By Vasily Bidzilia

19 SCYTHIAN IDYLL ON A ROYAL BREASTPLATE

By Boris Mozolevsky

21 A HORSE'S FINERY CAPPED

BY A GODDESS OF THE CHASE

By Vitaly Otroshchenko

22 SPLENDOURS OF SCYTHIAN ART

Eight pages in full colour

31 PAZYRYK

A nomad way of life "deep-frozen" for 25 centuriesin Siberian mountain tombs

By Man'ya P. Zavitukhina

34 CAVORTING CREATURES

ON THE TATTOOED MAN OF PAZYRYK

Photo story

38 HORSES FOR THE HEREAFTER

Seven score stallions in the grave of a mountain kingBy Mikhail P. Gryaznov

42 SHAMANS AND SHAMANISM:

EPIC JOURNEYS TO A LEGENDARY LAND

By Grigory M. Bongard-Levin and Edvin A. Grantovsky

48 THE OSSETES: SCYTHIANS OF THE 20TH CENTURY

By Vasily ,1. Abaev

50 UNESCO NEWSROOM

2 TREASURES OF WORLD ART

GREECE: The saint with the dog's head

Cover

Horsemen repose in the shade of a leafy tree. One holds the bridleof their two mounts while the other lies outstretched with his headin the lap of a seated woman. This scene from the life of the nomadsof the steppes is depicted on a symmetrical pair of gold plaques onceworn on a sword-belt and preserved among the treasures of the artcollection of Tsar Peter the Great. They are one of the myriad ex¬amples of the Creative genius of the artists of the steppes, homelandsof Scythian and Siberian horsemen 2,500 years ago. This issue ofthe Unesco Courier is entirely devoted to this cultural universe whichflourished in Antiquity at the crossroads of Asia and Europe.

This golden stag (see detail incolour, page 23) is a superbexample of typical Scythiananimal art. Discovered in a

tomb in the Kuban region,north-east of the Black Sea, it

was made by a master-goldsmithof the steppes early in the 6thcentury B.C. In the words ofthe Soviet archaeologist,Aleksandr Shkurko, an authorityon early Scythian art, "The artistwas not unduly concerned withmodelling the animal's body oradding precise detail. Whatheld his attention was its inner

qualitiesits strength, speed andessential wildness. Thedecorative treatment of the horns

and the compactness of thecomposition confer on the imagean almost heraldic appearance."The stag was a favourite themein the art of the Scythians.

SCYTHIAN WORLD

byBoris B. Piotrovsky

BORIS BORISOVICH PIOTROVSKY,

Soviet archaeologist, is an Internationallyknown authority on the history and art ofthe Scythians. A member of the Academiesof Sciences of the U.S.S.R. and the Arme¬

nian S.S.R., he is Director of the HermitageMuseum (Leningrad) which has a pricelesscollection of Scythian artifacts. He is alsoprofessor of Ancient Oriental History at theLeningrad State University. The author ofimportant studies on the history, cultureand art of the ancient Orient and the Cau¬

casus, Prof. Piotrovsky is a correspondingfellow of the British Academy, the FrenchAcadémie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres,and the Bavarian Academy of Sciences.

THE sweep and substance ofthe Scythian world have onlyrecently been fully revealed,

although the existence of the Scy¬thians was recorded long ago, andthey should not be regarded as oneof the forgotten peoples of history.

Herodotus, writing about them inthe fifth century B.C., included in hisdetailed account a number of Scythianor Greek legends concerning theirorigins, and stated that the landswhich they occupied had previouslybelonged to the Cimmerians.

The flatlands north of the Black

Sea, home of the Scythians whocaught Herodotus' attention whenthey came down to do business inthe Greek trading-colonies on thecoast, are studded with kurgans.These burial mounds of earth, erected

by the various nomadic tribes whichroamed across the steppes, werethemselves the subject of many alegend, and the treasure-seekers whoplundered them in the past werecertainly rewarded on more than oneoccasion.

a dynamic culture on thiof Eurasia 2500 years ago

steppes

Many of them had been built bythe Scythians, and it was here thatthe first archaeologists unearthedoutstanding examples of an art formcharacteristic of Scythian culture anddating mainly from the fifth to thethird centuries B.C. Since then, hard¬ly a year has passed without the de¬light of fresh discoveries by Ukrainianarchaeologists.

Excavations began a considerabletime ago. In 1763, a rich burialmound of the early Scythian periodnear Elizavetgrad (now Kirovograd)yielded a large number of gold and

silver objects, including an iron aki-nakes (the short dagger of the Scy¬thians) the scabbard and hilt of whichwere decorated in the ancient Eastern

style with fantastic animals andanthropomorphic deities, gatheredround a sacred tree. These inte¬

resting finds were placed in theKunstkammer, Russia's first realmuseum, which had been foundedby Peter the Great in 1714.

The Kunstkammer already con¬tained a number of gold objects-later identified as Scythianwhich had

been found in Siberian kurgans andsent as gifts to Peter the Great in1715 and 1716 by Nikita Demidov,the owner of mines and metalworks

in the Urals, and by the Governor ofTobolsk, Prince Gagarin. In 1718, aspecial government decree ordered"the collecting from earth and waterof old inscriptions, ancient weapons,dishes and everything old andunusual."

The Kunstkammer's "marvellous

and mysterious collection of Siberiansantiquities", as it was still called byr

early nineteenth-century archaeolo¬gists, was only explained and iden¬tified when archaeological investiga¬tions over a wide area gradually revea¬led a considerable degree of culturalunity in the wide belt of steppe-land,foothills and upland pastures whichstretched between the 40th and 50th

parallels of latitude, from the Danubein the west all the way to the GreatWall of China in the easta distance

of more than 7,000 kilometres.

From one end to the other of this

territory, archaeologists have unear¬thed identical pieces of horse gear,iron swords, triangular arrowheadsand ornaments, all dating from theScythian period, while cultural simi¬larities between different regionsare reflected in the widespread useof imagery in the so-called "Scytho-Siberian animal style."

But these links existed even ear¬

lier, and can certainly be clearlydetected in the pre-Scythian, Cim¬merian period (i.e. the eighth centuryB.C.). Convincing evidence of thisis provided by the objects found inthe Arzhan kurgan in the Tuva S.S.R.,far to the east (see article page 38).This ruined tomb of a military leaderyielded not only a number of itemssimilar to finds from the Ukraine and

Bulgaria, but also scraps of wovencloth of Iranian origin, pre-datingby almost 200 years the famousIranian carpet discovered during exca¬vations of the Pazyryk kurgans of theAltai (see article page 31).

Thus, in Cimmerian times, the con¬ditions already existed for the esta¬blishment of contacts between widelyseparated territories, and for thecreation of a generalized, semi-noma¬dic and stock-raising economy, inwhich the dominance of horse-

breeding permitted mobility over longdistances.

The network of relationships bet¬ween different tribes made up for thelack of natural resources, and of

metal deposits in particular, in diffe¬rent regions. The vast area coveredby Scythian culture, where the mostoutstanding artifacts were made ofgold, silver or high-quality bronze,contained few enough localitieswhere the first two of these metals

could be found, while tin, withoutwhich copper could not be transfor¬med into bronze "and which existed

in Central Europe and Bohemia, wastotally absent in the lands stretchingfrom the Danube as far as eastern

Kazakhstan.

Of course, there was no direct orpermanent contact between the no¬madic tribes inhabiting the westernand eastern extremities of this world;the elements which composed theircommon culture were, so to speak,"shuttled" from tribe to tribe, oftenlosing their stamp of origin in theprocess.

We should also remember that

these breeders of cattle and horses,whether Cimmerians or Scythians,werefirst and foremostwell-armed

and highly mobile horse-soldiers,whose rapidly moving war-parties,according to Herodotus, penetrateddeep into Asia Minor.

Herodotus' accounts have since

been confirmed by ancient Easternsources, and by documentary andarchaeological evidence from Assyriain particular. Reports by scouts ofthe Assyrian king contained in thearchive of clay tablets found in theAssyrian capital, Nineveh, refer tothe appearance of Cimmerians inAsia Minor as early as the middle ofthe 8th century B.C.

The participation of Scythians ina devastating attack on Assyria acentury later is mentioned in achronicle of the Babylonian kingNabopolassar which relates eventsin 616-609 B.C., and in a 5thcentury account of the sack of Nin¬eveh, by the Armenian historianMovses Horenatsi.

Excavations in seventh-century for¬tresses in Transcaucasia (at Karmir-

MY KINGDOM

FOR A HORSE

Some Scythian jewelsreveal numerous details

of the dress, way of lifeand customs of these

nomads of the steppes.The two bearded Scythianriders decorating theends of this torque, oropen necklace, of twistedgold are one example.The figures wearankle-length caftans tiedat the waist and longtrousers held by a strapbeneath the boot.

They ride bareback andwithout stirrups. Theirmounts emerge fromthe ends of the torque,woven of six gold strandsbound in an intricatelydecorated sheath inlaid

with enamel. The

horses' manes and theharnesses and bridle bits

are rendered with greatprecision. The torque,of Greco-Scythian styleand weighing over260 grammes, was foundin 1830. It encircledthe neck of a chieftain

in a 4th century B.C.grave in the Crimea.

Blur, near Erivan) and in the centralregion of ancient Urartu, near LakeVan (in present-day Turkey), havebrought to light a number of items ofhorse gear, iron weapons and beadssimilar to objects found in ancientScythian burials of the Black Searegion.

The Scythian connexion with AsiaMinor is clearly reflected in the so-called "Ziwiyeh treasure" from Saq-qez, in Iranian Kurdistan, discoveredduring the Second World War.Among the objects found here, whichwere subsequently proved to havecome not from a treasure hoard but

from a tomb constructed in the

seventh century B.C., is an outstand¬ing group of artifacts in which imagescharacteristic of both ancient Near

Eastern and Scythian art arecombined.

The golden objects in Scythianstyle found at Ziwiyeh are similar tofinds from Scythian burial mounds,such as the sword with a gold-covered

hilt and scabbard unearthed in 1763

in the Elizavetgrad (Kirovograd) kur-gan in the Ukraine, and the gold-handled sword and axe from the

Kelermes kurgans in the Kuban re¬gion, excavated in 1902.

All these objects combine Scythianmotifs (reclining deer) with ancientEastern imagery (the holy tree withits attendant divinities and fantastic

animals), and it is probably correctto consider that they are imitations ofUrartean artifacts, modified by theaddition of elements in purely Scy¬thian style.

Attempts have been made to re¬late the birth of Scythian art to theperiod of Scythian campaigns inAsia Minor, but this theory is dispro¬ved by the examples of Scythian andpre-Scythian art discovered in Si¬beria, which pre-date those fromZiwiyeh (i. e. 7th century B.C.), butare also decorated in the animal style.

The term "Scythian" is nowadays

applied to a large number of ethni¬cally unrelated tribes, characterizedby a strong Iranian influence in theirpersonal and place-names. Its appli¬cation is frequently limited to thetribes inhabiting the coastal flatlandsof the Black Sea region.

But archaeologists have shownthat the early Scythian monumentsof this region are related to ancientsteppe cultures which go back as faras the middle of the second millen¬

nium B.C. In this article the term

is used in a broader sense, includingin the "Scythian" world a vast massof tribes sharing the same economicand cultural existence and spreadover a much wider area.

From the sixth to the third centu¬

ries B.C., the steppelands betweenthe Don, the Volga and the Uralswere the home of a culture similar

to that of the Black Sea Scythians.The bearers of this culture, whom theGreeks called Sarmatians, were inturn linked with the tribes of Eastern

Kazakhstan, whose own culture isbrilliantly represented by a series ofgold plaques depicting reclining deer,found in the sixth-century Chilik-tinsky kurgan.

These links stretched beyond thesteppes of Kazakhstan still further,to the High Altai, whose frozenburial mounds have yielded perfectlypreserved collections of objects madeof wood, bone, felt and metal, inwhich Chinese, Iranian and Scythianinfluences are clearly apparent.

The development of Scythian cul¬ture in the lands north of the Black

Sea was certainly affected by thetrading colonies which the Greekshad established on the coast at the

end of the seventh century B.C., butthe Greeks themselves had alreadyencountered Scythians whose cultureowed nothing to outside influences,and the objects which their gold¬smiths made specially for Scythiancustomers can be easily distinguishedfrom purely Scythian artifacts. Ob¬jects of both types are now familiarto us, as a result of excavations.

antiquities took place at the Kul Obakurgan near Kerch, on the straitsconnecting the Black Sea to the Seaof Azov, in 1830. A stone vault

under the mound proved to containa rich burial of the fourth centuryB.C. with an outstanding collectionof Greek-made jewellery. Some ofthe pieces, including a gold torquedecorated with figures of Scythianhorsemen, had obviously been madespecially for Scythian customers.

Of particular interest is a spheri¬cally-shaped vase made of electruma natural gold-silver alloy), the body

of which is decorated with four

groups of figures illustrating a Greeklegend of the founding of the Scy¬thian dynasty, which Herodotus alsorecorded.

The scenes on the vase (analysedin detail in an article on pages 1 5 and16) depict the efforts of the threesons of Heracles (the Scythian Targitaus) and a strange serpent-womarñr

WARRIORS AND LIONS figureon this splendid 4th century B.C.gold comb from a Scythian tombat Solokha, on the lower Dnieper,in the Ukraine. The group ofcombatants and the five

crouching lions beneath themare worked in relief on both

sides giving the illusion of beingsculptured in the round. Onewarrior has been unhorsed and

his mount lies helpless on theground. The three beardedwarriors are Scythians, butthe Greek goldsmith who madethe four-inch wide comb addedGreek elements to the work,

including the helmets and thearmour (see also article page 1 5).

goddess to decide which of themshall lead the tribe, by being thefirst to bend a bow left with their

mother by their father. Two of thebrothers fail the test, collecting inthe process nasty injuries typical ofclumsy bowmanship, but Scythes,the youngest, succeeds.

Excavations of a great number ofkurgans in the coastal steppes aroundthe Black Sea, in the Crimea and inthe Northern Caucasus, during thelast half of the nineteenth century,brought to light a number of magni¬ficent examples of specifically Scy¬thian art, and of Greek craftsman¬ship commissioned by the Scythians.

Typical Scythian motifs s were thereclining deer with branch-like antlersand the panther, which possibly ser¬ved as tribal symbols. These ani¬mals decorate the solid gold plaqueson shields found in sixth-centurykurgans in the Kuban region; theywere also regularly depicted in thedecorations on quivers.

Links between the Scythians andtheir western and southern neigh¬bours are clearly reflected in the findsfrom the kurgans. Scythian burialsin the Ukraine have yielded a numberof Thracian objects, an outstandingexample of which is the silver-trim

med bridle found in the Khomina

Mogila kurgan in 1970, whose de-'corations include intricately engrav¬ed plaques depicting animal heads.

The contents of the Chertomlykkurgan, excavated by I.E. Zabelin,included a silver vaselater to becomefamousdecorated in relief with

figures of Scythian horse-breeders,and an iron sword whose gold hilt,depicting two calves' heads and ahunting scene, is a splendid exampleof Iranian decoration of the fifth cen¬

tury B.C.This sword, which was possibly a

trophy from the Greco-Persian orScytho-Persian wars, was in a goldscabbard of Greek manufacture depic¬ting a battle with the Persians, simi¬lar in composition to the scenes ofthe Battle of Marathon which

decorate Greek temples of the fifthand fourth centuries B.C.

Iranian (Achaemenid) objects wereno rarity in Scythian burial mounds.One of the several burial crypts ofthe Great Bliznitsa kurgan on theTaman peninsula, excavated between1864 and 1868, contained two in¬teresting objects of Near Easternorigin : an Achaemenid seal-ring ofgold showing a king wrestling witha lion; and an Egyptian amulet infaience depicting the head of thegod Besa diminutive figure withthe face of a monster and a head¬

dress of feathers or palm-fronds.This amulet could have arrived via

Iran, like the Egyptian alabaster ves¬sel with hieroglyphic and cuneiforminscriptions mentioning the nameof the Achaemenid king Artaxerxesdiscovered in the southern Urals.

Scythian culture thus reflects therelations with neighbouring and dis¬tant lands which contributed to the

establishment of the link between

Eastern Europe and the Far East,the wide east-west corridor which

was already open in the middle ofthe last millennium of the pre-Chris¬tian era and which, until the sixteenthcentury A.D., would form the famousSilk Route leading from the easternshores of the Mediterranean, throughIran, Central Asia and Chinese Tur¬kestan to the banks of the Hwang Horiver. The world of the Scythiansfully deserves its place in ancienthistory.

Boris B. Piotrovsky

8

ANTIQUITY'S GREAT

REPORTER HISTORIAN

AMONG THE SCYTHIANS

modern archaeologyconfirms the stories

of Herodotus

by

Yaroslav V. Domansky

AROUND the middle of the 5th

century B.C., a young mannamed Herodotus left his

native city of Halicarnassus in AsiaMinor, and began the travels thatwere to take him from the western

Mediterranean to Mesopotamia.

Vast distances lay ahead of him,separating many different lands andpeoples : through the Aegean to theislands of the Archipelago and thetowns of the Peloponnesus; east¬wards to Babylon; westwards as faras Sicily; southwards to Egypt andthe banks of the Nile; northwardsthrough the Balkan peninsula toThrace. And one day Herodotusarrived in Olbia, one of the mostnortherly of the Greek city-colonies,on the shores of the Black Sea.

Founded a century-and-a-halfearlier on the estuary of the riverBug, Olbia was thriving, and fullyliving up to its name ("olbia", inGreek, meant "prosperous").

But although he was usuallycurious about everything, neitherOlbia's present nor its past parti¬cularly interested the young manfrom Halicarnassus as he stood on

the city walls. He was lookingoutwards, over the vast plain whichstretched away into the distance.

Somewhere out there, beyondthe horizon, lived the Scythians,the people who, after an exhaustingwar, had finally humiliated Darius,king of the Persians.

The Greeks themselves had resis-ited the Persian invaders for many!

YAROSLAV VITAL'EVICH DOMANSKY,

a leading Soviet historian and archaeologist,is a senior member of the staff of the Her¬

mitage Museum in Leningrad. An authorityon the antiquities of the region north ofthe Black Sea, about which he has written

a number of works, he has excavated manysites along the lower reaches of the river Bugin the Ukraine.

L years, and it was Herodotus' ambi-'' tion to write the history of that war.

Obviously, the Scythians must comeinto the story.

There were a great number ofpeople in Olbia who had spent theirlives in the steppes, who had tra¬velled the length and breadth of thelands north of the Black Sea, andwho had many a tale to tell aboutthe world of the Scythians, so dif¬ferent from that of the Greeks.

Herodotus was an attentive listen¬

er, and the contrasts with the wayof life which he had known at home

fascinated him. He wanted to

write about all things unusual,leaving nothing out, and so he col¬lected all these talesincluding theunlikely onesfrom his Greek andScythian informants, one of whom,a certain Tymnes, had actually beena man of confidence of the Scythianking Ariapeithes.

What Herodotus saw for himself

in Olbia, and what he heard, formeda colourful patchwork picture of theScythian world and Scythian ways,in which the past and the present,the important and the insignificant,the possible and the highly improb¬able jostled for space, and whichhe would incorporate in the pagesof his History.

Thus, the first record of its kind,by the man who has been called the"Father of History", would containan account of one of the first peoplesidentifiable by name to have inhabi¬ted what is now part of the SovietUnion.

Herodotus was in Olbia in or

about the year 450 B.C. Five yearslater, he was reading parts of hismanuscript to the citizens of Athens,who were so impressed that theyoffered him a grant of money tocontinue with his project.

Let us listen with them now to

the words of the narrator: "Their land

is level, well-watered, and abound¬ing in pasture"... "Having neithercities nor forts, and carrying theirdwellings with them wherever theygo; accustomed, moreover, one andall of them, to shoot from horse¬back; and living not by husbandrybut their cattle, their waggons theonly homes that they possess..."

Thus Herodotus describes the

nomadic life of the Scythians,roaming in hordes over the "vastnessof the great plain" between theDanube and the Don, women andchildren in the waggons and the menon horseback, ready at any momentto defend their families and their

herds with their spears and with thebows and arrows which they handledwith such skill.

Being "entirely bare of trees", theland of the Scythians was "utterlybarren of firewood." They stuffedtheir meat, haggis-wise, into thestomach of the animal, and cookedit in cauldrons over a fire madewith the animal's own bones. In

A PLEDGE

OF BROTHERHOOD

Like many pieces of Scythianjewellery, this goldornamental plaque forclothing reveals a customamong the nomads of thesteppes. It shows twoScythians making a pledgeof everlasting brotherhood ina ritual also described byHerodotus. They kneel noseto nose, their profiles joinedtogether, and hold a singlehorn-shaped vessel in whichthey have mingled drops oftheir blood with wine.

The symbolism whereby twobecome one is also reflected

in the conception of theplaque: when the twoprofiles are viewed inclose-up (see enlarged detail,opposite page) .they form asingle face. This techniqueof "split representation" isrelatively common inScythian animal art (seecolour photo page 28) butis rarely found applied tothe human face. A

remarkable example of theScythian goldsmiths'virtuosity, this 4th centuryB.C. plaque is less than4 cms. high.

10

Mountain goats and rams frisking between flowers and palmettesbordered by two twisted cords of gold (below) evoke the pastorallife of nomad herdsmen who roamed the steppes 2,500 years ago inan endless quest for water and pastureland. Detail shown here isthe central motif of a gold pectoral (breast ornament) unearthedin 1868 in a burial crypt of the Great Bliznitsa tomb near the Seaof Azov. This masterpiece was considered a matchless example ofScythian jewellery until 1971, when an even more splendidprincely pectoral of similar style was discovered (see page 19).

this way comments Herodotus, "theox is made to boil himself, and othervictims also do the like."

Drinkers of mare's milk, the Scy¬thians were also copious quarters ofimported wine, which they neverdiluted with water. "Serve us in

Scythian style !" called the Greeks,when the drink was flowing merrily.

True children of the steppe, theScythians were born herdsmen, al¬though like their ancestors they alsohunted wild animals. Herodotus

was mainly concerned with the no¬mads, but he also noted that some

Scythians were "engaged in hus¬bandry".

"Abundantly provided with themost important necessaries", theywere favoured with a land watered

by many rivers, including the Borys-thenes (the Dnieper) which, he tellsus, "has upon its banks the loveliestand most excellent pasturage forcattle; it contains abundance of themost delicious fish; its water is mostpleasant to the taste; its stream islimpid... the richest harvests springup along its course."

This sounds idyllic, but the life ofthe Scythians was in reality a hardone. Their manners and customs

reflected a cruel age, and the "Fatherof History" has left a detailed des¬cription of the Scythians at war.

As pitiless with their enemies asthey were loyal to their friends, theyset great store by ritual oath-taking.Parties to a treaty shed some of theirblood into a bowl filled with wine, and

then plunged into the mixture "asword, some arrows, a battle-axe anda spear, all the while repeatingprayers", after which the allies eachdrank from the bowl.

Herodotus noted with particular in¬terest that the Scythians were notmuch given to the use of "¡mages,altars or temples", but he listed theirgods, identifying them with theirGreek equivalents and mentioningtheir role in the order of things.

Tahiti, whom the Greeks knew asHestia, protected the household. Pa-paeus (Zeus) was"very properly, inmy judgement", comments Herodo¬tus charge of celestial affairs,while his wife Apia dealt with moreearthly matters. The Greek godHeracles, known to the Scythians asTargitaus, was believed to have beenthe first man ever to live in their

country, the father of their people.

The Scythians sacrificed domesticanimals, and horses in particular, toall these gods, as well as to Ares,the god of war, the only divinity inwhose honour they erected altars, inthe form of huge piles of brushwoodtopped with antique iron swords.The sacrificial victims included not

only cattle and horses, but also oneout of every hundred of their prisonersof war.

Scythia had "an abundance of |soothsayers, who foretell the future I

11

i by means of bundles of willow; wands". When the king fell sick, itwas their task to identify the traitorwhose false oath by the king's hearthhad caused the illness, and who was

promptly beheaded. In doubtfulcases, the king sought a second opi¬nion; if the accused man was ac¬quitted, the unfortunate soothsayerslost their own heads.

The Scythians were convincedthat there was a life beyond the grave,picturing it as a continuation of whathad gone before. Herodotus givesus a detailed description of the royalfunerals, when elaborate prepara-,tions were made to ensure that the

king lacked nothing in his after-life.

After digging a deep, rectangulargrave, the Scythians placed the em¬balmed body of their king on awaggon, and took it on a royal pro¬gress from tribe to tribe. Themourners mutilated their own ears,cropped their hair, lacerated theirarms, forehead and nose, and thrustan arrow through their left hands.

Returning to the grave, they lower¬ed the king into the ground on alitter, which they surrounded witha fence of spears. Then they built aceiling of beams over the tomb, andthatched it with a roof of twigs.

In the open space around the king,they buried one of his concubines,first killing her by strangling, "togetherwith« his cup-bearer, his cook, hisgroom, his lackey, his messenger,some of his horses, firstlings of allhis other possessions, and somegolden cups..." Finally, says Hero¬dotus, "they set to work, and raisea vast mound over the grave, all ofthem vying with each other and seek¬ing to make it as tall as possible."

But this was not the end of the

affair. A year later, fifty of the lateking's attendants were strangled andimpaled on the backs of fifty slaught¬ered horses. Firmly attached tostakes and arranged in a circle, thisghostly guard of honour was left to

protect the burial mound.

Every Scythian was bound to res¬pect his gods, and betrayal wasseverely punished. In Olbia, Herodo¬tus heard the cautionary tale of Scy-las, son and heir of the Scythian kingAriapeithes, who "disliked the Scythiemode of life, and was attached, byhis up-bringing, to the manners of theGreeks." Scylas had installed one ofhis wives, "who was a native of theplace", in a large house in Olbia, andwhen he visited the city, as he didfrequently, he dressed in Greek clothesand followed the Greek customs and

rites, even joining in the Bacchanalianrevels, which the Scythians consid¬ered offensive.

Seeing him the worse for wear,some kinsmen of Scylas told tales athome, and the ensuing indignationled to a revolt against Scylas, whowas obliged to decamp to Thrace.

But he soon fell into the hands of

his successor on the throne, and wasbeheaded without further delay."Thus rigidly do the Scythians main¬tain their own customs," wrote Hero¬dotus, "and thus severely do theypunish such as adopt foreign usages."

The Scythians fascinated Herodo¬tus in many ways, but there was onematter in particular, to which hefrequently referred, in which they had,he considered, "shown themselveswiser than any nation upon the faceof the earth... The one thing ofwhich I speak, is the contrivancewhereby they make it impossible forthe enemy who invades them toescape destruction, while they them¬selves are entirely out of his reach,unless it please them to engage withhim."

Herodotus' tale of the Scythianscontains a wealth of historical, geo¬graphical and ethnographical material.His colourful account of the campaignof Darius is embellished with digres¬sions which are irrelevant to the

main theme, but which reveal theextent to which posterity is indebted

to the "Father or History" for itsknowledge of the ancient world and,more particularly, of the structure ofScythian society.

Herodotus could obviously nothave been expected to foresee thatthis subject would be of such interestto future historians, and to give thematter more than a passing glance,but his casual approach hasit mustbe admittedplaced his successorsin a very difficult position.

So much of what he wrote about

the Scythians remains open to diffe¬rent interpretations, and controversycontinues to bedevil any attempt bymodern scholars to understand his

writings and to relate them to othersources.

According to Herodotus, the struc¬ture of Scythian society was tribal,and it is clear that ancient tribal links

could, on occasion, provoke unitedaction by all the kinsmen. But thisbond had lost its earlier, all-embracingsignificance, and the patriarchal fa¬mily had become the basic social unit.The customs of the Scythians reveala male-dominated society, under theauthority of the chief, with womenin a position of dependence.

Scythian society was not egalita¬rian, but on the contrary, relativelyclass-ridden. Although most Scy¬thians were free men, irrespective ofpersonal power or wealth, there wasalso a slave class, whose existence

and activities are described by Hero¬dotus, as well as a property-owningand aristocratic minority, composedof the leaders of the richest families,the royal entourage and the warriorchieftains, all under the supremeauthority of the king.

Scythia was ruled by tribal alliances.At the time of the Persian invasion

under Darius, at the end of the sixthcentury B.C., it was divided intothree kingdoms, under the overallcommand of Idanthyrsus who had vir¬tually unlimited power, whether in theconduct of military affairs, the distri-

ELEGANT

HOUSEHOLD UTENSILS

Photo L Tarassova

Aurora Art Publishers,

LeningradPhotos A. BulgakovO Aurora Art Publishers, Leningrad

12

WHAT THE WELL-DRESSED HORSEMAN WORE

How Scythian horsemen of 2,500 years agodressed and the kind of equipment they usedis now known to the last detail (drawing right).This knowledge came with the discovery of aremarkably preserved set of accoutrements buriedwith a 5th-century-B. C. warrior in a Ukrainetomb (below). The conical helmet completewith earflaps, the leather back-piece coveredwith metal scales, the sword-belt of bronzeplaques and the breast-plate had all survived.Some of this equipment is depicted on a stonestele of the same period (left) as well as a longsword, a sheathed dagger, a rhyton (horn-shapeddrinking cup) and a gorytus (quiver for bow andarrows). The warrior's outfit also includedleg armour laced to trousers which were tuckedinto flat-soled felt boots.

y "WV: ii ..unir /.

K|

bution of booty or the destiny ofindividual Scythians, who could bepressed into service at will and whosedisobedience was punishable bydeath.

We have already seen the fatereserved for those who betrayed theiroath at the hearth of the king. In

The technical mastery with whichthe Scythians embellished even theireveryday objects is seen in theircauldrons, knives, perfume braziers,lamps, amphoras, jars, stools and avariety of other elegantly wroughtutensils. The three objects shownat left are about 2,500 years old :

1 Bronze lamp to hold six wicks(11 cms. high).

2 Bronze mirror (18 cms. diameter)with fluted handle topped by apanther.

3 Bronze meat-strainer or sieve

used for lifting boiling meat fromthe pot. A wooden stick wasinserted in the hollow handle.

anticipation of the king's own demise,a substantial stock of sacrificial

material, including slaves as well ashorses and precious objects, was kepthandy.

The Scythian king was above all amilitary leader. War, as a source ofprosperity, enabling the aristocrats toacquire riches and wealth, was aregular activity, and the life of theScythians, who were constantly' inarms, was permeated with martialarts, traditions and customs.

This mass of warriors was capableof bending the sovereign's will. Aprimitive form of democracy fromearlier times survived, for example, inthe assemblies which united all the

men-at-arms in discussion of matters

of importance and whichas was pro¬bably the case of the unfortunateScylascould decide the fate of theking himself.

Scythian society was full of contra¬dictions. With the exception of oneor two excursions into the past, Hero¬dotus was writing about events in themiddle of the fifth century B.C., achapter of Scythian history which wasto be followed by many others. Itwas a period of change in all respects,but the old ways of life had not beenentirely abandoned, and would leave

their imprint on all that came after¬wards.

Altogether, the Scythians occupiedthe stage of history for some thousandyears, about as long as Ancient Rome,living through a series of experienceswhich left no trace behind them.

But the little that we do know reflects

a dramatic destiny, full of variety andconflict.

There is no doubt that in the

seventh century B.C., the Scythianswere the scourge of the East. In612 B.C., they had joined in sackingthe Assyrian capital, Nineveh. Threehundred years later they were tosuffer defeat at the hands of Philip ofMacedón.

In the sixth century, they hadconfirmed their independence byrouting Darius and his Persian army;at the end of the second century, theGreeks were to rout them in battleafter battle in the Crimea.

At the dawn of their history, theyhad mounted almost unbelievable

raids as far as Egypt; as the sun set,they would be confined to a smallarea of the Crimean steppe, thehorses on which they had ridden soproudly throughout their history ex¬changed for the tools of farmers. w

Originally rejecting everything that f

13

reflected Hellas, they were finally tomingle with the crowds in the Greektrading-cities of the Black Sea coast.

Warriors who had smashed every¬thing that lay in their path, theywould value artistic creation, andbecome outstanding craftsmen them¬selves.

And when, in the third centuryA.D., Scythia and the ancient Scy¬thians had ceased to exist, the once-terrible name remained, and wasadopted by those who occupied theirformer territories, including the earlySlavs.

Silence fell over the Scythians forfifteen hundred years. And then, atthe turn of the eighteenth-nineteenthcenturies, the past became the future,as their monuments began to speak.All manner of Scythian relics awaitedthe spades of the archaeologists; thetime was rapidly approaching when'the truth of Herodotus' tales could be

put to the test.

The study of Scythian antiquitiesbegan soon after the lands north ofthe Black Sea became Russian terri¬

tory. Since then, a great number ofmonuments have been investigated,among the most important of whichare the famous burial mounds, orkurgans.

Many of these mounds marked thelast resting-place of chieftains orkings, and proved to be complexconstructions in the form of crypts orcatacombs, containing a great varietyof objects. Some of them had beenplundered long ago, but what therobbers had rejected was of the great¬est interest to the archaeologists.

The inventory of everyday objectsis a long one, and includes bronzecauldrons and earthenware utensils;gold rings, bracelets, necklaces, pen¬dants and ornaments for the head;costume jewellery in metalware(usually stitched to the garment);swords, battle-axes, spears, arrows,quivers, scabbards and armour; har¬ness for horses and ritual articles.

Various materials were used in

their production, ranging from gold,bronze and clay to iron, silver, boneand stone. The objects themselvescame from a variety of sources, someof them being of local manufactureand others imported from abroadhonestly purchased, looted by raiding-parties or obtained through tradewith other tribes.

Excavation on the whole confirmed

Herodotus' account of life in the

steppes, at least as far as its materialaspects were concerned, and justifiedhis claim to be considered as the

founder of historical science.

With one or two inaccuracies or

omissions, what the archaeologistsdiscovered in the royal tombs matcheshis descriptions of the funerals ofkings. The bronze cauldrons whichthey unearthed correspond to those inwhich, according to Herodotus, theScythians boiled their meat, and if

14

they found quantities of wood-ash,ashes from the hearths of at least one

settlement indicate that bones did on

occasion replace firewood.

In 1830, a new page was turned inthe history of the study of Scythianantiquities when excavations beganat the Kul Oba kurgan near Kerch, onthe straits between the Black Sea

and the Sea of Azov. Among themany objects brought to light was aunique collection of articles whichhave attracted the attention of scho¬

lars ever since.

Under the mound was a stone

crypt containing three bodies, buriedin the fourth century B.C., togetherwith a quantity of gold artifacts dec¬orated in a manner never seen before

and depicting scenes in the life of awarrior people whose clothes, head¬gear and general appearance in noway resembled those of the Greeks.

A solid gold torque was decoratedwith figures of horsemen, and goldornaments sewn to the clothing of thedead people were embossed withfigures of bowmen firing arrows,riders brandishing spears and soldierswith quivers and bow-cases attachedto their belts.

Who were the warriors portrayedin these scenes? The immediate

opinion of the archaeologists who hadunearthed these objects was correct.They were Scythians, drawn, as itwere, "from life".

For the first time, scholars whoseonly acquaintance with an ancientpeople had come through the pagesof Herodotus and other writers found

themselves face-to-face with Scy¬thian realities. What did they looklike ? How did they arm themselves?What did they wear? How did theybehave? The answers were there,

before their very eyes.

Kul Oba was only the first in aseries of burial mounds to yield metalobjects portraying the Scythians. In1 862, excavations began in the extra¬ordinary Chertomlyk kurgan near theDnieper, which produced a gold andsilver vase decorated with a frieze of

sculptured human figures and horsessimilar to those found on objects fromKul Oba, and which is generally consi¬dered to depict the horse-breedersand horse-breakers of the Scythiansteppes.

In 1912-1913, the neighbouringSolokha kurgan, which was also aroyal tomb, produced further objectsdecorated with scenes from Scythianlife, including a golden comb portray¬ing Scythian warriors in battle.

We have mentioned only a few ofthe most significant discoveries madein the late nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries and illustratingthe "Scythian theme" in ancient art.The most immediate impressionwhich they leave is one of artistic andtechnical perfection. The goldencomb referred to above, for example,is composed of a number of finely-

CONTINUED PAGE 48

Three vases

recount

the legendof KingTargitaus

by

Dimitri S. Raevsky

DIMITRI SERGEEVICH RAEVSKY,Soviet archaeologist, is engaged on re¬search at the Oriental Institute of the

Academy of Sciences of the U. S. S. R.in Moscow. He has written many stu¬dies on the history and culture of theScythians and is the author of a book onScythian mythology, as it has beenrecreated on the basis of archaeologicaldata and descriptions by authors ofAntiquity, to be published in 1977.

IN the 4th and 3rd centuries B.C.,Scythian artists and Greek artistswho had settled in the Scythian

territories began to provide the localScythian nobility with beautiful piecesof craftsmanship made according tothe tastes of their patrons and incor¬porating many subjects and motifs.

Did these motifs merely depictscenes from everyday life or werethey themes of greater significance?Professor Boris N. Grakov, a leadingSoviet authority on Scythian culture,has affirmed that the content and

style of these scenes are too specificfor them to be merely representa¬tions of everyday situations. Hesees them as possible representationsof Scythian myths.

By comparing these portrayals withthe information given us by Classicalauthors, we should be able to recon¬struct Scythian mythology.

%&smio v K h.KS2***

The story of the first Scythian king, Targitaus, and his three sons depictedon a frieze encircling a silver vessel (drawing no. 1, opposite page)discovered in the north of Kuban. The old king converses withhis eldest son (4) and bids farewell to his second son (5) who, holdingtwo spears in his right hand, is about to set off on a journey. To hisbeardless youngest son Targitaus proffers his bow, symbol of authority (6).

Photos © Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the U. S. S. R.. Moscow

Photo L Tarassova © Kiev State Historical Museum

6

Herodotus relates the Scythianlegend of the first hero, who wasknown to the Scythians as Targitaus,but whom the Greek colonists of the

Black Sea region, and Herodotus also,referred to as Heracles, the famoushero of Greek myth.

At the beginning of the 1950s,Professor Grakov put forward theinteresting hypothesis that the num¬erous Scythian representations of aman fighting with a fantastic beast alldepict the exploits of Targitaus.

Professor Grakov also claimed that

such works were popular among theScythians because Targitaus, accor¬ding to Herodotus, was consideredto be the direct ancestor of the

Scythian kings. Is it possible, then,to identify features in Scythian artwhich directly relate to the myth ofTargitaus ?

According to one version of thislegend, Targitaus-Heracles had threesons. In order to determine which

of them was the most worthy ofbecoming the ruler of the Scythians, ¡'he decided to put them to a test.Each had to attempt to string hisfather's bow and strap on the beltwhich he wore in battle. This trial

required, as may well be imagined,great strength and skill, and only

the youngest of the brothers. Scythes,succeeded. According to the legendhe then became the first ruler of the

Scythians and his two older brotherswere sent into exile.

This subject is depicted in anastonishing number of works ofScythian art. At the beginning ofthis century a small ritual silver ves¬sel (drawing 1) which clearly origi¬nated from the Black Sea area, was

found in a tomb along the course ofthe Don.

Six male figures are represented onthis vessel, grouped in three pairedscenes. One of the figures reappearsin all three scenes. He is an elderlyScythian with long hair and a beard.

In one of the scenes (4) he is repre¬sented in conversation with another

Scythian. Another scene (5) is moreimportant: the same character bidsfarewell to a warrior who holds a

spear in each hand and may besetting off on an expedition to distantlands.

But it is the third scene (6) whichseems to be the most significant ofall: the same hero proffers his bowto his companion, who is clearly theyoungest person in the grouphe hasnot yet even grown the customaryScythian beard.

/ZJX'

All the details of this compositionseem to indicate that it is a represen¬tation of Targitaus and his three sons.Two of them he is exiling from hisrealm. Targitaus even holds upthree fingers to the departing warrior,as if to remind him that all the bro¬

thers had been subjected to the test.Meanwhile he proffers his bow tothe third and youngest son as asymbol of his victory and as anemblem of his power.

A few years ago, during the exca¬vations at Gaimanova Mogila in theUkraine, a vessel (drawing 2, page 14and photo page 17) was foundshowing another young Scythiantaking an oblong object from thehands of an older man. Unfortunate¬

ly that part of the vessel (drawing 7,page 1 6) was seriously damaged andthe object cannot be made out.

But the content of the scene and

the appearance of the charactersmake it possible for us to see herethe very moment at which Targitaushands his . bow to his youngestson. On the opposite side of thevessel are two other Scythians, whomay well be the victor's exiledbrothers.

Now let us turn to the most re-w

nowned Scythian ritual vessel (3). r

15

Drawing of circular frieze (left)embellishing a gilded silver cup lessthan 10 cms high (drawing n° 2,

I page 14, and photo opposite.I Unearthed at Gaimanov (Ukraine),y it dates from the 4th centuryI B.C. At far right of drawing areI two long-haired, bearded menI dressed in Scythian fashion. At

centre left an old man is offeringsomething to a younger one. This

I scene may be a variant of the legendI of the Scythian king Targitaus.

Photos © Institute of Oriental Studies

of the Academy of Sciences of the U. S. S. R.; Moscow

, Made of gold and 1 3 cm high, it wasfound almost a century and a halfago in the Kul Oba kurgan on theKerch Peninsula in the Crimea.

A frieze encircles the vase, repre¬senting seven Scythians, busy at dif¬ferent occupations. One of themis kneeling on his right knee, hisleft leg over a bow, stretching it,while he strings it with the right handand holds it steady with the left.This may be a representation of thefeat that Targitaus asked of his sons.

If this is so how can we interpretwhat is happening in the other sceneson the vase? One Scythian is ban¬daging the wounded leg of another.Beside him, another Scythian isprobing for something with histhumb and forefinger in the mouthof his companion. The explanationof this somewhat unexpected sceneis as follows.

When unstrung, the Scythian bowis curved at both ends in the oppositedirection from the bow-string (in theform of a cursive letter "w" with a

hook on each end). If the archerattempts to draw it tight in themanner indicated on the vase, butdoes not have the necessary strengthand dexterity, the wood can spring

back violently, wounding him by ablow either on the left leg or thelower jaw.

The force of the backlash is such

that it may be capable of breakinga bone and could certainly dislodge atooth. Perhaps Targitaus's oldersons received these wounds, throughnot being able to carry out theirfather's test. Is this what we see onthe vessel from Kul Oba ?

What did the Scythians imaginéhappened to Targitaus's older sons?Herodotus does not tell us, butworld folklore recounts numerous

versions of the rivalry between threebrothers, in which the youngest isvictorious. These versions differ in

many details but usually have thesame ending: the older brothers,enraged by the younger's success,slay him.

This is how the story ends in thenarrative of the three sons of Ferey-dun, the hero of an ancient Iranian

epic, whose general characteristics,resemble those of the ScythianTargitaus.

The scene shown on the Gaimanova

Mogila vase described above sug¬gests that the end of the Scythianmyth may be very similar. The two

From right to left: a Scythian wearing a pointed helmetbandages his comrade's leg. Another seems to be actingas a dentist, probing in the mouth of his companion. Yetanother is stringing his bow, a task said to havebeen given to the sons of Targitaus. Two morefigures seem to be gossiping while they lean on theirspears. The drawing depicts a frieze decorating an electrum(gold and silver alloy) vase discovered at Kul Obain the Crimea (drawing n° 3, page 14).

persons who represent, accordingto our interpretation, the elderbrothersare heavily armed, while the youngestbrother and the father have onlybows. Has the artist not por¬trayed here the precise momentwhen the two brothers hatch their

murderous plot against their vic¬torious rival ?

Another renowned Scythian trea¬sure is the gold comb (4th centuryB.C.) from the Solokha kurgan, inthe lower Dnieper River region (seephoto page 8). Two Scythian war¬riors, one on foot and the other onhorseback, are attacking and van¬quishing a third one. Could thesealso be the sons of Targitaus?

A Roman poet, Caius ValeriusFlaccus (Ist century A. D.) confirmsthis theory in his poem "The Argo-nautica!'

In the midst of items which have

nothing to do with the myth, hesuddenly mentions a combat betweentwo individuals whose names are verysimilar in sound to those of Targitaus-Heracles' sons. His description ofthe combat also evokes that represen¬ted on the comb: the warrior's horse

is dead, he himself is wounded, deathwill soon overtake him...

Thus, such artistic representationsmake it possible to link together thefragments of Scythian myths preser¬ved by different authors and toreconstruct on this basis a singleconnected narrative.

The popularity of the legend ofTargitaus and his sons and the fre¬quent enactment of this subject onritual objects should not surprise us.After all, this was a dynastic myth,which supported the Scythian kings'claim to the throne.

However, it must be admitted thatthese interpretations are still notunanimously accepted, and thatthere are other possible explana¬tions and approaches to this subject.Meanwhile the search for the truth

continues...

Dimitri S. Raevsky

Four Ukrainian archaeologistspresent their latest finds

IN the steppes of Eastern Europelarge earthen mounds mark theburial places of ancient Scythian

rulers. These royal "kurgans" werein most cases plundered in antiquityby thieves in search of the hoards ofgold hidden within the tombs.

For the first time, during the pastsix or seven years, systematic exca¬vations of Scythian kurgans havebeen carried out on a large scale,using the latest scientific methods,by expeditions from the Institute ofArchaeology of the Academy ofSciences of the Ukrainian S. S. R.

Undertaken in connexion with

extensive land improvement projectsin the south of the Ukraine, the

research on the royal tombs hasaroused tremendous interest. Al

though they were first excavated inthe 19th and at the start of the 20th

century, and had been pillaged inancient times, the tombs were stillfound to contain an astonishing wealthof treasures.

The many objects unearthed includeremarkable pieces of jewellery, orna¬tely decorated weapons, gold andsilver vessels and other outstandingworks of ancient art. They have nowbecome part of the world's culturalheritage.

Among the best known of the royalkurgans dating from the 4th and 3rdcenturies B.C. are those of Chertom-

lyk, Solokha, Oguz, Alexandropol',Kozel, Bol'shaia Tsymbalka andChmyrev, all situated in the Dnepro¬petrovsk, Zaprozhye or Kherson

regions of the Ukraine. The famouskurgan of Kul Oba, near Kerch, in theCrimea, can also be included amongthese tombs by virtue of the wealthof objects it contained.

On the following pages, Ukrainianarchaeologists present a few of theirmost recent discoveries.

Ivan ArtemenkoDirector of the Institute

of Archaeology of theUkrainian Academy of Sciences

2 - the golden cup of GaimanovDURING 1969-70, the Gaima-

nova Mogila kurgan, whichoccupies a central position

among more than 50 burials of Scy¬thian warriors, was excavated andstudied by an expedition from theInstitute of Archaeology of the Aca¬demy of Sciences of the UkrainianS.S.R. Gaimanova Mogila is s¡tu-¡ated near the village of Balka in theVasil'ievska district of the Zaporozhyeregion.

In comparison with the otherkurgans, which are about 1 to 1.5metres high, Gaimanova Mogila is

remarkable for its sizeover 8 metres

high and about 80 metres in diameter.Its enormous size, its sharp outlinesagainst the flat steppe landscape andits gleaming white stone facingemphasized the exceptional impor¬tance of the individual buried in it.

Gaimanova Mogila served as aburial vault for Scythian royalty, andthe funeral objects discovered in itcorrespond in many details to thecustoms associated with the burial of

Scythian kings as described by Hero¬dotus. We found golden and silvervessels, the attributes of Scythian

royal power, cups, horns for wine, adrinking bowl, a pitcher, and the bo¬dies of those servants who, accordingto Herodotus, were buried with a king.

However, Gaimanova Mogila'sfame as one of the most valuable

historical monuments of Scythia isnot solely due to the extremely richfinds of eating and cooking utensilsand the several thousand excellent

pieces of jewellery. The most impor¬tant discoveries were the objectsburied in the cache of the northern

tomb. These included golden andsilver ritual vessels, as well as three

17

UKTEST UKRAINIAN FINDS (Continued)

wooden cups with rolled gold discsalong the rim; also in the cache werea flat silver drinking cup and twodrinking horns, with silver bases andgolden mouths and tips in the formsof the head of a ram and a lion.

These objects were accompanied bysilver pitchers and a round drinking-bowl placed in a gilded silver vessel.

With the exception of the largedrinking horn and the wooden cupswhich are the work of a local Scythiancraftsman, the remaining objects inthe cache are made in the style ofGreek art of the 4th century B.C.and show clear links with the jewel¬lery workshops of the Bosphorus.

The most outstanding work ofScytho-Classical art found in theGaimanova Mogila kurgan is a smallspherical gilded silver cup, with twoflat horizontal handles decorated with

rams' heads. The central designon the cup is a wide frieze in highrelief, depicting Scythian warriors.

The warriors stand against abackground showing an open, stonyarea and are connected with each

other by their involvement in com¬mon activities. They are superblyintegrated into the form of the vessel.The four major figures are displayedin pairs on the surface of the cup; theother two kneel under the cup'shandles. [For an interpretation ofthese figures on the golden cup ofGaimanov see article page 15].

On one side of the cup stand twoelderly warriors, engaged in conversa¬tion. Long-haired and bearded, theyare dressed in rich clothing and carryceremonial precious weaponry. Theirlong kaftans, with triangular gussets,are trimmed with fur and embroidered

on the shoulders and chest with

fantastical designs. Their hairstylesare highly distinctive, and theirweapons in particular betoken thehighest authority. The mace of thewarrior on the right and the two-thonged whip held by the one on theleft, suggest that the two men belon¬ged to the elite of Scythian leaders.

On the opposite side of the cupan elderly bearded warrior and ayoung Scythian are conversing.

Their clothing is just as luxurious,their weapons just as costly, buttheir poses are somewhat different.The young Scythian holds in his righthand a ritual drinking-bowl, and hisleft hand is outstretched, like that

of the elderly warrior. Under onehandle of the vessel, a youth on hisknees is prostrating himself before awineskin, while the kneeling figureunder the other handle is an elderlywarrior, with his gorytus (the combi¬nation quiver and bow-case typicalof the Scythians) beside him. Hehas one hand stretched up to hisforehead and is gripping somethingwith the other.

All the figures are gilded, and onlythe faces and hands are silver. Each

image is individual in style. It isworth emphasizing that this is thefirst known example of Scythiandécorative art depicting Scythianleaders of the highest rank.

Vasily BidziliaInstitute of Archaeologyof the Ukrainian Academyof Sciences

Photo © Art Publishers, Moscow

18

Scythian idyllon a royalbreastplate

On this gold pectoral or breast¬plate (right) the artist hasdepicted scenes in minute detailmaking this masterpiece of thegoldsmith's art (30 cm. in diameter)a vivid portrayal of Scythianpastoral life. At centre of upperfrieze of the pectoral (detail left)two men on their knees are holdingand sewing a sheepskin tunic.They wear the typical trousersand boots of the nomad horsemen

of the steppes. This 4th centuryB.C. Greco-Scythian pectoralwas wrought near the Black Seaand was discovered in the Ukraine

in 1971 in a Scythian ruler's tomb.Photo O APN, Moscow

THE excavations in 1971 of

Tolstaya Mogila, one of themost magnificent royal tombs

of Scythia, turned out to be a momen¬tous event for archaeology. In thécentre of the tomb was the burial

of the ruler himself, with beside himtwo pits for the burial of horses andthe three tombs of his leading grooms.In the south-western part of thekurgan two dark patches marked theentrances to a side tomb, which hadescaped plunder.

In this tomb lay the skeleton of ayoung Scythian woman, probably thewife of the ruler. All her clothesher

dresses, veils and sandalswere

embroidered with ornamental goldendiscs. Her jewellery was of gold.

Beside the woman was an alabaster

sarcophagus containing the body of achild who had died later and had

been carried into the grave througha separate entrance. The whole ofits tiny skeleton was also covered ingolden plaques, rings, bracelets andneck ornaments.

Everything was in a perfect state ofpreservation when, 2,300 years afterthe burial, the first archaeologistsentered the grave. But although thecentral grave had been plundered,

in it were found the objects whichwere to make Tolstaya Mogila world-famous. These were the most pre¬cious of the king's ceremonialemblems of authority: a sword cov¬ered in gold, a gold-wrapped whip,and, most spectacular of all, a goldenpectoral, or breastplate.

The pectoral weighs 1,150 gram¬mes. Its crescent-shaped surface isdivided into three bands by broadelegant twisted cords of gold.

In the centre of the lowest band

three scenes show a horse beingattacked and pulled down by griffins.Beyond them are depicted the com¬bats of a wild boar and a deer with a

leopard and a lion, and at each endof this band a hound chases after a

hare. In front of each hare two

grasshoppers face each othereternalsymbols of peace and tranquility.

The middle band is decorated with

plant motifs and among the wonder¬fully interwoven flowers, shoots,palmleaves, rosettes and leaves, fivelifelike figures of birds evoke theatmosphere of a quiet sunny morning.

Linked with the lower band into a

single picture, the middle band formsa kind of interlude between the large-scale sculptural figures on the lower

and upper bands and gives the wholework its unity as a great symphonicpoem about Scythian life and ideas.

In the upper band, four Scythiansgo about their peaceful tasks sur¬rounded by domestic animals. Inthe centre two men, stripped to thewaist, their quivers and bows closeat hand, are sewing a sheepskintunic. To the left and right of thema cow and a mare suckle their youngand further on two youths are milk¬ing ewes. Birds in flight completethe composition, communicating animpression of the infinity of the world.

With its perfect proportions and theoutstanding beauty and naturalnessof its movements, each figure is asculptural masterpiece. An extra¬ordinary composition, the work as awhole undoubtedly has a complexsymbolic meaning. But, quite apartfrom its true significance, it seemsclear that in this work the artist was

striving, directly or indirectly, toconvey a philosophical picture of hisworld, with all its aspirations and itsdreams.

For the first time, we see on a

ritual royal object neither battle 'scenes nor noble warriors, but a vistasof earthly life in all its harmony. f

19

LATEST UKRAINIAN FINDS (Continued)

Such a find was unprecedented inthe field of Scythian studies. Itreflected, as a drop of dew does thesun, the full brilliance and radianceof rpyal Scythian gold, much more ofwhich has been found at TolstayaMogila than in Kul Oba, previouslythe richest Scythian tomb everexcavated.

Yet the importance of these findslies not in the gold, butin the pricelesshistorical-revelations that come from

every object in the Tolstaya tomband the imperishable artistic valueof its most exquisite works.

Boris MozolevskyInstitute of Archaeologyof the Ukrainian Academyof Sciences

DEER-STALKING LIONS. Each end of this solid gold neck-ring is decoratedwith seven lions stalking a deer whose hindquarters mergeinto the decorative pattern on the neck-ring. This ornament belongedto a Scythian noblewoman buried 2,300 years ago with all her jewels.It came to light in 1971 in the same tomb as the magnificent pectoralshown on page 19. The tomb was robbed but both objects were missedby the plunderers.

Photo L Tarassova O Kiev State Historical Museum.

ENIGMATIC GRIFFIN. Bronze ornament (left) in the form

of a stylized griffin may have surmounted a staff,a ceremonial standard or the decoration of a catafalque.Discovered in 1971, it dates from the 4th century B.C.and is only 5 cms. high.

WELL-TRAVELLED BOAR. This gold boar with silver tusksmay have been the base of a wine-cup. The wild boarwas a cult animal for the Celts and this work

was probably made by a Celtic craftsman in Central Europein the 4th century B.C. Its discovery in the Ukraineis evidence of the trade links that existed in ancient times

between the Scythian world and its Western neighbours.Unearthed in 1970, the boar is 5 cms. longand weighs less than 20 grammes.

Photo L Tarassova 'O Kiev State Historical Museum.

SCYTHIAN PANOPLY. Carved in limestone 2,500 years ago, this statue isthe full-length portrayal of a Scythian warrior in helmet and armour (see alsobox page 13). From his belt hang the typical short Scythian sword (the akinakes)a quiver for bow and arrows (the gorytus), a battle-axe and a sheathed dagger.He is wearing a neck-ring and in his right hand he grips to his breast a rhyton,a horn-shaped drinking cup. The 2-metre-high statue may originally havetopped a burial mound. It was found near the Black Sea in 1975 byarchaeologists of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukraine.

Photo O V. Kloshko. Kiev

a horse's finerycapped

by a goddessof the chase

A 2,400-year-old Scythian or¬nament of singular beautyand originality was recently

unearthed in the Ukraine (the firstphoto of this, work ever publishedappears on the centre colour pages ofthis issue).

The ornament, a horse's gold bridlepiece, came to light when the undis¬turbed grave of a man and two horseswas uncovered at the end of a corri¬

dor. The discovery was made bytwo specialists in the archaeology ofEarly Iron Age cultures, I. P. Savovskyand Yu. V. Boltrik, who were directingexcavations at the village of Giunovkoin the Kamenskoye-Dnieper districtof the Zaporozhye region.

A man of about 25 lay by the wallof the passageway. The small num¬ber and modest nature of the objectsnear him (a gold ear-ring, an iron bra¬celet, glass beads and a bunch ofarrows) showed his subordinate po¬sition in society: he was most pro¬bably a groom. The horse buried bythe opposite wall was also modestlydecorated: the archaeologists foundan iron bit and the fastenings of abridle.

In comparison, the decoration ofthe second horse, lying in the middle,was striking in its magnificence. Itconsisted of a bridle frontlet in the

form of a lion, two cheekplates show¬ing a lion pulling down a deer, fourphaleras, or discs with running spirals,and two plaques without decoration.All the objects were of gilded silver.

The horse's head was crowned

with a flat top-piece. This waspainted blue, with a leather base, andhad a delicate segment-shaped goldplaque (33 cm by 20 cm) stuck to it.

The decoration on this "diadem for

a horse" is new for Scythian art. Awoman rider is firing arrows at a stagunder a tree which is crowned by twoenormous stylized flowers with red-coloured outer petals.

Plant shoots are visible under the

feet of the horse and the stag, andplant motifs dominate the scene.The antlers of the stag are intertwinedwith the branches of the tree and a

wide border of plant ornamentation iwavy shoots with whorls sprouting I

21

LATEST UKRAINIAN FINDS

(Continued)

from themframes the perimeter ofthe ornament. The top-piece is aminiature decorative panel in whichthe colourful effect is achieved by acombined use of gold, blue and red.The skilled craftsmanship has giventhe work an appearance of delicategold lace.

The realism of the details in the

costume of the horsewoman and her

pose should not be allowed toobscurethe mythological nature of the subjectas a whole. The theme of the death

of a stag is repeated three times inthe decoration of the buried horse.

On the cheekplates the stag is shownbeing eaten by a lion, on the gold discsit is being pulled down by a griffin,and in the top-piece it is being killedby a human.

The hunt takes place in a sacredgrove in which trees and plants arehighly stylized, and the whole recallsthe legend of the virgin huntress ofthe GreeksArtemis. This relates

how the hunter Actaeon strayed bymistake into the sacred forest of the

goddess in the valley of Cithaeron,where he caught sight of her bathing.As a punishment, Artemis turnedActaeon into a stag, which thenbecame itself the prey of hunters.

The image of the divine huntresswould naturally attract the Scythians,whose religion, as Herodotus tells us,underwent an intensive process ofanthropomorphisation of divinitiesduring the 5th and 4th centuriesB.C. But the discovery of this hunt¬ing scene is still too recent for defi¬nitive conclusions to be drawn about

its exact significance.

Vitaly OtroshchenkoInstitute of Archaeologyof the Ukrainian Academy,of Sciences

Page 23Golden stag's head (detailof photo on page 4) whichonce adorned an iron shield.

Measuring 31 cms. longand 19 cms. high, thewhole object weighs noless than 634 grammes.The stag was one of themost popular motifs ofScythian art.

Page 25This small bone horse

(11 cms. long) is a typicalproduct of the ancient artof Tuva, a region in centralSiberia near Mongoliawhere horses, reindeer and

even wild camels once

abounded. Perforations enabled this ornament

carved between the 5th and 3rd centuries B.C.

to be sewn onto a garment.

Three carnivorous beasts

are locked in combat over

their prey on this goldplaque which formed partof the Siberian gold trea¬sure assembled by TsarPeter the Great in the early

18th century. His collection consisted of solidgold objects that had escaped the plunderers ofmany ancient tombs.

Fabulous beast attackinga horse. The two sec¬

tions of the work were

originally joined by acopper plaque rivetedwith silver. This 2,500-

year-old sword-belt bucklewas once encrusted with

multicoloured gems.

Curled-up panther, amasterwork of Scytho-Siberian art of the 7th or

6th century B.C., mayhave been a shield decora¬

tion (see also photo page40). Solid gold, it weighsmore than 220 grammes.The small central circles

probably once held coloured inlays. (Collectionof Peter the Great).

Wrought in hammeredgold with enamel andamber inlays, this famouspanther from Kelermes,north of the Caucasus,

may have decorated abreastplate or shield. Itis one of the oldest examples of the animalart of the steppes (7th or 6th centuries B.C.).Weight: 735 grammes; length: 33 cms.

This elaborate gold andamber work (19 cms.

long) incorporates theheads of lions and rams

on an intricately-wroughtopenwork structure. Dat¬ing from the 7th or 6thcentury B.C., it may havethrone.

Colour pages

SPLENDOURS

OF SCYTHIAN ART

Page 24Golden diadem, or kalathos

(basket-shaped headdress)discovered in steppe-landnear the river Dniepersome 200 km. north of the

Black Sea. Its Greco-

Scythian style is evidenceof the close links between

Greeks and Scythians in the4th century B.C. Theopenwork plaques, origi¬nally sewn onto a cloth

backing, are decorated with scenes of animalcombata characteristic feature of Scythian art.Ornamental pendants hang from two of theplaques.

Pages 28-29The Scythians lavished the utmost care onthe details of their equipment, which wasembellished by sculptors and goldsmithswith sumptuous ornaments such as thoseshown here.

decorated a

Pages 26-27Our centre colour pages presenta photo, published for the first time,of a gold bridle top-piece, recentlyunearthed in the Ukraine. It adorned

the head of a horse of the steppessome 2,400 years ago. This orna¬ment is a striking example of thefinery with which the Scythiannomadsdecked out their steeds. Intricate

decoration of top-piece, which isattached to a coloured leather base,

shows a goddess of the chasehunting a stag (see article page 21).This remarkable work is now in the

Kiev State Museum (UkrainianS.S.R.).

Page 28Bridle frontlet carved from

a stag's antler in the 5thcentury B.C. by an artistfrom the Altai mountains

(Siberia). About 20 cms.

high, it joins the head of awild beast to the gracefullycurving necks of twogeese. Necks, ears andcurious claw-like feet are

symmetrically rendered inthis "split representation"of two motifs, which is a

Scythian art.

Page 29Half griffin, half bird of

prey, this gold-plated silverbridle trinket (4th centuryB.C.) was discovered in the

Sea of Azov region.

r '

10

specific feature of

Head of a griffin in en¬graved cast gold (4th cen¬tury B.C.). A harnessdecoration, 3.5 cms. high,

it weighs 50 grammes.

Bronze silhouette of the

head of a bird of prey (6thor 5th century B.C.) foundin the Kuban once toppeda ceremonial pole. Twoof the three bells originallyattached to the 26-cm.-

high head have survived.A mountain goat cowersbeneath the looming bird.

Although stylized inform, this 4th-century-B.C. bronze reindeer

conveys a realistic im¬pression of movement.

22

Photos n"" 1. 3. 6, 7. 8, 13 : Lee Boltin *.' The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New YorkPhotos n"s 2. 4. 5, 9, 10. 11, 12, 14 : L Tarassova Ö Aurora Art Publishers. Leningrad

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28

PAZYRYKa nomad way of life"deep-frozen" for 25 centuriesin Siberian mountain tombs

by ManyaP. Zavitukhina

MARIYA PAVLOVNA ZAVITUKHINA,Soviet archaeologist, is executive secretaryof the Department of History of PrehistoricCultures and curator of Siberian antiquitiesat the State Hermitage Museum (Leningrad).For many years she has directed excavationsof monuments from the Scythian periodin the Krasnoyarsk region and is the authorof many studies on Siberian archaeology.

Colour page opposite:

In the tombs of Pazyryk (Siberia)archaeologists have discoveredclothing, wall hangings and carpetsperfectly preserved for over2,000 years beneath the frozen earth.Above left, detail of a felt saddlecover from Pazyryk; the entire coveris shown in lower photo. Its design,in coloured felt appliqué outlinedwith cords, shows a mountain goatattacked by a griffin; its tassels arefringed with horsehair and fur.Saddle covers cushioned the riders'

thighs and were often embellishedwith brightly coloured animal formsor animal combats.

THE High Altai in Siberia issevere, majestic country.Over its steppes and moun¬tain pastures, in the middle

of the last millennium B.C., roamedthe nomadic tribes which scholars

have associated with the gold-guard¬ing griffins of legend. Followingtheir vast herds of cattle and horses,they left behind them, in the uplandhollows, innumerable cairn-coveredbarrows known as kurgans or burial-mounds.

In 1 929, two scholars from Lenin¬grad, S.I. Rudenko and M.P. Gryaznov,began excavations in an ancient burialground in a place called Pazyryk,1.600 metres above sea-level in the

remote Ulagan Valley, in Siberia.The explorations of the first kurgan,which proved to be frozen solid andto contain goods which would nor¬mally be called "perishable", arousedunprecedented interest.

Rudenko's return in 1947-1949, atthe head of an expedition whichinvestigated four other frozen barrows,produced sensational results. Whenthe "refrigerated" tombs yielded upcarpets, clothing and footwear, aceremonial chariot, the mummifiedbodies of men and women, horses inrich trappings, utensils of all kinds,musical instruments and other objects

of them almost 2,500 years oldthe little known name of Pazyryk be¬came world famous.

The hollows where the barrows aresituated are outside the area in which

the ground is permanently frozen, butthe climate of the High Altai, with itslow mean annual temperatures, itslong and almost snow-free wintersand its short summers, when thenights are still cold, led to the forma¬tion of merzlota, or permafrost, underthe cairns themselves. Their stones

protected the earth from heat in thesummer, and permitted refrigerationto a depth of seven metres, where thetemperature never rose above freezingpoint. Water turned into ice as itfiltered into the tombs, whose con¬tents, thus "deep-frozen", . were inideal conditions of preservation.

The archaeologists were faced withan unusual problem. In order to see

inside the burial places, they had tolay aside their trowels, knives andbrushes, and pour in vast quantitiesof hot water to melt the ice.

The Altaians organized excep¬tionally splendid burials, followingcustoms and rituals similar to those of

their kindred people the Scythians.At the bottom of a deep and roomyhole, they built a log-lined chamberwith walls and ceiling of doublethickness. On the floor they laid thecoffins which would receive the em¬

balmed bodies of the dead. Theydecorated the walls of the tomb with

felt hangings, and furnished it withthe personal possessions of the menand women they were burying, addingtableware, food and drink.

Outside the burial chamber theyplaced richly caparisoned horses,killed on the day of the funeral. Theyeven left behind them some of the

tools used in preparing the tomb:wooden shovels, picks and mallets, aswell as trolleys and ladders. Thenthey carefully covered over the tombwith layers of birch bark and the fo¬liage of the "smoky tea" shrub, androofed it up to ground level withlarch logs. They heaped soil on thetop and then, finally, raised a cairn ofstones over the mound.

Objects found in the tombs anddata from radiocarbon analysis, indi¬cate that these burial mounds wereconstructed in the fifth or fourthcenturies B.C.

The excellent pastures and almostsnow-free winters provided the Al¬taian nomads with year-round grazingfor their herds of horses and for the

herds of cattle, sheep and goatswhich furnished all their everydayrequirementsfood, clothes andshelter.

For these nomadic peoples, thehorse was the principal means of lo¬comotion. In addition to their small,locally-bred draught-horses, theypossessed highly-prized and swift-footed thoroughbred fliers, gold andchestnut in colouring, of Central Asianorigin. They even took these riding-horses with them into the grave.

Thanks to the excavations, we now r

31

TREASURES SAVED BY FROST AND LOOTERS

Rich stores of normally perishable objects, yielding priceless informationabout the steppe nomads, have been found almost perfectlypreserved in the extraordinary frozen tombs of the Altai mountains inSiberia (6th-4th centuries B.C.). Below, cross-section of an Altaitomb in the highland valley of Pazyryk, where graves were first excavatedby Soviet archaeologists in 1929. Tomb chamber shown, walledand roofed with logs, was at bottom of a pit 5 metres deep.- At groundlevel earth from the pit was formed into a low mound topped by pilesof boulders (see view of Pazyryk tombs in photo above). Cold winter airsettled between the stones and eventually a lens-shaped section ofground around the burial chamber became perpetually frozen. Everyhuman burial chamber at Pazyryk was looted by robbers who dug down andchopped through the logs (note disturbed v-shaped area of rocksand soil in cross-section). Water seeped through the opening and froze,preserving for all time the bodies of chieftains, their women, horsesand possessions of fur, fabric, leather and wood, left behind bythe looters. Drawing at bottom shows a Pazyryk horse burial, includingtrappings and wheels and frame of a 4-horse carriage.

Drawing C Aurora Ad Publisher* Leningrad

;-y:vO

mmsmm :

Drawing © Scientific American, New York

know how the ancient Altaians sad¬

dled up. The saddle itself consistedof two soft felt cushions, stuffed withdeer hair and secured by breast- andcrupper-straps which prevented itfrom sliding forwards or backwards.Stirrups were still unknown; theywere not to come into use for another

thousand years. The bridle wasformed by a headstall strap attachedto the bit, with side-straps, a throat-lash and a single noseband strap.

The nomads of the Altai probablylived in light, portable tents, or yurty,in covered wagons when they wereon the move andif the skill with

which they built their burial chambersis a guidein log houses. Theyused wooden and earthenware

vessels, as well as leather pouchesand flasks.

Their clothing consisted of skirtswoven from kendyr or hemp fibres,caftans of fur or felt, and patchworkbreeches made of soft, pliable leather.Their footwear consisted of felt

stockings and high leather bootswith soft soles. This costume was

completed by a head-dress in theform of a tall cap with ear-flaps, anda silver-buckled leather belt.

Women's clothing included coatsof squirrel skin, fur inwards, withnarrow, decorative sleeves, and short,fur-lined bootees, also with soft soles.

The nomads went to war with

bronze battle-axes, iron daggers andbows and arrows, sheltering behindshields made from whittled sticks

pleated through thin leather.

The ancient Altaians lived togetherin clans or tribes, with distinct classesof chieftains and property-owningnobles. The patriarch, who bore thedouble responsibility of stock-breederand warrior, played a leading role inthe family unit, although the matriarchwas also held in high esteem. Concu¬bines figured among the womenfolk,but probably only at the upper, pro¬perty-owning levels of society, wherecustom demanded that the favourite,after the death of her lord and master,be strangled so that she might followhim beyond the grave.

Although the people of the HighAltai lived in out-of-the-way places,far from the ancient centres of civili¬

zation, many of the objects found intheir burial mounds reveal a broadnetwork of trade and relations with

other peoples, from whom theyacquired precious goods: carpets,richly-woven textiles and ornaments,and the well-bred Central Asian riding-horses which they prized above allelse.

The Altaians probably offeredcattle and horses from their own

herds, as well as furs, gold and sil¬ver, in exchange for these goods.Valuable pile carpets and woollencloth of a distinctive style from Iranfound their way through CentralAsia to the Altai, whose inhabitantsalso obtained from their Easternneighbours embroidered silks which

CONTINUED PAGE 36

32

FABULOUS BESTIARIES

ON TAPESTRY AND SADDLE

Many elegant and richly worked textiles,some imported from faraway Iran and China,were found in the Pazyryk tombs, theircolours still unfaded. Tapestries and felthangings which adorned the tents of thehorsemen of the steppes were dyed invivid reds, blues, yellows and greens andoften covered with elaborate designsdepicting men and real or mythical creatures.A prancing winged and antlered figure,half-lion, half-human, decorates thisfragment of a felt wall-hanging fromPazyryk (1). Horses had been decked outwith magnificent finery before being buriedwith their masters. Felt saddle covers were

lavishly decorated with ornaments, mostlydepicting exuberant scenes of animalcombat. (See also colour photos page 30.)Drawings below show four animal motifsembellishing Pazyryk saddle covers; thesilhouettes were all cut from leather, partlycoloured and covered with gold leaf ortinfoil: (2) Lion with massive head and

fanged open jaws; (3) Eagle-griffin pecksfiercely into the neck of a lion-griffin; (4) Agriffin grips an elk in its talons; (5) Mountainram with tiger tearing at its throat hascollapsed onto its forelegs with its cruppertwisted round. (See also pages 34 and 35.)Its body is slashed with stops, commasand half-horseshoes, a technique vividlyused by the Altai artists to indicate theprincipal muscles and ribs.

Photo A. Bulgakov © Aurora Art Publishers. Leningrad . Drawingsfrom Frozen Tombs of Siberia by Sergei I. Rudenko © J. M. Dentand Sons, London 1970.

4 5

33

Cavortingcreatures

on the

tattooed man

of Pazyryk

rcsl

ï<m\

Photo L Tarassova © Aurora Art Publishers. Leningrad

Drawings from Frozen Tombs of Siberia by SergeiRudenko © J. M. Dent and Sons, London 1970.

One of the most exciting and puzzlingdiscoveries made at Pazyryk was thatof the embalmed body of an elderlychieftain who had been covered in

intricate tattooing long before his death,A mass of real and imaginary beasts

pouncing, galloping,prancing and kickingtumblehelter-skelter down both arms and

cover parts of one leg, chest and back.The designs, preserved by the freezingtemperature, were formed by firstpricking the skin and then rubbing sootin the perforations. On this double pagewe show drawings of nine cavortingcreatures on the tattooed man and a

photo (4) of an enlarged detail fromhis right arm, depicting a prancingdeer with an eagle's beak and longantlers that turn into bird heads.

Numbers on drawing 11, a front viewof the chieftain, indicate the positionof some of the creatures on his body.Running from his left breast to hisshoulder is a griffin, its curling tailtipped by the head of a bird orsnake (1). A fish (10) and a row ofmountain sheep run up one leg.Fantastic procession winding up rightarm from hand to shoulder includes

a donkey (5), a winged monster witha feline body (6), a carnivore with

gaping fanged jaws (9) and a hornedmountain ram (7). Notice theextraordinary way in which the ram'shindquarters are twisted right roundlike those of fantastic beast (3) onback of right arm. Animals wereoften depicted in this way by Altaiartists, usually when being attackedby stronger beasts. Among the motifson the left arm are an animal with

tucked-in forelegs, possibly a mountainram (2) and a fabulous beast combiningfeatures of deer, eagle and felinecarnivore (8). What was the purposeof this tattooing? In his bookFrozen Tombs of Siberia, Sergei I.Rudenko, the Soviet archaeologistwho excavated the Pazyryk burialmounds, suggests that it may have"signified noble birth or was a mark ofmanhood or both", while the whirlingmonsters "had some magic significancenot yet understood". The tattooedchieftain remains an enigmatic figure.

35

Photo © Aurora Art Publishers, Leningrad Photo L Tarassova © Aurora Art Publishers, Leningrad

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 32

must have been considered price¬less, even in China.

Amid all the treasures unearthed

at Pazyryk pride of place must go toa multicoloured pile carpet, wovenby a special knotted technique,whose almost square surface (ap¬proximately 2 m. by 2 m.) depictshorses and riders, grazing deer,griffins and stylized vegetation.This carpet, the oldest of its kind inthe world, is a tribute to the work¬manship of its Iranian weavers.

Close contacts with their neigh¬bours led the nomads of the HighAltai into mixed marriages, andalthough the physical features ofthe men and women buried in the

tombs are mainly European, tracesof Indo-European and Mongoloidmay also be detected. The Altaians,like the Scythians, are presumed tohave spoken a number of differentdialects of Iranian type.

The art of the ancient tribes of

the High Altai is astonishing in itsabundance and unique in its variety.It constitutes an excellent corrective

to the one-sided notion that

Scythian art was a matter merelyof artifacts fashioned from metal,

bone or clay.

In their choice of images andsubjects, the Altaian artists followedthe so-called "animal style" ofScythian art. The outstanding qua-Jity of the many everyday articlesfound in their tombs, of their clothes

and of the trappings of their horses,indicates that artistic creation mat¬

tered to the nomads to an unusual

degree, and that they spent theirwhole lives surrounded by aestheti

cally pleasing objects.

Art was indeed in the people'sblood. And the images of animalsand birds, whether wild or domesti¬cated, real or fantastic, whichfigured in their decorations weremore than brightly coloured orna¬ments. They revealed the spirit ofthe people, their beliefs, the waythey looked at things.

In their travels abroad, the ancientAltaians absorbed what was best in

their neighbours' art, and thenadded their own local colour and

interpretations. Thus, they foundplace in their own creations forgriffins and sphinxes borrowed fromWestern Asia, and for patterns oflotus flowers, ornamental palm-trees'and geometrical designs whoseorigins were in the countries ofthe near East and in Egypt.

It is possible that the artisticleanings of the people of the HighAltai were stimulated by the abun¬dance of materials which lay closeat hand. Stock-raising providedthem with a source of excellent

felt. They fashioned high-qualityleathers and furs. Their forests pro¬duced the cedar-wood and larch

from which the finest carvings couldbe made, while the plant worldplaced henna, indigo and madder attheir disposal, and the ground undertheir feet yielded ochre, colcotharand cinnabar as mineral dyes, aswell as virtually limitless quantitiesof gold, silver and other metals, whichthey used widely for decorative pur¬poses.

As we have seen the riding-horsewas the subject of lavish attentions.

Indeed, decked out in ceremonialtrappings, it must have been a fan¬tastic sight. Its head was enclosedin a decorated leather mask; itsbridle had carved wooden cheek-

pieces, pasted over with gold leaf.The felt saddle-cushions and theshabrack (saddle-cover) were trim¬med with multi-coloured appliquéwork, while leather covers andsheaths were stitched to the horse'smane and tail.

The clothing and footwear ofthe Altaians were decorated with

patches of coloured felt, fur andleather, and embroidered with pat¬terns in wool or sinew threads bound

round with strips of tinfoil. Their feltcarpets and wall-hangings, also exe¬cuted in appliqué work, were colour¬ful masterpieces, decorating the wallsand floors of their mobile homes, andeven the wooden legs of their low,collapsible tables were carved in theshape of tigers.

Colours also figured in the leatherand fur pouches in which they storedcheese and other produce, and intheir purses containing hempseedsand imported coriander seeds. Theirarrow-shafts and shields were painted,too. One may well ask whether theAltaians had a single object un¬touched by the hand of an artist.

_Among their images, the favour¬ites were beasts of prey (tigers andwolves), and other wild animals (elk,deer and mountain goats and rams),whose lively and realistic portraitsreveal the Altaians' great familiaritywith their habits and movements.

But no less impressive are the ima¬ginary creatures, devised out of

36

GAGGLE OF GRIFFINS

A griffin slaying a deer is a themewidely used by the nomad artistsof the steppes (see back cover).Example from Pazyryk at farleft was carved in wood in the 5th

century B.C. and is 35 cmshigh. It shows an abbreviatedform of the subject, with the headof each animal symbolizing theentire beast. The comb, ears andwings of the griffin are madefrom thick leather, as also are theears and antlers of the deer.

Points of antlers consist of cocks'

heads on long necks. Left, twogriffins coil round a frontal piece froma horse's bridle decoration found

in a tomb at Tuekta in the Altai

mountains. Right, astonishinglywell-preserved leather griffin'shead with curving beak and largeears and antlers was unearthed

at Pazyryk.

Photo © Aurora Art Publishers, Leningrad

elements of living animals andbirdsthe griffins and winged tigers,to which the Altaians returned more

frequently than the Scythians.

The skills which the Altaian artists

applied in so many creative wayshave survived until today, transmit¬ted by succeeding generations fromthe mainspring of an art which wastruly popular and never the jealouslyguarded secret of a few masters.

The Altaian artist always excelledin composition. With admirableease and virtuosity, the sculptorsin wood, bone and horn fitted their

subjects into the shape of the objectthey were decorating, lengthening orshortening the body of the animal,enlarging its head, bending itsfore- and hind- quarters into curves.The ancient Altaian sculptors passedunconcernedly from one techniqueto another, from shallow relief toexcised designs, and then to sculp¬ture in the round.

An outstanding feature of Altaianart is the manner in which the exe¬

cution of a single piece of workinvolved all these techniques ofsculpture, as well as the use ofdifferent materials, in which anobject could be simultaneously pain¬ted in bright colours and pastedover with strips of gold, tinfoil orsilver.

This complexity is particularlyevident in a carved wooden crest,representing a griffin holding adeer's head in its beak (see backcover) while figures made of soft ma¬terials, such as leather and felt, areparticularly well represented by theswans, composed of pieces of col¬oured felt, which may have adorn¬ed the canopy of a burial carriage (seepage 47).

Altaian art often contains scenes

in which beasts of prey and griffinsare falling upon deer, elk, and moun¬tain rams and goats. These ¡mages

possibly reflect a period when thepastoral tribes were at war witheach other. This age of men inarms produced its breeds of heroes,in whose honour epic tales andsongs must have been composed.It is not surprising, therefore, thatthe burial chambers also contained

musical instruments, in the form ofmulti-stringed harps and drums.

The excavation of the frozen

tombs of the High Altai revealed theancient, original culture of the Altainomads, which doubtless had a greatinfluence on Scythian art as a whole.Now, the works of the Altaian mastershave found another resting-place,among the collected treasures ofworld art.

Mariya P. Zavitukhina

DISANTLED ELK

Wooden elk's heads (each justunder 10 cms. long) from Pazyrykwere used as bridle ornaments.

Their antlers have not survived.

The elk figures prominently inthe art of the northern nomads.

Photo © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York

37

HORSES

FOR THE HEREAFTER

by Mikhail P. Gryaznov

FOR many centuries, the immenseexpanse of the steppes fromthe river Danube to the Great

Wall of China formed a single vastcultural-historical region. The nu¬merous tribes of this region, wholived in constant contact with each

other, differed in their historical past,as well as in their ethnographicheritage, but created for themselvesa culture which was uniform in its

general outlines.

This broad uniformity resulted fromthe fact that the culture had taken

shape through a series of identicalstages of development, which unfol¬ded simultaneously across the wholebelt of the steppes. This processbegan in the Aeneolithic period, thetime of transition from the Stone

Age to the era of metals. In thesteppes of Eurasia this transitioncoincided with that from the systemof acquisitive economy (hunting,fishing and food-gathering) to theproductive economy, which in thiscase centred on cattle-breeding.

The uniformity in the historicaldevelopment of all. the steppe tribesbecame particularly evident in thetime of the Scythians, when thepopulation of the steppes went overto the nomadic way of life, becamehighly mobile and developed underconditions of extensive inter-tribal

cultural exchanges.

In recent years, terms such as"cultures of Scytho-Siberian type"and "the Scytho-Siberian animalstyle" have begun to be used moreand more frequently. However,there has still been very little studyof the Asian part of the Scytho-Siberian cultural world. Specialistsin Scythian history tend to focustheir attention pn the monuments ofthe northern Black Sea area and the

MIKHAIL PETROVICH GRYAZNOV,member of the Archaeological Institute ofthe Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R. inLeningrad, has directed excavations of thetomb-complex of Arzhan (Autonomous SovietRepublic of Tuva) and of tombs at Pazyrykin the Altai mountains (Siberia). Professor

of Siberian archaeology at the university ofLeningrad, he is the author of many publishedworks including a study on the first burialmound excavated at Pazyryk.

problems of the origin of those tribeswhich may properly be calledScythian. Discussion centres onthe question of the origin of theScythians and the composition ofthe Scythian animal style.

Until recently, the only undisputedpremise in these arguments was thatScythian culture and art came intobeing in the 7th century B.C. andthat the attainments of Scythianculture with its presumed pre-Asiaticsources slowly spread to the East insomewhat modified forms.

However, it is also true to say thatscholars have for long been study¬ing some remarkable monumentsof the culture of the early nomadsof Siberia, magnificent specimens oftheir original art. Among these arethe amazing gold collection ofPeter I, the Pazyryk kurgans (burialmounds) in the Altai (see page 31),and the bronze objects and megalithicenclosures of the kurgans of theTagar culture on the river Yenisey.

During the last 20 years, monu¬ments of the early Scythian periodhave been discovered in Centraland Southern Kazakhstan, as well asin the western foothills of the Altaiand in Tuva. It has become clear

that cultures of Scythian type cameinto being in the East no later than

in Scythia itself. They were createdand flourished at the same time and

parallel with that culture which wasproperly Scythian.

Many Scythian specialists weresurprised by the discovery in 1971,at different points in the Scytho-Siberian lands, of three remarkablemonumentsthe royal kurgan ofPtichata Mogila in Bulgaria, nearthe town of Varna, two rich burials in

the Vysokaya Mogila on the Dnieperand the royal kurgan of Arzhanin the Tuva Autonomous Soviet Repu¬blic. All of these are dated to the

8th-7th centuries B.C., a time which

precedes the early Scythian period,and the first two monuments are

accepted by the majority of scholarsas being pre-Scythian or Cimmerianin culture.

Unlike them, the kurgan of Arzhanbelongs to the fully developed cul¬ture of Scytho-Siberian type. It too,however, belongs not to its "earlyScythian" stage, but to another,even earlier one. In order to under¬

stand the exceptional significanceof these monuments in explainingthe origin and composition of cul¬tures of the Scytho-Siberian type,we need to look at the kurgan ofArzhan in somewhat greater detail.

38

Photo L Tarassova © Aurora Art Publishers, Leningrad

Nomad chieftains were often buried

with their horsesin some cases

scores of them, as in the great8th- 7th-century B.C. tomb-complexat Arzhan in the Sayan mountains(Autonomous Soviet Republic of Tuva).Opposite page: remains of Arzhan'svast circular wooden structure,120 metres in diameter. Left, plan ofArzhan showing the honeycomb-likenetwork of its chambers. Tiny horse-figures indicate where horses wereburiedup to 30 in each chamber.In the central chamber the nomad

chieftain and his queen were buriedwith magnificent ceremony. No lessthan 6,000 trees were felled to build

the tomb and over 10,000 personsare thought to have attendedthe funeral. Below left, bronze plaqueof a coiled wild beast by a nomadartist. Unearthed at Arzhan it is

one of the biggest of its kindever found.

Arzhan is a vast stone tomb, the

biggest in the Sayan Mountains120 metres in diameter. Under its

stone mound, a unique woodenstructure of enormous dimensions

has been splendidly preserved. Alarge square wooden framework,with an area of more than 65 squaremetres, is placed directly on theground. Seventy other such frame¬works are arranged around it inradial lines and circles. These toge¬ther form a round wooden platform,about three metres high, which werecovered by a ceiling.

Excavations of the kurgan undermy direction went on for four years.Although the monument had beenmore than once ransacked and

plundered even in very ancient times,we discovered a large number ofobjects and were able to recreate afairly detailed picture of the magni¬ficent royal funeral.

Thousands of people gathered atthe place of burial in the month ofSeptember. In seven to eight daysthey felled more than 6,000 tree-trunks and used them to build the

huge multi-chambered platform.The central chamber contained, ona soft litter made of horses' manes

and tails, a small framework withdouble walls and a ceiling, in whichthe bodies of the king and his queenwere placed in separate sarcophagimade of hollowed logs. They weredressed in rich clothing made ofmulticoloured imported fabrics andcostly furs (sable and others).

The tomb was plundered. Vir¬tually nothing of importance hasremained, out of what must havebeen a mass of valuable ornaments:

only one small golden plaque andpieces of golden leaves, some tur¬quoise beads and a bead necklace,and 20 small turquoise discs, whichwere probably the inlay of massivegolden plaques depicting animals.These plaques were stolen by theigrave-robbers. I

39

On three sides around the royalframework were placed eight hol¬lowed logs in which were buried im¬portant personages who accompaniedthe king. All except one were oldor indeed very old, and all were dres¬sed in rich fur or woollen clothes.

Only in some of the logs had objectsbeen preserved: these included orna¬ments of gold and turquoise, bronzearrows, a dagger and some otheritems. Another five similar person¬ages were buried in .neighbouringchambers.

On the fourth side of the royalframework were stacked six saddle

horses. Of their rich and magni¬ficent harness there remain a few

ornaments from the bridle and

saddle straps, some gold and silver,and some made of coloured stone

or boar tusks. These horses were

obviously the personal property ofthe king.

One must suppose that numerousrepresentative groups of nomadsfrom all the tribes subject to thekingthose who peopled the moun¬tainous steppes of what is nowTuvagathered for his funeral. Theyarrived with gifts which befitted theoccasion. In seven chambers, posi¬tioned to the east of the central one,

they buried 138 horses30 saddlehorses in each of three chambers,15 horses in each of three otherchambers and three horses in the

last one.

The horses in each chamber all

came from the same tribe. All of

them were buried with their bridles

and saddles. All were old stallions.

There are few harness ornaments,but there are wonderful examples ofthe Scytho-Siberian animal styleartan enormous bronze figure ofa beast of prey rolled into the form ofa ring, and an ivory head of abridled horse.

We may also take it that delega¬tions from neighbouring countriestook part in the royal funeral. Theyplaced their gifts to the deceased insix chambers, positioned to thenorth and north-east of the central

chamber. In each of these chambersfrom two to ten horses were buried.

The bridle plates of each group ofhorses belong to a particular type,and differ from the harness dress of

all the other groups; the ornamentsof the bridles are also different.

There are five remarkable bronze

top-pieces (perhaps from battle stan¬dards), with monumental figures ofmountain rams on them.

In one case, .the horses wereaccompanied by two distinguishedelders, buried beside them in hol¬lowed logs. They had come, obviously -from some distance, in order to fol¬low the king, who was honourednot only in his own country, butalso beyond its borders. The par¬ticipation of foreign representativesin the funerals of great nomadleaders probably occurred quite fre¬quently in the past.

An ancient Turkic epitaph, forexample, informs us that at thefuneral of the first Turkic kagan orleader, there gathered "weepingand groaning people" from all theends of the earth, including somefrom tribes and peoples not subjectto the Turks, i.e. from the coasts ofthe Pacific, the Siberian taiga andCentral Asia. Even "Avars" and

"Rum", envoys from the Black Seasteppes and from faraway Byzan¬tium, are said to have been present.

One can judge the numbers ofparticipants in the funeral by theremains of the funeral feast. Around

the kurgan of Arzhan the ruins ofsmall round stone enclosures stand

in a semi-circle. There are more

than 300 of them. In the ruins of

each were found the bones of a

horse, but only fragments of theskull and bones of the lower part ofthe legs.

These are evidently remains of thesacrificial horses, placed on the siteof the funeral celebrations after

the horses' flesh had been eaten

and the funeral feast had finished.

Such a ritual was widespread amongthe nomads from the most ancient

times onwards. If one horse was

eaten on the site of each enclosure,the total number of those presentat the funeral feast must have

exceeded 10,000.

The tomb of Arzhan is clear evi¬

dence that the cultures of the so-

called early Scythian period werepreceded by cultures of an alreadyfully formed Scytho-Siberian type.Some scholars may hesitate to attributesuch monuments in the Black Seatsteppes to an early stage of Scythian'culture, but there is no doubt aboutthe monuments of the Sayano-Altairegion in this regard. Other monu¬ments of this period, of a fully Scy¬tho-Siberian type, are also knownin the Sayano-Altai region. Ofthese, the most interesting by farare the so-called deer stones.

A few deer stones were discovered

in the 19th century not far fromArzhan. We also found a fragmentof such a stone in the Arzhan tomb

on the ceiling of one of its cham¬bers. The deer stones have the

appearance of a round or rectan¬gular pillar or a slab-shape,d stone,representing a warrior with hisweapons in conventionalized form.They range in height from half ametre to three metres.

The lower part of the stone is"belted" with a thong, which has abow, a dagger, a hatchet and otherweapons suspended from it. At thetop, where the face of the warriorshould be, there are usually threesmall parallel oblique lines. On thesides are ear-rings and lower downa necklace or pendant. On thesmooth surface of the stone the

figures of a noble deer and some¬times other animals are often repre¬sented. Thus the name of deer

stone, although very often there are

Drawing shows design on thefour sides of a "deer stone" (c. 8th

century B.C.) unearthed in theMongolian steppe. Although namedfrom the figures of deer inscribed onthem, such stones are in fact stylizedportrayals of nomad warriors.This one wears a neck-ring andear-rings. Weapons, including adagger and a hatchet, hang fromhis belt and deer run slantwise round

his body. Many such stones, rangingin height from half a metre to 3 metres,have been found in Mongolia, theTuva Autonomous Republic of theU.S.S.R. and, in a slightly differentform, in the Urals.

no representations of deer on thestone.

Most deer stones have been found

in the steppes of Mongolia, and alsomany in Tuva. They have also beenunearthed in the adjoining landsbeyond Lake Baikal and in the moun¬tainous Altai. Further west, onlyisolated examples occur as far as thesouthern Urals. In the Urals, these

stone representations of a warriorare still more conventionalthe flat

side of the stone bears representa¬tions of only a hatchet and a dagger,with sometimes a belt.

It is true that the steles of the

Northern Caucasus are very closein type to deer stones, but theyrepresent a somewhat individualvariant of conventional warrior repre¬sentations. Yet another variant of

such sculptures existed further to thewest. One of these has been found

in Romania, and another in Bulgariain the mound of the Ptichata Mogilakurgan mentioned above.

The monumental sculpture of theAsian and Black Sea steppes, inclu¬ding its conventional image of thewarrior, emerged and developed atthe very beginning of the formationof the early Scytho-Siberian nomadculture. The consecutive stages inthe evolution of this warrior image

40

followed similar lines across the wide

expanse of the steppes. Similarly,the Scytho-Siberian animal style,despite all its variety, developeduniformly across the vast territorystretching from the Danube to theGreat Wall of China.

Monuments known to belong tothe initial period of Scythian cultureare still very few in number in thesteppes both of Asia and the BlackSea area. It is still impossible, onthe basis of the finds in the Arzhan

tomb and some less significant monu¬ments of the Altai, to give a fullpicture of the origin and compositionof the Scytho-Siberian type cultures,altough some important conclusionscan now be drawn.

It can no longer be said that theScytho-Siberian cultures formed inthe 7th century B.C. or later spreadfrom a single centre in different di¬rections, including the East. Secon¬dly, it is clear that the determiningfactor in the development of thesteppe population at that time wasthe transition to a new economybased on nomadic cattle-breeding.This stimulated the development ofnew farming methods and culturalforms.

It is difficult to be precise aboutthe movements and practices of par¬ticular tribes, but it is clear that fromthe 8th century B.C. onwards, similarcultures of Scytho-Siberian typeemerged and developed simul¬taneously. Extensive inter-tribal ex¬changes which occurred both peace¬fully and by means of wars andplundering raids meant that the cul¬tural acquisitions of one tribe becamewidely distributed among the othertribes.

The ancient tribes of the Asian

steppes were obviously creators andconstructors of cultures of Scytho-Siberian type to as great an extentas their contemporaries, the Scy¬thians. It is even possible that thecontribution which Asian tribes such

as the Altaians and Tuvinians made

to the formation of Scytho-Siberianart and culture was sometimes more

significant than that made by theScythians themselves.

Indeed one might well questionwhether European Scythia was, asmany people have hitherto believed,a centre or focus of the Scytho-Siberian territory. After all, it wassituated on the far periphery of theScytho-Siberian territory and itsproximity to and close contacts withMediterranean civilization may tosome extent have repressed thecreative originality of the Scythians.

Mikhail P. Gryaznov

41

The art of the steppes portrays the griffin in an infinite varietyof forms that vividly convey the force and ferocity of thismythical beast. With its powerful eagle's beak and sharpeye, this head of a griffin embellishes the handle of a5th-century B.C. Scythian sword, unearthed in the Kubanregion, to the east of the Black Sea.

Photo © "Miysl" Publishing House. Moscow

SHAMANS

AND

SHAMANISM

42

epic journeysto a legendary landby Grigory M. Bongard-Levin and Edvin A. Grantovsky

THE highly original culture ofthe Scythians was influencedby other peoples and in its

turn exerted a considerable influence

not only on classical societies andthe Ancient East, but, to an evengreater extent, on the vast tribalworld of Europe and northern Asia.

The Scythians possessed a vastcollection of epic tales in which theirspiritual culture was reflected. Andalthough the Scythian epic itself hasnot come down to us, the search fortraces of it is quite feasible.

This search is made possible bythe ethnic links between the tribes

and peoples who lived in the southRussian steppes during the Scythianepoch and by the extensive contactbetween the Scythians and theirneighbours. The latter ranged fromthe population of the forest zone inthe north of Eurasia, whose descen¬dants preserved their old folkloretraditions until recent times, to theHellenes (ancient Greeks) in the south,with their rich ancient literature.

The Scythians also visited Greece.Ancient writers and philosophersoften made use of the image ofAnacharsis, a Scythian whom theGreeks included among the SevenWise Men of Antiquity.

The varied accounts of the Scy¬thians found in ancient literature

make particular mention of epickings, heroes of Scythian legends,the gods of the Scythian pantheonand fantastical beings, such as theone-eyed Arimaspean warriors and

GRIGORY MAXIMOVICH BONGARD-

LEVIN, Vice-President of the International

Association for Sanskrit studies, is engagedon research at the Institute of Oriental

Studies of the Academy of Sciences of theU. S. S. R. A Unesco consultant and a

winner of the . Jawaharlal Nehru prize, forthe promotion of international understandinghe is an authority on the culturalproblems andhistory of Central Asia and India. A bookhe has written jointly, with Edvin A. Gran¬tovsky, From Scythia to India (Moscow,1974) gives a fuller treatment of the subjectof this article.

EDVIN ARVIDOVICH GRANTOVSKY,a specialist in the ancient history of Iran,Central Asia and the Scythians, is engagedIn research at the Institute of Oriental Studies

of the Academy of Sciences of the U. S. S. R.Among his many published works is his study.The Early History of the Iranian Tribes ofNear Asia (Moscow, 1970).

the griffins which guarded a hoardof gold. These accounts attestedthe existence among the Scythiansof complex mythological and religiousconceptions and of a richly developedepic.

Certain Scythian ¡mages workedtheir way into the subjects of Hellenicmythology, while some characters ofGreek myth share the attributes ofsimilar figures in Scythian mythologyand have "moved" from the placesthey inhabited in more ancient Greektradition to the Scythian North.

It is fortunately possible to findconfirmation of the Scythian originof the motifs mentioned above amongthe peoples of north-eastern Europeand Siberia, far from the regionsof Scytho-Hellenic contact.

The folklore of these peoples fea¬tures conceptions of one-eyed peoplesimilar to the Arimaspeans, andof winged monsters like the gold-guarding griffins. These imagesincluded some which are close tothe Greek and are endowed with

similar traits, such as the death-bearing flying maidens, similar to thegorgons, the winged daughters of aTitan and also the cold wind whose

abode, like that of Boreas, god ofthe north wind in later Greek tradi¬

tion, is a cave.

Can such coincidences be acci¬

dental when they occur in the legendsof countries as remote from each

other as Hellas and the forest regionsin the north of Eurasia, in legendsrooted in ancient literary traditions aswell as in those which have onlybeen recorded by modern folkloristsand anthropologists?

The Volga-Ural steppes, as far asthe Ural mountains, and the landbeyond the Urals were inhabited bythe Issedones and were known to the

Hellenes through the stories of theScythians and the Greek Aristeas,who had been in Scythia in the 7thcentury and had obviously reachedthe Issedones.

The forests near the Ural moun¬

tains, evidently those along the Kamaand Volga rivers, were inhabited bythe Argippeans. Herodotus recountsin this connexion that "those of the

Scythians who go to them (the Argip¬peans) have to employ seven trans¬lators and seven languages". Theexistence in the Scythian epoch of atrade route as far as the south Ural

region and the Volga-Kama forestsis confirmed by archaeological findsin these regions of "imported" objectsfrom the northern Black Sea area.

The contacts between the Scy¬thians and the forested Volga-Uralregions from which the Finno-Ugriclanguages spread explain the manyword borrowings from the steppepeoples which have been found inthe Finno-Ugric languages, borrow¬ings connected with both the mate¬rial and spiritual culture and religiousand mythological conceptions.

These borrowings include the pas¬sage of the name of the Wind God("Vata") among the Eastern Indo-Europeans and Scythians into thename of the North Wind ("Vat") usedby the Ugrians beyond the Urals.In addition, stories about "old manNorth Wind" are very close to whatancient literature tells us about

the "Boreas" who brought icy coldinto Scythia. Both of them find atraveller, envelop him in their furiousbreath and are capable of sweepinghim off his feet, carrying him awayor destroying him.

There can be no doubt that this

"Boreas", a character of purely Scy¬thian mythology, was identified bythe Greeks with their North Wind,the Boreas.

What do we learn from archaelo-

gical evidence? In the area roundthe Kama River, for example, archaeo¬logists have found cult figures ofcreatures which are half-bird, half-beast, with the head of a wolf or adog. Winged beasts or "griffins" arealso a frequent subject of Scythianart, in which they usually combinethe features of an eagle and a lion(or some other "feline" beast of prey).

However, several early Scythianartifacts from the Black Sea area (ofthe 6th-5th centuries B.C.) combinethe image of a bird-beast with thefeatures of a dog. And it is no acci¬dent that Aeschylus (6th-5th centu¬ries B.C.) in his Prometheus Boundcalls the bird-like griffins "silent" or"unbarking" dogs (unlike the tradi¬tional ancient description of griffinsas being like lions).

Ancient literature offers us signi¬ficant information regarding the "geo¬graphical" description of Scythia andthe lands beyond it if we base our¬selves on the work of various authors k

of Antiquity. f

43

, From south to north lay regionsinhabited by peoples who really existed,such as the Argippeans and theIssedones. Beyond them, however,and as far as the great northernmountains, usually called the Ripas,there lived fabulous tribes and fan¬

tastical creatures, including the nowfamiliar Arimaspeans, griffins andothers. Here also lay the abode of"Boreas". These regions had beenabandoned by nature, were swathedin darkness and covered in snow;

this was the kingdom of deepestwinter.

But even further north, in thedirection of the Ripas, the goldenpeaks of which reached the sky, andaround which turned the sun and the

stars, on the mountainous heightsand the shore of the Northern Sea

beyond them lay a country with awarm climate, free from the coldwinds and infinitely fertile.

In its woods and forests lived a

blessed and holy people, the "Hyper¬boreans" of ancient tradition. The

sun here rose and set only once ayear: the day lasted six months, andthe night the six remaining months.During the day the inhabitants sowedcrops in the morning, cut them in theafternoon and in the evening gath¬ered fruit from the trees.

Whose creation is this "geographi¬cal" picture? That of the Greeks orthe Scythians? Or, to put it anotherway, which elements of it belong towhich people?

The Ripa mountains might corres¬pond to the Urals, while the legendsabout their gold and the griffins whoguard it certainly reflect notions aboutthe mining of gold in regions roundthe Urals, a notion which is borne

out by ancient workings in theseregions. But the Urals range runsfrom south to north, whereas theRipa mountains extend in latituderight across the land to the north ofthe Scythian world.

The Northern Sea which stretched

beyond them may be an echo ofwhat the Scythians knew about theArctic Ocean, although the existencethere of a bountiful country with awarm climate is a piece of fantasy.Yet day and night last a half-year eachin this country, and it is difficult orindeed impossible to treat this asanything but the reflection of a realfact, namely the rotation of the Polarday and night (although, of course,they do not last "uninterruptedly" forhalf a year each).

The ancestors of the ancient Ira¬

nian and Indian tribes who lived

beside the ancestors of the Scythianshad much in common with them in

terms of economy, social structure,culture' and religion.

On the basis of the remainingfragmentary evidence about theScythians and their language, as wellas the parallels within the Indo-lranianlanguage system, scholars have estab¬lished the basic features of the Scy

thian language and its dialects, andthe nature of the Gods in the Scythianpantheon.

The details of some Indian and

Iranian epics and traditions alsocorrespond precisely to Scythianconceptions about the North. Inthe two great epics of India, theMahabharata and the Rämäyana, forexample, we find a geographicalfoundation in the form of a "northern

panorama".

They relate how far away to thenorth of India, beyond the real moun¬tains and deserts, countries andpeoples, and beyond fabulous king¬doms and tribes, stand the sacredmountains of Meru. Their goldenpeaks thrust into the sky and aroundthem revolve the heavenly bodies.

Beyond the mountains of Meru liesthe Northern Sea, identified with theWhite, or Milky Sea. On its shoresand on the northern slopes of theMeru live a fabulous, blessed people,"divorced from all evil, indifferent toall concepts of honour and dishonour,wonderful in appearance and abound¬ing in vitality."

There, beyond the mountains ofMeru, over whose summits "thegolden haired sun rises for half ayear"... "the day lasts half a year andthe night as long", and "one nightand one day together equal a year".The stationary polar star is mentionedas also are the position of constella¬tions which can only be observed inthe Far North, above the latitude of55 North. These descriptions of thesame inaccessible northern countryare "communicated" by the sacredbird Garuda to the hermit Galava

before carrying him off to this far¬away "land of blessedness".

It is important to note that theinformation about "polar phenomena"in Indian epic tales goes back to atime when it could not have been

influenced by Indian astronomy.Therefore, the "polar" motifs in thetales of India must be seen as "infor¬

mation" gained from the north.

The whole epic and mythologicalsetting in which these polar allusionsappear in early Indian tradition indi¬cates that they belong to the legendswhich the ancestors of Indian tribes

had preserved since the time whenthey were neighbours of related tribesliving to the north.

In the ancient Iranian Avesta (orZend Avesta) together with its affi¬liated works of Zoroastrian literature,similar mythological motifs have alsobeen preserved. These include men¬tion of the blessed abode of a fabu¬

lous people who see the sun rise andset only once a year and for whom aday and a night last a year. Theirbenevolent land is situated near cold

countries, where the winter lasts for10 months and there are two months

of cold summer, beside great nor¬thern mountains. These mountains,which reach the heavens, play thesame "astronomical" role as in Indian

and Scythian tradition.

All this leads to the conclusion that

there is a common origin to the Indo-lranian legends about countries inthe Far North and the tradition about

remote regions lying beyond theScythians. This whole cycle ofinterrelated concepts has a singlearchaic religious basis.

In each of the three traditions,Indian, Iranian and Scythian, thewhole panorama is arranged in thesame order, proceeding from realgeographical areas in the south tothe legendary lands by the NorthernOcean. In each tradition, this oceanis inaccessible to mortals and their

attempts to make their way there endeither in failure or in the death of a

bold hero, whose route takes himthrough the territory of fabuloustribes and supernatural creatures.

At this point we have a clearer ideaof the "geographical" distribution ofthose characters whom the Scythians,and after them the Greeks, locatedbetween Scythia and the northernmountainsthe death-bearing mai¬dens who lived in darkness, theArimaspeans, the griffins and others.

The Indian story-tellers, for exam¬ple, warned that in the foothills ofthe Meru there lay a deserted regionof gloom, which filled mortals withfear of the dark. Monsters, vam¬

pires, female cannibals and evil giantsinhabited this dreadful place.

But the ¡mage of the "winter"barrier has practically disappearedfrom the stories of torrid India. The

legends of the Iranians, however, apeople geographically and ethnicallycloser to the Scythians, mention thefatal hard frost of winter, whichcomes from the great northern moun¬tains. They also refer to the deathin the foothills of heroes who freeze

in the snow carried by the hostilewind. This role is obviously playedin Scythian legends by the NorthWind, which blows from the slopesof the Ripas and destroys the traveller.

It is notable that Herodotus also

mentions several times that it is

impossible to penetrate the northernregions beyond Scythia because ofthe excessive snows and the coid.

He also held the view that in generalpeople did not live there. But thenorth of Europe, as far as the ArcticOcean, was inhabited long beforethe pre-Scythian and the Scythianepochs. Even the Scythians referredto several "peoples" as living there,although they endowed them withunusual features.

We find in the Indian and Iranianstories that there is a direct linkbetween this theme and one of the

epic cycles, which concludes withthe victorious king (Yudhisthira inthe Mahabharata, and Khosrow in

Iranian epic) leaving his kingdomand arriving alive in the blessed landof the northern mountains. At the

same time, the heroes who accom¬pany him perish in the snow, whichaccording to Iranian legend, and

44

CYCLOPS Vs.

WINGED

SENTINELS

Far beyond Scythia,according to legend,lived fabulous creatures

such as the Arimaspeansand the griffins. Thewinged griffins guardeda store of gold fromthe giant one-eyedArimaspeans who werealways trying to steal it.Legends of their strugglesentered the mythologyof many peoples, as isshown by these strikinglysimilar scenes of combats

between the giantCyclops and the griffins,found in two distant

places. The one aboveadorns a gold ritualheaddress from a burial

mound at Great Blisnitza,

in the region east of theBlack Sea; the othercomes from a relief on

a tomb in southern Italy.Both works date from the

4th century B.C.

Photos © "Miysl" Publishers,Moscow

also to Herodotus, makes the routeto the north from the Scythian king¬dom impassable.

Other chosen heroes and righteousmen could only reach this land ontheir death. However, there existedanother "means" of getting there, fora limited time, and this means wasavailable only to certain renownedsages, priests and hermits. Thesemiraculous "journeys" also formedthe subjects of Indian, Iranian andScythian legends. Such, for example,were the exploits of Galava, Naradaand Shuka in the Mahabharata andof Arda-Viraz in Zoroastrian tradition.

In the ancient world there was a

story about the Scythian, Abaris,who "arrived" from the land of the

Hyperboreans. He had "made hisway across rivers, seas and impas¬sable places, as if he were travellingthrough air" and during this time hadperformed purifications, had drivenout pestilent diseases, predictedearthquakes, calmed the windsand soothed the waves of the sea.

The "information" about Abariswas basically preserved by the Pytha¬gorean brotherhood, who included itamong their conceptions about themigration of the soul. But the

legends about him obviously emergedindependently. Herodotus also knewabout the "journeys" of Abaris andrelated that "he did not take any¬thing for food". But Herodotus pre¬ferred to give a more detailed accountof that other legendary figure, Ari-steas, relating how, while the bodyof Aristeas lay in one place, hehimself appeared in another, or how,while following Apollo, Aristeas tookon the form of a raven.

The basis of the legends aboutAristeas were traditions formed in

the time of the earliest contact

between Greeks and Scythians. Therewas a definite similarity betweenseveral aspects of Scythian religiousbeliefs and practice and the Greekcult of Apollo, of which Aristeas wasan initiate. And it was this simila¬

rity that led to the widespreaddissemination of the legends aboutAristeas.

The poem Arimaspea, reputed tohave been written by Aristeas, alsomentioned the journey to the landof "the blessed people" lying beyondScythia and the great mountains onthe shore of the Northern Ocean.

The poem is in fact concerned witha real journey through Scythia and

talks about the tribes which inhabit

it, their life and their customs.

The author of the poem was alsofamiliar with the subjects of the mythsand the epic which were currentamong the Scythians and their neigh¬bours. The "flight" of Aristeas tothe land of the blessed Northern

people is considered by several scho¬lars to reflect conceptions about the"journeys" of the soul. These con¬ceptions had undoubtedly been bor¬rowed from cults of a shamanic type.

"During ceremonies", writes theeminent Soviet anthropologist SergeiTokarev, "the shaman frequently fallsunconscious; this is bound to makethe spectators think of the flight ofhis 'soul'; the delirium and the hallu¬cinations of the shaman often consist

in his seeing far-away countries andtalking loudly about hisjourneyings."A particular role was played by thecult of birds: the shaman or his soul

"set off" on their distant travels in

the form of a bird (most often, araven), "flying over" familiar or mythi¬cal countries.

Shamanism was widespread inAntiquity among the peoples of thenorth, in Asia and in Europe. Butwthe religions of the ancient Indians, t

45

Jranians and Scythians belong as awhole to another type despite somesimilarities in their epic and myth tothe images of "northern mythology".However, a good many Iranian andIndian specialists consider that thereligious practice of the Indians,Iranians and Scythians had featuresthat were similar to northern shama¬

nism, especially that of the Finno-Ugrians.

Historians know something aboutthe earliest connexions between the

ancestors of the ancient Indians,Iranians and Scythian tribes and theancestors of the Finno-Ugrians. Theyknow, for instance, of many simila¬rities between the languages of thesepeoples. Among these is the nameof the ecstatic medium with the aid

of which the shamans and priestsput themselves into a state of ritualpossession.

Various plants were used for thispurpose, including hemp. The Scy¬thians also were aware of these pro¬perties of hemp and used it in cultceremonies. The Greek lexicogra¬pher Hesychius informs us that hempis "the Scythian smoking plant" andis so powerful that it makes all parti¬cipants in this ritual sweat. TheWestern neighbours of the Scythians,the inhabitants of Thracia, usedhemp in preparing a sacred libation.

This is what Herodotus has to tell

us about the practice: the Scythians"place three poles leaning towardseach other, and pull onto them stripsof woollen felt, stretching these tofit as tightly as possible. They thenthrow red-hot stones into a vessel

standing between these poles and thewoollen strips.

"In their land grows hempa plantvery like flax, but much coarser andtaller; it grows wild there and is alsosown by the people... The Scythianstake the seeds of the hemp, crawlunder the felt strips and there throwthe seeds onto the heated stones;these seeds give out such a vapouras no Grecian steam-bath can exceed.

The Scythians enjoy this and howlloudly..."

This probably reflects a ritual cere¬mony which is reminiscent of shama-nic practices. If this is the case,then the "howl" represents the songof the servant of the cult, in a stateof ecstasy which is attained by thestupefying effect of the smoke fromroasting hemp seeds. Herodotus'account and the ritual nature of the

custom he describes are confirmed bythe excavations of the famous Soviet

archaeologist Sergei Rudenko, in theAltai mountains of Siberia (see p. 34).

In the burial mounds of the Altai

(5th-4th centuries B.C.) the perma¬frost layer has preserved some smallhuts made of poles lashed togetherat the top (two of the huts hadcovers on them, one of woollen feltand the other of hide). In one ofthese graves copper vessels were

On wings

of ecstasy

According to Scythian mythology a fabulousland where day and night each lasted halfa year lay far to the north in the polarregions. It was a bountiful country thatcould be reached only by heroes and sages.This belief, recorded by many Greek andRoman authors of antiquity, closelyresembles those found in ancient Indian

and Persian mythologies and epics, whichdescribe an earthly paradise lying beyondtowering mountains towards the north.How were the priests, sages and heroesto reach this reputedly inaccessible land?According to the Shamanic traditions ofthe Asian steppes the journey could beaccomplished by entering into an ecstaticstate, the secret of which was known to the

shaman. Soothsayer and healer, theshaman could transform himself into a bird

(Siberian shaman in drawing at left wearscostume with sleeves representing wings).

Photo and drawings © "Miysl" Publishers. Moscow.

46

Photos L. Tarassova © Aurora Art Publishers, Leningrad.

And his soul, leaving his body, took flight.One way in which the shaman attained astate of ecstasy was by inhaling the fumesof hemp. The remains of a "hemp" tent(seen at left) were found in a tomb atPazyryk. They consist of the tent polesand a receptacle for burning hemp seeds.In Indian legends the journey to the mythicalcountry was accomplished on the back ofsacred birds such as Garuda (above leftin a 19th-century Indian miniature). Innorthern Europe and the Urals, the legendarybird was depicted on metal plaques (drawingsopposite page). These plaques shaped asbird-like creatures often bore representationsof the face or standing figure of a man.Above, felt swans from a tomb at

Pazyryk. They were used as carriagedecorations 2,400 years ago.

found under such a structure: theycontained stones which had been

in a fire and partially charred hempseeds; in addition, a leather bag,containing hemp seeds, was tied toone of the hut poles. Similar sha-manic ceremonies, performed inyurts or chums (conical pole-hutsused by the Asian nomads) have beendescribed by anthropologists.

Facts are also known about the

use of other plants as a means ofachieving ecstasy during cult cere¬monies and Indian and Iranian reli¬

gious texts record a legend derivedfrom a common source about the

theft of a cult plant, the soma-plant, .from the great mountains by thesacred bird Garuda, also called Sh'enain the Rgveda, a collection of Vedichymns to the deities. Iranian tradi¬tion calls the same creature Saena,and later Simurg.

Legends similar to those whichwere told about Garuda in ancient

India and Simurg in Iran were cur¬rent among the Scythians. Thishuge "wonder-bird" was also oneof the mythological images usedby the forest tribes of north-easternEurope, the Urals and the landbeyond the Urals.

The same creature is also depictedon the large number of metal plaquesportraying birds and bird-like crea¬tures, on the bodies of which the face

or the standing figure of a man isoften represented. Excavations haveshown that such subjects were quitecommon even in the Scythian epoch.

This mythology and epic reflectsnot just legendary conceptions andthe products of fantasy but alsoreal facts about the surroundingworld. The mythology of the Scy¬thians, as much ' as that of otherpeoples, was a characteristic combi¬nation of fantasy and the rudimentsof scientific thought.

Not only did the Greeks expandtheir geographical horizon throughtheir contacts with the Scythiansbut, as a result of their familiaritywith Scythian epic, myth and cosmo¬logy, even in semi-legendary form,they acquired new information aboutthe geography of the remote forestzone, the northern Arctic Ocean, andthe "polar phenomena".

The "Scythian source" may beviewed as the first stage in the his¬tory of European science's know¬ledge of the Far North. And althoughnew information was added to this

store later in Antiquity, Greek andLatin authors, in describing thenorthern countries, continued formany centuries to refer to the tradi¬tion which went back to the 7th-6th

centuries B.C. and was based on

information acquired from the Scy¬thian world of the time.

G.M. Bongard-Levin

and E.A. Grantovsky

47

by VasilyIvanovich Abaev

THE OSSETES .SCYTHIANS

OF THE 20TH CENTURYTHE Scythian people did not disap¬

pear from the face of the earthwithout leaving a trace. If we look at anethnographic map of the Caucasus,which is a patchwork of more thanforty different nationalities, we find inthe" central part a small group of people,known as the Ossetes, whose popula¬tion numbers 400,000.

It was established long ago that theOssetes are in no way related to theirCaucasian neighbours. Immigrants fromthe steppes of south Russia, they aredescendants of the Alani who, accordingto Josephusa Jewish scholar and his¬torian of the first century A.D.were aScythian tribe living in the vicinity of theDon and the Sea of Azov.

During the great migrations of thefourth and fifth centuries A.D., some

of the Alani moved across Europe asfar as France and Spain. The Frenchname Alain and the English Alan datefrom that period.

The remaining Alani made their wayfrom Eastern Europe to the foothills of

VASILY IVANOVICH ABAEV, a well-

known Soviet scholar and orientalist, is a spe¬cialist in Iranian civilization and in the lan¬

guage and folklore of the Ossetes. He isscientific adviser to the Institute of LinguisticStudies of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciencesand is the author of 250 studies Including amonograph on Scytho-European linguisticgeography.

the Caucasus, where they establishedwhat was for the times a powerfulfeudal state. They were convertedto Christianity in the tenth century, andduring the Middle Ages they main¬tained active relations with Byzantium,Georgia and Russia.

The Mongol invasion and the cam¬paigns of Tamerlane were a disaster forthe Alani: one part of the populationwas annihilated in the incessant wars;another fled to Hungary, where theywere known as the 'As" and retainedtheir ethnic individuality for anotherseveral hundred years. A third partjoined in the expeditions of the maraud¬ing Mongolians and was dispersed inforeign lands.

The Alani who remained in the Cau¬casus took refuge in the narrow passesof the central regions.

One cannot help comparing the vastterritory between the Altai in the eastand the Danube in the west, whichhad been the home of the Scytho-Sarmatian tribes during the last millen¬nium of the pre-Christian period, withthe handful of narrow ravines whichwas all that was left to the Ossetesin the 18th century A.D.

Here, indeed is food for thoughtabout the reverses of fortune ! AtPitsunda, on the Black Sea coast, alittle grove of pine trees is all thatremains of a once-enormous forest.Fate dealt similarly with the ancientScythian world, which is now reducedto a tiny group of Ossetes, lost in the

Caucasian "mountains.

Two priceless treasures of their remotepast have, nevertheless, survivedtheirlanguage and their folklore.

The Scythians themselves left nowritten texts.' But Greek epigraphicinscriptions dating from the periodwhen the Scythians occupied the landsnorth of the Black Sea contain hun¬

dreds of Scythian and Sarmatian com¬mon nouns.

As eminent an authority as the Russianphilologist Vsevolod Miller and also spe¬cialists from other countries have convin¬

cingly demonstrated that knowledge ofthe Ossetic tongue makes interpretationof these inscriptions easier and thatthey can in fact be considered asexamples of the language of the ancientOssetes.

A number of words still used by theOssetes, such as "farn" (paradise), "hsar"(military prowess), "andon" (iron), "aldar"or "ardar" (master), "liman" (friend),^'furt" (son), "fida" (father), "sag" (stag)"sar" (head), "stur" (big), are easilyrecognized in these inscriptions.

Modern Ossetic also provides thekey to the meaning of many names onthe map of the region between theBlack Sea and the Sea of Azov. The

names of the Don, the Dnieper andthe Dniester are easier to understand,for example, when we know that inOsseticand in this language alonetheword for "river" is "don".

Traces of the Scythian world as evident

HERODOTUS AMONG THE SCYTHIANS ¡continued from page wdetailed elements cast separately, sol¬dered together in a composite article,and then carefully polished.

The battle scene, which is depictedin relief, is treated with meticulousattention to detail: the decorations on

the weapons and clothing of thewarriors, and even the curls of their

hair and beards, are engraved withextreme accuracy.

Similar virtuosity is to be found inthe execution of the Chertomlyk vase,the frieze in particular. All the fig¬urines, of men and horses weremoulded separately and only arrangedin a composition when they weresoldered to the vessel.

The chief interest of the objects pro¬duced by the jewellers of the northernBlack Sea coast lies in the themes

which they represent, and in the lightwhich they throw on this or thataspect of Scythian life.

Finds from the burial mounds

teach us much about Scythian wea¬pons, clothes and ornaments, but thepicture isso to speakunfinishedand lacking in depth. On the otherhand, the scenes in relief portrayed bythe metal-workers show the objectsfound by archaeologists actually

48

being used, and thus provide a fasci¬nating glimpse of the Scythians asthey really were, at different momentsof their existence.

There can be no doubt that all

these objects had their origins in anancient culture and, more specifically,jn Greek craftsmanship. In style andtradition, they were classically Greek,and they could only have been pro¬duced in a context of Hellenic notions

and capacities, which conditioned allstages of their production. Eventheir secondary details, such as theornamental motifs of palms, acanthus-plants and wattled designs, wereessentially Greek.

Many of the objects in metalwarewere, however, Greek neither in formnor in function. The spherical vesselsfound at Kul Oba closely resemble theearthenware vessels of the earliest

Scythian culture, and were doubtlessused in religious ceremonies, whilethe torques and the plaques used asornaments on clothing had Scythian,and not Greek significance.

Thus, the majority of these articleswere Greek in execution, but Scythianin form, while the ¡mages with whichthey were decorated have for a long

time and almost unanimously beenconsidered by scholars familiar withthe history of the region north of theBlack Sea to represent the Scythiansthemselves.

The Scythians were certainlywarriors, and many images showthem in battle or resting in the middleof their campaigns. But the artistsalso depicted more peaceful times,and the Chertomlyk vase shows themengaged in what may well have beena typical nomad activity, roping andhobbling their horses.

Hunting scenes were also depicted.A silver vessel from Solokha shows a

group of Scythian horsemen, accom¬panied by their dogs, at grips with afantastic lion-like creature with horns,which has seized a horse by the leg.^One hunter brandishes a spear, ano¬ther is taking aim with his bow andarrow, while their two companions,similarly armed, join in the fray.

Some of the small gold plaquesused as decoration for clothing andfound in the kurgans of Kul Oba,Solokha and Chertomlyk representscenes of a completely different kind,doubtless related to religious cere¬monies.

THE MOUNTAIN REMEMBERS

THE STEPPE

Much of the folklore and tales of the

Ossetes, a small group of mountainpeople in the Caucasus, originates inthe epics of the ancient Scythians ofthe steppes. Here, Dris Tautiev, anhonoured bard of the Northern Osse¬

tian Republic (U.S.S.R.) and one of the400,000 descendants of the Scythians,sings to the strains of the "kiatmancha".

as those found in the language of theOssetes are also to be found in their

folklore, and more particularly in theheroic epics which, like other peoplesof the Caucasus, they still relate. Theheroes of these epics are a race ofwarriors known as the Narts.

Vsevolod Miller and the French

scholar Georges Dumézil have con¬cluded after careful comparative ana¬lysis that much of what happens in thetales of their adventures correspondsvery closely to the Scythian customsand way of life described by Herodotusand other ancient authors. All these

sources mention, for example, anenchanted cup from which only themost valiant warriors may drink, sword-worship, and very similar burial cere¬monies.

Comparison of the Epic of the Nartswith similar narratives from other cul¬tures immediately reveals one salientfeaturethe central character is awoman. It would be difficult to find inother epic poems of the world a femalepersonality of such stature and strength.

Satána, as she is called, is the essence,the centre through whom all thingsflow. She is the mother of the people,the provider and mentor of the principalheroes, Soslan and Batradz. She is the

wise counsellor, the omnipotent sorceressand the guiding force without whoseintervention nothing worthy of mentioncan be accomplished. None of theheroes is indispensable to the Epic ofthe Narts. Without Satána, there isno Epic.

Obviously so imposing a figure couldonly emerge from a society wherewomen occupied a dominant position.And such, according to the unanimoustestimony of ancient authors, was thesociety of the Sarmatians and the Mas¬sagètes. "The Sarmatians are governedby their women", one of these authors

tells us. Satána thus joins the ranks ofthe Scythian, Saka and Massagetequeens and warrior-maidens, to standbeside Zarina, Amaga and Tomiris,whose names have also been handed

down by tradition. She is a product ofthe steppe and not of the Caucasus.

Nor do the natural surroundings inwhich the Epic of the Narts unfolds bearany resemblance to the mountainfastnessof present-day Ossetia. Broad expansesof sea and steppe are the usual settingfor the adventures of the Narts. The

wind of the steppes lashes through thenarrative. We feel the endlessness of

the Scythian plains and hear thestampeding of horses, as a herd ofstags appears, pursued by tirelesshunters.

The Narts had the closest of rela¬

tionships with the watery element.The founder of their people was adaughter of Don Bettyr, the ruler ofthe depths. Here, the similarity withancient Scythia is remarkable. Thefavourite animal of Narts and Scythiansalike was the stag. In the Epic thestag is often referred to as "Astassion"(the Eighteen Horned One). Curiouslyenough, the famous golden stags ofthe Scythian animal style have exactlyeighteen branches on their horns.

In the absence of chronicles or docu¬

ments, the language and folklore of asmall settlement in the Caucasus have

bridged the gap of over 2,000 years,bringing to us the sounds and imagesof the inimitably individualistic worldof the ancient Scythians and Sarmatians.

Vasily I. Abaev

One of them shows what appearsto be a goddess (women rarely figuredin the imagery of the northern BlackSea metal-workers) seated on athrone, with a mirror in her hand.In front of her sits a Scythian drinkingwhat is probably a magic potion froma horn-shaped cup.

Other plaques feature a similardrinking-horn, from which twokneeling Scythians are drinking simul¬taneously, in what is generallybelieved to be a ritual oath-takingsuch as that described by Herodotus.

By no means all the scenes whichdecorate the metal objects found inthe Scythian burial mounds can beso easily interpreted. More than afew of them probably reflect preoccu¬pations which lay at a deeper levelthan the affairs of everyday life, andit has been suggested they are ideo¬logical or mythological in content,illustrating the epics which nourishedScythian society (see page 15).

But let us turn again to the outwardappearance of the Scythians, as theyare portrayed in these images. Theyhave regular features, and frequentlysevere expressions, long, shoulder-

length hair andin the majority ofcasesbeards and moustaches.

Their double-breasted jackets, orcaftans, are trimmed with whatappears to be fur and embroidereddesigns. They wear soft, shortboots, strapped at the ankle, andpointed, hood-like caps. They arefrequently portrayed bearing arms:short swords, bows and arrowscarried in a case suspended from theirbelts, spears, battle-axes and shields.In a number of cases, they wear metalhelmets and armour.

The Greek craftsmen responsiblefor these portraits were extremelyfamiliar with their subjects, and thisknovyledge is reflected in the smallestdetails of the figures, scenes andcompositions.

All the objects we have mentionedwere produced largely in the fourthcentury B.C., when the Scythiansoccupied the whole of the areaaround the northern coast of theBlack Sea and the Sea of Azov, andwhen their kings were at the zenith oftheir power and wealth.

This was the period when they builtthe impressive royal tombs discoveredin the vicinity of the Dnieper rapids.

which have also yielded manyexamples of the precious metalwareobjects which wealthy Scythianscommissioned from Greek craftsmen,specifying that they should be execu¬ted "in the Scythian style".

A final group of metal objectsappears to depict some of the Scy¬thian divinities encountered in the

pages of Herodotus. Thus, forexample, one gold plaque (a horse'sdecorated frontlet or forehead orna¬

ment) from the Tsymbalka kurganshows what appears to be the goddessApia in the form of a serpent-woman;while the legendary hero Targitausis shown in combat with a monsteron a bronze crest found in the Bliz-

nitsa Slopovskaya kurgan.

The outstanding discoveries whichmarked the dawn of Russian archaeo¬

logy were followed by others. Invery recent years, excavations in thekurgans of the Ukrainian steppes haveyielded jewellery similar to that foundat Kul Oba, Chertomlyk and Solokha.Will there be more finds? It is hard

to say but it is more than likely thatthe earth still hides the key to furtherepisodes in the history of the ancientScythians.

Yaroslav V. Domansky

49

BOOKSHELF

UNESCO BOOKS AND

PERIODICALS

Planning for Satellite Broad¬casting: The Indian Instructio¬nal Television Experiment, byRomesh Chander and Kiran Kar-

nik. ("Reports and papers onmass communication" series,

No. 78) 1976, 71 pp. (8 F).

Youth Participation in theDevelopment Process: a casestudy in Panama, by Luis A. Go¬mez de Souza and Lucia Ribeiro.

(No. 18 in the International Bureauof Education's "Experiments andinnovations in education" series)1976, 101 pp. (12 F).

Some Aspects of Cultural Po¬licy in Togo, by K.M. Aithnard.1976, 101 pp. (12 F); CulturalPolicy in the Republic of Zaire,a study prepared under the direc¬tion of Dr. Bokonga Ekanga Bo-tombele. 1976, 119 pp. (14 F).(Both published in Unesco's"Studies and Documents on

Cultural Policies" series).

The Use of Socio-economic

Indicators in Development Plan¬ning. Eight papers discussed at2 Unesco meetings (at Universityof Sussex, U.K. and in Bangkok,Thailand) 1976, 282 pp. (40 F).

Schooling in the mother ton¬gue in a multilingual environ¬ment is the major theme of Pros¬pects, Unesco's quarterly reviewof education (Vol. VI, No. 3, 1976).Each issue 9.50 F; annual subs¬cription 32 F.

A Bold New Architecture in

the Historical Site of the Vatican

and Three Museums Cope withTourism are the themes of Mu¬

seum, Unesco's quarterly on mu-seography (Vol. XXVIII, N° *2,1976). Each issue 17.50 F; annualsubscription 60 F.

El PUD

OTHER BOOKS

The Diploma Disease: Educa¬tion, Qualification and Develop¬ment, by Ronald Dore. Allen andUnwin Ltd., London, 1976, 214 pp.(£ 5.95).

Ecological Consequences ofthe Second Indochina War. Pu¬

blished by Stockholm InternationalPeace Research Institute (SIPRI) incollaboration with Almqvist andWiksell International, Stockholm.1976, 119 pp. (Sw. kr. 76.50).

Reaping the Green Revolu¬tion: Food and Jobs for All and

A Richer Harvest: New Horizons

for Developing Countries, bySudhir Sen. Orbis Books, Mary-knoll, New York ($ 10.95 each).

The Gypsies in Sweden: ASocio-Medical Study, by JohnTakman with the assistance of

Lars Lindgren. Liber Förlag, Stock¬holm. 1976, 173 pp.

Environmentalism, by T. 0'Riordan. Published by Pion Ltd.,London; distributed by AcademicPress, London and New York.1976, 373 pp.

The big 'Unesco Courier'

language family

We have pleasure in recalling to rea¬ders that the Russian language editionof the "Unesco Courier", published inMoscow, celebrates its 20th anniver¬sary at the end of December 1976. Thefirst edition to be published outsideUnesco's headquarters (in January 1957)the Russian language edition has sincebeen followed by eleven other editions:German (Berne, September 1960) Arabic(Cairo, November 1960) Japanese (To¬kyo, April 1961) Italian (Rome, January1963) Hindi (New Delhi) and Tamil (Ma¬dras July 1967) Hebrew (Jerusa¬lem, September 1968) Persian (Teheran,May 1969) Dutch (Antwerp) and Portu¬guese (Rio de Janeiroboth October1972) and Turkish (Istanbul, May 1973).Two new editionsUrdu (Karachi, Pakis¬tan) and Catalan (Barcelona, Spain) willbegin publication early in 1977, thusbringing the total number" of languageeditions in which the "Unesco Courier" is

published monthly to 1 7. The possibilityof launching a Kiswahili language editionin Kenya or Tanzania is at present understudy.

What do you knowabout Unesco?

Why not visit Unesco at its headquar¬ters in Paris and learn more about its

history and its wide range of activities ineducation, culture, science and commun¬ications? Free information programmesconsisting of general or specialized talks,a discussion period and film projectionsare offered in most languages to youngpeople, adults and professional, culturaland social groups. Further details areavailable from the Unesco Visitors'

Centre, 7, Place de Fontenoy, 75700Paris, France; telephone 577-16-10,extension 22.14.

Unesco medal

for Carthage

Unesco has issued a medal to comme¬

morate its programme for the preser¬vation of Carthage and to enable peopleto contribute to this international cam¬

paign. Featuring the face of the "Ladyof Carthage" from a Roman mosaic,and, on the reverse side the "Horse¬

man of Douimes" from a Punic coin, the

medal is the latest in a series issued byUnesco in support of its internationalcampaign for monuments, includingVenice, Moenjodaro and Philae. TheCarthage medal, available in gold (455French francs) silver (135 F) and bronze(60 F), can be ordered through banks,numismatic dealers or directly from theUnesco Philatelic Service, Place deFontenoy, 75700 Paris.

Death of Alexander Calder

The American sculptor AlexanderCalder, one of the great figures of20th-century art, died in New York on11 November 1976 at the age of 78.He was world-famous for the movingsculptures, or mobiles, which he beganto create in 1932 and for the monu¬

mental motionless "stabiles" he beganto make in the late 1950s. His works

now stand in public buildings and open 'spaces throughout the world. A32-foot-high steel mobile called "Spi¬rale" (see photo) by Alexander Calderhas been an outstanding feature of thepiazza at Unesco's Paris headquarterssince 1958.

Flashes

The World Health Organizationreceived about $ 83 million to eradicatesmallpox ¡n the world while the cost ofa single strategic bomber is $ 88 millionsays the U.N. "Development Forum"in an article pointing out the currentImbalance in the allocation of worldresources.

The Unesco Institute for Education

¡n Hamburg (Fed. Rep. of Germany)currently studying problems of lifelongeducation, celebrates Its 25th anniver¬sary this year.

Ghana recently launched Its firstrural newspaper, a fortnightly publishedin the Ewe language, as a joint projectof Unesco and the Institute of Adult

Education of the University of Ghana.

An International convention prohibi¬ting the killing or capturing ofpolar bears(today less than 20,000 survive) hascome into effect after ratification byCanada, Denmark, Norway, U.S.A. andU.S.S.R.

47 universities now give degrees infilm-making according to "The Educa¬tion of the Film-maker, an internationalview", co-published by the Unesco Pressand the American Film Institute in

Washington.

50

Unesco Courier Index 1976January

OUR SPLIT BRAIN. (V. L. Deglin). The hungry brain (E. A. Shneour). Thefirst 4 months of life before birth (Photos). New machines to explore thebrain (J. M. R. Delgado). Art treasures: Ritual bucket (Iraq).

FebruaryTHE SEARCH FOR CULTURAL IDENTITY. The Angry Young Men ofOceania (A. Wendt). African art, where the hand has ears (A. Hampâté Bâ).African arts take the high road away from Western art (M. Wahba). Childrenof the whale (Y. Rytkheou). Three in one: Latin America's racial and culturaloriginality (A. Uslar-Pietri). Art treasures: Statuette of ancestor-spirit(Ghana).

March

UNESCO'S FIRST THIRTY YEARS. Unesco's early years (J. Huxley).Julian Huxley (P. de Berrêdo Carneiro). A philosophy for Unesco (J. Huxley).50-question quiz on Unesco. Unesco and the world outlook for tomorrow(A.-M. M'Bow). Roots of a growing world crisis. Art treasures: Nefertari(Egypt).

April

THE WORLD OF HUMOUR. Humour across frontiers (G. Mikes). Gabrovo:Bulgaria's capital of humour (B. Gerasimov). "Worm Runner's Digest" (J.McConnell). Nasrudin Hodja (I. Sop). The world will never die if it dieslaughing (Y. Boriev). The political and satirical cartoon (I. Tubau). Chinesehumour (K. M. Schipper). Art treasures: Man with a skin of clay (Ecuador).

May

EARTHQUAKE! Can we prevent earthquake disasters? (E. M. Fournierd'Albe). Deadliest earthquakes of the century. Tragedy in Guatemala (Photos).China predicts a major earthquake (D. Behrman). Ancestor of all seismographs.Earthquake in Pagan, Burma (P. Pichard). San Francisco's coming earthquake(K. V. Steinbrugge). Man-made earthquakes. Earthquakes in history (Ñ. N.Ambraseys). Earthquake "signatures". Tsunamis (R. Fenton). Internationalwarning system. Atlantisa Mediterranean island? Art treasures: NeolithicHead (Yugoslavia).

June

HABITAT. Habitat and the quality of life (G. Fradier). A third of the worldin shantytowns (S. Chamecki). Squatter-builders (J. F. C. Turner). Thearchitect: a modern scapegoat (F. A. Novikov). The needy left out in the cold

(J. Bain D'Souza). Housing â la carte (Y. Friedman). The uprooted. A man'shome is his castle (Photos). Hong Kong: the most urban place on earth.(D. Behrman). Art treasures: Goddess of harvests (U. S. S. R.).

July

AMERICA'S SPIRIT OF 1776. (H. S. Commager). Americans as they see theU.S. (R. W. Winks). Nobel laureates of literature. Thomas Jefferson and

Benjamin Franklin. About the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Paine's"Common Sense" (B. Bailyn). Citizen Paine (J. Janssens) Colour pages.Making of the Statue of Liberty (Photos). A living heritage of cultures andpeoples (Y. L. Wong and H. C. Shore). Private philanthropy in the Americanarts. The state as patron of the arts (N. Hanks). U.S.A.: the continuingrevolution (W. W. Davenport). Art treasures: Youth with a rose (U. S. A.).

August-SeptemberDESTINATION UNESCO: A VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY AROUND THE

WORLD. 68-page comic strip issue on some of the major problems Unescohas tackled during the last 30 years. By J.-M. Clément and Safoura Asfia.

October

THE SEARCH FOR A NEW WORLD ECONOMIC ORDER. (T. Bratteli

and S. Amin). Arsenic and old plates (I. Selimkhanov). Brancusi (B. Bre-zianu). René Maheu (P. de B. Carneiro). "La Civilisation de l'Universel"(R. Maheu). International cultural centre in Burgundy (P. Ouannès). Arttreasures: head on the jar lid (Ethiopia).

November

EXPLORING THE NEW SOUNDSCAPE (R. M. Schafer). Rock, pop and risingdecibels (I. Bontinck and D. Mark). Tuning in to the past (D. Lowenthal).Insect "wings of song" (Photos). Early man goes through the speech barrier(A. A. Leontyev). Sound sculptures. Psychoanalysis of sound (P. Ostwald)Art treasures: Siren-borne candlestick (Hungary).

December

THE SCYTHIANS (B. B. Piotrovsky). Horsemen of the steppes (Y. Do-mansky). Scythian art and myths (D. S. Raevsky). Archaeological findsin the Ukraine (I. Artemenko, V. Bidzilia, B. Mozolevsky, V. Otroshchenko).Splendours of Scythian art (colour pages). Frozen tombs of Pazyryk (M. P.Zavitukhina). Graves of men and horses in the Sayan mountains (M. Griaz-nov). Scythian mythology and folklore (G. M. Bongard-Levin and E. A. Gran-tovsky). The Ossetes, 20th century heirs of ancient Scythia (V. I. Abaev).Art treasures: St. Christopher (Greece).

Where to renew your subscriptionand place your order for other Unesco publicationsOrder from any bookseller or write direct to theNational Distributor in your country. (See listbelow; names of distributors in countries not

listed, along with subscription rates in localcurrency, will be supplied on request.)

AUSTRALIA. Publications: Educational Supplies Pty.Ltd.. P.O. Box 33, Brookvale, 2100, NSW; Periodicals:Dominie Pty., Limited, Box 33, Post Office, Brookvale2100, NSW. Sub-agent: United Nations Associationof Australia, Victorian Division 5th floor, 134-136Flinders St., Melbourne (Victoria), 3000. - AUSTRIA.Verlag Georg Fromme & Co., Arbeitergasse 1-7, 1051,Vienna. - BELGIUM. "Unesco Courier" Dutch edition

only: N.V. Handelmaatschappij Keesing. Keesinglaan2-18, 2100 Deurne-Antwerpen. French edition andgeneral Unesco publications agent: Jean de Lannoy,112, rue du Trône, Brussels 5. CCP 708-23. -

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51

Siberian art treasures

preserved in ice

for 2,500 yearsFive centuries before the Christian Era, a nomad artist of the

steppes in the Altai region of Siberia (to the southwest of LakeBaikal) sculpted this superb animal motif in wood. It depicts agriffina mythical winged beast of prey -with a stag's head in itsjaws. The stag's horns and ears and the griffin's crest arefashioned from leather, and on the mythical monster's neck two

tiny griffins are shown attacking a goose. This ornament(35 cm. high) was discovered in a frozen tomb at Pazyryk, in theAltai mountains, in 1949 (see article page 31).

Photo C Aurora Art Publishers, Leningrad