The Scythians are an ancient people. "Animal style" and violent temper

Scythians (Greek Skythai), chipped, Ishkuza

V. Abaev compared the ethnonym skuta with the Germanic *skut- (archer, to shoot).
K. T. Vitchak and S. V. Kullanda explain the Scythian self-name as follows: other Greek. Σκόλοτοι< *skula-ta < *skuδa-ta < *skuda-ta (то есть «лучники», с закономерным переходом *d >*l in Scythian). Moreover, the form *skuδa-ta existed in the 7th century BC. e., when the Greeks began to contact the Scythians (that is why other Greek Σκύϑαι). Then the Assyrian campaign of the Scythians took place - that's why the Assyrians. Ašgūzai or Išgūzai. By the 5th century BC e. - the time of Herodotus' visit to Olbia - the transition *δ > *l has already occurred.

The transition of Old Iranian *δ into Scythian *l as a characteristic feature of the Scythian language is also confirmed by other Scythian words.

Language

The Scythian language is included in the northeastern subgroup of the Iranian languages. Very close in language and culture to the Scythians were Savromats (Sarmatians), Saks and Massagets.

Time of existence

Actually the history of the Scythians in the Northern Black Sea region - VIII century. BC e. - IV century. n. e. From the beginning of the war with the Cimmerians to the defeat of the Scythian kingdom by the Goths in the Crimea.

Origin

There are several legends of the origin of the Scythians -

Among the Scythians, there was a legend that their people were younger than all the others and that in their land, which was deserted, the first man Targitai was born from Zeus and the daughter of Borisfen. Targitai had three sons: Lipoksai, Arpoksai and Koloksai. Under them, golden objects fell from the sky: a plow, a yoke, an ax and a bowl. The older and middle brothers could not grab these objects: they immediately ignited. The younger son was able to safely take the wonderful gifts of heaven and therefore he was given the kingship.

from the elder brother came the family of Avkhats,
from the middle - the genera of catiars and traspians,
from the younger - paralatov.

Here Herodotus says that the common name of the people is chipped off; the Greeks called them Scythians, and the Persians - Saks. It was the part of Scythia from the Danube to Meotida, especially known in Olbia, that was called primordial Scythia. A thousand years passed from Targitai to the time of Herodotus.

The Black Sea Greeks told Herodotus one more legend. Hercules, driving the cows of Gerion, entered Scythia, then not yet inhabited. When Hercules fell asleep, his horses left the yoke. He found them in Hylaea with a half-woman half-snake who lived in a cave, who agreed to return the mares to him if he marries her. Hercules lived with her for a long time and three sons were born from their marriage. Only after that did the hero get his horses back. When he left, he left his beloved a bow and a belt, so that one of his sons who could pull this bow and gird himself like a father would remain in possession of the land, and the other two would be removed. The task was completed by the youngest of them named Scythian, the ancestor of the Scythian kings. From the two elders - Agathirs and Gelon - the tribes of Agathirs and Gelons originated. In this myth one can clearly hear the Greek reworking of another native tradition, which differed from the previous one. It clearly refers to the crossing of newcomers (Hercules) and local (snake-footed goddess) beginnings in the Scythians, while in the first the local element sounds stronger, although the newcomer, perhaps, manifests itself in the fact that the future land of the Scythians was empty when they appeared .
Herodotus points out that there is, however, another story, which I myself most trust. According to this story, the nomadic Scythians who lived in Asia, being pressed by the war from the Massagets, crossed the Arak (Syr Darya) River and retired to the Cimmerian land.

At the moment, there are just three versions of where the Scythians appeared in the Black Sea region.

Grakov B.N. autochthonous theory. Grakov believed that the direct ancestors of the Scythians were the tribes of the semi-sedentary (shepherd) Srubna culture of the Bronze Age, which penetrated into the Northern Black Sea region from the Volga region. The resettlement took place for quite a long time from the middle of the 2nd millennium BC. and the Herodotus migration of the Scythians - this can be said to be one of the last waves of migration. The Cimmerians, whom the Scythians met, are also one of the waves of the Srubna culture, but an earlier one, which eventually allowed related tribes to merge, forming a homogeneous ethnic element.
Artamonov M.I. Anterior Asian theory. Before the arrival of the Scythians in the Black Sea region, a log culture developed there and preceded the Scythian. The Scythians themselves came from Western Asia and were associated with the developed civilizations of that era (as the main element of the Scythian animal style). In his opinion, the Cimmerians are representatives of the Catacomb culture, who were ousted from the Black Sea region in the second half of the 2nd millennium BC.
Terenozhkin A. I. Central Asian theory. According to his version, there is no ethnic or cultural continuity between the population of the Northern Black Sea region and the newcomer Scythians. The Scythians penetrate the Black Sea region from Central Asia (Mongolia, Altai, East Kazakhstan) in an already culturally formalized form, which is based on the triad - characteristic type of armament, horse harness, artistic animal style.
In turn, the attack of the Massagetae led to their movement to the west, and they, in turn, were attacked by their eastern neighbors and, most likely, a great drought of 800 BC led to such a chain reaction.

Story

7th century BC. The war of the Scythians with the Cimmerians, which allowed the Scythians to oust the latter from the Black Sea region and occupy their territory.

685 Under the leadership of Spargapif, the Scythians migrated from the North Caucasus and the Kuban to the Northern Black Sea region. Most likely, Scythia at this time is divided into three regions -

between the Don and the Volga, the clan of Ishpakaya-Partatua rules.
between the Don and the Dnieper the genus Spargapif rules,
between the Dnieper and the Danube, and possibly all of Scythia, Ariant rules.

70s 7th century BC. A series of Scythian campaigns in Media, Syria, Palestine and Asia Minor. As a result of which, the Scythians were able to establish themselves there.

Within the limits of Eastern Transcaucasia (modern Azerbaijan and partly Iranian Azerbaijan), on the northern and partly on the southern banks of the Araks River, the state of the Scythians was founded, named in the sources of Ishkuz, which existed until the 6th century BC. BC, when the Scythians were expelled from Transcaucasia by the Medes.

679-674/73 BC. The Scythians under the leadership of Ishpakai (one of the first historically known leaders of the Scythians), in alliance with the Medes, Urartu and the kingdom of Manna, participated in the war against the Assyrian kingdom under the leadership of Assarhadon, during which Ishpakay died.

673-654 BC. Partatua (Prototius) becomes the leader of the Scythians, under whose leadership the Scythians left the anti-Assyrian coalition. According to one hypothesis, this happened due to the conclusion of a dynastic marriage - Partatua married the daughter of Assarhadon.

Dyakonov I.M.

Piotrovsky B.B., Belyavsky V.A., Grakov B.N., Artamonov M.I.

654-625 BC. Madai (Madiy), probably the son of Partatua, became the leader of the Scythians. At this time, the Scythians make a series of predatory campaigns throughout the Mediterranean - to Syria, Palestine, Egypt. At the same time, they remain true to allied relations with Assyria.

653/52 BC The Scythians, helping Assyria, defeat the Medes. According to the legend of Herodotus, from that time and for 28 years, Media paid tribute to them, while also being subjected to robberies.

645 BC The Scythians under the leadership of Madai in Transcaucasia, again helping Assyria, defeat the Cimmerians.

625 The campaign of the Scythians to Egypt. According to one version, Pharaoh Psammetik I bought them off with gifts, according to another, the Scythians were still afraid to enter into open conflict with the Egyptian troops.

After 612 B.C. The Medes are pushing the Scythians out of all the Transcaucasian lands they had previously conquered. This was done thanks to the cunning of Cyaxares, the king of the Medes. After the destruction of Assyria, Cyaxares decided to get rid of the Scythians. He invited the kings of the Scythians to a feast, got them drunk, and then ordered them to be killed. The Scythians left without leaders left Transcaucasia.

650-584 BC e. The king of the Scythians was Madiy. Long and quite successful campaigns of the Scythians in Transcaucasia and Western Asia begin.

624-585 BC. The reign of Cyaxares. But it is possible that he died earlier at the turn of the century. 616 BC Scythian invasion of Media.

614 BC Siege of Nineveh and Ashur by the Medes. Ashur was taken, the siege was lifted from Nineveh thanks to the Scythians - the allies of Assyria.

612 BC Nineveh was taken by allied forces - the Medes, Babylonians and Scythians, who sided with Media. The Scythians establish their dominance over Media for 28 years.

609 BC The Scythians defeated the Egyptian pharaoh.

Turn of the 7th-6th centuries BC. Cyaxares (or his son Aliattes) decide to destroy the Scythians and kill their leaders at a feast. After that, part of the Scythians returns to the Black Sea region, part submits to the Medes.

590-585 BC The war between Media and Lydia, as a result of which peace was concluded, according to which the Scythians, who fought on the side of Lydia, had to leave Transcaucasia.

650 BC The Scythian leader Ariant conducts a "census" of the population in the Black Sea region. He orders each Scythian to bring a tip. After that, he casts a large cauldron. The description is in Herodotus -

“In this area (near the upper reaches of the Hypanis-Bug) there is a copper vessel, perhaps six times larger than the vessel for mixing wine, which Pausanias, the son of Cleombrotus, ordered to dedicate to the gods and place at the entrance to Pontus (Black Sea). For those who have not seen this vessel, I will describe it: it can easily hold 600 amphoras, and the thickness of this Scythian vessel is six fingers. According to local residents, it is made from arrowheads. One Scythian king, named Ariant, wished to know the number of Scythians. For this, he ordered all the Scythians to bring one arrowhead each and threatened with death to anyone who did not obey. Then the Scythians brought so many arrowheads that the king decided to erect a monument to himself from them: he ordered this copper vessel to be made from the arrowheads and exhibited in Exampey. Here is the information that I received about the number of Scythians.

As previously indicated, there are opinions that Ariant owned the lands from the Dnieper to the Danube, but at the same time he could control Scythia as a whole.

Settlement of the Scythians according to Herodotus (Grakov B.N. Scythians - Moscow State University, 1971, p. 16-17.):

Many hypotheses have also been expressed about them, which, however, break down on the exact localization of the five main rivers: Istra, Tiras, Gipanis, Borisfen and Tanais. This allows us to outline the settlement of tribes in accordance with the data of Herodotus. This is how we see this settlement. From the Danube to the Dnieper, the coast is occupied by the Scythians: their northern border with the neurons is somewhere on the upper Dniester. Gipanis and the Dniester bring their course closer in the land of the Alazons: this convergence begins immediately above Nikolaev. Up along the Bug, Kallippids, otherwise Hellenes-Scythians, are closest to Olbia. Later, in the Olbian decree in honor of Protogenes (3rd century BC), they are called "mixelins", i.e. "mixed Hellenes". This confirms the accuracy of Herodotus' data. Above them lives the Scythian tribe of the Alazons, in the place where the Bug and the Dniester meet. Even higher are the Scythians-plowmen, somewhere in the interfluve of the same rivers. Exampey had their border with the Alazons. The fourth Scythian tribe, the Scythian farmers, lived along the Dnieper and beyond the Dnieper to Pantikap (Ingulets). It must be assumed that the Scythian farmers lived on both banks of the Borysfen, just as the Scythian nomads, who were located behind Panticap and further behind the farmers, obviously partly lived within the right bank. In other words, both tribes to some extent lived interspersed. Scythian nomads on the left bank of the Dnieper lived in the steppes, divided in half by Hypakiris, and reached the river Gerros (Konka). Further to the east and south lived the royal Scythians across the river Gerros. They occupied the steppe to Meotida and Tanais and the northern Crimea to the mountains where wild Tauri lived. Immediately above the Scythians along the Dnieper lived androfagi (cannibals). Herodotus says that they are the only cannibals of all the peoples of Scythia. They wear Scythian clothes, wander, but have their own language, different from the Scythians.

To the north of the Scythian plowmen and androphagi, according to Herodotus, between the fantastic lake from which the Dniester flows, and the Dnieper, the Nevri live immediately to the west of the Dnieper. In other words, the neurons occupied a vast space no longer in the steppes, since the upper reaches of the Dnieper and the Bug, as well as the right bank of the Dnieper adjacent to them, are already in the forest-steppe zone. At the same time, they somehow neighbored the boudins located to the east. A lot of amazing things were told about the neurons as werewolves and sorcerers. The neurons, according to Herodotus, had Scythian customs.

To the north of the royal Scythians on the left bank of the Dnieper and further to the east lived melanchlens, that is, people wearing black cloaks. Their eastern border is not clear, but somewhere closer to the Don they must have come into contact with the Boudins and, perhaps, with the Sauromates. This is a special, non-Scythian tribe, but its way of life is Scythian. Perhaps the Melanchlenians are called non-Scythian people because they had their own language, or because they were not part of the Scythian political grouping.

Above the Meotians, who occupied the delta and the very lower reaches of the Tanais-Don, three days' journey from its confluence with the Meotida, fifteen days' journey to the northeast, on the right bank of the river, the Sauromates lived in the treeless steppe. They allegedly originated from the marriages of the sons of free Scythians and warlike Amazon women. Their women were therefore warlike, and their language was spoiled Scythian through the fault of the Amazons who did not understand it. They retained political independence and were pure nomads.

Above the Savromats along the Don, beyond their steppe, but already in heterogeneous forests, that is, in the forest-steppe, lived the Boudins - a very large, according to Herodotus, and nomadic people. Their country, somewhere in the west, adjoined Nevris (the country of the Neuros), since a generation before Herodotus, the Neuros moved to the land of the Boudins. The Boudins spoke their own language. They, apparently, did not border on the Scythians and were, undoubtedly, politically completely independent. In their country there was a large wooden city of Gelon. It was inhabited by certain Gelons, who spoke either Scythian or Hellenic, revering the Greek gods, in particular Dionysus. They were sedentary and engaged in agriculture. Other writers, according to Herodotus, in vain considered the Gelons and Budins as one people.

Con. VII - beginning. 6th century BC e. Gnur, the son of Lik, the grandson of Spargapif, became the king of the Scythians in the Black Sea region.

90-50s 6th century BC. Savliy (Kaduit, Kaduin, Kalvid - in some sources) - the son of Gnur - becomes the king of the Scythians. According to the Herodotus version, the murderer of his brother - Anacharsis - one of the seven wise men.

End of the 6th century BC. The king of the Scythians becomes Idanfirs, the son of Savlius, who participates in the war against Darius I. One of the leaders in this war was Skopasis, whose detachment (most likely, the Azov Scythians and Sauromatians) was the most combat-ready and mobile. Another leader known from Herodotus, Taksakis, led the army of the Gelons and Boudins.

514/12 BC The war of the Scythians with the Persian king Darius I.

Darius gathered a huge army of 700 thousand people - colorful and multilingual, consisting of representatives of 80 peoples. With this army, the Persian monarch passed through Asia Minor, crossed to the European side through the Bosphorus, crossed Thrace. And finally, having crossed the Danube on a bridge of ships built for him by mercenaries (Asia Minor Greeks), he entered the Northern Black Sea region - within the boundaries of Scythia. The trip was planned for two months.

avoid big battles;
lure the enemy deep into their territory;
to attack his supply routes;
destroy by attacks mobile cavalry detachments and small groups of Persians who are separated from the main forces in search of food and water.

At the same time, retreating, the Scythians filled up wells and springs and burned vegetation - steppe grasses that served as feed for livestock.

The army of Darius with its huge convoy, pursuing the Scythians, managed, according to Herodotus, to reach Tanais (Don) and Meotida (Sea of Azov) in a short time, after which it turned back. From hunger, deprivation, disease, and the constant attacks of the Scythian cavalry, the Persians suffered huge losses, without winning a single battle and without capturing any booty. Fortunately for Darius, the Greek mercenaries did not dismantle the bridge on the Danube after the agreed 60 days, and the remnants of his troops and he himself, having escaped death, returned to Persia.

480-460s 5th century BC. Ariapif became the king of the Scythians - the father of Skil, Oktamasad and Orik. During his reign, several important events took place -

settled relations with the Odrysian kingdom (through dynastic marriage),
established a protectorate over Olbia (although there is an opinion that this is not so).

He himself was killed by the king of the Agathirs (most likely a Thracian tribe) Spargapif. After the death of the king of the Scythians, Opia, the wife of Ariapif and the mother of Orik, ascended the throne. The question of whether this character is a real historical figure remains debatable.

OK. 465-447/45 BC. After a short reign of Opia, Skil, the son of Ariapif, comes to power. He was the son of a Greek woman and almost completely accepted Greek culture and, after becoming king, settled in Olbia, promoting the commercial interests of Istria. As a result of palace intrigues, he was executed by the Scythians themselves.

50s 5th century BC. Octamasad, also the son of Ariapif, became the king of the Scythians. He was a relative of the king of the Odrysses - Sitalka. Perhaps with his support to power in the Bosporus in 438 BC. came Spartocus. Orik, brother of Oktamasad, most likely ruled Olbia at the same time.

Con. V-beginning 4th century BC. King Atey destroys other kings of the Scythians and usurps power.

Appears Kamenskoe settlement (located near the city of Kamenka-Dneprovskaya and B. Znamenka, Zaporozhye region). From the side of the steppe, the ancient settlement was protected by an earthen rampart and a moat, and from the north and west by cliffs over the Dnieper, r. Konka and Belozersky estuary. In the southwestern corner was the acropolis, where the Scythian nobility lived. The main occupations of the inhabitants were the manufacture of bronze and iron tools, weaving, pottery, as well as agriculture and cattle breeding. Craftsmen lived in dugouts and pillared ground buildings, the nobility lived in stone houses. The settlement was a large craft and trade center, closely associated with the Greek colonies of the Northern Black Sea region and the local population of Scythia. At the end of the III century. BC. the territory of the settlement was abandoned (with the exception of the acropolis, where life continued until the 3rd century AD).

358 BC The power of the Scythians is subject to Istria on the Black Sea coast.

344 BC The Scythians are waging a successful war with the Triballi, who lived on the territory of modern Bulgaria.

343 BC Subordinated to Callatis on the Black Sea coast.

40s 4th century BC. King Atey, having eliminated other kings, united the Scythian tribes from the Sea of \u200b\u200bAzov to the Danube.

339 BC e. War of the Scythians with Philip II of Macedon. According to legend, it was in this war that King Atey died at the age of 90.

From the source it is known that “both sides were irritated, a battle ensued, in which the Scythians, despite the superiority of their spiritual prowess and numbers, were defeated by the cunning of Philip; 20 thousand children and women were taken (by the Macedonian winners), a lot of cattle, but there was no gold and silver at all, which was the first evidence of the poverty of the Scythians; 20 thousand blood mares were sent to Macedonia to breed the breed” [Justin. Epitome of Pompey Trogus. "History of Philip" (IX, 2-3)].

On the way back, the Macedonian army was ambushed by the Triballi.

331 BC Zopyrion is left by Alexander the Great as governor of Thrace, Pontus (or Scythia). Wanting to prove himself collects 30 thousand. army and goes to war against the Scythians. Most likely, he reached Olbia, but then he had to flee. As a result, he was overtaken by the Scythians, defeated, while losing almost the entire army. He himself dies somewhere in Bessarabia.

313 BC Lysimachus, the ruler of Thrace, inflicted a severe defeat on the Scythians across the Danube.

310-309 BC e. Dynastic war in the Bosporan kingdom. Agar, the leader of the Scythians, supported Satyr, but as a result of the battle on the Fat River, another pretender to the throne, Eumela Bosporus, Satyr's brother, won.

280-260 AD BC. The Sarmatians invade Scythia and in fact completely take over the northern Black Sea region, destroying and driving out the Scythians. Subsequently, part of the Scythians remained at the mouth of the Dnieper and on the Crimean peninsula. The other part crosses the Danube and settles there, the territory is called Lesser Scythia (Istria-Dobruja).

Con. III - beginning. 2nd century BC. Great changes are taking place in Scythia. The pressure of the Sarmatians is intensifying, as mentioned earlier, the Kamenskoe settlement ceases to exist (except for the acropolis, which continues to function) on the Dnieper. Throughout the Northern Black Sea region, archaeologists have noted the change of the Scythian culture to the Sarmatian. At the same time, the Scythians in the Crimea began to settle down, engage in agriculture, fishing, and crafts.

130-114/13 AD BC. The reign of the Scythian king Skilur in the Crimea. He was able to unite the entire territory of the Scythians in the Crimea, up to the mouth of the Dnieper and South. Bug. He turned Scythian Naples (near modern Simferopol) into the capital. To fight against Pontus, he began to attract Sarmatians (Roxalans), led by Tasius. Skilur managed to take possession of Kerkinitida, the Beautiful Harbor and Fortifications, the cities of the western coast of Crimea, which until then were part of the Chersonesos Republic.

114/13-111 BC.(110-107 BC) The reign of Palak, the son of Skilur. In three expeditions, Diophantus successively defeated Palak, conquered the mountain Taurians, occupied the Scythian fortresses of Khabei and Naples in the Crimea, and subjugated the Scythians to Mithridates of Pontus.

Later, the Scythians retreated again and Diophantus again went against them, liberated Kerkinitida and the Fortifications and began to besiege the Beautiful Harbor. Palak moved towards him, but was defeated in such a way that, according to the Chersonesos inscription in honor of Diophantus, "no one escaped from the infantry, and only a few escaped from the horsemen." In the spring, Diophantus moved to Khabei and Naples and forced the Scythians to ask for peace.

The Scythians who lived in the Bosporus revolted against Perisades, the last nominal king of the Bosporus from the previous dynasty, who transferred power to Mithridates VI, but retained his title. The uprising was led by the Scythian Savmak, perhaps the foster slave of Perisad. The king was killed, Savmak seized power, but Diophantus liquidated this uprising, subordinating Chersonese, the Bosporus and the Steppe Crimea to Mithridates of Pontus.

Through these wars, Taurus Scythia was divided into several dominions and no longer represented a single kingdom.

Ser. 1st century BC. The Getae under the leadership of Birebista cross the Danube and destroy Olbia. The city ceased to exist. Later, the Scythians persuaded the escaped inhabitants to rebuild the city, but he no longer recovered from such a blow. This had a very serious impact on the very trade of the Scythians with the Greeks.

80 BC The Pontic stateg Mithridates Neoptol defeated the fleet of the Scythians, took Tire and Olbia from them. And a little later, in the Kerch Strait, he also breaks the fleet of the Scythians, and in winter on the ice he defeats the allied forces of the Bosporus and the Scythians. The power and authority of the Scythians have been shaken, but they continue to influence the politics of their region.

1st century BC. - II century. AD According to archaeological data, a strong mixing of the Scythians and Sarmatians begins, since their cultures actually coincide, and it is already quite difficult to separate one culture from another.

257 AD The arrival is ready in the Crimea. They attack the Bospro kingdom. From the same time, the Scythian kingdom ceased to exist as such.

70s 4th century Invasion of the Huns. They sweep away the remnants of the Scythians both in the Crimea and in Istria on the Danube. The Scythians, one might say, completely dissolve in the ethnic environment surrounding them.

social organization

Traces of the presence of the Scythians are also noted in the North Caucasus. The main territory of the settlement of the Scythians is the steppes between the lower reaches of the Danube and the Don, including the steppe Crimea and areas adjacent to the Northern Black Sea coast. The northern border is unclear. The Scythians were divided into several large tribes. According to Herodotus, the royal Scythians, who lived in the steppes between the Dnieper and the Don, were dominant. Nomadic Scythians lived along the right bank of the lower Dnieper and in the steppe Crimea. Between the Ingul and the Dnieper, Scythian farmers lived interspersed with nomads. In the basin of the Southern Bug, near the city of Olbia, the Callipids, or Hellenic-Scythians, lived, to the north of them - the Alazons, and even further north - the Scythians-plowmen. The boundaries of the settlement of individual tribes of Scythia (especially the Scythian plowmen) are unclear (see the map above).

Close relations with the slave-owning cities of the Northern Black Sea region, the intensive trade of the Scythians in cattle, bread, furs and slaves intensified the process of stratification in the Scythian society. It is known that the Scythians had a union of tribes, which gradually acquired the features of a kind of state of the slave-owning type, headed by the king.

From the end of the 7th century BC e. Scythian society knew different gradations of social status:

slaves of various origins and exploited in various ways;
"hippotoxotes" (mounted shooters) - free community members;
the poor, who had the opportunity to fight only on foot;
different levels of aristocracy from the heads of wealthy families to nomarchs-skeptukhs;
kings from local to three leading kings with a senior in position at the head.

By the beginning of the VI century. BC. social stratification reaches large proportions. The grounds for saying so are given by the burials of that era. Grandiose royal mounds with murdered servants and concubines and simple burial pits with a minimum of inventory. Most of the free community members fought on horseback and had some property, but already at that time “octopuses” appeared. These are Scythians on foot who had only a couple of oxen to harness to the wagon, hence the name. There were even poor people who had nothing. Of these, the Scythian infantry was formed, which, over time, grew more and more numerically.

A stratum of slaves, originally foreigners, also appeared. In the legends and descriptions of Herodotus, the slaves were the local population, in the territories captured by the Scythians.

Royal power was hereditary, but there were several kings. This can be seen, for example, from the wars with Assyria, when one or another king could be an enemy and ally of Assyria. We see the same during the invasion of Darius, when the Scythians formed three detachments, each headed by its own king. At the same time, power apparently belonged to one dynasty.

Until the 5th century BC. royal power was limited to a council of kings or a military assembly. In other cases, the power of the king was unlimited. An encroachment on her was followed by beheading, or death at the stake.

Already in the IV century. Atheus ruled Scythia with absolute power, having other rulers in submission, named in one of the Olbian inscriptions as basileus, i.e. kings.

economy

Herodotus indicates that part of the Scythian tribes was engaged in cultivating the land. Wheat, barley, millet, beans, onions, and garlic were grown. Hemp is also indicated, from which the canvas was made and some kind of drug for smoking.

The bulk of the Scythians were engaged in nomadic cattle breeding. It was year round. In winter, tebenevka was common (the cattle themselves got their food from under the snow). Part of the nomads migrated to the Azov region to the estuaries of the rivers, where tall grass was preserved. Felt yurts were on wheels and a pair of oxen were harnessed to them. Such caravans of wagons were accompanied by mounted male warriors.

Judging by the excavations of the Kamensky settlement, the composition of the herds was as follows:

horses - 40%
cattle - 40%
small cattle (sheep, goats) - 18%
dogs, game game: deer, saiga, beaver - 2%

Interestingly, the Scythians did not breed pigs even in the settled centers of their state.

Accordingly, not only meat was used, but also skins and wool. They sewed sheepskin coats, felt felt, dressed leather. Milk was also used as food; it was not for nothing that the Scythians were called milkers of mares and mammals.

Iron-smelting workshops were found in a large number in the Kamensky settlement. Copper was mined in small quantities near Donetsk, and also, most likely, went along trade routes from the Caucasus and the Southern Urals. Zinc for bronze was mined on the Lower Dnieper, the origin of tin is still unclear.

Iron was in sufficient quantities in the swamps of the Dnieper floodplains. Iron smelting was extremely uneconomical, 40-60% remained in the slag. Judging by the excavations, large patriarchal families were engaged in iron-making - about 900 hectares in the Kamensky settlement were dotted with large houses (150-300 m³ each), in which there were forges for the production of various weapons and equipment.

Next to the metallurgists lived joiners, whose tools (chisels, axes, adzes) were also found in large quantities, both in the settlement and in the barrows. The fact that carpenters were still specialization says that yurts on wheels have many wooden parts. In addition, there were permanent dwellings - winter roads, which also had to be serviced by carpenters.

Pottery was developed. The potter's wheel was little used, the dishes were molded by hand from clay bundles. We find analogies of the Scythian utensils in the Late Srub culture. The utensils are mostly round-sided pots with a vertical, slightly flared neck or with a gently turned edge. They also find narrow-necked dishes with a spherical body.

Weaving was also widespread in the Scythian environment. find a lot of clay and lead whorls. They are found in settlements and as an obligatory element in female burials. The material for the fabric is sheep wave and hemp. In addition to fabrics, mats were woven, and felt and felt were also used.

Starting from the 7th century BC. the trade of the Scythians with the Greek cities of the Black Sea takes on a regular character. The main goods that the Scythians supplied to the markets were bread and slaves. Moreover, the scope of the grain trade was large. Even on the coins of the Scythian kings an ear of wheat was depicted. It was on such trade that the Bosporus kingdom arose (the export of bread accounted for the lion's share of exports). Grain trade was developed until the III century. BC. until the invasion of the Sarmatians, then it began to gradually subside, giving way to the cattle trade. Along with the cattle, furs were also exported, which came from the forest-steppe strip, through the lands of the Scythians. Honey and wax were also exported.

A substantial share in trade belonged to the export of slaves. Starting from the VI century. BC. The names of Scythian slaves appear in ancient inscriptions. At the same time, the Scythians come in large numbers to Greece to participate in wars. Besides the Scythians, a large number of slaves came from the tribes of the Getae, Triballi, Sarmatians and Meotians. At the turn of III and II centuries. BC. the flow of Scythian slaves weakened.

As for imports into Scythia itself, it is worth highlighting wine, which came in huge quantities from Greece. As a result, Greek dishes are widely used - not only amphorae for wine, but also vessels for incense, ointments, perfumes, which are often found in the graves of rich and simple Scythians.

Fabrics and clothes also came to the steppe - this is reported by Greek writers. Jewelry was in large quantities - mirrors, glass and paste beads, earrings and various jewelry. The Scythians also often acted as intermediaries in trade with the more northern forest-steppe and forest tribes.

Sources

B.N. Grakov. Scythians. Popular science essay. Moscow: MGU Publishing House, 1968.
Archeology of the USSR. Steppes of the European part of the USSR in the Scythian-Sarmatian time. M.: Publishing house "Nauka", 1989.
M.I. Artamonov. Cimmerians and Scythians. L .: Publishing house of Leningrad State University, 1974.
IN AND. Gulyaev. Scythians: the rise and fall of a great kingdom. 2006

For the Laconians have long hair, and from them all Hellenism ... Scythians the first began to cut their hair, which is why they are called " oxidized(gr. απεσκυθισμενοι )».

Myths about the origin of the Scythians

At the same time, other fundamentally important evidence of Herodotus is often ignored.

IV.7. This is how the Scythians tell about the origin of their people. They think, however, that from the time of the first king of Targitai to the invasion of their land by Darius, just 1000 years passed (approximately 1514-1512 BC; commentary). The Scythian kings carefully guarded the mentioned sacred golden objects and revered them with reverence, bringing rich sacrifices every year. If someone at the feast falls asleep in the open air with this sacred gold, then, according to the Scythians, he will not live even a year. Therefore, the Scythians give him as much land as he can go around on a horse in a day. Since they had a lot of land, Kolaksais divided it, according to the stories of the Scythians, into three kingdoms between his three sons. He made the largest kingdom where gold was stored (not mined). In the region lying even further north of the land of the Scythians, as they say, nothing can be seen and it is impossible to penetrate because of flying feathers. Indeed, the earth and air there are full of feathers, and this interferes with vision.

8. This is how the Scythians themselves talk about themselves and about their neighboring northern countries. The Hellenes, who live on Pontus, convey differently (claiming to have a deeper memory: commentary). Hercules, chasing the bulls of Gerion (more often - cows), arrived in this then still uninhabited country (now it is occupied by the Scythians). Geryon lived far from Pontus, on an island in the Ocean near Gadir behind the Pillars of Heracles (this island is called Erythia by the Hellenes). The ocean, according to the Greeks, flows, starting from the rising of the sun, around the whole earth, but they cannot prove this. From there, Hercules arrived in the now so-called country of the Scythians. There he was caught by bad weather and cold. Wrapped in a pigskin, he fell asleep, and at this time his draft horses (he let them graze) miraculously disappeared.

The absence of “gold” in the legend about the origin of the Scythians from Hercules, in particular, indicates its great antiquity compared to the legends of the Scythians themselves about the times of Targitai. At the same time, according to one version, the Scythians existed even before Hercules, who was taught archery by the Scythian Tevtar.

According to a number of modern linguists, "chipped" is a form of iran. *skuda-ta- “archers”, where -ta- is an indicator of collectiveness (in the same meaning -tæ- is preserved in modern Ossetian). It is noteworthy that the self-name of the Sarmatians "Σαρμάται" (Sauromatæ), according to J. Harmatta, had the same meaning.

The transition of Old Iranian *d to Scythian l as a characteristic feature of the Scythian language is also confirmed by other Scythian words, for example:

Scythian Παραλάται - a tribal name, meaning, according to Herodotus (IV, 6), the ruling Scythian dynasty and explained by him in other places using the expression ΣκύÞαι βασιλητοι, that is, "royal Scythians";< иран. *paradāta-«поставленный во главе, по закону назначенный», авестийское paraδāta- (почетный титул владыки, букв. «поставленный впереди, во главе»)

At the same time, there are other scientific versions of the etymology of these ononyms - from other Indo-European, Turkic, Ugric and Semitic languages.

Story

emergence

Scythian culture is actively studied by supporters of the Kurgan hypothesis. The formation of a relatively generally recognized Scythian culture, archaeologists date back to the 7th century BC. e. . There are two main approaches to interpreting its occurrence:

Formation of statehood

The beginning of the relatively generally recognized history of the Scythians and Scythia - VIII century BC. e., the return of the main forces of the Scythians to the Northern Black Sea region, where the Cimmerians ruled for centuries (Homers in a number of sources).

The Cimmerians were forced out by the Scythians from the Northern Black Sea region by the 7th century BC. e. , and campaigns of the Scythians in Asia Minor. In the 70s. 7th century BC e. the Scythians invaded Media, Syria, Palestine and, according to Herodotus, "dominated" in Asia Minor, where they created the Scythian Kingdom - Ishkuz, but by the beginning of the 6th century BC. e. were expelled from there. Traces of the presence of the Scythians are also noted in the North Caucasus.

The main area of settlement of the Scythians is the steppes between the lower reaches of the Danube and the Don, including the steppe Crimea and areas adjacent to the Northern Black Sea region. The northern border is unclear. The Scythians were divided into several large tribes. According to Herodotus, the dominant ones were royal Scythians- the easternmost of the Scythian tribes, bordering the Savromats along the Don, also occupied the steppe Crimea. To the west they lived Scythian nomads, and even to the west, on the left bank of the Dnieper - Scythian farmers. On the right bank of the Dnieper, in the basin of the Southern Bug, near the city of Olvia lived callipids, or Hellenic-Scythians, to the north of them - alazones, and further north Scythian plowmen, and Herodotus points to agriculture as differences from the Scythians the last three tribes and specifies that if the Kallipids and Alazons grow and eat bread, then the Scythian plowmen grow bread for sale. According to Herodotus, the Scythians collectively called themselves "chipped" and were divided into four tribes: paralates("first") avhaty(occupied the upper reaches of Gipanis), traspium and catiars.

Close relations with the slave-owning cities of the Northern Black Sea region, the intensive trade of the Scythians in cattle, bread, furs and slaves intensified the process of class formation in the Scythian society. It is known about the existence of a union of tribes among the Scythians, which gradually acquired the features of a kind of state of the early slave-owning type, headed by the king. The power of the king was hereditary and deified. It was limited to the union council and the people's assembly. There was a separation of the military aristocracy, vigilantes and the priestly stratum. The political unity of the Scythians was facilitated by their war with the Persian king Darius I in 512 BC. e. - at the head of the Scythians were three kings: Idanfirs, Skopas and Taksakis. At the turn of the V-IV centuries. BC e. King Atei eliminated the other Scythian kings and usurped all power. In the 40s. 4th century BC e. he completed the unification of Scythia from the Sea of Azov to the Danube.

heyday

Archaeological research of the Kamensky settlement (about 1200 hectares) showed that in the heyday of the Scythian kingdom it was the administrative and trade and economic center of the steppe Scythians. Sharp changes in the social structure of the Scythians by the 4th century. BC e. reflected in the appearance in the Dnieper region of the grandiose burial mounds of the Scythian aristocracy, the so-called. "royal mounds", reaching a height of more than 20 m. They were buried kings and their combatants in deep and complex funerary structures. The burials of the aristocracy were accompanied by the burial of dead wives or concubines, servants (slaves) and horses.

Warriors were buried with weapons: short akinaki swords with gold sheaths, a mass of arrows with bronze tips, quivers or goritas lined with gold plates, spears and darts with iron tips. Rich graves often contained copper, gold and silver utensils, Greek painted ceramics and amphoras with wine, various decorations, often fine jewelry made by Scythian and Greek craftsmen. During the burial of ordinary Scythian community members, basically the same rite was performed, but the grave goods were poorer.

Sarmatian conquest of Scythia. Tauroscythia.

Between 280-260 AD BC e. the power of the Scythians was significantly reduced under the onslaught of their kindred Sarmatians, who came from behind the Don.

The capital of the Scythians was moved to the Crimea, and, according to the latest data, in the ancient settlement of Ak-Kaya, where excavations have been carried out since 2006. Based on the results of comparisons of excavation plans with aerial and space photography, it was determined that a large city with a fortress that existed on two centuries earlier than Scythian Naples. “The unusual size of the fortress, the power and nature of the defensive structures, the location of groups of “royal” Scythian burial mounds near the White Rock - all this indicates that the Ak-Kaya fortress had a metropolitan, royal status,” says the expedition leader Yu. Zaitsev.

In the 30s. 2nd century BC e. on the river Salgir (within the boundaries of modern Simferopol), Scythian Naples was built on the site of the existing settlement, probably under the leadership of Tsar Skilur.

The Scythian kingdom in the Crimea reached its peak in the 30-20s. 2nd century BC e., under Tsar Skilur, when the Scythians subjugated Olbia and a number of possessions of Chersonesos. After the defeat in the war with the Pontic kingdom, Tauroscythia ceased to exist as a single state.

disappearance

The Scythian kingdom with its center in the Crimea lasted until the second half of the 3rd century BC. n. e. and was destroyed by the Goths. The Scythians finally lost their independence and ethnic identity, dissolving among the tribes of the Great Migration of Peoples. The Greek name "Scythians" ceased to have an ethnic character and was applied to various peoples of the Northern Black Sea region, including medieval Russia.

Saks and Sarmatians

Saks disappeared in the early Middle Ages under the onslaught of other nomads (Tokhars, Huns and other Turks, Sarmatians, Hephthalites).

Scythian heritage

Numerous Scythian items have been found on the territory of Ukraine, southern Russia and Kazakhstan.

The names of many rivers and regions of Eastern Europe are of Scythian-Sarmatian origin.

Peoples of Scythia

Among the "Scythians" three main branches can be distinguished:

European Scythians

The European Scythians were Iranian-speaking nomads who dominated the Black Sea region until the 4th-3rd centuries BC. e. Significant data on the European Scythians are contained in ancient Greek sources, especially in Herodotus. Often, under the name of the Scythians, it is precisely the European Scythians that are understood.

The Scythians themselves, according to Herodotus, are called skolots, and the Persians called them Saks.

saki

Saks are Scythian tribes that inhabited the territory of modern Central Asia. The Asian peoples, especially the Persians, called them "Saki". Ancient Greek authors called the Saks "Asiatic Scythians". It is noteworthy that the Persians, on the contrary, called the European Scythians "overseas Saks".

Sarmatians

The tribes of the Sarmatians or Savromats, related to the Scythians, originally lived in the Volga region and the Ural steppes. According to Herodotus, the Sarmatians descended from the union of the Scythian youths and the Amazons. Herodotus also reports that "Sauromatians speak the Scythian language, but distorted since ancient times." From the 4th century BC e. there are several wars between the Sarmatians and the Scythians proper, as a result of which the Sarmatians took a dominant position in European Scythia, which was later called Sarmatia in ancient sources.

From the language of the Sarmatians, the only surviving form of the Scytho-Sarmatian language, the Ossetian language, is derived.

Other peoples of Scythia

It is believed that some of the European Scythian tribes mentioned in ancient sources were not Iranian-speaking.

culture

In science, attempts are intensifying to trace the cultural genesis of the peoples of Eurasia since the Paleolithic. In particular, variants of burial rites, a number of symbols and images, elements of the animal style (the horse of the Paleolithic Sungiri), etc. find analogues in 20 - 23 thousand in the cultures of the Eurasian peoples.

Art

Among the artistic items found in the burials of the Scythians, the most interesting are items decorated in the animal style: quiver and scabbard covers, sword hilts, details of the bridle set, plaques (used to decorate horse harness, quivers, shells, and also as women's jewelry), mirror handles, buckles, bracelets, hryvnias, etc.

Along with images of animal figures (deer, elk, goat, birds of prey, fantastic animals, etc.), there are scenes of animals fighting (most often an eagle or other predator tormenting a herbivore). Images were made in low relief using forging, embossing, casting, embossing and carving, most often from gold, silver, iron and bronze. Ascending to the images of totem ancestors, in the Scythian time they represented various spirits and played the role of magical amulets; in addition, they may have symbolized the strength, dexterity and courage of a warrior.

An undoubted sign of the Scythian belonging of this or that product is a special way of depicting animals, the so-called Scythian-Siberian animal style. Animals are always depicted in motion and from the side, but with their heads turned towards the viewer.

The peculiarities of the Scythian animal style are the extraordinary liveliness, specificity and dynamics of images, the remarkable adaptation of images to the shapes of objects. In the art of the Scythians IV-III centuries. BC e. images of animals received more and more ornamental, linear-planar interpretation. There were also stone, highly schematized statues of Scythian warriors, installed on mounds. From the 5th century BC e. Greek craftsmen made objects of decorative and applied art for the Scythians, in accordance with their artistic tastes.

According to scientists, the Scythians and the ancient Greeks had a significant impact on many peoples who lived on the territory of the European part. former USSR, for example, they had such an impact on the Meotian culture, which can be seen from the artifacts found in the Kurgans of Kelermessky, Karagodeuashkh and others. The mounds are also indicative: Kul-Oba, Solokha, Chertomlyk, Tolstaya Mogila, etc .; unique wall paintings discovered in Scythian Naples.

Costume

Main article: Scythian clothing

Mythology

The mythology of the Scythians has numerous Iranian and Indo-European parallels, which was shown in a number of works on paganism by Academician B. A. Rybakov and Professor D. S. Raevsky and is being developed by modern research.

Warfare

Among the Scythians, the first among the peoples of the continent, the cavalry really became the main type of troops, numerically prevailing over the infantry, and during the Asiatic campaigns - the only force.

The Scythians were the first (as far as sources allow us to judge) in the history of wars to successfully use a strategic retreat in order to radically change the balance of power in their favor. They were the first to go for dividing the troops into two interacting parts with setting separate tasks for each of them. In military practice, they successfully applied the method of waging war, which ancient authors aptly called "small war". They demonstrated the skillful conduct of significant campaigns in a vast theater of operations, leading to the expulsion of exhausted enemy troops (the war with Darius) or the defeat of significant enemy masses (the defeat of Zopyrion, the battle of Fata).

In the second century BC. e. Scythian military art is already outdated. The Scythians are defeated by the Thracians, Greeks and Macedonians.

The Scythian military craft received two continuations: among the Sarmatians and Parthians, with an emphasis on heavy cavalry, adapted for close combat and operating in close formation, and among the eastern nomads: Saks, Tokhars, later - Turks and Mongols, with an emphasis on distant battle and associated with the invention of fundamentally new designs of bows.

Legendary history and chronology of the Scythians

Chronological indications related to the ancient history of the Scythians are found in a number of ancient authors. They not only operate with the usual round numbers for approximate information, but often contradict each other, which makes their direct comparison with archaeological data illegal.

Justin also gives a story about the young men of the royal family Plin and Skolopite, their death and the origin of the Amazons. These events are placed about two generations before the Trojan War, and the campaign of the Scythian prince Panasagora against Athens - one generation.

The Christian historian Orosius, generally using the work of Justin, could not accept his dates, because they contradicted the biblical dating of the flood (it is noteworthy that in the Chronicle of Eusebius there is no information about the ancient history of the Scythians at all). The achievement by the Scythians of dominance in Europe and Asia Orosius attributed to the period 1500 years before Nin, which falls on 3553 BC. e. Orosius rearranged the sequence of wars. He dates the victory of the Assyrian king Nin over the Scythians 1300 years before the founding of Rome (2053 BC), Vesosis is at war with the Scythians 480 years before the founding of Rome (1233 BC). Thus, Orosius, like Herodotus, dates this war shortly before the Trojan War, but the outcome of the war, like Justin, is the victory of the Scythians. The story of Skolopith, Pliny and the Amazons in Orosius coincides with Justin.

Jordan, also talking about the victory of the Gothic king Tanauzis over the Egyptian pharaoh Vesosis, places it shortly before the Trojan War, also mentioning the origin of the Amazons, but omits the names of Skolopit and Plina.

Notable Scythians

mythical

see also Scythia and the Caucasus in ancient Greek mythology#Scythia

historical

Dynasties (kings) of the Scythians and representatives of the dynasty, known from Assyrian sources:

Dynasties (kings) of the Scythians and representatives of the dynasty mentioned by Herodotus:

Dynasties (kings) of the Scythians and representatives of the dynasty, known from other sources:

Dynasties (kings) and representatives of the dynasty of the Scythian kingdom in the Crimea (Tauroscythia) (~ 250 BC - 250 AD):

Also:

Kanit - ok. 270 BC e.
Harasp - II century. BC e.
Akros - II century. BC e.
Thanos - ok. one hundred.
Zariax - 1st c. BC e.
Elias - before 70 BC. e., ok. 70 BC e. Sarmatian conquest

Scythians in antiquity

The Scythians, as the main tribe of the Northern Black Sea region, were known in antiquity as a nomadic pastoral people who lived in wagons, ate milk and meat of cattle, and had cruel warlike customs, which allowed them to win the glory of invincibility. The Scythians became the personification of barbarism (either a condemning or idealizing model of attitude towards the barbarians).

Conclusions of geneticists

Most of the Scythian skeletons found in the burials of Siberia and Central Asia contain the haplogroup R1a1.

Scythians in medieval tradition

Russian chronicles emphasized that the peoples of Russia were called by the Greeks "Great Scythia".

Notes

TSB
Encyclopedia "Round the World"
Ancient scholia to the Iliad. II. 11 // V. V. Latyshev. News of ancient writers about Scythia and the Caucasus
Harmatta, J. (1996), "Scythians", History of Humanity Volume III: From Seventh Century B.C. to the Seventh Century A.D., Routledge for UNESCO, p. 182
History of the Ancient East. M., 2004. S.545
Herodotus. History IV 11
History of the Ancient East. M., 2004. S.546
Roller pottery culture // BDT. T.4. M., 2006.
Cimmerian period // BRE. T.13. M., 2008.
Cimmerians // BRE. T.13. M., 2008.
Herodotus. History IV 17
justin. Epitoma Pompey Troga
Latyshev VV News of ancient writers about Scythia and the Caucasus. Herald ancient history. 1947-1949; Index 1950: Saks, Massagets: comparison of versions. Analogues on the Internet.; Sosanov Koshali History of Kazakhstan. Help Guide, Almaty: "Ol-Zhas Baspasy", 2007. - 112 p. ISBN 9965-651-56-6
Herodotus. History IV 110-116
Herodotus. History IV 117
Ethnocultural interaction in Eurasia. RAS program. Sections and publications
INTRODUCTION
The main problems in the study of Meotian culture
Herodotus. History IV 62
Herodotus. History IV 59
Monuments of the pre-Scythian and Scythian times in the south of Eastern Europe // Materials and research on archeology of Russia, no. 1 / Ed. R. M. Munchaev, V. S. Olkhovsky. M., 1997; and etc.)
Herodotus. History IV 5
Herodotus. History IV 7
Herodotus. History II 103, 110
after Sesostris Feron ruled, and after Feron - Proteus, under which Alexander and Helen arrived in Egypt (Herodotus. History II 111-116)
Herodotus. History IV 8-10
Ivanchik A. I. On the eve of colonization. Northern Black Sea region and steppe nomads of the 8th-7th centuries. BC e. in the ancient literary tradition. M.-Berlin, 2005, especially p. 213, 219
Justin. Epitome Pompey Troga II 1, 5-21
Diodorus Siculus. Historical Library II 43, 3-6
Justin. Epitome Pompey Troga II 3, 8-14
Justin. Epitome Pompey Troga II 3, 17
Justin. Epitome Pompey Troga I 2, 13
Justin. Epitome Pompey Troga I 6, 16
complex development of the version taking into account many factors: http://www.proza.ru/avtor/zolinpm&book=15#15; http://www.proza.ru/avtor/zolinpm&book=10#10 ; http://www.proza.ru/avtor/zolinpm&book=8#8 ; works by G. V. Vernadsky, B. A. Rybakov, N. I. Vasilyeva and other authors
Justin. Epitome Pompey Troga II 4, 1-16
Justin. Epitome Pompey Troga II 4, 28
Ivanchik A. I. On the eve of colonization. Northern Black Sea region and steppe nomads of the 8th-7th centuries. BC e. in the ancient literary tradition. M.-Berlin, 2005. S.208-209
Orosius. History Against the Gentiles I 4, 2
Orosius. History against the Gentiles I 14, 1-4
Orosius. History Against the Gentiles I 15, 1
Jordan. Getika 44, 47-48; for dates, see comm. E. Ch. Skrzhinskaya in the book. Jordan. Getica. St. Petersburg, 2001. S.373-374
Jordan. Getica 49-52
Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker (FGrHist) 31 F30 ( Herodorus Heracleensis)
Fragmenta historicorum Graecorum (FHG) Vol.II, Lib.I, s.34 ( Herodorus Heracleensis) F23
Myths of Ancient Greece. Triptolemus and Dimetra.
Ivanchik A.I. before colonization. Northern Black Sea region and steppe nomads of the 8th-7th centuries. BC e. in the ancient literary tradition. M.-Berlin, 2005. S.209
History of the Ancient East. Book 2. M., 2004. S.548
Herodotus. History I 103; History of the Ancient East. Book 2. M., 2004. S.554
Herodotus. History I 81

Scythians - the common name of the northern nomadic peoples (Iranian (presumably) origin) in Europe and Asia, in ancient times (VIII century BC - IV century AD) Scythians were also conditionally called semi-nomadic tribes related to them, which occupied the steppe spaces of Eurasia up to Transbaikalia and Northern China.

Herodotus reports a lot of interesting information about the Scythians, who made up the bulk of the then population of the Northern Black Sea region. According to Herodotus, which are confirmed by archaeological excavations, the Scythians inhabited the southern part of the Black Sea region - from the mouth of the Danube, the Lower Bug and the Dnieper to the Sea of \u200b\u200bAzov and the Don.

Origin

The origin of the Scythians is one of the most difficult and controversial issues in historical ethnography. Some historians believe that the Scythians were an ethnically integral people and at the same time attribute them either to the Aryans or to the Mongols (Ural-Altaians), other scientists, relying on Herodotus' instructions about the cultural difference between the Western and Eastern Scythians (farmers and nomads), consider that the name "Scythians" encompassed ethnically diverse tribes, and classify settled Scythians as Iranians or Slavs, and nomadic as Mongols or Ural-Altaians, or they prefer not to speak out about them definitely.

Most of the available data speaks in favor of their belonging to one of the branches of the Indo-European tribe, most likely to the Iranian one, especially since the scientists who recognized the Iranianness of the Sarmatians, the words of Herodotus about the relationship of the Sarmatians with the Scythians allow the conclusions obtained by science for the Sarmatians to be extended to the Scythians.

Warfare

The army of the Scythians consisted of free people who received only food and uniforms, but could take part in the division of booty if they showed the head of the enemy they had killed. Warriors wore bronze helmets in the Greek style and chain mail. The main weapons are a short sword - akinak, a double-curved bow, a square shield and spears. Each Scythian owned at least one horse, the aristocrats had huge herds of horses.

Warriors not only cut off the heads of defeated enemies, but also made bowls from their skulls. Decorating these creepy trophies with gold and proudly showing them to their guests. The Scythians fought, as a rule, on horseback, although over time, as the settlement grew, the Scythian infantry also appeared. Herodotus described in detail the military customs of the Scythians, but perhaps to some extent exaggerated their militancy.

heyday

IV century - the Scythian king Atey, who lived for 90 years, was able to unite all the tribes of the Scythians from the Don to the Danube. Scythia at that time reached its peak: Atey was equal in strength to Philip II of Macedon, minted his own coins and expanded his possessions. These tribes had a special relationship with gold. The cult of this metal even served as the basis for the legend that the Scythians were able to tame griffins guarding gold.

The growing power of the Scythians forced the Macedonians to undertake several large-scale invasions: Philip II was able to kill Atheus in an epic battle, and his son, after 8 years, went to war against the Scythians. But Alexander could not defeat Scythia, and was forced to retreat, leaving the Scythians unsubdued.

Language

The Scythians did not have a written language. The only source of information about their language is the works of ancient authors and inscriptions of the ancient era. Some Scythian words were recorded by Herodotus, for example, "pata" - meant "to kill", "oyor" - meant "man", "Arima" - meant "one". Taking as a basis fragments of these words, philologists attributed the Scythian language to the languages of the Iranian family of the Indo-European language group. The Scythians themselves called themselves Skuds, which, most likely, could mean "archers". The names of the Scythian tribes, the names of deities, personal names, toponymic names have also come down to our times in Greek and Latin transcription.

What did the Scythians look like?

What the Scythians looked like and what they wore is known mainly from their images on gold and silver vessels of Greek work, discovered during archaeological excavations in such world-famous burial mounds as Kul-Oba, Solokha and others. In their works, Greek artists depicted the Scythians in peaceful and military life with amazing realism.

They wore long hair, mustaches and beards. They dressed in linen or leather clothes: long trousers-harem pants and a caftan with a belt. Shoes were leather boots intercepted with ankle straps. The Scythians wore pointed felt hats on their heads.

There are also images of Scythians on other items found in Kul-Oba. For example, a gold plaque depicts two Scythians drinking from a rhyton. This is a rite of twinning, known to us from the testimonies of ancient authors.

Religion of the Scythians

A characteristic feature of the religion of these tribes is the absence of anthropomorphic images of the gods, as well as a special caste of priests and temples. The personification of the god of war, more revered by the Scythians, was an iron sword stuck into the ground, in front of which sacrifices were made. The nature of the funeral rituals may indicate that the Scythians believed in an afterlife.

Attempts by Herodotus, listing the Scythian deities by name, to translate them into the language of the Greek pantheon were unsuccessful. Their religion was so peculiar that it could not find direct parallels in the religious ideas of the Greeks.

1) Fiala (Mid 4th century BC); 2) Golden Scythian pectoral; 3) Gold earrings with a boat-shaped pendant. Gold, enamel; 4) Cup spherical, golden (4th century BC)

Scythian gold

Initially, gold jewelry was made only for noble Scythians, but over time, even ordinary people could afford to buy jewelry, although the amount of gold in them was less. The Scythians made cheaper products, consisting of bronze. Part of the heritage is called just that - Scythian-Greek art, and part is attributed exclusively to the products of the Scythians.

The appearance of the first gold jewelry dates back to the end of the Bronze Age, when a person already knew how to process gold, giving it shape and appearance. If we talk about the most ancient gold jewelry of the Scythians, then its approximate age is 20,000 years. Most of the products were found in burial mounds. The first decorations were found during the reign.

They used gold because they considered it a divine, magical substance. They were attracted by the brilliant appearance, and they considered the decoration a talisman even during the battle. The thickness of the jewelry is a few millimeters, but they often looked rough, because the Scythians wanted to fit as much gold as possible into the product. There were massive chest decorations in the form of plaques, they often depicted the heads of animals, while in volume, and not in a plane.

The most common were images of a deer or a goat - animals that the tribes saw. However, sometimes fictional creatures come across, the meaning of which is difficult to unravel.

1) Bracelet with sphinx protomes (Kul-Oba mound, 4th century BC); 2) The ceremony of "drinking the oath" (fraternization); 3) a golden comb depicting a battle scene; 4) A plaque in the form of a figure of a lying deer

Scythian tribes. Lifestyle

Although the material culture of the Scythians, which spread throughout this vast territory, had its own characteristics in different regions, on the whole it had features of a typological community. This commonality was also reflected in the types of Scythian ceramics, weapons, horse sets, and in the nature of funeral rites.

According to the way of economic life, the Scythians were divided into settled agricultural and nomadic, pastoral tribes. Listing the agricultural tribes known to him, Herodotus first of all named the Kallipids and Alazons, the closest neighbors of Olviy, founded by immigrants from Miletus on the banks of the Bug-Dnieper estuary. In this city, Herodotus mainly conducted his observations.

Herodotus called the Kallipids and in another way - the Hellenic-Scythians, to such an extent they assimilated with the Greek colonists. The Kallipids and Alazons in the list of Herodotus are followed by Scythian farmers who lived along the Dnieper at a distance of 11 days of navigation from its mouth. Scythia of the times of Herodotus was not ethnically united. It also included tribes not related to the Scythians, for example, agricultural and cattle breeding, who lived in the forest-steppe.

economic life

The economic life of most of the Scythian tribes reached a relatively high level. According to Herodotus, the Alazons sowed and ate, in addition to bread, onions, garlic, lentils and millet, and the Scythian farmers sowed bread not only for their own needs, but also sold it through the mediation of Greek merchants.

Scythian farmers plowed the land, as a rule, with the help of an ox-drawn plow. Harvested with iron sickles. The grain was ground in grain graters. The inhabitants of the settlements were engaged in breeding cattle and small cattle, horses and poultry.

The nomadic Scythians and the so-called Royal Scythians, who, according to Herodotus, were the strongest and most warlike of all the Scythians, inhabited the steppe space to the east from the Dnieper to the Sea of Azov, including the steppe Crimea. These tribes were engaged in cattle breeding and arranged their dwellings in wagons.

Among the Scythian nomads, animal husbandry rose to a relatively high level of development. In the 5th-4th centuries, they owned huge herds and herds of cattle, but distributed it unevenly among their fellow tribesmen.

Trade

Trade was developed on the territory of Scythia. There were water and land trade routes along the European and Siberian rivers, the Black, Caspian and North Seas. In addition to war chariots and wheeled carts, the Scythians were engaged in the construction of river and sea flax-winged ships at the shipyards of the Volga, Ob, Yenisei, at the mouth of the Pechora. took craftsmen from those places to create a fleet that was intended to conquer Japan. Sometimes the Scythians were building underground passages. They laid them under large rivers, using mining technology.

A busy trade route from India, Persia, China ran through the lands of the Scythians. Goods were delivered to the northern regions and Europe along the Volga, Ob, Yenisei, the North Seas, and the Dnieper. In those days, there were cities with noisy bazaars and temples on the banks.

decline. Disappearance of the Scythians

During the 2nd century, the Sarmatians and other nomadic tribes gradually ousted the Scythians from their land, leaving behind them only the steppe Crimea and the basin of the lower Dnieper and Bug, as a result Great Scythia became small. After that, Crimea became the center of the Scythian state, well-fortified fortifications appeared in it - the fortresses of Naples, Palakiy and Khab, in which the Scythians took refuge, waging wars with Chersonesus and the Sarmatians. At the end of the 2nd century, Chersonese received a powerful ally - the Pontic king Mithridates V, who attacked the Scythians. After many battles, the Scythian state was weakened and bled dry.

In the I and II centuries. AD, the Scythian society could hardly be called nomadic: they were farmers, rather strongly Hellenized and ethnically mixed. The Sarmatian nomads did not stop pushing the Scythians, and in the 3rd century the Alans began to invade the Crimea. They devastated the last stronghold of the Scythians - Scythian Naples, located on the outskirts of modern Simferopol, but could not stay for a long time on the conquered lands. Soon the invasion of these lands began, ready, who declared war on the Alans, the Scythians, and the Roman Empire itself.

A blow to Scythia was the invasion of the Goths around 245 AD. e. All Scythian fortresses were destroyed, and the remnants of the Scythians fled to the southwest Crimean peninsula, hiding in hard-to-reach mountainous areas.

Despite the seemingly obvious complete defeat, Scythia continued to exist for a short time. The fortresses that remained in the southwest became a refuge for the fleeing Scythians, and several more settlements were founded at the mouth of the Dnieper and on the Southern Bug. But they too soon fell under the onslaught of the Goths.

The Scythian war, which after the events described was waged by the Romans with the Goths, became so called due to the fact that the word "Scythians" began to be used to refer to the Goths who defeated the real Scythians. Most likely, there was some truth in this false name, since thousands of defeated Scythians joined the army of the Goths, dissolving in the mass of other peoples who fought with Rome. So, Scythia became the first state that collapsed as a result of the Great Migration of Nations.

The Huns finished the work, in 375 they attacked the territories of the Black Sea region and destroyed the last Scythians who lived in the Crimean mountains and in the Bug valley. Of course, many Scythians again joined the Huns, but there could no longer be any talk of any independent identity.

Doctor of Historical Sciences Valery Gulyaev

In world history, not only tribes, but also peoples are quite often encountered, the entire genealogy of which is exhausted by two or three phrases recorded by ancient chroniclers. These are "ghost peoples". What do we know about them? Is it just an outlandish name and a few facts from their history - sometimes semi-legendary. For Eastern Europe I millennium BC. one of the first among such mysterious peoples of antiquity are the Scythians.
The history of their study (and in current year it is exactly 250 years old) serves as a clear illustration of both the successes of modern science and its failures. Despite the tremendous work of archaeologists who have excavated thousands of Scythian mounds, dozens of settlements and settlements, despite the breakthroughs of historians and linguists studying written sources, despite the significant contribution to Scythian studies by representatives of such sciences as anthropology, paleobotany, paleozoology, paleogeography and others, we have there is still no answer even to the basic questions concerning the history of the Scythians.
In many ways, the origin of the Scythians and their culture is not known. Until now, they are fiercely arguing about the level of development of this people, about whether they created their own state, and if so, when and in what form it happened. (However, it should be noted: in history, since the 18th century, Scythian leaders began to be called kings. This is a kind of convention accepted by science.) There is no unambiguous answer to the question: what caused the sudden death of Great Scythia? ...

Science and life // Illustrations

Golden diadem of the 7th century BC (detail shown larger). Melgunovsky (Litoy) barrow, Northern Black Sea region. (Excavations by A.P. Melgunov in 1763.)

Science and life // Illustrations

Such Scythians are shown on an electric vase from the Kul-Oba barrow, located in the Crimea. 4th century BC

Sword in a golden sheath and with a golden handle of the 7th century BC, found in the Melgunov mound.

And the bottom of the scabbard.

The scabbard of this sword is decorated with gold plates depicting a deer and winged monsters with bows.

Science and life // Illustrations

Gilded silver vessel with scenes of Scythian horsemen hunting a lion and a fantastic creature - a horned lioness.

Fragment: one of actors this hunt. Early 4th century BC (Kurgan Solokha, excavations by N. I. Veselovsky in 1913.)

A bearded Scythian leader with a bow and a young Scythian are depicted on a silver vessel found in 1911 (excavations by S. E. Zverev) in mound No. 3 from the Frequent Mounds group near Voronezh. 4th century BC

Ceremonial ax with a gold lining, in the design of which both Scythian and Middle Eastern elements are already visible. The gold lining of an ax with the figure of a leader or priest is clearly of the Eastern type.

Science and life // Illustrations

Golden hilt of a Persian (Achaemenid) sword of the late 6th - early 5th century BC. Dnieper River. Perhaps this is a trophy received by the Scythians after the defeat of the troops of Darius I. The "royal" mound Chertomlyk. (Excavations by I. E. Zabelin in 1863.)

What were they

We are those who were whispered about in the old days,
With involuntary trembling, Hellenic myths:
A people who love violence and war,
The sons of Hercules and Echidna are Scythians.
A. Ya. Bryusov, 1916

The Scythians suddenly appear on the historical arena of Europe in the 7th century BC, having come from somewhere "from the depths of Asia." These warlike and numerous nomadic tribes quickly capture the entire Northern Black Sea region - the steppe and forest-steppe regions between the Danube in the west and the Don in the east. Having passed through the mountains of the Caucasus, the victorious Scythian cavalry smashes the ancient states of Western Asia - Media, Assyria, Babylonia, threatens even Egypt ...

But just as suddenly and mysteriously, this numerous and warlike people, invincible for almost four centuries (VII-IV centuries BC), leaves the historical arena of Europe, leaving behind legends of courage and cruelty and countless mounds with burial places of ordinary soldiers and powerful kings.

The well-known Russian Scythologist A. Yu. Alekseev writes: “The Scythians, this Asian by origin, but who became European people, had a significant impact on the culture and history of their close and distant neighbors for several centuries. They were the first in a long chain of nomadic tribes known to us, which, at intervals of 200-400 years, rolled in waves along the Great Steppe Corridor to Europe (the last such wave was the Mongols in the 13th century). Nevertheless, the culture of the Scythians, perhaps, has no equal among the steppe cultures of all epochs, neither in its inherent bright originality, nor in the resonance it produced.

The first official excavations of a large Scythian mound were carried out in 1763 on behalf of Lieutenant General Alexei Petrovich Melgunov, the Governor of the Novorossiysk Territory. From this moment the time of field Scythian archeology is counted. Then they explored the Litoy Kurgan, located 60 km from Elisavetgrad (now Kirovograd). The opened burial (Chervonnaya Mogila) turned out to be the burial of a noble Scythian, as evidenced by the magnificent gold items of the late 7th - early 6th century BC.

And today, both in Russia and in the main custodian of European Scythian antiquities - Ukraine, Scythian research continues (after the collapse of the USSR and the emergence of political map peace of sovereign Ukraine the main part Scythian monuments remained within its borders). And in Russia, Scythian burial mounds and settlements are found only in the Middle and Lower Don (Voronezh, Belgorod, Rostov regions), in the Stavropol and Krasnodar regions. Relatively recently, Scythian burials were found in the south of Siberia, in Tuva.

From the mountain ranges of Altai and Tuva to the full-flowing Danube, the boundless Eurasian steppes stretch in a wide strip. At the beginning of the 1st millennium BC. Numerous nomadic tribes of pastoralists lived here - they belonged to the Indo-European family of peoples and spoke various dialects of the ancient Iranian language.

According to the already cited A. Yu. Alekseev, "Scythians" is the common name of many people close in culture, economic structure, lifestyle and ideological ideas of the nomadic tribes of Eurasia. The name of the Scythians was given by the Greeks, who first encountered them in Asia Minor, and then in the Northern Black Sea region, where the first Greek colonies arose in the second half of the 7th century BC. Thanks to the information that has come down to us from ancient historians, including those who lived in the 5th century BC. Herodotus of Halicarnassus, the so-called European Scythians, who lived in the steppe and forest-steppe regions of the Northern Black Sea region (between the Danube in the west and the Don in the east) from the 7th to the 3rd centuries BC, became most famous.

The appearance of the Scythians on the historical arena coincided in time with two epochal events that played a huge role in world history. The first of them: iron was mastered and became widespread - now the main material for the manufacture of tools and weapons. (The forerunners of the Scythians - among them the Cimmerians - also used bronze tools and weapons.) The second most important historical event: the emergence of nomadic cattle breeding. The nomads who dominated the Scythian society, primarily the "royal Scythians", subjugated the agricultural non-Scythian tribes of the Scythian steppe and forest-steppe. Wandering, the Scythians established trade, political and cultural relations with the Greek colonial cities of the Northern Black Sea region.

Today, the appearance of the Scythian nomads is already quite well known: the Hellenic masters depicted them ethnographically accurately on gold and silver vessels and jewelry found in many burial mounds of the highest Scythian nobility. Valuable information is also provided by the anthropological reconstruction carried out on bone remains and skulls from Scythian burials. “Yes, we are Scythians, yes, we are Asians with slanting and greedy eyes ...” - this poetic image created by Alexander Blok does not correspond to reality. The Scythians did not have any slanting eyes or other Mongoloid features. They are typical Caucasians of medium height and strong build. In terms of language, the Scythians belonged to the North Iranian group (of the currently existing peoples, Ossetians are closest to them in terms of language - the descendants of the Sarmatians related to the Scythians).

But the Scythians have nothing to do with the Slavs, and there was no direct contact between them. If the last Scythians finally disappear in Eastern Europe in the 3rd century of a new era, after the Gothic raid and pogrom, then the first mention of the Slavs appears in written sources no earlier than the middle of the 1st millennium from the birth of Christ.

The Scythians dressed in leather, linen, wool and fur clothes. The men's costume consisted of long, narrow trousers, which were worn tucked into soft leather boots or loose, and jackets (or caftans) girded with a leather belt. The costume was complemented by a conical leather hat and a felt hood. Much less is known about women's clothing. We only know that it consisted of a long dress and a cape. The men had long hair, mustaches and beards.

True, the external goodness of the Scythian male images that have survived to this day should not be misleading. From the reports of the Assyrians, Jews, Greeks and Romans, it is known that they were an unbridled and cruel people who enjoyed wars, raids and robberies, their soldiers scalped their defeated enemies.

Origin

Where to look for the ancestral home of the Scythians? This is one of the main questions in their history. The abundance and inconsistency of existing points of view are striking. However, most scientists in one way or another tend to one of the two traditionally opposed hypotheses. The first of them - the so-called autochthonous - is substantiated in most detail by the famous Russian Scythologist B. N. Grakov. He believed that the direct ancestors of the Scythians were the tribes of the Srubna culture of the Bronze Age, which penetrated the Northern Black Sea region from the Volga region, including the Cimmerians. Such penetration occurred very slowly from the middle of the 2nd millennium BC. And the migration of the Scythians “from Asia” mentioned by Herodotus (for ancient geographers, “Asia” began immediately after Don-Tanais) is only one of the waves of this penetration, most likely the last.

Migrants - "logs" in the steppes of Eastern Europe met with earlier settlers from the same areas, and the merger of these related groups developed into an ethnically homogeneous population of the Scythian time, who spoke one of the dialects of the northern Iranian language. It was the culture of the Srubny tribes, which experienced significant changes during the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age and from a semi-settled way of life to a genuine nomadic one, that, according to B. N. Grakov, formed the basis of the Scythian culture proper.

A. I. Terenozhkin, the recognized leader of a group of specialists who defend the Central Asian origin of the Scythian culture, approaches the problem in a completely different way. In his opinion, there is no ethnic or cultural continuity between the population of the pre-Scythian and Scythian times in the Northern Black Sea region. The Scythians come in the 7th century BC. to the specified region from the depths of Asia and bring with them an already fully formed culture in the form of the famous Scythian triad: a characteristic type of weapons, horse harness and animal style art.

The presented hypotheses also interpret differently the question of the Cimmerians - the predecessors of the Scythians in the northern Black Sea steppes, which are reported by ancient Eastern and Greek written sources. Terenozhkin insists on the complete cultural and ethnic difference between the Scythians and the Cimmerians, who, in his opinion, owned the latest monuments of the local Srubnaya culture. (According to B.N. Grakov, let me remind you, both the Scythians and the Cimmerians are direct descendants of the "log houses" and therefore have a common culture. Most likely, they are ethnically related.)

Ancient authors speak differently about the origin of the Scythians. Here is the "first man" Targitai, the son of Zeus and the daughter of the Borisfen (Dnieper) river, the progenitor of all the Scythians. And Hercules, who created from a connection with the local snake-footed goddess who lived at the mouth of the Dnieper (Gilea), three sons - Scythus, Agathirs and Gelon. However, the “father of history” Herodotus remarks: “There is, however, another story that I myself most trust. According to this story, the nomadic Scythians who lived in Asia, being pressed by the war from the Massagets, crossed the Araks (Syr-Darya) and retired to the Cimmerian land.

Important for solving the problem of the origin of the Scythians was the discovery of the Arzhan mound in Tuva, in which they found the burial of the leader of the 9th-8th centuries BC. "In this funerary monument<…>, - writes the historian V. Yu. Murzin, - fully developed samples of the material culture of the Scythian type, as well as products made according to the canons of the Scythian animal style, were discovered. These finds fit well into the scheme of A.I. Terenozhkin, according to which the formation of the Scythian culture proper took place in the deep regions of Asia somewhat earlier than the 7th century BC.”

Today, taking into account all the information available at the moment, it is logical to admit that the Central Asian hypothesis of the origin of the Scythians is preferable to the autochthonous one. And in order to support this position with facts, it is necessary to single out the characteristic features of the Scythian culture and prove that they were already brought to the Northern Black Sea region by the hordes of Iranian-speaking nomadic Scythians precisely from Asia.

The face of the Scythian culture is determined, first of all, by the named triad. To this triad, some scientists now add two more signs: bronze cast cauldrons on a conical leg and bronze disc-shaped mirrors with a handle in the form of two vertical columns.

A. Yu. Alekseev, having subjected to a thorough analysis the entire list of features of the archaic Scythian culture, comes to interesting conclusions:

1. "Deer stones" (stone steles) are undoubtedly of Central Asian origin (in Eastern Europe they appear at the turn of the 8th-7th centuries BC).

2. Analogues of anthropomorphic statues of the early Scythian era can be found in archaeological complexes of 1200-700 BC. in Xinjiang (Northern China).

3. Cast bronze cauldrons are also clearly of Asian origin - their earliest examples were found in the Minusinsk Basin and in Kazakhstan. And in the Northern Black Sea region, they first appear no earlier than the middle of the 7th century BC. (Kelermessky burial ground in the Kuban region).

4. Prototypes of disk-shaped bronze mirrors with a vertical handle have been known in Central Asia and Northern China since the 12th-8th centuries BC; analysis of the bronze composition of some mirrors found in Eastern Europe, for example, in the Perepyatikh burial mound in Ukraine, revealed in it an alloy characteristic of Mongolia and Northern Kazakhstan.

5. Slotted bronze tops from funeral carts also have Central Asian analogies (for example, the Korsuk treasure in the Baikal region of the 8th century BC).

6. Bronze helmets of the "Kuban" type were common in Eastern Europe in the 7th - early 6th centuries BC, and the source of their origin was in Central Asia and Northern China of the Zhou era.

7. Bimetallic picks (that is, made from an alloy of iron and bronze) are well known from the 7th century BC. in Central Asia and South Siberia.

The same can be said about other characteristic features of the Scythian archaic: stone dishes, horse bridle, zoomorphic art - all these objects have clear Central Asian roots.

So, in a long-term dispute between two hypotheses about the origin of the Scythians and their culture, the scales are increasingly leaning in favor of the "Asians". Most likely, the Scythian ancestral home was located somewhere within the vast Asian territory: between Tuva, Northern Mongolia, Altai, Central Asia and Kazakhstan. There they lived surrounded by tribes related to them in culture and language: Saks, Massagets, "Pazyryks" (inhabitants of Altai).

Scythians and world history

The Scythians appeared in Eastern Europe, according to written sources, in the 7th century BC. At that time, the main arena of world history was in a completely different place - in the Middle East and in Greece. And if the Scythians had remained in their wild Eastern European steppes, they would not have been known in the then civilized world soon. But the equestrian Scythian hordes from the conquered lands of the Northern Black Sea region soon moved south, to the centers of ancient Eastern civilizations. In rich kingdoms, fabulous booty awaited them.

Having passed through the passes of the Main Caucasian Range, they invaded in the 7th century BC. in Transcaucasia, they defeated the mighty state of Urartu and, like a formidable storm, fell upon the flourishing cities of Media, Assyria, Babylonia, Phoenicia and Palestine.

It is quite difficult to restore the history of the Scythians in Western Asia, since the available written documents provide only fragmentary information about this. Usually these are the most striking episodes of wars or military clashes associated with the relationship of the "civilized" peoples of antiquity with the "barbarians". Of these, it is known that in the 70s of the 7th century BC. The Scythians, led by King Ishpakay, united with the Medes and Mannei and opposed Assyria. However, the Assyrian king Esarhaddon (680-669 BC) managed to conclude a separate peace with the Scythians. Moreover, he even agreed to give his daughter to another king of the Scythians. To fully appreciate this step, it should be remembered that Assyria at that time was the largest and most powerful power in the Middle East.

Shortly after these events, the Scythians moved further south and, reaching Syria and Palestine, were about to invade Egypt. But Pharaoh Psammetik I was ahead of them: he went out to meet the Scythians with rich gifts and dissuaded them from the intention to ruin the ancient country. According to Herodotus, the northern nomads remained in Western Asia for 28 years and devastated everything with their rampage and violence.

Nevertheless, the Scythian campaigns to the south must be recognized as a large-scale phenomenon that had a versatile influence on the fate and culture of the peoples of the Caucasus and Western Asia. First of all, participating in the political struggle and in the wars of the ancient Eastern states, the Scythians tipped the scales first in one direction, then in the other. And violating with their devastating raids and heavy tribute to the local economic life, they acted as a kind of unforeseen destructive force, "punishment of God." (Isn’t that what the biblical prophets also talk about?) However, with active hostilities, the Scythians spread advanced forms of Scythian weapons everywhere - bows and arrows, swords and spears, battle axes and horse equipment.

The Scythians brought with them their art of the animal style, forcing the skilled craftsmen of Western Asia to work for themselves. So there was a merger of two artistic principles. In the second half of the 7th century BC. a new direction in art appeared, incorporating Scythian and oriental elements. Scythian animal motifs - eagles, deer, predators from the cat family - appeared in the decorations of oriental items - headbands, diadems, breast decorations-pectorals. But images of local art began to be used in the decoration of Scythian things, an example of this is the sword and ax found in the Kelermes mound in the North Caucasus.

However, the Scythians behaved in the Middle East as robbers and rapists. Thousands of bronze arrowheads found during excavations of ancient Middle Eastern cities, traces of fires and destruction in them confirm the reports of ancient written sources about the devastating raids of the Scythian cavalry on the flowering regions of Asia Minor.

Over time, the general political situation in the Middle East is developing extremely unfavorably for the "northern barbarians". The robberies and violence of the Scythians begin to cause indignation among the conquered, and they now and then come out with weapons in their hands against the invaders. Media and Babylonia are noticeably intensifying. In 612 B.C. their combined army storms the Assyrian capital of Nineveh and destroys it to the ground. Assyria fell and disappeared forever from the arena of world history.

Then the turn came to pay off the Scythians for all past grievances. And the Median king Cyaxares, as ancient authors report, invited many Scythian leaders and commanders to his palace for a “friendly” feast and, having drunk them into unconsciousness, ordered them to be killed. Having lost their top leadership and being under the threat of a complete defeat by the Median troops, the Scythians were forced to return to their northern Black Sea possessions. And from the end of the 7th century BC. the main events of Scythian history are already associated only with the steppe and forest-steppe regions of Eastern Europe.

Darius I: his campaign in Scythia

The next layer of information about the past of Scythia is associated with dramatic events at the end of the 6th century BC. Then the Persian king Darius I Hystaspes of the Achaemenid dynasty decided at the head of a huge army to invade from the west, across the Danube, into the Northern Black Sea region. The goal is to “punish” the militant Scythian nomads for the past (almost two centuries ago) “sins”, that is, for the atrocities in Media and other Middle Eastern regions that were mentioned. In any case, according to the testimony of Herodotus, the lord of the Persian Empire chose just such a pretext for starting a war.

Modern historians, however, believe that the Persian monarch pursued more real reasons for unleashing a large-scale military campaign. An attempt by Darius I to subdue the warlike Scythians, apparently, became a preparation for an all-out war with mainland Greece. By that time, the Persians had already captured the Hellenic cities in Asia Minor, part of the islands of the Aegean Sea and were planning an invasion of the Balkan Peninsula, including the Greek Peloponnese. Let me remind you that the European Scythia stretched along the Northern Black Sea coast from the Danube to the Don.

The course of the Scythian-Persian war is described in detail in the IV book of Herodot's "History". On the eve of the decisive duel with the freedom-loving Hellas, the Persian king - an experienced politician and commander - decided to cut off the Greeks from their raw material “rear”, the Northern Black Sea region, from where grain, salted and dried fish, honey, skins and much more, much needed on the rocky hills of their homeland.

The Scythians, well aware of the actions of the enemy, knew about his colossal numbers. They themselves, together with the allied tribes, could put up no more than 200 thousand soldiers. Realizing the depth of the danger looming over them, the Scythians nevertheless decided to fight to the end. To do this, they developed a general strategic plan for the campaign: avoid large battles; lure the enemy deep into their territory; to attack his supply routes; destroy by attacks mobile cavalry detachments and small groups of Persians who are separated from the main forces in search of food and water. Retreating, the Scythians filled up wells and springs and burned vegetation - steppe grasses that served as fodder for livestock.

The very fact of the Persian campaign against the Scythian lands in 512 BC. can hardly be doubted - this event shocked the whole world of that time. But besides the story of Herodotus, do we have any material evidence of the presence of Darius's army in the Northern Black Sea region? It turns out there is.

Ukrainian archaeologist E. V. Chernenko suggests, for example, that the unique sword of the Achaemenid type with a golden handle found in the “royal” mound Chertomlyk (the mound itself dates back to 340-320 BC) is a trophy mined at the end of the 6th century BC. AD on the battlefields with the Persians and kept for many years in the treasury of the Scythian kings. And the Kharkov archaeologist A. V. Bandurovsky mentions a Persian bronze helmet, accidentally discovered in the Aleshkinsky sands in the Kherson region. It is very similar in shape to the helmet from Olympia, which came to Greece as a trophy after the victory of the Hellenes over the Persians at the Battle of Marathon.

(Ending follows.)

The contribution of the Scythians to the treasury of world culture has already been appreciated

What do we know about the Scythians

Ethnonym Scythians and its mention

The Scythians, like other peoples closely related to them, who lived in the 1st millennium BC. in the Eurasian steppes, did not have their own written language, and therefore their social and political history has to be recreated mainly on the basis of information preserved in sources of other cultures, and according to archaeological data.

The name of the Scythians, known to us primarily from the writings of Greek and Latin authors, was used there in different meanings. Often, ancient writers called the Scythians a wide range of peoples who lived in that era in the vast expanses of the Eurasian steppe belt and had a largely similar culture. But a careful study of the use of this name in ancient sources indicates that only the inhabitants of the Northern Black Sea region and the Sea of \u200b\u200bAzov called themselves this way, or even initially only one tribe, in the first centuries of the 1st millennium BC. subjugated the rest of the population of this region and created on this basis a powerful union of tribes, which later grew into an early state formation. Greek settlers who began in the 7th century. BC. active colonization of the northern coast of the Black Sea, initially came into contact with precisely this people. Over time, more and more expanding the circle of their knowledge about the inhabitants of the Eurasian steppes and discovering in their culture and way of life much similar to what they already knew about the Scythians, the Greeks began to designate all the peoples of this circle by the name of the one who was familiar to them. earlier and better than others. So the term "Scythians" acquired an expansive meaning. But many ancient authors retained an understanding of its specific ethno-historical meaning and distinguished the Scythians proper from other steppe peoples, whose names were also known to them - from the Savromats, Massagets, Issedons, etc.

Predator image. Kurgan Kulanovsky. Crimea.

Language

The historical science of modern times has long shown attention to the information about the Scythians preserved by the Greco-Roman tradition - in the writings of Herodotus, Strabo, Pliny the Elder and other authors. Critical analysis of these texts has become more and more profound with the accumulation of archaeological data comparable to ancient evidence. Interest in the antiquities of the Black Sea Scythians awakened at the end of the 18th century. Modern science already has a fairly complete picture of the history and culture of the Scythians and other peoples of the widely understood "Scythian world" of the Eurasian steppes.

Unfortunately, there is almost no data on the Scythian language. All that scientists have is a certain number of personal names and geographical names that have remained in foreign language texts. But even these remains were enough to determine: the Scythian language belonged to the Iranian group, which is part of the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European family of languages. The ethno-linguistic affiliation of other peoples of the Eurasian steppe belt remains more hypothetical, but there is some data on this subject as well. So, about the Savromats - the closest eastern neighbors of the Scythians - Herodotus reports that they allegedly descended from the marriages of Scythian youths with the Amazons and speak the Scythian language, but "spoiled from ancient times." In other words, the language of the Savromats is essentially a dialect of Scythian. Separate surviving names and titles testify that other Iranian-speaking peoples also lived in the Eurasian steppes.

Origin

The question of the origin of the Scythians is solved by a synthesis of written and archaeological data. Of the ancient authors, Herodotus writes about this most in detail. According to his story, the Scythians came to the Black Sea region from Asia, displacing the Cimmerians from here. This news is echoed by the message of Diodorus Siculus, who tells that the Scythians were once a weak and not numerous people and lived on the banks of the Araks, but then they intensified and conquered Ciscaucasia and the entire northern coast of the Black Sea. Unfortunately, it is not clear which river Diodorus calls the Araks - the ancient authors called different rivers that way, and therefore there are different opinions in science about the original habitat of the Scythians. Sometimes, relying on Herodotus, it is localized very far in the East, for example, in Central Asia. But if you remember that the ancient geographers considered the border between Asia and Europe, the river. Tanais (modern Don), then the validity of this hypothesis will be seriously shaken.

Most likely, the ancestral home of the Scythians was located not to the east of the Volga basin (in some ancient sources it is called Ra, maybe this is the Araks?) or, in extreme cases, the Urals. By the way, this assumption is in better agreement with the data of linguistics about the zone of formation of the Iranian languages. In pre-Scythian times, the northern Black Sea region and the Lower Volga region were inhabited by carriers of the same archaeological culture - the Srubnaya. Apparently, one of the movements within this culturally homogeneous area, archaeologically almost elusive, is captured in the tradition recorded by Herodotus and Diodorus.

Some stages of the history of the Scythians

Arrival in the Black Sea region

According to Herodotus, in the initial period of the history of the Scythians, they expelled all the Cimmerians from their land. But this is not confirmed by archeology: much in the culture of the Scythians reveals a direct continuity from the culture of the Black Sea region of the previous period. Most likely, the Scythian union of tribes was formed during the conquest by a tribe that came from the east of closely related inhabitants of this territory. It is possible that the conquerors were the direct ancestors of that of the Scythian tribes, which Herodotus in the 5th century. BC. knows under the name of "royal Scythians", reporting that they rule over the rest of the Scythians, considering them their slaves. Probably, it was this tribe that originally was the bearer of the self-name "Scythians".

The reverse side of the mirror. Detail. Kelermes mound. Kuban.

According to the story of Herodotus, after the conquest of the Black Sea region, the Scythians, pursuing the fleeing Cimmerians, invaded Asia Minor. This message is confirmed by the data of ancient Eastern texts, in which the invading people are called "shkuda" - another rendering of the same ethnic name. More often, however, eastern scribes called all northern newcomers "gimirri" - Cimmerians, and such a generalized naming of them best of all speaks of the fact that the Scythians and Cimmerians were ethnically and culturally close to each other. Most likely, in reality, there was not a one-time invasion of the inhabitants of the Black Sea region into the ancient East, but a gradual - in several waves - their penetration here, starting at least from the end of the 8th century. BC.

Scythians in Asia Minor

Throughout the 7th century BC. Scythian-Cimmerian military detachments actively participated in the political life of Asia Minor, intervened in conflicts between states, supported some, and attacked others. Later, having suffered a number of defeats, the Scythians left this region and returned to the Northern Black Sea region. Since that time, approximately four hundred years of their dominance in the Black Sea steppes began. But the stay of the Scythians in the Middle East, acquaintance with the ancient Eastern civilization did not pass without leaving a noticeable mark on the appearance of the Scythian culture.

Before the mentioned campaigns, the inhabitants of the Black Sea steppes (like other Indo-Iranian peoples on early stages their history) did not know the fine arts, limiting themselves to decorating their household and ritual utensils with the simplest geometric ornament. When did the social development of the Scythian society, which especially accelerated just during the period of the conquest of the Black Sea region by the Scythians and their campaigns in Asia Minor, required the creation of an artistic language designed to embody certain religious and mythological concepts associated with ideas about the hierarchical organization of society and the divine origin of the institution of royal power , for this purpose, images borrowed from the ancient Eastern artistic repertoire were used.

Scythian culture

animal style

Rethought in the spirit of the actual Scythian concepts, these images became entrenched in the Scythian culture. For reasons not yet fully understood by researchers, various images of animals became the most popular in Scythia, which served as the basis for the formation of the famous Scythian animal style - the most interesting and original element of Scythian culture. This art is characterized by the embodiment of strictly defined images - mainly ungulates, primarily deer, as well as cat predators and birds - depicted in several canonical poses. These motifs served mainly to decorate items of military equipment, horse harness, and ritual vessels. It is quite obvious that all these images had some important content in the eyes of the Scythians, but the question of the semantics of the Scythian animal style is still the subject of discussion.

Some researchers are of the opinion that it is based on magical ideas - the desire to provide the owner of these images with those outstanding qualities that are inherent in incarnate animals. Others associate them with Scythian mythology, believing that the Scythians thought of their gods as having a zoomorphic appearance. Sometimes the animal style is considered as a kind of symbolic sign system, designed to embody general ideas about the structure of the universe. The question of the semantic load of the Scythian animalistic art requires more in-depth development. Be that as it may, the art of the animal style, formed on the basis of a synthesis of ancient Iranian ideas about the world and ancient Eastern iconography, has become the most striking and original phenomenon of Scythian culture.

Vessel from the Kul-Oba kurgan. Gold. Crimea.

Scythian folklore

Another event in the history of relations between the Scythians and the ancient East had a completely different character - their struggle against the invasion of the troops of the Persian king Darius I into their lands. The invasion of huge hordes threatened Scythia with great misfortunes. However, paradoxical as it may seem, this episode is of interest to us primarily not as an important page in the political history of the Scythians, but from the point of view of the study of Scythian culture. The fact is that a detailed account of this war, preserved by ancient authors (primarily Herodotus), goes back, judging by a number of its features, to the actual Scythian oral epic tradition. The folklore of any nation reflects the most important aspects of the history of its culture, and its study is extremely important. The folklore of the Scythians has been almost completely lost, and ideas about it can only be formed from its meager retellings of other cultures.

According to the tradition preserved by Herodotus, Darius, having crossed the Danube, for two months moved along the Black Sea steppes after the Scythians, who left without accepting a battle. The attempt of the Persian king to challenge the Scythians to a decisive battle was not successful. The Scythians motivated their refusal by the fact that, having neither cities nor cultivated lands worth defending from the enemy, they do not see the need for active struggle, but simply continue to lead their usual nomadic lifestyle. Nevertheless, they constantly disturbed the Persians with small raids, inflicting significant damage on them. As a result, the army of Darius, passing through the whole of Scythia and some neighboring lands, was forced to flee from the Black Sea region, having suffered heavy losses.

O real events Scythian-Persian war, this story, apparently, contains very scarce information. Even the route described in it does not so much reflect the true course of hostilities as it is intended to embody the idea of the total nature of the conflict and is dictated by the ritual and magical concepts of the ancient Iranian-speaking peoples. But this narrative contains the most interesting data about Scythian customs, ideas, cultural models. Noteworthy is the majestic figure of the leader of the Scythians, King Idanfirs, a wise ruler and commander, described in it, which is typical of the ancient epic.

Scythian burial mounds

After the repulse of the Persian invasion, Scythia began to flourish for almost two hundred years. The absolute majority of the Scythian monuments studied by archaeologists dates back to this time. These are mostly burial mounds. Their dimensions vary considerably: small mounds were built over the burials of ordinary soldiers, which now - after centuries of plowing and weathering - barely rise above ground level; but over the graves of tribal leaders or kings, giant earthen hills were built, sometimes with the use of stone structures.

Pectoral. Kurgan Thick Grave. Gold. Lower Dnieper.

So, one of the most famous royal burial mounds of Scythia - Chertomlyk - on the eve of the excavations had a height of more than 19 m and a base circumference of 330 m, and the height of another mound - Alexandropol - exceeded 21 m. A grave was placed under the mound of the mound. Most often, this is the so-called catacomb - a kind of cave of a simple or complicated configuration, dug under one of the side walls of a deep (up to several meters) entrance well. There could be several such chambers in the burials of the nobility.

funeral rite

In the space of the chamber, and sometimes the entrance pit, the main inventory accompanying the deceased was placed. In aristocratic burials, often here or in special additional graves, the bodies of servants buried together with the “lord” were laid - a squire, a groom, a servant, as well as riding horses intended for the deceased.

According to the story of Herodotus, all his subjects participated in the ritual of the funeral of the Scythian leader, with the help of which the giant mound was erected. These same people were participants in the feast - a funeral ritual, traces of which are often found during excavations. So, in the moat surrounding the mound Tolstaya Mogila (rich, although not too large), bones of such a number of domestic and wild animals eaten during the funeral feast were found, which suggests that about 2.5-3 thousand people took part in the funeral. Human. The burial of an ordinary member of society was performed by his closest relatives and friends.

Inventory

The set of inventory in Scythian graves is quite traditional, although it is, of course, immeasurably richer in aristocratic burial mounds than in ordinary ones. In male burials, these are primarily weapons. The validity of Herodotus' remark that every Scythian is an equestrian archer confirms the presence in the grave of bronze arrowheads, and sometimes the remains of the bow itself. With the shape of the Scythian bow, ancient authors compared the outlines of the Black Sea, the straight line of the southern coast of which corresponds to the bowstring, and the northern coast - a shaft with a bend in the place where the arrow's hand was located. How tight the Scythian bow was and what skill was required when handling it is evidenced by the myth preserved by Herodotus about the three sons of the ancestor of the Scythians, who, in order to choose from them a worthy contender for the royal throne, suggested that they pull a bowstring on his bow as a test; according to the Scythian tradition, only the youngest of the sons could succeed in this test.

Spears and akinaki swords were also common weapons among the Scythians, but the latter are more common in aristocratic than in ordinary burials. In women's graves, simple personal jewelry - earrings, rings, bracelets, as well as mirrors - is a common find.

The set of objects found in the burials of the nobility is much more diverse. The main categories of things here are the same, but their types are more diverse, and the decoration is richer. Sheaths of akinaks and goritas - cases for bows and arrows - are often decorated with gold plates, equipped with ritual and mythological images. It is magnificently decorated with gold overlays and a ritual female headdress. The clothes of the buried and the bedspreads that hung the walls of the burial chamber were embroidered with golden plaques with images. Ritual vessels of various shapes are very common in aristocratic burials - spherical goblets, rhytons, open bowls with two horizontal handles. Such vessels were made of precious metals or wood with metal facings. All these objects, in addition to indicating the extraordinary wealth of the Scythian aristocracy, are important because the content of the images decorating them reflects the Scythian ideas about the power of leaders and kings as a God-given institution: its sacred nature was confirmed by compositions based on mythological subjects.

Influence of the Greek masters

Many products of this type are products not of Scythian proper, but of Greek masters. Since the Scythians themselves, in fact, did not know fine art, the Hellenic world had to create pictorial incarnations of their myths. The formation of a specific Greco-Scythian art is a process in which both sides were equally interested: for the Scythians, this was the way to obtain monuments embodying their ideological concepts, and for the Greeks, providing a market for their art and craft products.

In order to more securely gain a foothold in this market, Hellenic craftsmen not only imported their serial products to Scythia, but, adapting to the tastes and demands of the Scythian nobility, made monuments specially designed for sale in the Scythian environment. Various objects of this series, obtained in the course of excavations of rich Scythian mounds and decorating museum collections in Russia and other countries, stylistically belong to ancient artistic culture, embodying its highest achievements - dynamism, plasticity, authenticity and vitality in the transfer of the human and animal body. But in terms of content, most of the images decorating these objects are associated with the ideas inherent in the Scythian world, and therefore they serve as an invaluable source for recreating the ideological concepts inherent in the Scythians.

Felt saddle cover from the I Pazyryk kurgan. Mountain Altai.

So, on an electric goblet from the Kul-Oba burial mound, excavated in the Crimea over 150 years ago, scenes of the already mentioned myth about the three sons of the Scythian first ancestor are presented: two older brothers are depicted at the moment when they heal the injuries received during unsuccessful attempts to pull the bowstring on father's bow, and the third of the brothers - to those who succeeded in this test. The same plot is depicted on a silver vessel from a mound excavated in the vicinity of Voronezh, but its pictorial interpretation in this case is different: we see the expulsion of two eldest sons from the country and the presentation of the father's bow to the younger as a symbol of power over Scythia.

The golden openwork pectoral from the Tolstaya Mogila burial mound deserves special attention. The Greek artist captured on it a complex system of Scythian cosmological ideas: the lower frieze of the three-tier composition symbolizes the other world - the zone of domination of chaos and the forces of death, and the upper one - the world of people, opposing chaos "cosmos". In the middle frieze, a wonderful interweaving of floral ornament symbolizes the “World Tree”, connecting two such dissimilar worlds. In the central scene of the upper frieze, a ritual action is presented - sewing clothes from sheep's fleece, to which many peoples of antiquity attributed the magical ability to ensure wealth and, in particular, the fertility of livestock.

There are also other ritual or mythological scenes in Greco-Scythian art. So, on a large silver vase from the Chertomlyk mound, the shoulders are decorated with scenes of horse sacrifice in exact accordance with the description of this Scythian ritual, which was preserved by Herodotus.

Many ceremonial and ritual items from the Scythian burial mounds are provided with images on the plots of Greek myths and legends. Here you can meet Hercules, Athena, Gorgon Medusa, episodes of the Trojan War. Sometimes these compositions are interpreted as evidence of the spread of Hellenic cults in the Scythian environment, but it is more likely that such images were rethought by the Scythians, who interpreted them as illustrations for their own myths and the embodiment of their gods and heroes.

Scythian society and its decline

Religious representations of the Scythians

According to Herodotus, seven main gods enjoyed special reverence among the Scythians. The first place among them belonged to Tabiti, the goddess of fire, an element considered especially sacred by all Indo-Iranian peoples of antiquity. Following her in the Scythian religious and mythological hierarchy, a married couple was revered - the deities of heaven and earth Papai and Api, who were considered the progenitors of people and the creators of the entire earthly world. The four gods of the third "category" apparently personified this earthly, bodily world. Among them, the most known to us is the god embodied in an ancient iron sword. His Scythian name has not come down to us, but Herodotus describes in detail the ways of worshiping him. According to the historian, in each of the regions of the Scythian kingdom, a giant altar dedicated to this god was built from brushwood. Hoisted on top of the altar sword-akinaku sacrificed domestic animals and every hundredth prisoner.

Decoration of a horse harness from Pazyryk Mound I. Mountain Altai.

A common Scythian shrine was, apparently, a huge bronze cauldron, located in the Eksampey tract, between the Dnieper and the Southern Bug: according to Herodotus, this cauldron was cast from bronze arrowheads, demolished here - one from each warrior - at the behest of the Scythian king Ariant, who thus wanted to find out the number of his subjects. The cauldron, of course, has not been preserved, but its shape can be judged from numerous bronze cauldrons, often found in Scythian burial mounds. As for the size of the cauldron located in Exampey, the data of Herodotus on this score are undoubtedly exaggerated and have a purely legendary character.

Public hierarchy

In accordance with the ancient Indo-Iranian tradition, the Scythian society was divided into three estates - warriors, priests and ordinary community members: farmers and cattle breeders. Each of the estates was descended from one of the sons of the first ancestor and had its own sacred attribute. For warriors, they were served with a battle ax, for priests - a bowl, and for community members - a plow with a yoke. The Scythian myth tells that these golden objects fell from the sky at the beginning of the world and since then have become an object of veneration among the Scythian kings.

Tradition also refers to the mythical era of the first creation the formation of the political structure of the Scythian kingdom, headed by three kings. Such political organization existed, as we know, in the era of the Scythian-Persian war. Its collapse dates back to the middle of the 4th century. BC, when King Atey became the sole ruler of Scythia. The era of Atey, which includes almost all the most famous rich Scythian mounds, is the period of the last rise in the power of the Scythians. The internal causes of the subsequent decline of Scythia are not yet completely clear to researchers.

Sarmatian invasion

We know better the external factors that contributed to this. Thus, ancient sources preserved information about a serious defeat inflicted on the Scythians in 339 BC. Philip of Macedon, when the Scythian ruler Atey himself, by that time already a 90-year-old elder, died in the battle. But leading role the collapse of Scythia was played by an invasion from the east, from the Ural steppes, a people belonging to the same ethno-linguistic family as the Scythians. By the 2nd century BC e. Sarmatians have already occupied the entire Dnieper left bank, and a little later penetrated the right bank of the Dnieper.

Describing the Sarmatian invasion of Scythia, Diodorus Siculus reports that they devastated a significant part of it and, “by completely exterminating the defeated, turned most country to the desert. Of course, this catastrophe still could not destroy the entire population of Scythia. The remains of the Scythian population survived, in particular, in numerous fortified settlements that arose at that time on both banks of the Dnieper. In the culture of their inhabitants, the features inherited from the heyday of the Scythian kingdom, and those that were brought by the new population of the Black Sea region - the Sarmatians, merged. But that was already a new page in the history of the region, it is known in sufficient detail.

Eurasian steppe belt

Felt figurines of swans from Pazyryk Kurgan V. Mountain Altai.

It is necessary to touch briefly on the culture of those parts of the Eurasian steppe belt that were located east of Scythia. Their material culture as a result of excavations of hundreds and thousands of burial mounds. It was the excavations that made it possible to reveal the cultural closeness of the inhabitants of the Eurasian steppes and the Black Sea Scythians, although each of the peoples of this circle also had specific cultural features inherent only to it. The burial mounds of the mentioned tribes were explored in the lower reaches of the Syr Darya and in Central Kazakhstan, in the Tien Shan, Pamir and Altai, in the Minusinsk Basin and even in Eastern Turkestan.

Perhaps the greatest attention deserves the monuments of the so-called Pazyryk culture, discovered in the Altai Mountains. The climatic conditions typical for the area of distribution of the Pazyryk sites, and the design features of the burial structures inherent in them, led to the formation of local lenses of permafrost in the space under the kurgan. This ensured the preservation in the graves of Pazyryk and some other burial grounds of this region of objects made from organic materials, which usually decay without a trace in the ground. Among them are the clothes of the buried, jewelry and utensils made of carved wood, felt and pile carpets, etc. Even the bodies of the people buried here, decorated with intricate tattoos, were well preserved by the permafrost.

With each generation, even with each field season, knowledge about the life, way of life, culture of long-disappeared peoples is steadily replenished.

The culture of the Meots - the neighbors of the Scythians in the Sea of \u200b\u200bAzov

The newest remarkable finds are connected with the study of the monuments of the Kuban. The inhabitants of this region in the 1st millennium BC. were the Meotian tribes, which belong to the Ibero-Caucasian language family. The first mention of the Meotians by ancient authors date back to the 6th century BC. BC. Judging by Herodotus, Strabo, numerous epigraphic monuments Bosporan kingdom, these tribes lived in the Eastern Sea of \u200b\u200bAzov and the Kuban.

In 1982-83 in the Trans-Kuban region, near the Adyghe village of Ulyap, the Caucasian archaeological expedition of the State Museum of Oriental Art (State Museum of the Art of the Peoples of the East), led by A. M. Leskov, explored a number of Meotian burial mounds and a soil burial ground of the 6th-4th centuries. BC. Of particular interest are several Meotian sanctuaries of the 4th century BC. BC, built on pre-existing Bronze Age mounds. In the sanctuary of the Ulyap barrow No. 1, among the numerous bones of animals and humans, there were a large number of different finds (bronze cauldrons, antique amphoras and bronze vessels, tools, parts of horse attire, weapons, various gold jewelry). Of greatest interest are two large gold plates in the form of figures of walking deer. The head, set straight on a powerful neck, is crowned with branched horns, a surprisingly proportional body on long slender legs as if moving forward. Such are the Ulyap deer - a wonderful example of the Scythian-Meotian animal style, which combines a realistic interpretation of the figures of these noble animals with conditionally transferred horns in the form of a bizarre combination of stylized griffin heads.

Riton. Ulyap. 5th-4th centuries BC.

The most significant finds from the first Ulyap sanctuary are two sculptural tops. One of them is in the form of a wild boar lying on tucked-in legs with a snout stretched forward. The sculpture is made of two massive stamped silver plates, fastened together on a wooden base of hazel with the help of silver studs, each of which is soldered with a gold cap. On the plates there are cutouts framed by reliefs for fangs, eyes and ears. They are closed with gold inserts, fastened on a wooden base under silver plates. The lower edges of the plates, although bent at right angles to the plane with the image of a wild boar and have holes for attaching to the base, do not converge. This fact indicates that the boar sculpture served as a pommel, put on a flat base that protruded below the base of the plates. Apparently, this base was attached to a pole.

Pommels in the shape of a deer's head. Fragment. Ulyap. 5th century BC.

Plates with stylistically similar images of a wild boar are known in Scythian art (the steppes of Ukraine and the Don region). However, the round sculpture of a wild boar, which was created using different materials and techniques (stamping, engraving, soldering), was found in Scythian-Meotian art for the first time. Pommels in the form of a wild boar were also not known before. The second pommel in the form of a sculpture of a deer has been restored only partially (the silver plate of the body is still under restoration). It was possible to restore the head of a deer, planted on a slender long neck. With sparse, concise means (oblong impressions mark the nostrils and mouth of the animal, the eyes are somewhat more complicated), the master achieves rare expressiveness. Massive branched silver horns complete the image. The sculptural head of the Ulyap deer, created without any schematism, conventionality or stylization, can be put on a par with the best examples of early Scythian-Meotian art.

A magnificent complex of finds was discovered on a ritual site located on the top of the Ulyap barrow No. 4, around which there was a ground burial of the 4th century BC. BC. A human skull, three antique bronze vessels, a silver phiale, a golden hryvnia and plaques, as well as two rhytons - gold and silver - were found here. A golden rhyton at the point of inflection is surrounded by a plate, the entire field of which is decorated with wire overlays in the shape of the letter S with ends coiled up in a spiral. On the base of the rhyton there is a tip in the form of a tube, decorated with four braided belts and ending with a sculptural image of a panther's head. Its ears, which are triangular, heart-shaped, help to identify the place of production of the rhyton. A similar interpretation of the ear goes back to the antiquities of the Hittite-Hurrian circle and Nuristan. Later, this form of ear is found in the earliest images of a panther, made in the Scythian animal style (treasure from Zivie).

Riton. Ulyap. 5th century BC.

Already from the middle of the VI century. BC. such an image of an ear is not found in the monuments of the Scythian-ancient toreutics, which means that there is every reason to consider this rhyton brought from Iran or Asia Minor. The second silver rhyton on a slender glass-shaped leg has a straight high body with a slightly bent edge. The crown of the vessel is surrounded inside and outside by a gilded overlaid plate, decorated on the outside with palmettes and stylized embossed and engraved lotus flowers. Below the body of the vessel there are a number of overlaid gilded palmettes and a partially preserved figurine of Satyr. Smoothly curving, the rhyton ends with the protome of the winged horse Pegasus, whose powerful neck is crowned by a head with a gilded mane. Raised ears, large eyes, once inlaid with amber, slightly parted lips through which teeth and a gilded tongue are visible, swollen nostrils, prominent veins - this is how the master imagined the divine horse. The rich gilding of the upper part, as well as the mighty gilded wings, mane, head straps and leash, which stand out brightly against the background of silver, give the rhyton a solemn look worthy of a royal table.

Of great interest is the frieze encircling the middle part of the body of the vessel. On a gilded plate in high relief, the artist with extraordinary talent depicted six opposing couples, introducing the world to another version of the reflection in applied art of the ancient Greek myth of the struggle between gods and giants (gigantomachy). Among the Olympian gods, it is easy to recognize Zeus, striking his opponent with “peruns”, Hermes, depicted twice with a caduceus in his left hand, Hephaestus with blacksmith tongs and a fiery cry clamped in them. In the scene where the lion helps the god, most likely, Zeus should also be seen, because it is he, the favorite of the mother of the gods Rhea, who is helped by the king of animals accompanying her. If this assumption is correct, then it becomes clear why the artist uses the print with the image of Hermes twice - then on the two extreme scenes on both sides of the frieze, the same gods - Zeus and Hermes - are fighting side by side. It is more difficult to establish which of the Olympian goddesses is depicted on the frieze. It is possible that this is the wife of Zeus Hera, attacking the giant with a temple key.

Judging by the iconography of the characters depicted on the frieze, the rhyton was created no later than the middle of the 5th century BC. BC, in the era of the highest flowering of ancient art and culture. It was then that the unknown master of applied art created, who gave the world this masterpiece. The Ulyapsky rhyton with the protome of Pegasus is rightfully one of the unique works of ancient art discovered by Russian archeology.

Scythian pommel in the form of a boar. Ulyap. 4th century BC.

Scythian heritage

None of the ancient peoples leaves the historical scene without a trace. His cultural heritage passes to his successors. The most tangible Scythian layer was deposited in the Nart epic, which exists among various peoples of the North Caucasus. Among these peoples, of course, one should first of all name the Ossetians - an Iranian-speaking people, related, if not to the Scythians themselves, then to the tribes of the Scythian circle. Now the Nart epic is the property of the most diverse Caucasian peoples, and in each of its versions it is possible to identify elements dating back to the era of the Scythians - a people who lived on earth in the distant past, but left a noticeable and distinctive mark in the history of world culture.

Language

Time of existence

Origin

Story

Settlement of the Scythians according to Herodotus (Grakov B.N. Scythians - Moscow State University, 1971, p. 16-17.):

social organization

economy

Sources

Myths about the origin of the Scythians

Story

emergence

Formation of statehood

heyday

Sarmatian conquest of Scythia. Tauroscythia.

disappearance

Saks and Sarmatians

Scythian heritage

Peoples of Scythia

European Scythians

saki

Sarmatians

Other peoples of Scythia

culture

Art

Costume

Mythology

Warfare

Legendary history and chronology of the Scythians

Notable Scythians

mythical

historical

Scythians in antiquity

Conclusions of geneticists

Scythians in medieval tradition

see also

Notes

Origin

Warfare

heyday

Language

What did the Scythians look like?

Religion of the Scythians

Scythian gold

Scythian tribes. Lifestyle

economic life

Trade

decline. Disappearance of the Scythians

What do we know about the Scythians

Ethnonym Scythians and its mention

Language

Origin

Some stages of the history of the Scythians

Arrival in the Black Sea region

Scythians in Asia Minor

Scythian culture

animal style

Scythian folklore

Scythian burial mounds

funeral rite

Inventory

Influence of the Greek masters

Scythian society and its decline

Religious representations of the Scythians

Public hierarchy

Sarmatian invasion

Eurasian steppe belt

The culture of the Meots - the neighbors of the Scythians in the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov

Scythian heritage

The culture of the Meots - the neighbors of the Scythians in the Sea of \u200b\u200bAzov