The Scythians: nomad goldsmiths of the open steppes; The ...

L years, and it was Herodotus' ambi-'
' tion to write the history of that war.
Obviously, the Scythians must come
into the story.
There were a great number of
people in Olbia who had spent their
lives in the steppes, who had tra¬
velled the length and breadth of the
lands north of the Black Sea, and
who had many a tale to tell about
the world of the Scythians, so dif¬
ferent from that of the Greeks.
Herodotus was an attentive listen¬
er, and the contrasts with the way
of life which he had known at home
fascinated him. He wanted to
write about all things unusual,
leaving nothing out, and so he col¬
lected all these talesincluding the
unlikely onesfrom his Greek and
Scythian informants, one of whom,
a certain Tymnes, had actually been
a man of confidence of the Scythian
king Ariapeithes.
What Herodotus saw for himself
in Olbia, and what he heard, formed
a colourful patchwork picture of the
Scythian world and Scythian ways,
in which the past and the present,
the important and the insignificant,
the possible and the highly improb¬
able jostled for space, and which
he would incorporate in the pages
of his History.
Thus, the first record of its kind,
by the man who has been called the
"Father of History", would contain
an account of one of the first peoples
identifiable by name to have inhabi¬
ted what is now part of the Soviet
Union.
Herodotus was in Olbia in or
about the year 450 B.C. Five years
later, he was reading parts of his
manuscript to the citizens of Athens,
who were so impressed that they
offered him a grant of money to
continue with his project.
Let us listen with them now to
the words of the narrator: "Their land
is level, well-watered, and abound¬
ing in pasture"... "Having neither
cities nor forts, and carrying their
dwellings with them wherever they
go; accustomed, moreover, one and
all of them, to shoot from horse¬
back; and living not by husbandry
but their cattle, their waggons the
only homes that they possess..."
Thus Herodotus describes the
nomadic life of the Scythians,
roaming in hordes over the "vastness
of the great plain" between the
Danube and the Don, women and
children in the waggons and the men
on horseback, ready at any moment
to defend their families and their
herds with their spears and with the
bows and arrows which they handled
with such skill.
Being "entirely bare of trees", the
land of the Scythians was "utterly
barren of firewood." They stuffed
their meat, haggis-wise, into the
stomach of the animal, and cooked
it in cauldrons over a fire made
with the animal's own bones. In
10
A PLEDGE
OF BROTHERHOOD
Like many pieces of Scythian
jewellery, this gold
ornamental plaque for
clothing reveals a custom
among the nomads of the
steppes. It shows two
Scythians making a pledge
of everlasting brotherhood in
a ritual also described by
Herodotus. They kneel nose
to nose, their profiles joined
together, and hold a single
horn-shaped vessel in which
they have mingled drops of
their blood with wine.
The symbolism whereby two
become one is also reflected
in the conception of the
plaque: when the two
profiles are viewed in
close-up (see enlarged detail,
opposite page) .they form a
single face. This technique
of "split representation" is
relatively common in
Scythian animal art (see
colour photo page 28) but
is rarely found applied to
the human face. A
remarkable example of the
Scythian goldsmiths'
virtuosity, this 4th century
B.C. plaque is less than
4 cms. high.