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

WARRIORS AND LIONS figure
on this splendid 4th century B.C.
gold comb from a Scythian tomb
at Solokha, on the lower Dnieper,
in the Ukraine. The group of
combatants and the five
crouching lions beneath them
are worked in relief on both
sides giving the illusion of being
sculptured in the round. One
warrior has been unhorsed and
his mount lies helpless on the
ground. The three bearded
warriors are Scythians, but
the Greek goldsmith who made
the four-inch wide comb added
Greek elements to the work,
including the helmets and the
armour (see also article page 1 5).
8
goddess to decide which of them
shall lead the tribe, by being the
first to bend a bow left with their
mother by their father. Two of the
brothers fail the test, collecting in
the process nasty injuries typical of
clumsy bowmanship, but Scythes,
the youngest, succeeds.
Excavations of a great number of
kurgans in the coastal steppes around
the Black Sea, in the Crimea and in
the Northern Caucasus, during the
last half of the nineteenth century,
brought to light a number of magni¬
ficent examples of specifically Scy¬
thian art, and of Greek craftsman¬
ship commissioned by the Scythians.
Typical Scythian motifs s were the
reclining deer with branch-like antlers
and the panther, which possibly ser¬
ved as tribal symbols. These ani¬
mals decorate the solid gold plaques
on shields found in sixth-century
kurgans in the Kuban region; they
were also regularly depicted in the
decorations on quivers.
Links between the Scythians and
their western and southern neigh¬
bours are clearly reflected in the finds
from the kurgans. Scythian burials
in the Ukraine have yielded a number
of Thracian objects, an outstanding
example of which is the silver-trim
med bridle found in the Khomina
Mogila kurgan in 1970, whose de-'
corations include intricately engrav¬
ed plaques depicting animal heads.
The contents of the Chertomlyk
kurgan, excavated by I.E. Zabelin,
included a silver vaselater to become
famousdecorated in relief with
figures of Scythian horse-breeders,
and an iron sword whose gold hilt,
depicting two calves' heads and a
hunting scene, is a splendid example
of Iranian decoration of the fifth cen¬
tury B.C.
This sword, which was possibly a
trophy from the Greco-Persian or
Scytho-Persian wars, was in a gold
scabbard of Greek manufacture depic¬
ting a battle with the Persians, simi¬
lar in composition to the scenes of
the Battle of Marathon which
decorate Greek temples of the fifth
and fourth centuries B.C.
Iranian (Achaemenid) objects were
no rarity in Scythian burial mounds.
One of the several burial crypts of
the Great Bliznitsa kurgan on the
Taman peninsula, excavated between
1864 and 1868, contained two in¬
teresting objects of Near Eastern
origin : an Achaemenid seal-ring of
gold showing a king wrestling with
a lion; and an Egyptian amulet in
faience depicting the head of the
god Besa diminutive figure with
the face of a monster and a head¬
dress of feathers or palm-fronds.
This amulet could have arrived via
Iran, like the Egyptian alabaster ves¬
sel with hieroglyphic and cuneiform
inscriptions mentioning the name
of the Achaemenid king Artaxerxes
discovered in the southern Urals.
Scythian culture thus reflects the
relations with neighbouring and dis¬
tant lands which contributed to the
establishment of the link between
Eastern Europe and the Far East,
the wide east-west corridor which
was already open in the middle of
the last millennium of the pre-Chris¬
tian era and which, until the sixteenth
century A.D., would form the famous
Silk Route leading from the eastern
shores of the Mediterranean, through
Iran, Central Asia and Chinese Tur¬
kestan to the banks of the Hwang Ho
river. The world of the Scythians
fully deserves its place in ancient
history.
Boris B. Piotrovsky