Barry Cunlife - The Scythians

preface
history exploring, with undisguised delight, their unusual behaviour and beliefs.
Nowadays Scythians are seldom in our consciousness. They are hardly represented
in our museum collections and only rarely are they the subject of temporary exhibitions.
Recently, in 2017, the British Museum has hosted a brilliant exhibition, Scythian
Warriors of Ancient Siberia, from the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg. Before
that one has to go back to the Frozen Tombs exhibition of 1978. America has been
rather better served but even so the wonders of Scythian culture are seldom seen in
the West.
There are many reasons for this. The difficulty and expense of mounting international
displays must rank large. But there are also cultural reasons. The Scythians
were largely nomads, constantly on the move and frequently covering large
distances. They left no cities or monumental architecture. For most people in the
world today, leading sedentary, urban lives, nomadism is difficult to comprehend; it
is much easier to empathize with Greeks and Romans, or even Egyptians or Aztecs.
The Scythians are ‘other’, alien and therefore a little unnerving—best left on the margin
where they belong. Yet to the Greeks it was just this that made them so fascinating.
And rightly so. I hope that this book will go some way in making the world of the
Scythian nomads a little more accessible and understandable and will encourage at
least some readers to explore for themselves the wonders of Scythian culture and the
breathtaking steppe landscape in which they lived.
Barry Cunliffe
Oxford
April 2018
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