Iranians and Greeks in South Russia - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian ...

FOURTH AND THIRD CENTURIES B.C. 107
into the mysteries of her rehgion. We have observed the part v^^hich
she played in the religion of the Maeotians and of the Sauromatians :
we have mentioned her temples in the Taman peninsula. At Panticapaeum,
as we shall find, she became the chief goddess of the
Bosphoran state in the Roman period. But we have just seen that
she was deeply venerated by the Scythians as well. What can be
the reason ? Did the Scythians bring the cult with them from their
eastern homeland ? It is possible, nay probable. But the development
and prominence of the cult can only be accounted for by
supposing that here, as in Asia Minor, the Iranians inherited the
worship of the Great Goddess from the native population, that it was
the primitive worship of the natives. This view is confirmed by the
' list of Scythian deities in Herodotus (iv. : 59) they worship these
deities and no others : first, Histie, after her Zeus and Ge, then Apollo
and Heavenly Aphrodite, Herakles and Ares.' Later he says :
' they
call Histie in their tongue Tahiti, and Zeus, I think, Papaios, Ge Api,
Apollo Gaitosyros, Heavenly Aphrodite Argimpasa, Poseidon Thagimasadas.'
At first sight it is strange to find, in a list of Iranian
divinities, a goddess with the un-Iranian name of Tahiti occupying
the highest place, while the supreme god has the second place only.
But it is not surprising on the hypothesis which I have formulated.
Herodotus' list is a mixed one, a list of the divinities who were revered
by the native population primarily, the neighbours of the city of Olbia.
We can understand, therefore, that the Great Goddess should be
mentioned first, and after her a god with a name which is Thracian
rather than Iranian, Papaios.
The Scythian legends collected by Herodotus corroborate my
theory. Remember the story of the autochthonous goddess of the
Dnieper region, half-woman, half-serpent, who dwelt in a woodland
cave near the mouth of the Dnieper. Herakles, the conquering god,
had to come to terms with her, and she bore him the three eponymous
heroes of the peoples in the Russian and Thracian plain, the Gelonians,
the Agathyrsians and the Scythians. The legend reflects the
history of the country. Conquerors who were servants of a warrior
god ; and a native population devoted to the worship of an earth
goddess, a serpent goddess. It is worth noticing that a similar tale
was current in Sakastan : the part of Herakles is played by the hero
and demi-god Rostahm. The
confirmed by the archaeological
legend reported by Herodotus is
monuments. The same group of
tumuli, those of the fourth and third centuries B.C., have furnished
she appears on
several representations of a serpent-footed goddess :
the horse's frontlet from Tsyntbalka ; on gold garment - plaques