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

THESARMATIANS 123
In characterizing this group I shall take as my principal guide the
finds recently made in four tumuli near the village of Pr6khorovka.
Although the objects came from clandestine excavations, the reports
of the excavators seem to be perfectly accurate : they were verified
on the spot by a competent archaeologist, Rudenko, and the complementary
excavations which he carried out have given us full particulars
about the funerary ritual and the structure of the tombs. The
Prokhorovka excavations may therefore rank as scientific, and round
them we can group others which gave closely similar results.
The funerary structures in the Orenburg region are very unpretentious
(fig. 14). A square, oval, or circular trench dug in the soil,
sometimes with a small pocket in one of the walls. The corpses
were not put in coffins, but wrapped in mantles of leather or fur,
occasionally, perhaps, with mats or turf beneath them.
SECTION PLAN
BARROW IN THE ORENBURG REGION
Fig. 14.
The funerary ritual is quite different from the Scythian. There
were no wooden structures, no funeral cars, and no sacrifices of horses
or human beings. The ritual was no less primitive than the Scythian,
the dead being provided with everything necessary for the Hfe beyond
the grave : but it was much simpler.
The classes of objects buried with the dead are the same as in the
Scythian graves : arms, sometimes horse-trappings, garments, precious
articles, pottery. But one characteristic is immediately obvious : the
total absence of Greek imports. No Greek vases, no Greek jewels.
Imports are not lacking, but they are Oriental, generally Persian I may
:
mention thetwo silver cups,of Persian work, with Aramaean inscriptions
from one of the Prokhorovka graves (pi. XXIV, i ), and the Persian seal,
engraved with a figure of a king fighting with a lion, from a grave at
Pokrovka. The people which established itself in the steppes of Oren-
but it
burg was not in touch with the Greeks or with the Scythians :
maintained regular relations with the eastern Iranian world, especially
with the Persian kingdom. The principal weapons are a long heavy
lance and a long sharp-pointed sword. A heavy corslet of cast iron