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

THE PREHISTORIC CIVILIZATIONS 33
single nationality. The Greeks knew them by the generic title of
Maeotians, derived from Maeotis, the ancient name of the Sea of Azov.
Two Maeotian tribes are often mentioned as the strongest and most
numerous : the Sauromatians in the delta of the Don, and the Sindians
on both shores of the straits of Kerch, the Cimmerian Bosphorus.
These tribes captivated the imagination of the Greeks by one of the
peculiarities of their social structure : the part played by women in
military and political life. Female sovereigns, female warriors among
the Sauromatians were a commonplace in Greek ethnographic literature
from the earliest times. The same feature, we learn, characterized
the Maeotians and the Sindians : remember the romantic story of
Tirgatao reported by Polyaenus. Owing to the gynaecocracy which
prevailed among the dwellers by the Sea of Azov, the semi-historical
legend of the Amazons came to be localized on the shores of that sea.
These female warriors, according to Herodotus, migrated to the
steppes near the Sea of Azov after their defeat by the Greeks in their
original home, Themiscyra, on the northern shore of the Euxine.
Landing close to the Sea of Azov, they came to blows with the
Scythians and ended by marrying the youth of Scythia and forming
the semi- Scythian Sauromatian State. The legend is undoubtedly
aetiological, but it bears witness to historical facts : to constant
relations by sea between the straits of Kerch and the southern shore
of the Euxine ; to a fierce struggle between the Maeotian peoples and
the Scythian conquerors, terminating not in a complete Scythian
victory but in compromise and intermarriage ; to the co-existence of
two racial elements on the shore of the Sea of Azov, and to strong
Scythian influence on the Sauromatians. Let us remember, before
going further, that the Sauromatians, who were Maeotians, are not
to be confounded with the Sarmatians, who do not appear on the Don
until about the fourth century, and who were an Iranian people,
patriarchal and not matriarchal.
The matriarchal life of the dwellers by the Sea of Azov was closely
connected with their religious beHefs. Their chief divinity was the
Mother Goddess. In the historic period, the peninsula of Taman was
covered with sanctuaries of this deity, whom the Greeks identified
with their Artemis, their Aphrodite, their Demeter. The organization
of the sanctuaries was the same as in Asia Minor. In the sanctuary
Herakles
near Phanagoria there was a legend attached to the temple :
was said to have come hither in his contest with the Giants : the
goddess concealed him in a cave, and delivered the Giants to him
one by one. No doubt both Herakles and the Giants had been
overcome by the attractions of the goddess, who thus resembles the
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