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

SCYTHIANS IN SOUTH RUSSIA 49
monial : essentially a nomadic ceremonial, cruel, bloody, and luxurious ;
closely resembling, in its essential features, the Chinese funerary
ceremonies of the Han and later dynasties. The grave itself was
a reproduction of the sumptuous tent in which the dead man had
dwelt. The body was borne to the sepulchral tent in procession. The
dead chief, and the persons sacrificed in his honour, clad in festal
attire and accompanied by the sepulchral furniture, were placed on
funeral chariots, each drawn by six horses, or on biers carried by
retainers. Canopies were held above the bodies, attached to poles surmounted
by rattles and covered with bells : if the body was conveyed in
a chariot, the canopy was set up over the chariot (pi. X, b, d, e). The
procession was probably preceded by one or more standard-bearers, the
standards being crowned, like the poles of the canopy, by emblematic
figures in bronze (pi. X, a, c).
the procession made a vast
As the horses also wore bells (pi. X, e),
din, intended to drive away the evil
spirits. When the sepulchral tent was reached, the bodies were laid
in the grave, with the objects grouped about them ; the horses were
slaughtered and their corpses disposed around and within the tent ;
the canopy and the chariot were broken and placed near the tomb,
sometimes in the corridor. The ceremony over, the grave was covered
with earth, and a barrow, of imposing height, raised above it. A primitive,
materialistic and superstitious rite, thoroughly nomadic. In
itself it presents little historical interest.
But the objects interred with the bodies are extremely interesting,
and enable us to apprehend the various currents of civilization which
met in the South Russian steppes. The richest archaic finds were
made in the barrows of Kelermes on the Kuban, in the barrow excavated
by Melgunov near Elisavetgrad, and at Vettersfelde in the
south of Prussia. The two former finds are contemporary and almost
identical, the third presents some essential differences and belongs to
a later period, the sixth to the fifth century B.C. I shall begin with
Kelermes, a find which has never been entirely published. Among
the rich and varied objects from Kelermes, we can clearly distinguish
the furniture of one or more male burials and of one or more female.
What strikes us particularly in these objects is their mixed character.
Side by side with objects which were undoubtedly imported from
Asia Minor, and which offer all the characteristic features of sixth
century Ionian and Aeolian art, such as the engraved silver rhyton
with Greek mythological subjects, a bronze helmet of pure Greek
shape, a gold diadem decorated with rosettes and flying birds, we have
objects the origin of which cannot be determined except by an exhaus-
tive analysis of their style and their subjects.
H
I refer particularly to
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