The Scythians dominated what is now Russia for almost a millennium. Neither the Persian Empire nor Alexander the Great could break them. But suddenly, overnight, this people mysteriously disappeared into history, leaving behind only majestic mounds.
Who are the Scythians
Scythians is a Greek word used by the Hellenes to designate the nomadic peoples living in the Black Sea region between the Don and Danube rivers. The Scythians themselves called themselves Saki. For most Greeks, Scythia was a strange land inhabited by “white flies” - snow, and cold always reigned, which, of course, did not correspond much to reality.
It is precisely this perception of the Scythian country that can be found in Virgil, Horace and Ovid. Later, in Byzantine chronicles, the Slavs, Alans, Khazars or Pechenegs could be called Scythians. And the Roman historian Pliny the Elder wrote back in the 1st century AD that “the name “Scythians” passed to the Sarmatians and Germans,” and believed that the ancient name was assigned to many of the peoples most distant from the Western world.
This name continued to live on, and in the “Tale of Bygone Years” it is repeatedly mentioned that the Greeks called the peoples of Rus' “Scythian”: “Oleg went against the Greeks, leaving Igor in Kyiv; He took with him many Varangians, and Slavs, and Chuds, and Krivichi, and Meryu, and Drevlyans, and Radimichi, and Polans, and Northerners, and Vyatichi, and Croats, and Dulebs, and Tivertsi, known as interpreters: these were all called Greeks "Great Scythia".
It is believed that the self-name “Scythians” means “archers”, and the beginning of the Scythian culture is considered to be the 7th century BC. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus, in whom we find one of the most detailed descriptions of the life of the Scythians, describes them as a single people, divided into various tribes - Scythian farmers, Scythian ploughmen, Scythian nomads, royal Scythians and others. However, Herodotus also believed that the Scythian kings were the descendants of the son of Hercules, the Scythian.
The Scythians for Herodotus are a wild and rebellious tribe. One of the stories tells that the Greek king went crazy after he began to drink wine “in the Scythian way,” that is, without diluting it, as was not customary among the Greeks: “From that time on, as the Spartans say, every time When they want to drink stronger wine, they say: “Pour it the Scythian way.”
Another demonstrates how barbaric the morals of the Scythians were: “Everyone has, according to custom, many wives; they use them together; they enter into a relationship with a woman by placing a stick in front of her home.” At the same time, Herodotus mentions that the Scythians also laugh at the Hellenes: “The Scythians despise the Hellenes for their Bacchic frenzy.”
Thanks to regular contacts of the Scythians with the Greeks, who were actively colonizing the lands surrounding them, ancient literature is rich in references to the nomadic people. In the 6th century BC. The Scythians ousted the Cimmerians, defeated Media and thus took possession of all of Asia. After this, the Scythians retreated to the northern Black Sea region, where they began to meet with the Greeks, fighting for new territories. At the end of the 6th century, the Persian king Darius went to war against the Scythians, but despite the crushing power of his army and enormous numerical superiority, Darius was not able to quickly break the nomads.
The Scythians chose a strategy of exhausting the Persians, endlessly retreating and circling Darius' troops. Thus, the Scythians, remaining undefeated, earned themselves the reputation of impeccable warriors and strategists.
In the 4th century, the Scythian king Atey, who lived for 90 years, united all the Scythian tribes from the Don to the Danube. Scythia during this period reached its highest prosperity: Atey was equal in strength to Philip II of Macedon, minted his own coins and expanded his possessions. The Scythians had a special relationship with gold. The cult of this metal even became the basis for the legend that the Scythians managed to tame the griffins guarding gold.
The growing strength of the Scythians forced the Macedonians to undertake several large-scale invasions: Philip II killed Ataeus in an epic battle, and his son, Alexander the Great, went to war against the Scythians eight years later. However, the great commander failed to defeat Scythia and had to retreat, leaving the Scythians unconquered.
Throughout the 2nd century, the Sarmatians and other nomads gradually ousted the Scythians from their lands, leaving behind them only the steppe Crimea and the basin of the lower Dnieper and Bug, and as a result, Great Scythia became Lesser. After this, Crimea became the center of the Scythian state, well-fortified fortifications appeared in it - the fortresses of Naples, Palakiy and Khab, in which the Scythians took refuge while fighting with Chersonese and the Sarmatians. At the end of the 2nd century, Chersonesos found a powerful ally - the Pontic king Mithridates V, who went to war against the Scythians. After numerous battles, the Scythian state was weakened and drained of blood.
Disappearance of the Scythians
In the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, Scythian society could hardly be called nomadic: they were farmers, quite strongly Hellenized and ethnically mixed. The Sarmatian nomads continued to press out the Scythians, and in the 3rd century the Alans began to invade Crimea. They devastated the last stronghold of the Scythians - Scythian Naples, located on the outskirts of modern Simferopol, but could not stay long in the occupied lands. Soon the invasion of these lands by the Goths began, declaring war on the Alans, the Scythians, and the Roman Empire itself.
The blow to Scythia, therefore, was the invasion of the Goths around 245 AD. All Scythian fortresses were destroyed, and the remnants of the Scythians fled to the southwest of the Crimean Peninsula, hiding in inaccessible mountainous areas.
Despite the seemingly obvious complete defeat, Scythia did not continue to exist for long. The fortresses that remained in the southwest became a refuge for the fleeing Scythians, and several settlements were founded at the mouth of the Dnieper and on the Southern Bug. However, they too soon fell under the onslaught of the Goths.
The Scythian war, which after the events described was waged by the Romans with the Goths, got its name due to the fact that the name “Scythians” began to be used to refer to the Goths who defeated the real Scythians. Most likely, there was some truth in this false naming, since thousands of defeated Scythians joined the Gothic troops, dissolving into the mass of other peoples who fought with Rome. Thus, Scythia became the first state to collapse as a result of the Great Migration of Peoples.
The work of the Goths was completed by the Huns, who in 375 attacked the Black Sea region and killed the last Scythians who lived in the mountains of Crimea and in the Bug valley. Of course, many Scythians again joined the Huns, but there was no longer any talk of any independent identity.
The Scythians as an ethnic group disappeared in the whirlpool of migrations, and remained only on the pages of historical treatises, with enviable persistence continuing to call all new peoples, usually wild, rebellious and unbroken, “Scythians”. It is interesting that some historians consider Chechens and Ossetians to be descendants of the Scythians.
Thumbnail source: historyfiles.co.uk
Herodotus Scythia [Historical and geographical analysis] Rybakov Boris Aleksandrovich
Royal Scythians. Scythian nomads
ROYAL SCYTHIANS. SCYTHIANS-NOMADS. A complete selection of all Herodotus’s comments about the Scythians as such, given above, shows that only nomadic monuments should be classified as Scythian in the literal sense: “...they are not farmers, but nomads” (§ 2). We have no right to associate the insignificant inclusion of agricultural settlements found in the coastal zone, near Greek cities, with the Scythians, not only in connection with the categorical denial of Scythian agriculture by Herodotus, but also because the historian accurately indicated the names of these coastal farmers: Callipidae and Alazones, given which we will look at later.
The steppe archaeological group is identified with the royal Scythians. Confirming Herodotus, who wrote about the absence of cities and fortifications among the Scythians, archaeologists note that “the only monuments of the nomadic Scythians are mounds.” The Kamensk settlement apparently arose already in the post-Herodotus period.
In full accordance with Herodotus, the royal mounds of the Scythians are located in the Dnieper bow - in Herodotus' Gerros - west of the rapids (Alexandropolsky, Kichkassky, Ostraya Mogila, Chertomlyk, etc.). A significant part of the mounds (Solokha, Chmyreva Mogila, etc.) are located south of Konskie Vody and near Molochnaya, which can also be considered as Gerros land.
Hydria from the village. Peschany
The Gerros people are “the most distant, subordinate to them” (Scythian kings) (§ 71). The archaeological northern border ran approximately along the Kirovograd - Dnepropetrovsk line. But to the nearest (Kyiv) archaeological group there was still a strip of 60–80 km with almost no Scythian monuments. It is possible that these same Herros, the most northern of the Scythian nomadic tribes, roamed here.
Scythian burial mounds are also well known on the Kerch Peninsula (Kul-Oba).
However, it should be said that the archaeological map of the royal Scythians coincides with the information of Herodotus only in the main, middle part. Herodotus describes the land of the Scythians on a grand scale:
“On the other side of the Gerra River (west of Molochnaya) are the so-called royal possessions and live the bravest and most numerous Scythians, who honor other Scythians as their slaves.
In the south they extend to Taurica, in the east to the ditch that the descendants of the blind dug, and to the market place on Lake Maeotis, called Kremni.
Some of their possessions extend to the Tanais River...” (§ 20).
The outskirts of Kremny, judging by archaeological finds, were indeed the eastern outskirts of the royal Scythians, and the bulk of them were really located “on the other side of Gerros” (Molochnaya), if you count from Kremny. The border of the Scythians near Kerch is also very accurately indicated.
A significant but understandable discrepancy is the definition of the eastern limits. In full agreement with our archaeological information, Herodotus designated the eastern borders as Kremny and Bosporus, but made an interesting reservation: “... part of their possessions also extend to the Tanais River.” There is little archaeological data here, it is fragmentary, but such a failure to discover sources by archaeologists to date cannot yet be an argument against Herodotus. The steppes between Molochnaya and the Lower Don could have been a nomadic area for the poorest Scythian tribes, pushed into these semi-desert spaces with lithophytic vegetation by their more powerful neighbors, that is, the royal Scythians, who occupied the magnificent pastures of the Lower Dnieper, Zaporozhye and the Steppe Crimea. In other words, those tribes that the historian simply called “Scythian nomads” could live here. They could be in a certain dependence on the royal Scythians, which explains Herodotus’ formula: the possessions of the Basilides partially reach Tanais. The non-royal free Scythians, who lived to the west of Gerros (Molochnaya), lived further to the east along the coast of Meotida, and their power, their possessions extended all the way to Tanais.
We have two more landmarks that allow us to clarify the archaeologically deserted space of the Scythian nomads:
“To the east of the Scythian farmers, on the other side of the Pantikapa River, live the Scythian nomads, who neither sow nor plow anything.
This entire country, with the exception of the Giles, is treeless. The nomads occupy an area to the east for 14 days' journey, extending to the Gerrosa River.
On the other side of the Gerros River there are... royal possessions..." (§ 19).
This paragraph became clear only after Herodotus’s river system was clarified. Only the identification of Pantikapa with Vorskla allows us to understand the true geography of simple Scythian nomads, clearly contrasted with the Royal Scythians.
If we set aside a distance of 14 days (? 500 km) from Vorskla-Pantikapa, then we will find ourselves in the bend of Tanais, i.e. exactly where the borders of Scythia should end. The line, a 14-day journey, will leave behind the forest-steppe behind Vorskla, and from Vorskla to the southeast it will go to the very mouth of the Donets along the feather grass mixed-grass steppe. This country, with the exception of forest areas on the Vorskla and in the upper reaches of the Donets, is truly treeless.
Having given the diameter of the steppe space of the Scythian nomads and thereby defining the northwestern (Vorskla) and southeastern (Tanais) borders of their nomads, Herodotus uses two landmarks to record the demarcation of simple nomads from the royal nomads. The Gerros-Molochnaya River really was the border between two groups of Scythian tribes: simple nomads lived along Meotida to Tanais, leaving almost no archaeological traces, and “on the other side of Gerra,” to the west of Molochnaya, were the possessions of the “bravest” royal Scythians, whose power to some extent it extended to all simple Scythians right up to the border Tanais, beyond which the land of the Sauromatians began.
The second (besides Gerros) landmark in the Azov steppes for Herodotus was the Hypakiris River:
“The sixth river Hypakiris begins from the lake. Its current divides the land of the Scythian nomads in half...” (§ 55).
The upper reaches of Gipakiris-Konka are indeed located almost on the middle line of the steppes between the Dnieper and Don: from Konskie Discord both to Vorskla and to the mouth of the Don are equally 300 km.
Staying near Kremna at the border between the royal and simple Scythians, Herodotus was able to obtain fairly complete information, which now helps us restore the geographical position of the land of the Scythian nomads with greater accuracy even than the land of their royal neighbors.
The northern half of the lands of the Scythian nomads is delineated by the border of the steppe landscape zone, running along the Lower Vorskla, the oak forests of the Kharkov region (part of the “gils”) and the middle reaches of the Seversky Donets, which bordered the Scythian nomads from the east; the southern border was Maeotis. In the west, the border ran approximately along Molochnaya and somewhere above Konskie Vody (which, judging by the mounds, belonged to the royal Scythians) ran along the left bank of the Borysthenes to Pantikapa.
From the book Aryan Rus' [The Heritage of Ancestors. Forgotten gods of the Slavs] author Belov Alexander Ivanovich“We are Scythians...” At one time, Alexander Blok wrote about the Scythians like this: “Yes, we are Scythians! Yes, Asians – we have slanted and greedy eyes!” As for “greed”, this is a controversial issue, but as for slanted eyes, it must be said with complete certainty: the Scythians did not have those. Scythians, according to
From the book Aryan Rus' [The Heritage of Ancestors. Forgotten gods of the Slavs] author Belov Alexander Ivanovich"Yes! Scythians - we...” However, the plot of the Storm-hero as a whole can be considered borrowed from later Iranian myths, in which the hero Rustam successfully fights with multi-headed devas. Rustam gets himself a magic horse and successfully resists the nomads - the Turanians, who
From the book The Eurasian Empire of the Scythians author Petukhov Yuri DmitrievichScythians-Parthians At the end of III - beginning. II centuries BC e. The political map of Eurasia has changed significantly. The Volga-Don Sarmatian kingdom took the initiative and extended its influence to the Carpathians in the west (pushing the remnants of the old, “Scythian” state into the Crimea) and to
From the book Weapons of Antiquity [The Evolution of Weapons of the Ancient World] by Coggins JackSCYTHIANS The vast steppes gave rise to one of those violent storms that from time to time fell with terrifying fury on the civilized lands of Europe and Asia. Throughout history, the inhospitable steppes of Central Asia have given birth to countless hordes of barbarians. From
From the book Empire of the Steppes. Attila, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane by Grusset ReneScythians Between 750 and 700 Before the birth of Christ, according to the testimony of Greek historians, supplemented by Assyrian chronology, the Cimmerians were forced out of the steppes of the southern strip of Russia by the Scythians who arrived from Turkestan and Western Siberia. Peoples whom the Greeks knew by the name
From the book From Scythia to India [Ancient Aryans: Myths and History] author Bongard-Levin Grigory MaksimovichSCYTHIANS In many regions of Ukraine and Kazakhstan, the Volga-Ural steppes and Altai, ancient mounds that belonged to the Scythians and related tribes still stand today. Thanks to the excavations of Scythian burial mounds, rich materials were obtained that allow us to judge the image
From the book The Art of War: The Ancient World and the Middle Ages author Andrienko Vladimir AlexandrovichPart 3 Nomads and their tactics of equestrian combat - the appearance of cavalry Cimmerians, Scythians, Sarmatians Chapter 1 The people of "Gimmiru" (Cimmerians) and the Scythians Light cavalry tactics Information about the Cimmerian tribes is in Homer's Odyssey, in Herodotus's History, in Assyrian cuneiform (VIII-VII centuries
From the book World History. Volume 4. Hellenistic period author Badak Alexander NikolaevichScythians Herodotus reports a lot of interesting information about the Scythian tribes, who made up the bulk of the then population of the Northern Black Sea region. According to Herodotus, which was confirmed by archaeological excavations, the Scythians inhabited the southern part of the Black Sea region -
From the book Historical Fates of the Crimean Tatars. author Vozgrin Valery EvgenievichSCYTHIANS Scythians according to ancient authors and modern scientists. "According to the stories of the Scythians, their people are younger than all of them. And it came about in this way. The first inhabitant of this then uninhabited country was a man named Targitai. The parents of this Targitai, as the Scythians say, were Zeus and the daughter of the river
From the book There was no “Yoke”! Intellectual sabotage of the West author Sarbuchev Mikhail MikhailovichYes, we are Scythians!.. The version of the genesis of the Cossacks from... the Scythians looks quite acceptable. “Scythians” in the original in Old Church Slavonic (as still in Serbian, which has retained much in common with Old Church Slavonic; after all, Cyril and Methodius came from Macedonia) are called “monasteries” from
From the book Jesus. The Mystery of the Birth of the Son of Man [collection] by the author author Pleshanov-Ostaya A. V.Yes, we are Scythians! One of the most vehement opponents of the Norman theory of the formation of Russian statehood, Mikhail Lomonosov, leaned toward the Scythian-Sarmatian theory of Russian ethnogenesis, which he wrote about in his “Ancient Russian History.” According to Lomonosov, ethnogenesis
From the book What happened before Rurik author Pleshanov-Ostaya A. V.Scythians A large and powerful nation - the Scythians - suddenly disappeared into history: by the 4th century AD, its mention disappeared from the chronicles. However, excavations by Soviet archaeologists carried out on the Dnieper, Bug, Dniester, Don and Kuban showed that the Scythians did not disappear anywhere,
The Scythians are a people who in ancient times inhabited the steppe spaces adjacent to the Black Sea in the south of what is now European Russia and who most likely came from the east to replace the more ancient “Cimmerian” inhabitants of this country. The time of settlement here of the people, known among the Greeks as the Scythians, and among the Persians under the name of the Saks (the Scythians themselves called themselves, according to Herodotus, Skolots) is difficult to determine exactly. Already Homer speaks of the hippomolgus (“milkers of mares”), galactophages (“milk feeders”) and Abii who lived behind the Thracians and Mysians, and some modern scientists, following Strabo, are ready to see Scythians in them; but the name Scythians is first mentioned in a verse by Hesiod cited by Strabo.
Sources of Scythian history
We have the first reliable information about the Scythians in the testimonies of the Hebrew prophets Jeremiah And Ezekiel about the raid on Asia by nomads, in which this tribe can be assumed (VII century BC), in the inscriptions of the Persian king Darius who fought with the Scythians (VI century) and finally in the “History” of Herodotus (V century), fourth the book of which, in large part, is devoted to a description of Scythia and Darius’s campaign against the Scythians. We owe almost all our knowledge about the Scythians to Herodotus. He visited the northern shores of Pontus, had the opportunity to use good sources, and the latest archaeological research, which often confirms his reports, shows that we can rely on his accuracy and truthfulness. Besides him, only Hippocrates, Scylacus, Strabo, Mela and Pliny give us some additional information from the ancient writers.
Scythian tribes - briefly
Herodotus says that the Scythians lived along the shores of Maeotis and the Pontus Euxine (Azov and Black Seas), from the Tanais (Don), which separated their possessions from the land of the Sauromatians ( Sarmatians), to the Istra (Danube), occupying space for 20 days of travel inland. The neighbors of the Scythians were the Agathiros in the west, and then (towards the east) the Neuroi, Androphagi, Melanchlens, Budins, Gelons, and finally the Sauromatians beyond the Don. The Scythian region was irrigated by large rivers: Borysthenes (Dnieper), Gipanis (Bug) and Tiras (Dniester), besides which Herodotus names three more, which are still not finally confined to specific points on the modern map: Panticap (Ingulets?), Hypakiris (Kalanchak ?) and Herr (Konka or, perhaps, Molochnaya?). The country of the Scythians was a treeless steppe, with the exception of a tree-covered area on the sea coast, east of Borysthenes, which was called Hylea (i.e. Polesie).
Map of ancient Scythia and neighboring countries around 100 BC.
The Scythians split into separate tribes. To the west of the Borysthenes and on both banks of it lived the Kallipids (a mixed tribe that Herodotus calls “Helleno-Scythians”), Alazones, Scythian plowmen and Scythian farmers, while to the east of the named river the Scythian nomads and the royal Scythians, who were the most powerful of the Scythian tribes and “considered the rest of the Scythians their slaves.” The western Scythian tribes, as the names “Scythians-plowmen” and “Scythians-farmers” already show, were sedentary and agricultural, while the eastern ones, apparently more significant, consisted of nomads engaged in cattle breeding.
Most of the reports of Herodotus, as well as other ancient writers, about the life of the Scythians relate, as one might assume, to nomadic tribes, and some authors, as if forgetting even about the existence of agricultural tribes, portray all Scythians as nomads. So, for example, according to Hippocrates and others, their home was replaced by a felt-covered wagon harnessed to several pairs of oxen; men spent most of their lives on horseback. Looking for good pastures for their herds, the Scythians roamed the steppe, not staying in one place for a long time, etc. Individual Scythian tribes were headed by leaders or kings of the tribe. One tribe, living in the region of Gerr near the Dnieper, had the privilege that the king of all Scythians was elected from among them.
Scythian religion - briefly
War was considered the most honorable occupation. They fought primarily as mounted archers. The highest deities in the Scythian religion were the god of the sky (Pappaeus), the goddess of fire on the hearth and the god of war. Other deities are also mentioned, personifying for the most part the forces and phenomena of nature. The religious cult of the Scythians was poorly developed (there were almost no altars or images of gods), but was accompanied by bloody and even human sacrifices. The Scythians were brave, good-natured, carefree and sociable, but prone to excess and revelry. Herodotus reports many details about their military customs, about the fortune tellers who played a large role in their everyday life, about the custom of twinning that existed among them, and especially about their unique funeral rites.
Scythian pectoral (necklace) from the Tolstaya Mogila mound (Ukraine). Second half of the 4th century BC.
The origin of the Scythians - briefly
The question of the origin of the Scythians is one of the most difficult and controversial in historical ethnography. Some scientists consider the Scythians to be an ethnically integral people and at the same time attribute them either to the Aryans or to the Mongols (Ural-Altaians), while others, based on Herodotus’ instructions about the cultural difference between the Western and Eastern Scythians (farmers and nomads), believe that the name Scythians embraced ethnically diverse tribes, and settled Scythians are classified as Iranians or Slavs, and nomadic Scythians as Mongols or Ural-Altaians, or they do not speak out specifically about them. As for the question of the ethnic homogeneity of the Scythians, it is difficult to assume that Herodotus, who was well informed about the Scythians, who every time when describing the peoples neighboring the Scythians, “the tribe is not Scythian,” “speaks a language that is not Scythian,” did not know or was silent about the ethnic differences of individual tribes the Scythians themselves.
The question of the origin of the Scythians still remains not completely resolved, although most of the data at our disposal speaks in favor of their belonging to one of the branches of the Indo-European tribe, most likely to the Iranian one, especially since the researchers who recognized the Iranianness of the Sarmatians, the words of Herodotus about the relationship of the Sarmatians with the Scythians (see. Sarmatia) make it possible to extend to the Scythians the conclusions obtained by science for the Sarmatians. With the Greeks, who founded numerous colonies on the Pontic shores, the Scythians carried on lively trade relations and, although, according to Herodotus, they were not inclined to borrow foreign customs, nevertheless, as data from archaeological excavations show, they largely fell under the influence of Hellenic culture.
Wars of the Scythians with their neighbors
Around 630 BC, the Scythians, according to ancient historians, invaded Media and penetrated into the region of the Euphrates and Tigris and into Syria as far as Egypt. They crushed the power of the Assyrian kingdom, but after about ten years they were again driven out of Asia by the king of the Medes, Cyaxares. To punish them for this attack on Media (at least Herodotus thinks so), the Persian king Darius I crossed in 515 with 700,000 people across the bridge built across the Thracian Bosporus to Europe and penetrated through Thrace into the country of the Scythians. Avoiding battle, the Scythians retreated to the east, and the Persians followed in their footsteps beyond Tanais, but tired of the fruitless pursuit that exhausted their strength, they returned along the same road to Ister and from there through Thrace to Asia. The entire description of this campaign by Herodotus is completely legendary. Apparently Darius, as Strabo already reports, did not penetrate deeper into Scythia beyond the so-called Gothic desert, that is, the area between the Danube and the Dniester.
From this time on, for several centuries, we learn almost nothing important about the Scythians from ancient historians. Only the Pontic king Mithridates the Great again entered into war with them when the dynasts of Greek cities on Pontus placed their possessions under his protectorate, not being able to fight the neighboring Scythian tribes that oppressed them. Mithradates cleared the entire Tauride Peninsula of Scythians. When, having defeated Mithridates, the Romans subjugated the Bosporan kings to their influence and established trade relations with the peoples on the banks of Pontus and Maeotis, they, especially after the conquest of Dacia by Trajan, became more familiar with the country of the Scythians. But in the II - III centuries. Before Christ, the Scythians had already been conquered or driven out by the Sarmatians advancing from the east.
Scythia and Sarmatia
For a long time, however, the name Scythians was used by ancient writers, along with the name “Sarmatians” or instead of it, to designate all the peoples who lived north of Pontus. Subsequently, only the region in Asia adjacent to Asian Sarmatia is called Scythia. This one described Ptolemy Asian Scythia embraced the lands between Asian Sarmatia in the west, an unknown country in the north, Serika (China) in the east, India in the south and was divided into two main parts: Scythia on this side and Scythia on the other side of the Imai (large mountain range). Among the rivers mentioned here are Parananis (Parapamis), Rimn (now Gasuri), Daik (later Yaik), Oxus (Amu Darya) and Yaxartes (Syr Darya).
The steppes of Central Asia have been home to many nomadic peoples for centuries. Tribes of herders occasionally raided neighboring cities. The Greek scientist Herodotus, who lived in the 5th century BC, was the first to describe nomads. The historian called the tribes that lived on the territory of the modern south of Russia and Ukraine Scythians. Tribes related to the Scythians, whom Herodotus called Sakas, lived on the territory of Kazakhstan, Altai, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.
Story
The Scythians migrated from Central Asia to southern Russia in the 7th and 8th centuries BC. On this land, the Scythians founded a rich, strong state with borders from the Don in the east to the Danube in the west and a center in Crimea, which existed since the 4th century BC. to 3rd century BC.
The Scythians were feared and admired, paying tribute to their military art, especially the talents of horsemen. The tribe's migration from Asia brought them into the territory of the Cimmerians, who lived in the Caucasus mountains and the plains north of the Black Sea. In a war that lasted about thirty years, the Scythians defeated the Cimmerians and found themselves at the head of an empire stretching from western Persia through Syria and Judea to the borders of Egypt. The Medes, who inhabited Persia and Turkey, expelled the Scythians from their possessions, leaving only the territories of southern Russia under their control.
Herodotus describes the contemporary Scythians as a federation of tribes. Probably not all the peoples of this federation spoke the language of the Iranian group. Most Scythians were nomads, but there were also farmers. The tribes actively traded with Greek cities in Crimea.
Among the Scythians, a class of rulers stood out - wealthy aristocrats, whom Herodotus called “royal Scythians.” The graves of the royal Scythians have been preserved - mounds with a large amount of items made of gold and other precious metals.
The tribes were ruled by a king, whose power was inherited by the eldest son. During the time of Herodotus, the family of the rulers of Scythia became related to the Greek aristocrats.
In 514 BC, Darius, the third of the great Persian kings, decided to invade Scythia. A Persian army of 700 thousand people, led by Darius himself, marched through the southern Russian steppes. The nomads gradually retreated, showering the enemy army with a hail of arrows. As a result, Darius was never able to force a general battle on his opponents.
During negotiations with Darius, the Scythian ambassadors said: “We have neither cities nor fertile arable land in this land, and we are not afraid that you will ruin them. But if you want to fight us quickly, look around and you will see the graves of our fathers. Try touching them and see if we will fight you.” In the end, the Persian king turned back. On the way back, Scythian detachments constantly attacked his army. The Persians made no further attempts to conquer the northern lands, and for the next century the Scythians ruled the southern Russian steppes alone.
In the fourth century BC, the Scythian kingdom reached its greatest prosperity. The great king Atey united all the Scythian tribes and expanded his territory to the Danube. In 339, Ataeus was killed in battle with Philip II of Macedon at the age of 90. In the second half of the 3rd century BC, the decisive blow to the Scythians was dealt by their related Sarmatian tribes from the East.
The Scythian state survived in the Crimea and on the Black Sea coast of modern Bulgaria, where they initially captured several Greek colonies, but were defeated by the army of the Greek Pontic state. The capital of the Crimean Scythians was Scythian Naples, located in the area of modern Simferopol. In the middle of the third century AD, Naples was ravaged by the Gothic tribes, at the same time the Scythian tribes disappeared from the historical scene.
Language
The Scythians did not know writing. Some Scythian words were recorded by Herodotus, for example, “pata” meant “to kill,” “oyor” meant “man,” “arima” meant “one.” Based on these fragments of words, philologists attributed the Scythian language to the languages of the Iranian family of the Indo-European language group. The Scythians called themselves scuds, which most likely meant “archers.”
Lifestyle
The Scythian people were among the first to domesticate the horse, and the first tribe to widely use the horse in war. Richly decorated Scythian bridles have been preserved. The Scythians did not know stirrups; they rode horses, skillfully maintaining their balance.
The Scythians were polygamists. Unlike the neighboring Sarmatian tribe, where women fought alongside men, among the Scythians women were in a dependent position. After the death of a relative, the son or brother of the deceased took the wives for himself. Scythian women and children traveled behind the army on carts.
On the lands of the Scythians, fish was found in abundance, and game could be easily obtained. The diet consisted of stewed meat, koumiss, cheese, and vegetables such as beans and onions.
The Scythians were the first tribe to wear some kind of pants. This type of clothing was created for comfort when riding. The mummies in the burials were covered with tattoos.
Army
The Scythian army was composed of free people who received only food and uniforms, but could participate in the division of booty if they showed the head of an enemy they had killed. The warriors wore Greek-style bronze helmets and chain mail. The main weapon was a short sword - akinak, and a bow with a double bend. Every Scythian had at least one horse, and aristocrats owned huge herds of horses.
Warriors not only cut off the heads of killed enemies, but also made bowls from their skulls. They decorated these terrible trophies with gold and proudly showed them to their guests.
Art
This tribe left behind a huge amount of gold items. Clothes, weapons, and armor were richly decorated with gold. The metal was mined from deposits in the Altai region.
The Scythians achieved great skill in the art of making jewelry, developing the so-called “animal” style. The decorations were given the shape of animals - deer, tiger, lion, horse, boar. Figures of running animals reflected their grace; sometimes decorations featured scenes of animals fighting each other.
Scythian craftsmen worked with a wide variety of materials, including wood, leather, bone, and felt. Many items of clothing decorated with embroidery have survived. Often clothes were decorated with miniature plaques in the form of animal figures. Tapestries depicting scenes of worship of the Great Goddess or figures of half-humans, half-animals, and felt carpets have been preserved.
A rich collection of Scythian jewelry is kept in the St. Petersburg Hermitage. The collection is based on finds from the Pazyryk mound in Altai.
Despite many known facts about the Scythians, there are still many blank spots in the history of this people that have yet to be unraveled.
No related links found
Attempts by the Persians and Greeks to conquer the Scythians failed every time. When in 331 BC. e. One of the governors of Alexander the Great, Zopyrion, with 30 thousand soldiers, embarked on a campaign to Scythia; he was destroyed along with his entire army. And yet the 4th century - the century of the heyday of Scythia - became the prelude to the decline of Scythian power. But the decline period lasted 500 years.
The Sarmatians were advancing on the Scythians from the east, and little by little they began to move to the right bank of the Don. And in the 2nd century BC, the Sarmatians launched a decisive offensive. The territory subject to the Scythians was significantly reduced and was cut in two. The capital of the Scythian kingdom was moved to Crimea, to the site of present-day Simferopol. The Greeks called it Naples - “New City”. The life of the Scythian nobility by this time had undergone strong Hellenization, the Scythians had by that time lost their former passionarity, the elite was mired in luxury and debauchery, and the common people hated the elite.
The Scythians mixed more and more with the peoples around them, and the Scythian culture gradually lost its unique features. In the 3rd century AD, life in Scythian Naples ceased, and the Scythians disappeared from the arena of history, where they had been one of the main characters for almost a millennium.
Egyptian monuments brought to us the appearance of the “peoples of the sea” - the Cimmerin warriors who fought with Pharaoh Ramesses. They are depicted “with shaved beards and heads, with long mustaches sticking out apart and a forelock, which our Cossacks wore in the 16th-17th centuries; stern facial features, with a straight forehead, a long straight nose... On their heads are high conical lambskin caps; on the body there are shirts with a border at the hem and something like chain mail or leather jackets. On the legs there are trousers and large boots with knee-length boots and narrow toes... The boots are real, modern, the kind that simple Cossacks still wear. On the hands are mittens... Armament: short spear, bow and axe."
It should also be noted that Egyptian sources called the “peoples of the sea” Gita (Geta), and this name was one of the most common in the Scythian environment from ancient times; Thus, in the time of Herodotus, the “getae” lived on the Danube, the “fissa-getae” on the Volga and the “massa-getae” in Central Asia... Judging by the images, these ancient Scythian-getae were surprisingly similar to the medieval Cossacks. Is this why the Cossack leaders bore the title “hetman”?
The Russian Nikanorov Chronicle reports about the wars of the Scythians in Egypt; it mentions the campaigns against Egypt of the Russian ancestors, the brothers “Scythian and Zardan”. The "Zardana" from this message can be compared with the name of one of the "sea peoples" who attacked Egypt, namely the "Shardans"; these “shardans”, some time after the campaign against Egypt, invaded the island. Sardinia and gave it its name - Shardania, which later transformed into Sardinia. The mention of “Scythian and Zardan” makes it possible to attribute the message in the Nikanor Chronicle not to the Scythian campaigns of the 6th-7th centuries BC. but to the invasion of the "Sea Peoples", known from Egyptian sources, around 1200 BC. This is one of the earliest events in Russian history preserved in national historiography, an event that can be reliably dated.
