Table Of Contentthe scythians
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SCYTHIANS
N O M A D WA R R I O R S O F T H E S T E P P E
BA R RY CUNLIFFE
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preface
Many years ago as a young undergraduate at Cambridge I came across a
brief reference, in a series of essays written by Gordon Childe, to horse-
men who had moved westwards from the Pontic steppe and had estab-
lished themselves in Hungary at the end of the Bronze Age. I was surprised to find that
none of my teachers at Cambridge had any interest in, or indeed much knowledge of,
the subject so I decided to follow it up, as far as I could, from published sources and to
make it my own. That which we discover for ourselves we cherish. So began a lifelong
fascination with the warrior nomads of the steppe.
Some years later, in the early 1970s, I managed to arrange a brief study trip to Hun-
gary, then still under Soviet control, the first of many visits to Eastern Europe to meet
colleagues and to establish academic links. It was in the National Museum in Buda-
pest, looking in awe at two great gold stags, brought to northern Hungary by horse-
men from the steppe, that the brilliance and energy of the Scythian world first really
struck home. Thereafter I have dogged the footsteps of the Scythians, in the Ukraine
and the Crimea, and across Central Asia as far as Mongolia. I have also made pilgrim-
ages to two of the world’s greatest collections of Scythian art, in the State Hermitage
Museum in St Petersburg and the Museum of Historical Treasures in Kiev. This book
is my homage to these remarkable people.
For the most part the story told here is presented as a straightforward narrative
but a small collection of end matter has been added: a list of Scythian kings, a brief
timeline, and a Gallery of Objects in which ten selected items, which best illustrate
Scythian life, are presented—chosen because they are frequently referred to in the
text. There is also a section offering a Guide to Further Reading for those who, I hope,
might wish to begin to dig deeper into the detail.
To an educated Greek, the Scythians were one of the four great peoples of the bar-
barian world. They were well known. Scythian archers were frequently depicted on
Attic Black-Figured pottery and historians like Herodotus recorded stories from their
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preface
history exploring, with undisguised delight, their unusual behaviour and beliefs.
Nowadays Scythians are seldom in our consciousness. They are hardly represented
in our museum collections and only rarely are they the subject of temporary exhibi-
tions. Recently, in 2017, the British Museum has hosted a brilliant exhibition, Scythian
Warriors of Ancient Siberia, from the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg. Before
that one has to go back to the Frozen Tombs exhibition of 1978. America has been
rather better served but even so the wonders of Scythian culture are seldom seen in
the West.
There are many reasons for this. The difficulty and expense of mounting inter-
national displays must rank large. But there are also cultural reasons. The Scyth-
ians were largely nomads, constantly on the move and frequently covering large
distances. They left no cities or monumental architecture. For most people in the
world today, leading sedentary, urban lives, nomadism is difficult to comprehend; it
is much easier to empathize with Greeks and Romans, or even Egyptians or Aztecs.
The Scythians are ‘other’, alien and therefore a little unnerving—best left on the mar-
gin where they belong. Yet to the Greeks it was just this that made them so fascinat-
ing. And rightly so. I hope that this book will go some way in making the world of the
Scythian nomads a little more accessible and understandable and will encourage at
least some readers to explore for themselves the wonders of Scythian culture and the
breathtaking steppe landscape in which they lived.
Barry Cunliffe
Oxford
April 2018
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contents
1 Discovering the Scythians 1
2 The Scythians as Others saw Them 29
3 Landscapes with People 61
4 Enter the Predatory Nomads 85
5 The Rise of the Pontic Steppe Scythians: 700–200 Bc 111
6 Crossing the Carpathians 147
7 Scythians in Central Asia: 700–200 Bc 169
8 Bodies Clothed in Skins 199
9 Bending the Bow 229
10 Of Gods, Beliefs, and Art 265
11 The Way of Death 291
12 Scythians in the Longue Durée 311
Gallery of Objects 329
Timeline 353
Kings and Dynasties 357
Further Reading 359
Illustration Sources 385
Index 391
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contents
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1
DISCOVERING
THE SCYTHIANS
In April 1698 a tall young man, 26 years old, untidily dressed and with hands
scratched and scarred through hard work, decided to take time off from studying
shipbuilding in the Deptford and Greenwich yards on the Thames to visit Oxford
with a small group of friends. The party stayed in the Golden Cross Inn in Cornmar-
ket, where they evidently had a convivial evening, and the next morning set out to
visit the Ashmolean Museum, then in Broad Street. The museum had been opened
fifteen years earlier, under the patronage of Elias Ashmole, to house his ‘cabinet of
curiosities’ inherited from the collector John Tradescant. The visit to the museum
was brief but the group had attracted notice and by the time they left to cross the
road to visit Trinity College chapel a large crowd had gathered. Irritated by the atten-
tion the young man decided to return to London to immerse himself once more in
the intricacies of shipbuilding. He was Peter Alexeyevich, Tzar of Russia, later to be
known as Peter the Great.
Peter was an intellectual and a man of action. He had realized that for his country
to grow in the modern world it would have to become a great sea power. Since its few
ports on the icebound White Sea were far from adequate he set his heart on estab-
lishing a navy on the Black Sea—an ambition which meant confronting the Otto-
mans, who then controlled the region. Later in his reign he was to turn his attention
to the Baltic and the Caspian Sea, involving Russia in wars with Sweden and Persia. It
was his early realization of the importance of sea power that led him to take a deep
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