Scythia

Religion.

The religion of the Scyths was nature worship. Herodotus (iv. 59) gives a list of their gods, with the Greek deities corresponding, but we cannot tell what aspect of the Greek deity is in question. He says they chiefly reverence Tabiti (Hes tia), next Papaios and his wife Api (Zeus and Ge), then Oitosuros or Goitosuros (Apollo), and Argimpasa (Aphrodite Urania). These are common to all the Scythians, but Thamimasadas, or Thagimasadas (Poseidon) is peculiar to the royal Scyths'. They set up no images or altars or temples save to Ares only. To Ares they make a heap of faggots three stades square, with three sides steep and one inclined, and bring to it i so fresh loads of faggots every year. Upon the top is set up a sword which is the image of Ares; to this they sacrifice captives, pouring their blood over it. The account of the cult of Ares, for whom no Scythian name is given, appears to be an addition, and the mention of such masses of faggots suggests the wooded district of the agricultural Scyth ians, not the treeless steppe of the royal tribe. The Scythian pantheon is not distinctive. The Scyths had a method of divina tion with sticks, and the Enarees, who claimed to be soothsayers by grant of the goddess who had afflicted them, used another method by splitting bast fibres. They intervened in case of the king's falling sick, when it was assumed that some man had sworn by the king's hearth and broken his oath. If a man accused of this denied it, other diviners were called, and if these concurred, he was beheaded and his sons slain, and his goods given to the diviners. But if a majority of diviners decided against the ac cusers, the latter were set upon a wagon-load of brushwood and burned to death. The burial rites are the most fully described. Private persons were merely carried about among their friends, who held wakes in their honour, and then buried 4o days after. But the funerals of the kings were much more elaborate. They surrounded the dead man with everything in which he found pleasure during his life. The tombs of the kings were in the land of Gerrhus near the great bend of the Dnieper where the chief tumuli have been excavated. The body was embalmed and filled with aromatic herbs, and then brought to this region, passing through the lands of various tribes. The royal Scyths who f ol 'The names are read in various ways ; it is impossible to establish the correct forms.

lowed the body *ere accustomed to cut about their faces and arms, and each tribe that the cortege met upon its way had to join it and conform to this expression of grief. Arrived at the place of burial, the body was set in a square pit with spears mark ing out its sides and a roof of matting. Then one of the king's con cubines and his cupbearer, cook, groom, messenger and horses were strangled and laid by him, and round about offerings of all his goods and cups of gold—no silver or bronze. After this they raised a great mound, striving to make it as high as possible. A year later they strangled 5o youths of the dead man's servants (all Scyths born) and so of the best horses, stuffed them, and mounted them in a circle about the tomb.

Tombs.

The description is generally borne out by the evidence of the tombs opened in the Scythic area. None agrees on every point, but almost every detail finds a close parallel in some tomb or other. The chief divergence is in the presence of silver and copper objects, but making allowance for repeated robberies, the quantity of gold is stupendous and implies that the kings of Scythia controlled the inexhaustible stores of the Altai. To say that there was nothing but gold seems merely an exaggeration. Tombs to which the name Scythic is generally applied form a well defined class. They are preceded over the whole area by a much simpler form of burial marked by the practice of staining the bones with red ochre. The grave-goods were just a few rough

pots, implements of flint, stone or copper and rude ornaments of bone or copper. Yet that some were tombs of great chiefs is shown by the great size of the barrows heaped over them and the often elaborate burial chamber many contain. They have been referred to the Cimmerians, but this attribution is uncertain. The Scythic tombs can be roughly dated by the objects of Greek art that they contain. They seem to begin about the 7th century B.C., and to continue till the and century. A different style of tomb, re ferred to the Sarmatians, begins in the East in the 5th century and gradually spreads westward. The finest of the Scythic class were opened about the bend of the Dnieper, where we should put the land Gerrhus. Others are found to the south-west of the cen tral area, and in the governments of Kiev and Poltava we have many tombs with Scythic characteristics, but differences (e.g., the fewness of the horses) which make us think of the settled tribes under Scythic domination. Others occur in the flat north ern half of the Crimea, and even close to Kerch, where the famous Kul Oba seems to have held a Scythic chieftain who had adopted a veneer of Greek tastes but remained a barbarian at heart. East of the Maeotis, especially along the river Kuban, are many groups of harrows showing the same culture as those of Gerrhus but in a purer form. Very few of these barrows have come down to us unplundered, and we cannot find one complete example and take it as a type. Soon after they were heaped up, bef ore the beams supporting the central chamber had rotted, thieves made a prac tice of driving a mine into the mound straight to where the valu ables were deposited. It is perhaps by the collapse of such a mine and the crushing of the robber after he had thrown everything into confusion that the treasures of the Chertomlyk barrow, on the whole the most typical, were preserved to us. This was 6oft. high and I,Iooft. round; about it was a stone plinth, and it was approached by a kind of stone alley; a central shaft descended 35f t. 6in. below the surface of the earth, and from each corner of it at the bottom opened out side chambers ; beyond the north west chamber was a large irregular chamber. In the central pit all was in confusion, but here the king seems to have lain on a bier. His belongings, found piled up near the mine, included a gorytos (combined bow-case and quiver) and a sword sheath, each covered with plates of gold of Greek work, three swords with gold hilts, a hone with gold mounting, a whip, many other gold plates and a heap of arrow-heads. In the north-west chamber was a woman's skeleton, and she had her jewels, mostly of Greek work. She was attended by a man, and three other men were buried in the other chambers. They were supplied with simpler weapons and adornments, but even so their clothes had hundreds of stamp ed gold plates and strips of various shapes sewn on to them. By every skeleton were drinking vessels. A store of wine was con tained in six amphorae, and in two bronze cauldrons were mutton bones. The most wonderful object of all was a great two-handled vase standing 3f t. high and made to hold kumys. The greater part of its body is covered by a pattern of acanthus leaves, but on the shoulder is a frieze showing nomads breaking in wild mares, our chief authority for Scythian costume. To the west of the main shaft were three square pits with horses and their harness, and by them two pits with men's skeletons. In the heap itself was found an immense quantity of pieces of harness and what may be re mains of a funeral car. The Greek work would seem to date the burial to the 3rd century B.C.