Scythian note dump -- for essayel

[yakalskovich]

Overall impression: 'gold gold gold' approach to exhibitioning. Lots of shiny, NO organic finds. No wood, felt, leather, tattoos (not even pictures, if they don't want m-things), no fragments of bows or armour or trilobate arrowheads. Only shinies, and quotes from Herodotus on the wall. My dad says he gets a feeling some Ukrainian powers-that-be had written the non-Herodotus text, too, as it was clearly biased, attributing to the Scythians what was clearly Greek-made or Greek-influenced. Apparently, the Ukrainians tend to identify with the Scyths and consider them their ancestors.

Notes I took:

• Herodotus 4, 46. "... people live in wagons."
• Crimea: late Scythians lived in settlements and traded with the Greeks and Romans
• They had mille-fleur glass beads, looking a lot like later Venetian beads
• Scythians used Greek bronze helmets and adapted them to their use
• Herodtus in 4 71-73 claims Scythians mummified their dead on purpose
• "... any the king calls upon become his servants; bought slaves are not known..."
• Horses gelded to make them docile
• gold came from Kasakhstan and the Altai mountains; came in through a caravan route ending in Olbia
• small wagons four-wheeled, larger wagons six-wheeled; wagons completely covered with felt and constructed like houses
• from 4th ct. BC bow saddles & stirrups made from strips of leather
• they liked Egyptian beetle amulets
• tree of life, and holy animals on it
• the Scythian bow is very small and symmetric, not assymmetric like the Hunnish horse bow; arrows as long as the entire bow; size of bow might probably be inferred from size and shape of goryt
• wagon model: four massive equal-sized wheels, house part in the back with two storeys, windows in it and a porch roof over the twin doors in the back; covered part in the back and open part in front (storage? covered by canvas?) -- scan of drawing follows

Comments

[cracicotus.livejournal.com]

Mmmm... I still think of all that gold we saw, and can honestly say I still haven't seen anything that comes even close to the quality - not even my dear Romans ;)

[yakalskovich]

But there was more than gold in 'our' exhibition -- which went on to show that the Scythians did everything 'just so' on purpose, every angle, every curve, every little detail exactly as intended. Their combination of abstraction and precision is awesome, but you do need to see the textiles, felt, wood, leather, skin to understand how very intentionally shaped their not-very-material nomadic little world was. They could only have as many things as fitted into their wagons, so every thing they had was of the best.

It's the polar opposite to how most modern people live.-