Which Scythians did Alexander Blok write about?
Civilizations of the Ancient World
Around 750 BC, arose on the Black Sea coast the first colonies of the Ionian metropolitan cities. Very soon Pont Aksinskiy (“inhospitable”) changed his epithet to Euxinskiy – “hospitable.”
Chalice from Gaiman's grave - one from Scythian burial mounds in Zaporozhye
The literary consequence of the Greek colonization of the Black Sea was the appearance of the first historical and ethnographic description of the northern part of the ecumene, which belonged to Herodotus. For more than ten years he was possessed by “wanderlust.” During this time, he traveled to almost all the countries of Western Asia and visited the Northern Black Sea region.
Herodotus observed and studied the customs and morals of foreign peoples without a shadow of arrogance, with the inexhaustible interest of a true researcher, “so that past events do not fall into oblivion over time and the great and amazing deeds of both Hellenes and barbarians do not remain in obscurity,” - for that Plutarch ranked him among the “filovars” - lovers of foreign things, despised by educated people of that time.
Unfortunately, the original Slavic lands remained completely unknown to the “father of history.” The regions beyond the Danube, he writes, “are apparently uninhabited and limitless.” He knows only one people living north of the Danube, namely the Siginnov - a nomadic Iranian-speaking tribe. During the time of Herodotus, the Siginns occupied territory along almost the entire steppe left bank of the Danube; in the west, their lands extended to the possessions of the Adriatic Veneti. From this we can conclude that in the 5th century BC. e. areas of Slavic settlement were still to the north of the almost continuous mountain range - Ore Mountains, Sudeten Mountains, Tatras, Beskids and Carpathians - stretching across Central and Eastern Europe from west to east. Herodotus managed to collect much more information about Scythia and the Scythians.
The Scythians, who supplanted in the 8th century BC. e. from the Northern Black Sea region, the semi-legendary Cimmerians, aroused keen interest among the Greeks because of their proximity to the Greek colonies in the Crimea, which supplied Athens and other Hellenic city-states with grain. Aristotle he even reproached the Athenians for spending whole days in the square, listening to magical tales and stories of people returning from Borysthenes (Dnieper). The Scythians were known as a barbarically brave and cruel people: they skinned their dead enemies and drank wine from their skulls. They fought both on foot and on horseback. Scythian archers were especially famous, whose arrows were coated with poison. In depicting the way of life of the Scythians, ancient writers rarely managed to avoid tendentiousness: some painted them as cannibals who devoured their own children, while others, on the contrary, extolled the purity and unspoiled Scythian morals and reproached their compatriots for corrupting these innocent children of nature by introducing them to to the achievements of Hellenic civilization.
In addition to personal preferences, which forced Greek writers to highlight certain features of Scythian morals, a truthful portrayal of the Scythians was hampered by one purely objective difficulty. The fact is that the Greeks constantly confused the Scythians, who belonged to Iranian-speaking peoples, with other peoples of the Northern Black Sea region. Thus, Hippocrates, in his treatise “On the Air, Waters and Terrains,” under the name of the Scythians, described obvious Mongoloids: “The Scythians resemble only themselves: their skin color is yellow; the body is plump and fleshy, they are beardless, which makes their men like women.”
Alexander Blok, in accordance with the “Mongolian” theory of the origin of the Scythians, popular in the late 19th – early 20th centuries, endowed them with “slanting eyes” in his famous poem, which in reality they never had.
Herodotus himself found it difficult to say anything definite about the prevailing population in “Scythia”. “The number of Scythians,” he writes, “I could not find out with accuracy, but I heard two different opinions: according to one, there are a lot of them, according to the other, the Scythians themselves are few, and besides them they live ( in Scythia - S.Ts.) and other peoples". Therefore, Herodotus calls Scythians either all the inhabitants of the Black Sea steppes, or only one people who dominates all others. When describing the way of life of the Scythians, the historian also contradicts himself. His characterization of the Scythians as a poor nomadic people, having neither cities nor fortifications, but living in carts and eating livestock products - meat, mare's milk and cottage cheese, is immediately destroyed by the story of Scythian plowmen selling bread.
This contradiction stemmed from the fact that ancient writers had a poor understanding of the political and social structure of the steppe people. The Scythian state, which was a confederation of Scythian clans proper, was structured on the model of all other nomadic empires, when one relatively small horde dominated in numerical terms over the alien nomadic hordes and the settled population.
According to Herodotus, the main Scythian horde were the “royal Scythians” - their self-name was “Skoloty”, whom the historian calls the most valiant and most numerous. They considered all other Scythians to be slaves under their control. The Scythian kings dressed with truly barbaric pomp. On the clothes of one such ruler from the so-called Kul-Ob grave near Kerch, 266 gold plaques with a total weight of up to one and a half kilograms were sewn. The Skolos roamed in Northern Tavria. To the east, next to them, lived another horde, called Scythian nomads by Herodotus. Both of these hordes constituted the actual Scythian population of the Northern Black Sea region.
Academician B.A. Rybakov in his writings persistently identified the Scythians-Skolots with the Proto-Slavs. He used the word as his main argument chipped in meaning illegitimate son, referring to one story from ancient Russian epics, which tells about the birth of Ilya Muromets’s son from a heroic woman from the steppe glade. This boy, named Sokolnik (or Podsokolnik), was teased by his peers as “knocked down.” The offenders were inhabitants of the steppe, therefore, Rybakov concluded, “chipped off” in their mouths is the oldest name for the Slavs, i.e. Herodotus' Scythians It is surprising that a respected scientist, carried away by his bold hypothesis, did not bother to look at least in Dahl’s dictionary, where the word chipped in its mentioned meaning referred to verbs to knock together, to knock together. Thus, “knocked down son”, “knocked down”, “knocked down” means the same thing as the later expression “b... son”, i.e. a “seven-year-old” child, conceived by a wandering mother from an unknown father (by analogy with a “knitted dress” - clothing sewn from several scraps of fabric). Scythians-chipped in fact turn out to have absolutely nothing to do with it.
Scythia did not extend very far to the north (the Dnieper rapids were not known to Herodotus), covering a rather narrow steppe strip of the Northern Black Sea region at that time. But like any other steppe inhabitants, the Scythians often went on military raids against their close and distant neighbors. Judging by archaeological finds, they reached the Oder and Elbe basins in the west, destroying Slavic settlements along the way. Territory Lusatian culture was subjected to their invasions from the end of the 6th century BC. Archaeologists have discovered characteristic Scythian arrowheads stuck in the outer ramparts of Lusatian fortifications. Some of the settlements dating back to this time contain traces of fires or destruction, such as the settlement of Vitsin in the Zelenogur region of the Czech Republic, where, among other things, the skeletons of women and children who died during one of the Scythian raids were found. At the same time, the unique and elegant “animal style” of Scythian art found many admirers among Slavic men and women. Numerous Scythian decorations at the sites of Lusatian settlements indicate constant trade relations between the Slavs and the Scythian world of the Northern Black Sea region.
Trade was most likely carried out through intermediaries, since between the Slavs and Scythians wedged the tribes of the Alizons and “Scythian farmers” known to Herodotus, who lived somewhere along the Bug. Probably these were some Iranian-speaking peoples subjugated by the Scythians. Further to the north extended the lands of the Neuroi, behind which, according to Herodotus, “there is already a deserted desert.” The historian complains that it is impossible to get there because of snowstorms and blizzards: “The ground and air there are full of feathers, and this is what interferes with vision.” Herodotus talks about the Neuroi themselves from hearsay and very sparingly - that their customs are “Scythian”, and they themselves are sorcerers: “each Neuroi turns into a wolf for a few days every year, and then again takes on human form.” However, Herodotus adds that he does not believe this, and, of course, he is right. Probably, in this case, information reached him in a highly distorted form about some kind of magical rite or, perhaps, the custom of the Neuros during the annual religious holiday of dressing in wolf skins.
Suggestions have been made about the Slavic affiliation of the Neuros, since legends about werewolf-wolves were later extremely widespread in Ukraine. However, this is unlikely. In ancient poetry there is a short line with an expressive description of the neuro: “the neuro-adversary, who dressed the horse in armor.” We agree that a neuroses sitting on an armored horse bears little resemblance to the ancient Slav as ancient sources and archeology portray him as. But it is known that the Celts were skilled metallurgists and blacksmiths; the cult of the horse was extremely popular among them. Therefore, it is more natural to assume the Celtic affiliation of the Herodotus Neuroi, linking their name with the name of the Celtic tribe of Nervii (Nervii).
This is Scythia and the surrounding lands according to Herodotus. In the classical era of Greece, when the ancient literary tradition took shape and took shape, the Scythians were the most powerful and, most importantly, the most famous people of barbarian Europe to the Greeks. Therefore, subsequently the name of Scythia and Scythians was used by ancient and medieval writers as a traditional name for the Northern Black Sea region and the inhabitants of the south of our country, and sometimes for all of Russia and Russians. Nestor already wrote about this: the Uluchi and Tivertsy “travelled along the Dniester, along the Bug and along the Dnieper to the very sea; these are their cities to this day; Previously, this land was called by the Greeks Velikaya Skuf.” In the 10th century, Leo the Deacon, in his description of the war of Prince Svyatoslav with the Bulgarians and the Byzantine Emperor John Tzimiskes, called the Rus by their own name - 24 times, but the Scythians - 63 times, the Tauro-Scythians - 21 and the Taurians - 9 times, without mentioning the name of the Slavs at all. *
Legends about the Scythians
Herodotus gives two different legends about the origin of the Scythians. According to one (book IV, chapters 5 - 7), this youngest of all tribes descended from Targitai, the son of Zeus and the daughter of the river god Borysthenes. He had three sons: Lipoksai, Arpoksai and Kolaksai, of whom, as always in fairy tales, the youngest eventually became king. From each of them various Scythian tribes allegedly originate. But a few chapters later, the historian cites the stories of the Scythians themselves (chap. 8 - 10): as if Hercules, driving the bulls of King Geryon, arrived in places later inhabited by the Scythians, and here he found in a cave a maiden of a serpentine appearance who had captured his horses. She promised to return them to Hercules only if he agreed to cohabit with her. And from Hercules she had three sons: Agathyrs, Gelon and Scythian. And of them, again according to the fairy tale law, only the youngest turned out to be worthy of his great father, and from him all the Scythian kings descended.+
V. Klinger in his excellent study “Fairy-tale motifs in the history of Herodotus” (Kiev. Univ. Izv. 1902, No. 11, pp. 103-109) with a detailed analysis of this second legend proved its closeness to the tales of ancient and modern peoples, and F. Mishchenko in the article “On the legends of the royal Scythians in Herodotus” (Journal of Min. Nar. Prosv. 1886, Jan., 39-43) correctly contrasted the first Scythian legend with purely native names with the Greek origin of the second with Hercules (chap. 8 - 10 ), and although the first explains the origin of all Scythians, and the second, as F. Mishchenko noted (p. 43), “concerns only the Scythian rulers, not at all referring to those Scythian peoples who were revered as slaves,” it is clear that in the end one excludes the other, and therefore it is appropriate to raise the question of what made Herodotus place a second one after the first legend.
To correctly assess its main meaning, in my opinion, we must start from the image of Hercules. The desire to emphasize their connection with the nobles could make him the ancestor of the Scythians. After all, no matter what Yu. Beloch objects (History of Greece. Vol. I, p. 98, translated by M. Gershenzon), Hercules c'est la personificftion de la race dorienne (Dictionary of Duremberg and Salio, Vol. III, p. 80 ), but the connection between the nobles and the Greek colonization of Scythia is too weak (Yu. Kulakovsky. The Past of Taurida. Kiev, 1914, p. 6) for Herodotus to especially emphasize it, although in his native Halicarnassus he could hear this interpretation, flattering for the pride of the nobles . But from the complex appearance of Hercules one can choose other features, and here, first of all, one recalls the desire of the ancients to present Hercules as a hero, who everywhere replaced the previous barbarism with more cultural and human conditions of life. Thus, Dionysius of Halicarnassus says about him (A.R. I 41): “if where there was a painful dominion, deplorable for the subordinates, or a city that boasted and insulted its neighbors, or settlements of people with a rude way of life and lawless extermination of foreigners, Hercules eliminated this, establishing a legal royal power, consistent with the morality of the way of government and life, benevolent morals that meet the requirements of community life.” Therefore, Horace (Odes III, Z.9) sets Hercules as an example to Augustus, as the universal instiller of culture and morality, and Lucretius glorified Hercules, along with Ceres and Dionysus, as the liberator of humanity from the original savagery.
The legend makes Hercules marry a serpentine maiden. The connection of the snake with the earth is well known (W. Klinger. Animal in ancient and modern superstition. Kyiv, 1911, pp. 155-175), thus, this marriage, according to fairy-tale symbolism, should mark the victory of the culture brought in the person of Hercules by the Greeks over the primary native savagery; it portrays the Greeks as noble organizers of barbaric Scythia. At the same time, this legend also reveals another intention: it is known how diligently the ancient historiographers of purely political types tried to emphasize the tribal kinship of the Italians with Greece. This was served by the entire legend about the arrival of Aeneas in Italy from Troy, which dates back to Stesichorus and Hellanicus, but then received special development under the influence of political considerations.
If this legend about the Trojan origin of Rome connected Greece with internal ties to the new state formation in the West, then Herodotus’ legend about Hercules, the father of the Scythian kings, served the same purpose, bringing a large eastern region under a common origin with the Greeks. At the same time, such legends were supposed to greatly facilitate the work of Greek colonization in Scythia, reconciling the natives with the newcomers and eliminating at least partially those frictions and discontent of the native population regarding the penetration of everything Greek into local life, which led, for example, to the death of someone who was too friendly with the Greeks Scythian king Skila (Herodotus. IV ch., 78-80).
Photos of Crimean nature
Herodotus gives two legends at once regarding the origin of the Scythians. The first belongs to the Black Sea Hellenes. According to him, the Scythian tribe arose from the love affair of Hercules with a half-maiden, half-snake, who lived in their then uninhabited country. The second legend goes back to the Scythians themselves and traces their family back to the mythical ancestor, King Targitai and the daughter of the Borysthenes (Dnieper) river. From their marriage three sons were born - Lipoksai, Arpoksai and Kolaksai. Both of these versions place the ancestral home of the Scythians in the European part of Russia, which Herodotus does not really trust.
“The Father of History” writes: “There is a third legend (I myself trust it most of all). It goes like this. The nomadic tribes of the Scythians lived in Asia. When the Massagetae ousted them from there by military force, the Scythians crossed the Araks and arrived in the Cimmerian land (the country now inhabited by the Scythians is said to have belonged to the Cimmerians since ancient times). As the Scythians approached, the Cimmerians began to hold advice on what to do in the face of a large enemy army. And so at the council, opinions were divided. Although both sides stubbornly stood their ground, the kings’ proposal won. The people were in favor of retreat, considering it unnecessary to fight so many enemies. The kings, on the contrary, considered it necessary to stubbornly defend their native land from invaders. So, the people did not heed the advice of the kings, and the kings did not want to submit to the people. The people decided to leave their homeland and give their land to the invaders without a fight; The kings, on the contrary, preferred to die in their native land rather than flee with their people. After all, the kings understood what great happiness they had experienced in their native land and what troubles awaited the exiles deprived of their homeland. Having made this decision, the Cimmerians divided into two equal parts and began to fight among themselves. The Cimmerian people buried all those who fell in the fratricidal war near the Tiras River (the grave of the kings can still be seen there to this day). After this, the Cimmerians left their land, and the Scythians who arrived took possession of the deserted country” (Herodotus; IV, 11). This story emphasizes the independence of the Scythians from the previous Cimmerian culture. The civil war between two groups of Cimmerians takes place in Transnistria (Tiras is the Dniester), and the Scythians settle in the “deserted” spaces of the Dnieper and Azov regions. We agree that this, already purely historical, version raises a number of questions. The main one, of course, is the question of the relationship that has developed between the two peoples who met.
We have no reason not to trust either the legendary information of the Scythians and Hellenes, or the historical version of Herodotus. On the contrary, we are convinced that all three stories are based on truthful foundations and therefore contain a layer of truth. We emphasize that it is a whole layer, and not grains, as most modern researchers believe. Another thing is that each of these stories should be considered from a certain angle, to find that single “thread” that will help unravel the tangle of seeming contradictions. This is the principle of our approach to studying the problem of the origin of the Scythians.
Herodotus, being a historian, preferred the version that featured specific place names and famous historical peoples. But it should be linked with two other legends. Supporters of the Asian ancestral homeland turn a blind eye to them and do it completely in vain.
Let us first turn to the Hellenic myth about the origin of the Scythians. The Pontic (that is, living on the shores of the Black Sea) Greeks said that Hercules, driving the bulls of Geryon, arrived in a then uninhabited land, which was later occupied by the Scythians. “There he was caught by bad weather and cold. Wrapping himself in a pig's skin, he fell asleep, and at that time his draft horses (he let them graze) miraculously disappeared. Having awakened, Hercules went throughout the country in search of horses and finally arrived in a land called Hylea. There, in a cave, he found a certain creature of mixed nature - a half-maiden and half-snake. The upper part of her body from the buttocks was female, and the lower part was snakelike. Seeing her, Hercules asked in surprise if she had seen his lost horses. In response, the snake woman said that she had the horses, but she would not give them up until Hercules entered into a love affair with her. Then Hercules, for the sake of such a reward, united with this woman. However, she hesitated to give up the horses, wanting to keep Hercules with her as long as possible, and he would gladly leave with the horses. Finally, the woman gave up the horses with the words: “I kept these horses that came to me for you; You have now paid a ransom for them. After all, I have three sons from you. Tell me, what should I do with them when they grow up? Should I leave them here (after all, I alone own this country) or send them to you?” That's what she asked. Hercules answered this: “When you see that your sons have matured, then it is best for you to do this: see which of them can pull my bow like this and gird himself with this belt, as I show you, let him live here. Anyone who does not follow my instructions will be sent to a foreign land. If you do this, then you yourself will be satisfied and fulfill my wish.” With these words, Hercules pulled one of his bows (until then, Hercules had carried two bows). Then, having shown how to gird himself, he handed over the bow and belt (a golden cup hung at the end of the belt clasp) and left. When the children grew up, the mother gave them names. She named one Agathirs, the other Gelon, and the younger Scythian. Two sons, Agathyrs and Gelon, could not cope with the task, and their mother expelled them from the country. The youngest, Skif, managed to complete the task and remained in the country. From this Scythian, the son of Hercules, all the Scythian kings descended. And in memory of that golden cup, to this day the Scythians wear cups on their belts (this is what the mother did for the benefit of Scythians)” (Herodotus. History IV, 8-11).
The view of the Greeks is the opinion of an outside observer; foreigners have no motive to embellish the history of another people. That is why their opinion deserves special attention. Firstly, the Greek myth claims that the Scythians were autochthonous inhabitants of their land, and it covered not only the steppe regions, but the areas to the north of them, where “bad weather and cold” reigned. This territory, according to Hellenic myth, was uninhabited before the Scythians arrived there. Consequently, the Greeks did not distinguish them from the first inhabitants of the Russian Plain.
Now about the image of the Scythian queen. The figure of the Cosmic Serpent is perhaps the most mysterious in world mythology. Scientists are completely unclear about its origin and intermediate stages of evolution. Meanwhile, an ingenious solution to this mythological problem was proposed by L. M. Alekseeva in the book “Aurora Borealis in the Mythology of the Slavs. The theme of the snake and the snake fighter." Observing auroras from the ground can give rise to a variety of figurative associations. One or more luminous arcs of the aurora create the impression of a huge (often stretching from horizon to horizon) luminous "fire snake". These arcs often turn into folded stripes, the wavy twists of which very similarly reproduce the movements of the snake. The homeland of the Serpent, therefore, is the sky of northern latitudes. His cult originated among the northern peoples, which included the ancestors of the Scythians. Their special reverence for the Cosmic Serpent explains such an unusual image of the ancestor of the Scythians. The archaic appearance of the deity testifies to the rootedness in the Scythian environment of the most ancient northern traditions, dating back to Neolithic times.
A Greek inscription from the northern Black Sea region gives a slightly different version of the same Hellenic myth. It tells that Hercules, having come to Scythia, defeats Arax (the deity of the river of the same name, most likely the Volga) in the fight and marries his daughter Echidna. From this marriage Agafirs and Skif are born. This is a later version of the myth, dating back to the time when one of the sons of Hercules - Gelon - left his homeland. In addition, the Scythian queen now has a name and a husband. Araksay is a “speaking” name. It is two-part, its second part (“ksay”) is a Greek reproduction of the Sanskrit word “lord, lord, king” and denotes the title of a leader. The first one - Ara - carries the main semantic meaning, this is the name of the ruler. Ara-xai, thus, means “king Ar” or “Aryan-king” - the ruler of the Aryan people who lived in the country of Echidna.
Our compatriot, sociologist and public figure Lev Ivanovich Mechnikov (1838–1888) is known as the author of the very popular book “Civilization and the Great Historical Rivers” in his time. Mechnikov drew attention to the fact that the birth of the most ancient civilizations took place in the basins of large rivers. The Yellow River and Yangtze irrigate the area of Chinese civilization, Indian (or Vedic) culture was localized mainly in the Indus and Ganges basin, Sumerian arose on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates, and Egyptian around the Nile. According to the researcher, these rivers imposed on the inhabitants living on their banks “a kind of yoke of historical necessity.” Due to the very physical and geographical conditions, the people of these places found themselves firmly tied to civilization and progress. But Mechnikov, surveying distant countries, lost sight of his native borders, the lands of the Russian Plain. The Vedas, the sacred books of the Aryans, tell us that in ancient times their tribes lived on the banks of the Rasa River, which modern researchers identify with the Volga (its ancient name is Ra). A sharp cold snap forced the Aryans to migrate to warmer lands. They dispersed to various countries, but even there they remembered their northern ancestral home.
The Volga originates on the Valdai Hills and receives about 200 tributaries. The left tributaries are more numerous and have more water than the right ones. The Volga is one of the largest rivers in the world and the largest in Europe. The river system of the Volga basin includes 151 thousand watercourses (rivers, streams and temporary watercourses) with a total length of 574 thousand km. Moreover, the number of rivers appearing on this list is 7 thousand! Playing on this unique fact, Alexander Tvardovsky dedicated a poem to our great river:
Seven thousand rivers
In no way equal:
And from the rushing mountains there is a stormy rush,
And between the fields in smooth bends
Flowing into the distance - seven thousand rivers
She collected from all over -
Big and small - up to one,
What from Valdai to the Urals
They furrowed the globe.
And in that intertwined kinship,
One family involved,
Like a branched tree
We settled down on the ground.
The poet compares the system of tributaries of the Volga with the giant crown of a powerful tree, but the association with the network of capillaries feeding the Russian Plain also comes to mind. And if the Volga is inferior in length to the Nile, Yangtze and Yellow River, then in terms of branching it surpasses other great historical rivers. In this sense, the Aryan civilization should be called the most ancient river culture.
The influence of the ancient Aryans on the Scythian civilization will be discussed repeatedly in the future. But it cannot be emphasized enough that, like the Aryans, the Scythians linked their origins with the rivers of the Russian Plain. They did not forget those sacred shores that their ancestors had once left. Settlements collapse, but rivers are eternal. That is why the Scythian legend calls the mother of Targitai the daughter of the Dnieper, and Hercules, in order to establish himself in a new territory, needed to defeat the river god Araxes. The Roman historian of the turn of our era, Pompey Trog, begins the history of the Scythians with the mythical king Tanai, whose name is associated with the name of the Tanais (Don) river, as well as with related names of the water element and its god among the Indo-Europeans. It is also noteworthy that the Russian “Tale of Bygone Years” descends from Kiya, the ferryman, that is, the “master” of rivers or a river deity. Thus, the legends of origin already highlight the cultural kinship of the Aryans, Scythians and Russians and characterize them as autochthons of the Russian Plain.
The Roman legend about the birth of the Scythian people has also reached us. It is of more recent origin than those discussed earlier. The first-century Roman poet Valerius Flaccus recorded that the god Jupiter took as his wife Hora, a nymph with “a half-beast body and two snakes,” and from their union a son was born, Colax, who can naturally be identified with Herodotus’ Colaxai, the son of Targitai. True, now Colax is the only son of his parents. In addition, the mother of Colax is named neither the daughter of the Dnieper Boristhenes, nor Echidna, but some unknown nymph Horus. But here it’s time to remember that Echidna has Gorgon sisters, or, in the Greek reading, “born Mountains.” They live on the banks of the Ocean River. There are three gorgons in total, their names are Stheno, Euryale and Medusa. According to ancient texts, they are distinguished by their terrible appearance, being winged, covered with scales, with snakes instead of hair, with fangs, with a gaze that turns all living things into stone. These characteristic properties of their portrait fit well with the description left by the Roman poet. The Gorgons personify chthonic forces, they are the most ancient deities, and their original image was not at all the same as the Greeks and Romans described them. Stheno and Euryale are the older sisters, they are immortal, the younger Medusa is mortal. Of the two immortal sisters, remembering Herodotus’ story, we will choose Stheno for the role of Mountain, believing that in his story Valerius Flaccus used a shortened version of the name Borysthenes.
But these are not all the surprises of Flacco's history. He also has an interesting detail that Colax dies fighting the unknown hero Apr. The names of characters in myths and legends are the most valuable information that should be studied comprehensively. Especially if it carries an element of novelty. To begin with, let us note that the name of the hero is present in the full name of the Dnieper - Dan-apra (in Iranian - Danapris). Danapr means "river Apra" (in Sanskrit danu - river). Thus, Apr is the name of the ruler who guarded the banks of the Dnieper. It must be assumed that, as the owner of the river, he was the husband or father of Stheno (Borysthenes). It’s still amazing how individual fragments of the Flacco legend harmoniously combined into a complete mosaic.
But what does the name "Apr" mean? After all, if it is connected with one of the largest rivers of the Russian Plain, then the status of the hero who wore it must be outstanding. And this is true, but to show this clearly and conclusively, we will have to turn to Russian mythology.
The Christian author from the times of Kievan Rus, Saint Gregory (the Theologian), in his essay “The Lay of Idols,” writes that the beginning of our religious ideas should be considered the belief in ghouls and beregins. We know more about both of them from works of art. Ghouls (or vampires) in modern tradition are fiends of evil, personifications of destructive forces. Vampires suck blood from humans and eat the dead. Beregini are also associated with the world of the dead. These are mermaids, whom folklore and fiction of the 19th century represent as malicious and treacherous drowned women. In this regard, a completely legitimate question arises: were the first heroes of the religious beliefs of our distant ancestors really the bearers of dark principles?
Of course no. One of the laws of mythology says that the more ancient the deity, the more negative traits are involved in it. Generations of gods changed, the old ones were replaced by younger and more attractive ones, new heroes of human fantasies. It was at this very moment that shadows were cast on the former idols and labels were hung. They turned into villains, enemies of the human race. This happened with the goblins, the water goblins, the bannik, the brownie, Baba Yaga and Koshchei the Immortal. But it should be remembered that initially their images did not have an ethical “coloring”. The division of gods into good and evil happened quite late. For the most ancient stage of paganism, this is generally unacceptable. The latest literature conveys images of ghouls and mermaids not in their original form, but in a deliberately distorted form. It is extremely wrong to imagine our distant ancestors as “people of the moonlight” (V.V. Rozanov), tuned to perceive, first of all, the dark side of reality. We need to understand in more detail the heroes of their fantasies, delve into the inner world of ancient man and ultimately pay tribute to their poetic views.
The name “ghoul” is at first glance mysterious and unclear. But in Russian, in some cases, adding the letter “u” to a word gives it a negative connotation. For example, God is wretched (without God). So isn’t the word “ghoul” a negation of a certain “wheatgrass”? Let’s take a look at the “Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language” by Vladimir Ivanovich Dahl. Pyrin, pyran, pyr, pyrka - all this is a designation of an object (organ) that pierces. Parents of Russian boys still call their son’s little “branch” pirin. Pyry, due to its symbolic meaning, personifies the forces of fertility and the triumph of life on earth. Accordingly, the ghoul, acting as its antipode, is depicted as a dead man (figuratively, without a ghoul), attacking people and animals.
The memory of Pyra has been erased among our people, but the gods are truly immortal. It’s just that for some time now they began to call him Perun. Yes, yes, the god of thunder and lightning, the patron of the princely squad, the god Perun, known to everyone since school years, is our dear, home-grown god. Perun is an aged Pyr. At first he was thought of as a deity of fertility, only later, when characterizing him, they began to highlight and emphasize the individual functions of the thunderer. But here, too, his role is essentially reduced to peppering the earth with lightning arrows. In an even later incarnation, Pyr-Perun began to appear as a horseman armed with a spear.
The hero Apr from the Flacco legend personifies Perun. The victory of Apra-Perun over Kolaks emphasizes that the Scythians who came to the Dnieper region met militarily strong local tribes there. And, more importantly, in ethnic terms these were the ancestors of the Russians - the guardians of the cult of Pyra-Perun.
To complete the set of myths about the origin of the Scythians, we should also mention the version of the Greek historian Diodorus, who also lived at the turn of our era, more than 400 years after Herodotus. The Scythians, says Diodorus, “at first occupied an insignificant region, but subsequently, gradually strengthened by their courage and military strength, conquered a vast territory and gained great glory and dominion for their tribe. At first they lived in small numbers near the Araks River and were despised for their ignominy; but even in ancient times, under the control of one warlike king distinguished by his strategic abilities, they acquired a country for themselves in the Caucasus Mountains, and in the lowlands - the coast of the Ocean and the Meotian Lake (Sea of Azov. - A.A.) and other areas to the Tanais River.
Subsequently, according to Scythian legends, a maiden born of the earth appeared among them, whose upper body to the waist was female, and the lower part of a snake. Zeus, having copulated with her, produced a son named Scythian, who, having surpassed all his predecessors in glory, called the people Scythians after his own name. Among the descendants of this king were two brothers distinguished for their valor; one of them was called Pal, and the other Nap. When they accomplished glorious deeds and divided the kingdom among themselves, the nations were called by the name of each of them: one fell, and the other napa..."
Diodorus's story is general in nature, which allows us to summarize our comparison of different legends (their data is summarized in a table for convenience). All versions of the origin of the Scythians connect them with the Russian Plain. Expanding their area of influence, they come to the Caucasus and Asia. Herodotus's report that the Scythians, displaced by the Massagetae, crossed the Araxes and met the Cimmerians, dates back to the time of their return to the Russian Plain, the homeland of their ancestors.
Diodorus emphasizes that initially the Scythians were a small tribe. This is also supported by the fact that Scythian is only one of the sons of Hercules, and therefore, he inherited only part of the tribal lands. Colax loses the battle to Apr, which means that in their youth the Scythian warriors were not yet considered the strongest even in their native lands. Diodorus dates the legend of the birth of Scythian from Zmeedeva to the time when the Scythians had already settled in the Caucasus and owned the southern Russian steppes. This time jump, so to speak, is an artistic device necessary in order to naturally insert a message about the split that occurred within the Scythians.
The descendants of Scythian Pal and Nap gave names to two peoples - “Paleys” and “Naps”, but historians do not know such “peoples”. Diodorus also does not add anything about them, but the Roman encyclopedist Pliny the Elder, listing the nomadic tribes of Central Asia in his “Natural History”, casually remarks: “Here the Palaeans once exterminated the Napaeans.” The place of conflict between the brothers, therefore, is not the southern Russian lands, but the Trans-Volga expanses of the Asian steppes. Translated from Sanskrit, Pal means “lord, king,” and Nap means “descendant, son, grandson.” Therefore, we are most likely talking about an attempt by some part of the Scythians from among the “young and nimble” to separate its eastern (Asian) part from the Scythian empire (Great Scythia). The royal Scythians suppressed the rebellion, restoring the integrity of the state. Thus, the Napei are a “branch” of the Scythians, and not some other people, which people subsequently forgot about.
Purely psychologically, the conflict between “grandfathers” and “grandsons” in Scythian society is perfectly characterized by a small “short story” by Herodotus (IV, 1, 3,4):
“Following the Cimmerians, they (Scythians. - A. A.) penetrated Asia and crushed the power of the Medes (before the arrival of the Scythians, Asia was ruled by the Medes). When, after a 28-year absence, the Scythians returned to their country after so long, a disaster awaited them, no less than the war with the Medes: they met a strong enemy army there. After all, the wives of the Scythians, due to the long absence of their husbands, entered into relationships with slaves.
From these slaves and Scythian wives the younger generation grew up. Having learned their origin, the young men began to resist the Scythians when they returned from Media. First of all, they fenced off their land by digging a wide ditch from the Taurian Mountains to the widest part of Lake Maeotia. When the Scythians then tried to cross the lake, young slaves came out to meet them and began to fight with them. Many battles took place, but the Scythians could not defeat their opponents; then one of them said this: “What are we doing, Scythian warriors? We are fighting our own slaves! After all, when they kill us, we weaken; if we kill them, then from now on we will have fewer slaves. Therefore, as I think, we need to leave the spears and bows, let everyone with his whip go at them. After all, as long as they saw us armed, they considered themselves equal to us, that is, freeborn. If they see us with a whip instead of a weapon, they will understand that they are our slaves, and, having recognized this, they will no longer dare to resist.”
Hearing these words, the Scythians immediately followed his advice. The slaves, frightened by this, forgot about the battles and fled. So, the Scythians were the rulers of Asia; then, after they were expelled by the Medes, they returned to their native country in this way.”
Herodotus turned his story into an edifying parable, saying that it was not right for slaves to rebel against their masters. But its historical background is quite specific. The Scythian army went on an Asian campaign and was absent for almost a third of a century. During this time, the warriors grew up not only sons, but also grandchildren. It seems that it was these young shoots, and not slaves at all, that initiated the conflict with the warriors returning from Asia. The guards (“paleys”), after a series of battles, simply dispersed the young opponents (“napeis”). And it is likely that many of them ended their lives as slaves (in the same social status that Herodotus assigned them).
But wherever the war of the Paleians and Napeians took place - in the depths of Asia or the Black Sea region - the evidence of Diodorus, Pliny and Herodotus indicates the existence of two centers of Scythian history - European and Asian. The first of them existed constantly in the center of the Russian Plain, while the second, having once arisen among the Scythian conquering warriors, migrated across Asia, but ultimately returned to the Black Sea region. The first is associated with Hercules and his sons. The second, as will be shown in the second part of the book, is already the merit of Targitai and his heirs.
The presence of two geographically separated centers of development is a feature of Scythian history. It is no coincidence that legends name the names of two ancestors, and it is no coincidence that their children have completely different names. In the Roman legend, retold by Valery Flaccus, the arrival of Colax in the Dnieper region symbolically indicates the existence of contacts between related parts of a single ethnic group. Another thing is that, as in any family, relationships between relatives were different.
| |
Before talking about the animal style of the Siberian Scythians, it is necessary to note the features of the mythology of these peoples as a whole. The author conducted research on the characteristic features and life of the Siberian Scythians, which will show us what caused the appearance of the famous animal style.
The mythology of the Scythians has not reached us completely. Only a few myths and legends are known, told by Herodotus and some other ancient authors. Some legends and the meaning of names can be established with the help of comparative historical linguistics.
Legends of the origin of the Scythians
The Scythians worshiped seven gods, like many other Iranian peoples. Tabiti was revered as their supreme goddess. Besides him, the pantheon included Papay, Api, Oytosir (Goytosir), Argimaspa, and 2 more deities whose names have not been preserved. Tabiti was the goddess of fire and hearth. She was called the "queen of the Scythians."
Herodotus mentioned that the most advanced Scythian tribe - the "royal Scythians" - worshiped Poseidon, or Tagimasad, as they called him.
According to Herodotus, the Scythians believed that they were descended in a desert land from a first man named Targitai, whose parents were the daughter of the Dnieper River (Borysthenes) and the Scythian god of thunder, corresponding to the Greek Zeus. Targitai had three sons: Lipoksai, Arpaksai and Kolaksai. From the first came the Scythian-Avhatians, from the second the Katiars, and from the third the Scythian-Paralata. Their common name was put together. Let us note right away that all these names are clearly Turkic in nature and are easily explained from the Karachay-Balkar language and other Turkic dialects and dialects. And the word “chipped off,” certainly distorted by the Hellenes, originally sounded like “skhylts” in the language of the Scythians themselves, which in Karachay-Balkar means the social elite of society. After all, these three tribes traced their origins to the progenitor of all Scythians - Targitai
Herodotus also heard another tradition or legend that the Scythians descended from the marriage of Hercules with a half-maiden, half-snake, whose upper body was female, the lower part was that of a snake.
However, Herodotus continues to describe the origin of the Scythians: “There is, however, another story, which I myself trust most. According to this story, the nomadic Scythians who lived in Asia, being pressed by war from the Massagetae, crossed the Araks River and retired to the Cimmerian lands. Indeed, the country now occupied by the Scythians originally belonged, they say, to the Cimmerians. Here it must be said that the ancient authors called Araks not only the modern Araks, and not so much this river, but the Syr-Darya. Consequently, the Scythians could have been pressed by the Massagetae from the Aral Sea steppe, where the ancient Proto-Turkic culture once arose.
Yes, we are Scythians! Yes, we are Asians! With slanted and greedy eyes.(Alexander Blok).
In ancient times, approximately from the beginning of the 8th century BC. That is, in the vast territories of Eurasia from the northern Black Sea region and right up to Altai there lived a freedom-loving and warlike tribe, or rather tribes that went down in history under the common name of Scythians. Who were the ancient Scythians, what is their history, religion, culture, read on about all this.
Where did the Scythians live?
Where did the ancient Scythians live? In fact, the answer to this question is not as clear and simple as the answer to who these Scythians are. The fact is that different historians included a variety of tribes and peoples among the Scythians, including our ancestors the ancient Slavs. And in some medieval manuscripts even Kievan Rus is called Scythia. But, in the end, historians came to a consensus that Scythians should still be called one specific people, who lived, however, on a very wide territory, from the Don to the Danube, the northern Black Sea region in the south of our country Ukraine and right up to Altai.
Other tribes related to the Scythians, for example, Sauromatians, Saks, Meotians, should be called the peoples of the Scythian world, since they have many common features in their way of life and culture, tribal way of life, rituals and worldview.
Map of archaeological finds of Scythian burial mounds. As we see, despite the wide territories where this ancient people lived, most of the Scythians lived in the Northern Black Sea region and there is reason to believe that this was where the center of their civilization was.
Origin of the Scythians
In fact, the origin of the Scythians is mysterious, the fact is that the Scythians themselves did not have a written language, and information about them from other peoples is very contradictory. The main source of historical information about them is the works of the historian Herodotus. According to one of the legends, which is mentioned by the “father of history,” the Scythian nomads came from Asia to the territory of the northern Black Sea region, expelling the local Cimmerian tribes living there. But the same Herodotus, in his other work “History,” mentions another legend of the Scythians, according to which they always lived in the Black Sea region.
But legends are legends, and what does Her Majesty archeology say about the origin of the Scythians? Archaeological excavations also, unfortunately, do not provide an exact answer to the question and the origin of the Scythians. Thus, most Scythians led a nomadic lifestyle and could move long distances in a relatively short period of time. And it is also very difficult to identify their ancestors among many tribes with a similar culture.
Still, a number of scientists believe that the Scythians came to Europe from Asia as an already formed people. Proponents of another theory argue that the Scythians, on the contrary, from ancient times lived in the steppes of the Black Sea region, and acquired some of their Asian features during their campaigns beyond the Caucasus Range, in Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, which took place in the 7th century BC. e. Unfortunately, we don’t know how it really happened.
History of the Scythians
The heyday of Scythian civilization occurred in the 7th century; it was at this time that the Scythians dominated not only the steppes of the Black Sea region, but also all of Asia Minor, where they created the Scythian state of Ishkuza, although by the beginning of the 6th century they were forced out of Asia Minor. At the same time, traces of the Scythians were found in the Caucasus.
In 512 BC. that is, all the Scythian tribes rallied to repel the conquest undertaken by King Darius I. The attempt to conquer the lands of the Scythians failed, the Persians were defeated. The unsuccessful campaign of Darius against the Scythians is described in detail by the same Herodotus; the Scythians used very original tactics against the conquerors - instead of giving the Persians a general battle, they lured them deep into their territory, avoiding a general battle in every possible way and constantly exhausting the Persian troops. In the end, it was no longer difficult for them to defeat the weakened Persians.
After some time, the Scythians themselves attacked neighboring Thrace (the territory of modern Bulgaria) and successfully conquered these lands. Then there was a war with the Macedonian king Philip, who inflicted a crushing defeat on the Scythians, again throwing them back into the steppes of the Black Sea region.
Around the III-II century BC. e. Scythian civilization begins to decline. The territory where the Scythians lived also shrank significantly. In the end, the Scythians themselves were conquered and destroyed by their distant relatives - the nomadic tribes of the Sarmatians. The remnants of the Scythian kingdom continued to exist in the Crimea for some time, but from there they were soon forced out by the Gothic tribes.
Scythian culture
The entire culture of the Scythians, their life, their way of life is literally imbued with military affairs; obviously, there was no other way to survive in the harsh conditions in which they lived. Not only all men, but also most women were warriors in Scythian society. It is with the stern Scythian warriors that ancient legends about the tribe of Amazons, brave female warriors, are associated. At the head of the Scythian society were the so-called military nobility - the royal Scythians, who in turn were led by the Scythian king. However, the power of the Scythian king was not absolute; he was rather the first among equals, rather than a ruler with unlimited power. The functions of the king included command of the army, he was also the supreme judge, resolved disputes between his subjects and performed religious rituals. But the most important matters were discussed at democratic public assemblies, known as the “Council of the Scythians.” Sometimes the Scythian council even decided the fate of their kings.
An objectionable king could also easily be overthrown and killed, as, for example, happened with the Scythian king Anarcharsis, who, after marrying a Greek woman, became addicted to Greek culture and the Greek way of life, which the rest of the Scythians perceived as the king’s betrayal of Scythian customs and the punishment for this was death king
Speaking of the Greeks, the Scythians conducted intensive trade with them for centuries, especially with the Greek colony cities in the Black Sea region: Olbia, Chersonesos. The Scythians were frequent guests there, and, of course, some of the cultural influences of the Greeks did affect the Scythians; Greek ceramics, Greek coins, Greek women's jewelry, even various works of art by Greek masters were often found in their burials. Some particularly enlightened Scythians, like the already mentioned Scythian king Anarcharsis, were imbued with the ideas of Greek philosophers and tried to bring the light of knowledge of Antiquity to their fellow tribesmen, but alas, the sad fate of Anarcharsis says that this was not always successful.
Scythian customs
In the works of Herodotus one can find many references to the harsh Scythian customs, like the Scythians themselves. So, when killing the first enemy, the Scythian was supposed to drink his blood. The Scythians, like the American Indians, also had a bad habit of taking scalps from defeated enemies, from which they then sewed cloaks for themselves. To receive his share of the spoils, a Scythian had to present the severed head of an enemy, and bowls were made from the heads of especially fierce enemies. Also, every year the Scythian nobility organized feasts, in which only a Scythian who had killed an enemy could participate.
Fortune telling was popular in Scythian society; special soothsayers used bundles of twigs or linden sponges to tell fortunes. The Scythians consolidated friendly ties with a special ritual - the blood of both friends was poured into a cup of wine, then after the vows were pronounced, this wine with blood was drunk by both friends.
The most interesting works of art discovered by archaeologists in Scythian mounds are objects decorated in animal style. These include arrow quivers, sword hilts, women's necklaces, mirror handles, buckles, bracelets, hryvnias, etc.
In addition to images of animal figures, there are often scenes of various animals fighting. These images were made using forging, chasing, casting, embossing and carving, most often from gold, silver, bronze or iron.
All these objects of art were indeed created by Scythian craftsmen; a sign of their belonging to the Scythians is a special way of depicting animals, the so-called Scythian animal style. Animals are always depicted in motion and from the side, but at the same time have their heads turned towards the viewer. For the Scythians themselves, they served as the personification of animal totemic ancestors, various spirits and played the role of magical amulets. It is also believed that various animals depicted on the hilt of a sword or a quiver of arrows were intended to symbolize the strength, dexterity and courage of the Scythian warrior.
Scythian warfare
All Scythian warriors were excellent horsemen and often used cavalry in battle. They were also the first to successfully use strategic retreat in the war against the Persians, significantly exhausting the Persian troops. Subsequently, the military art of the Scythians became significantly outdated, and they began to suffer military defeats, either from the united Macedonian phalanx or mounted Parthian archers.
Scythian religion
The religious life of the Scythians was dominated by the cult of fire and the Sun. An important ritual was the veneration of the royal hearth. Religious rites were performed by kings, and the Scythian king was also at the same time the religious head of the community. But besides him, various magicians and soothsayers also played a major role, whose main task was to search for the enemy of the king and to prevent the magical machinations of enemies. The illness of both the king and any other Scythian was explained precisely by the magical machinations of some enemy, and the task of the soothsayers was to find these enemies and eliminate their machinations in the form of illness. (This is a kind of ancient Scythian medicine)
The Scythians did not build temples, but they had special sacred places where they performed their religious rites of worship of the Sun and fire. In exceptional cases, the Scythians even resorted to human sacrifices.
Scythians, video
And in conclusion, we suggest watching an interesting documentary about the Scythians.
