The Skythians were a semi-nomadic highly
equestrian barbarian people who inhabited the steppes of Eurasia in the Iron age. They
were famous around the world and are attested in the writings of the Greeks, Assyrians,
Persians, Indians and Chinese and they are even mentioned in the Bible. They wrought
havoc across Eurasia for centuries but very little is known about their religion. In this
film I will introduce you to their gods and their bloody rituals but first I will briefly
explain who they were and where they came from. The Ancient Persians used the name Saka to refer
specifically to the Scythians east of the Caspian, while the Greeks conflated saka and scythians but
considered that the Scythians were distinct from other steppe peoples including the related Iranic
steppe peoples known as kimmerians, Massagetae and Sarmatians. Today some restrict the term Scythian
to the iranic people of the iron age Pontic Steppe but knowing their origin was further East I prefer
to use Scythian as a very broad term to refer to all the East Iranic language speaking people of
the Eurasian steppe from Europe to China from 1000 BC up to the 2nd century BC - but please be aware
that a lot of people would, quite reasonably, disagree with me doing this as it obscures some
nuances that I do not have time to cover here. Although as I say they spoke an Iranic language of
the East Iranic branch, they didn’t come from Iran at all but rather, like the Iranians themselves,
they descended from the Proto-Indo-Iranic people known as the Aryans. The Aryans have their roots
in Europe’s Indo-European Corded ware culture- specifically the Fatyanovo variant which
carried the ancestor of the paternal lineages that modern Indo-Iranic speakers in
Asia have - this culture expanded East out of the forests west of Moscow and became the
Abashevo culture over 4000 years ago which in turn with expanded further East to become the
Sintashta culture situated on the border of Europe and Asia and which is responsible for
breeding the ancestors of all modern horses and for inventing the light
spoked wheel war chariot - both of which were essential parts of the culture
of their Scythian descendants. The Sintashta culture had close links with the neighbouring
Srubnaya aka timber grave culture to the extent that while Scythian paternal lineages derive
from Fatyanovo, their maternal lineages come from Srubnaya - Sintashta expanded East into
the Asian steppe to become the Andronovo culture - and these Aryan warriors in turn invaded
Iran to become the Iranians, the Levant where they became the Mitanni and India where those Aryans
founded the Vedic culture which gave rise to the Hindu religion. But most Andronovo Aryan people
remained on the asian steppe and two variants, known by archaeologists as the Fedorovo culture
and the Proto-Iranic speaking Alakul culture went further East and assimilated with
their Mongolian and Siberian neighbours as well as with another Indo-European culture
on the Altai called the Afanasievo culture, to give rise to the Proto-Scythian culture
known as the Karasuk culture around 1500 BC. By the time the first Scythians emerged from the
Karasuk culture in the 10th century BC, they were no longer European, but very much a mixed race
Eurasian people. Some of the Karasuk people became the Tagar and Tashtyk cultures which remained
semi-sedentary like the Andronovo Aryans had been, but others developed a truly nomadic pastoralist
culture and exploded Westward across the steppes, retracing the path their European ancestors
had taken East, mixing with their Aryan cousins on their way and becoming less
Asian the further West they got except those late Scythians who went South into
India or Iran and mixed with those peoples. However, all the scythian DNA samples we
have, still have significant levels of Karasuk ancestry including Siberian and
other asian admixture - the most Western Scythians were of course those who made it
as far West as Eastern Europe and remixed with Europeans. This map shows where most of the
Scythian DNA samples we have so far came from. All of the ancient descriptions of Scythians
whether from Greeks like Herodotus, Callimachus and Polemus, the Roman Pliny
the elder, or the Chinese envoy Zhang Qian describe them as having red or blonde hair
and blue eyes. The early medieval Alans, a name which means Aryans, who descended from the
Scythians were also said to be tall and blonde. Scythian mummies have been found with all
different hair colours, and are often large and strong, but ones with blonde hair have been
found as far East as Mongolia so this phenotype was not limited to those who mixed with iron
age Europeans in the West and was therefore more likely to have been inherited from their Andronovo
Aryan ancestors. Despite their blonde hair, they were undeniably a highly heterogeneous
population with many mixed race people. However the modern Mari and Chuvash people are
also similarly mixed Eurasian peoples yet there are plenty of blondes among them too. It is
likely Scythians looked much the same as them. These pie charts show the admixture proportions
of four samples from across the Scythian world. This one is the oldest and you can
see that while it is mostly European, there is a significant Asian element. The asian
element is also significant in this Eastern Saka sample from the tian shan mountains near the
Kazakh border with China. But this Russian Sarmatian from near the border of Europe and
Asia is almost ¾ European and the asian element is limited to just admixture from south Siberians
and the Bactria–Margiana culture of central asia with no east asian ancestry at all. Further West
in Ukraine this Scythian has similar ancestry. All this stuff about DNA is relevant to
a discussion of Scythian religion because we can see significant influences on Scythian
religion from peoples the Scythians mixed with, especially Siberians. The mixing of blood is
often accompanied by a mixing of religions. However I must caution that it is wrong to
typify the Scythian religion as being highly syncretic and fluid. A mixed half Greek half
Scythian man named Anacharsis switched from Scythian to Greek religion, and was murdered by
his own brother as punishment for sacrificing to the Anatolian Mother goddess Cybele. A century
later, a Scythian king named Skyles became too interested in Greek religion such that his people
hated him and he was also killed by his brother. It may be that these two stories are actually
apocryphal and refer to one original myth, but even so they still reflect a reality
that Scythians were xenophobic when it came to religion. However recent archaeological
evidence indicates they softened up a bit by the 1st century AD. A woman was recently found
in Phanagoria, capital of the Greco-Scythian Bosporan Kingdom on the Taman Peninsula in the
sea of Azov, Russia. She has been identified as a priestess of Aphrodite by this silver medallion
on her chest which depicts that Greek goddess. a quick word from this video's sponsor now the
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garments that look smart and keep you cool. The bronze age Aryans had two classes of gods. One
called *Hásuras from a word meaning to beget, and another called *daywás from a word meaning sky.
In the earliest Indian text the *Hásuras, called asuras, are not all bad, but in later texts the
asuras are essentially evil demons and enemies of the true gods, the devas. But in Iran it went the
other way; after the Zoroastrian reforms, Persians considered the daevas to be demonic figures,
while they called the true gods Ahuras. This did not affect Scythian religion at first, in fact
Zoroastrianism which banned animal sacrifice was directly hostile to the Scythian faith. Some have
speculated that the daevas became taboo in Persia precisely because they were equated with the gods
of the Scythians. Even so, Zoroastrians eventually had some influence on the Scythian world, and
this is especially evident in the Nart sagas. The word Ahura is cognate with the Old Norse word
Aesir, both deriving from a Proto-Indo-European word *h₂ems- which means to beget and indicates
this is a prehistoric category of divine beings which the Indo-Europeans believed themselves
descended from. Indeed the ruler of the Aesir, the Germanic god Woden, is considered
an ancestor of Germanic kings. We have to compare skythian religion to both
Hinduism and Zoroastrianism in order to understand it but at the same time we need to remember that
both of those religions are completely different to the Skythian religion because each of them
underwent significant reforms that resulted in some of their gods being classed as demons and
others remaining Gods, but the opposite in either case, and both of them took a negative stance on
blood sacrifices which certainly were a central part of the original proto-indo-iranic religio.
so the Skythians kept the blood sacrifices and they kept the gods without demonizing them
like zoroastrians and Hindus did and in that sense this scythian religion although
Iranic might bear closer resemblance to what we know of the Germanic religion which
also had many gods and blood sacrifices so I'll be comparing the Skythian religion to
Germanic religion in this video as well. Scythians didn’t write anything down about their
religion because they were mostly illiterate except for a few bactrian inscriptions in greek
script as well as an as yet undeciphered script sometimes called Issyk which was found on a
silver bowl in a barrow back in the sixties. The main source we rely on is the
Greek historian Herodotus who lived in the fifth century BC and who visited
Scythia, going as far as the Dnieper River The Ossetians are an Iranic speaking people
in the Caucasus who descend from the Scythian descended Alans, who settled there and mixed with
people of the Caucasus in the mediaeval period. The Scythian religion, by then heavily distorted
by Zoroastrian influence, was mixed up with the folklore of Caucasian peoples in a series of tales
known as the Nart sagas. Alongside Herodotus, and archaeological evidence, these are the main
sources we have for what Scythians believed in. We can see from the oldest text of an Indo-Iranic
religion, the Rigveda composed in India about 1500 BC, that seven was a sacred number
for Indo-Iranic folk from an early stage. The Brahmins focused on seven Vedic gods who were
invoked daily. Similarly Herodotus says that the Scythians had seven main gods who he describes
while interpreting them as the Greek gods which he considers they are equivalent to. This means
we do not always have their actual Scythian names. Herodotus ranked the 7 gods into a three tiered
hierarchy which Scythians apparently used. According to historian Barry Cunliffe, this structure represents the
structure of the universe. He writes, “At the head is the primeval fire, the basic
essence from which everything was created. Then followed the sky/father and earth/mother who
together, or separately, were responsible for the birth of the gods. Since the world was conceived
to have four sides regulating the universe, so four custodian deities were needed in
this third range. Between this heavenly realm and the chthonic zone beneath
the earth existed the world of people.” So let us begin with the chief
deity - the god of primeval fire. The highest god stands alone in the highest
tier. She is Tapatī́, the Flaming One, who was the goddess of heat, fire and
the hearth. Herodotus called her Tabiti but this can be understood based on known
Iranic cognate words like the verb tapayati, “is hot/burns” and Avestan tapaiti (“is warm”).
Herodotus naturally equates Tapatī́ with Hestia, the Greek goddess of the sacred fire and the
hearth, but while Hestia was a minor deity, he says the Skythians honoured Tapatī́ above
all others. He also wrote that the Skythian king Idanthyrsus told the Persian king Darius
that Hestia is the “queen of the Skythians” There is a clear cognate goddess among Hindus
called Tapati but she is not a hearth goddess, but rather a river goddess and a daughter of
the sun god Surya. However it is possible that the river Tapati in India was named after the
goddess and she became conflated with it but that she was originally a fire goddess like
the flaming one worshipped by the Skythians. The primacy of a female hearth goddess
is difficult to explain; partly because other Indo-European pantheons, including
indo-iranic ones, are ruled by a male sky deity, but also because the hearth deity of all
other Indo-Iranic religions is also male. In India this is Agni while among
Zoroastrians he was known as Atar. The pagan religion of the Ossettians
also has a male hearth god called Safa. Even the more distantly related religion of the
Slavs had a male hearth god called Svarozhits. So either the Scythians are extremely divergent
or, perhaps more likely, the original Iranic hearth goddess was female and the Zoroastrian
reforms of the 6th century BC led to a gender swap of a god in Iran which influenced
the gods of Ossetians and Slavs later on. It is also worth noting that in RigVeda 10.5
Agni is explicitly described in androgynous terms as both a bull and a cow whereas the
flames of Agni are repeatedly referred to as female in several prayers. So maybe the
Vedic hearth god was female too at one stage. It's clear from both Hinduism and
Zoroastrianism that Indo-Iranic peoples revered fire and had special ritual fires,
sometimes in the home, others in temples. In the Bronze age Agni was far more prominent
than he was in later Hindu religion and in the RigVeda Agni has a cosmic aspect and is set apart
from all other gods. The Baltic peoples are close cultural relatives of the Proto-Indo-Iranics and
they had a pagan tradition of a sacred fire that wasn’t allowed to go out as well as several gods
and goddesses of the hearth and of temple fires. Even the more distantly related Romans had
the sacred fire of Vesta, an eternal flame which could only be tended by sacred virgins.
Similarly Zoroastrians have sometimes been termed fire worshippers because they have
kept eternal flames they do not allow to be extinguished such as the Behram fire which
is believed to have burned for 1,500 years. Hindus have a tradition in which the sacred
fire is supposed to be tended by the wife of the sacrificer - connecting this duty to women
as in the Vestal cult of Rome and suggesting there was once a more explicit connection
between women and the hearth fire cult. Indeed it would be natural for a hearth fire
to be associated with women by the Skythians since the home, including the fire on which
food was prepared, was managed by women. Several images of a female accompanied by a solar
disc have been discovered in Scythian barrows and these have been interpreted as representing
Tabiti. In her stated role as an abstract notion of fire, there are no representations of her, but
was Tabiti a sun goddess as in these depictions? All the surviving Indo-Iranic solar deities are
male, but it is clear from most Indo-European religions including Germanic, Baltic and
Slavic that the original sun deity was female. The Indian sun god Surya who is father
of Tapatī́ also has another daughter called Süryā the feminine form of the same
name- was she the original Aryan sun god? What’s more, Agni the Vedic hearth god is
sometimes referred to in the Rigveda in his cosmic form as the sun which disappears at night
such as in 6.9.1 - There are therefore clear signs linking the Vedic hearth god to the sun, and the
sun god to a female form. So It isn't as crazy as it may first seem to suggest that Tabiti was a
sun goddess, despite Herodotus not mentioning it. He also says Tabiti is the
goddess of oaths and marriage. Other Indo-European sun gods are associated with
oaths too such as Greek Helios and Indian Surya while marriage is often associated with such sun
gods due to an IE myth of a divine marriage and a kidnapped bride involving the sun, the
dawn goddess and the divine horse twins. The association with oaths is perhaps
corroborated in the language of the Chuvash, who, although a Turkic siberian
people, have some Scythian heritage. Their expression tupa tu, likely a cognate
of Tapati, means "to give an oath", and is used specifically in reference to
an oath of allegiance during marriage. However, Herodotus’ assertion that Tabiti
was a hearth fire goddess is corroborated by another Roman account - that of the Gaul
Pompey Trogue who recounts a dispute between Egyptians and Scythians over which race
was more ancient in which the Scythians argue that the world began covered with
fire - likely in reference to Tabiti. In the second rank of gods are two deities
common to all Indo-European religions; the sky father and the earth mother. The sky father is usually the chief god in
Indo-European religions. I made a video all about the original sky father god, please watch
it. but the Scythian Papaios or Papaeus is only second rank. However, the early Christian writer
Origen of Alexandria, writing several centuries after Scythians disappeared, claims
that Papaios was their supreme god. In his contemporary account, Herodotus equated
papaios with the Greek sky father, Zeus while he has also been conflated with the god who became
the main god of the Persians after the Zoroastrian reforms, Ahura Mazda despite the fact that the
Persian king Darius who defeated the Scythians specifically says that they did not worship Ahura
mazda. However since Ahura mazda was an ahura, and as I already said this comes from a word meaning
beget, it is interesting that the Scythians regarded Papaios as their divine ancestor via
the hero god Targitaos - more on him later. The original Scythian name of Papaios
was likely a cognate of papa and meant father or grandfather as well. He and his
consort the earth and water mother Api were involved in a kind of hieros gamos
which resulted in the creation of the middle world in which we dwell - and such
unions of sky father and earth mother are common across the Indo-European world as I
explained in the video on the sky father. Depictions of a man flanked by griffins or
birds of prey are interpreted as being papaios based on the association of birds with
the sky. The man on this shamanic pole top is commonly identified as papaios.
The gryphon was a very important animal in Scythian iconography and it is through
Scythian influence that griffins became a part of European mythology. Maybe
Griffins were connected to him too? He might be equivalent to the chief god of the
Ossetians in the Nart sagas called Hutsau or Xucau. His name is cognate with Persian
Khuda which is an epithet of Ahura Mazda showing zoroastrian influence. Or perhaps
Xucau replaced Papaious at some point. Api is the Mother earth goddess who is also a
goddess of water and her name may mean water but could also mean “mama”. Her birth giving and
chthonic aspect led Herodotus to equate her with the Greek earth mother Gaia. It is possible
she is the same goddess as Apatouros who is mentioned by several Greek and Roman sources.
Besides herodotus, the worship of such an earth mother by Scythians is confirmed by Strabo
who says the Massagetae worship mother earth. In the Nart sagas there is an earth
mother goddess called Satanaya who, like Api was also a progenitor of heroes. But
this goddess is also similar to the Chechen-ingush deity sela-sata so may not be of Scythian origin
at all and would therefore be unrelated to Api. In the third category of
gods there are four deities. Artimpasa was the daughter of Api and
papaios. Herodotus called her Argimpasa and equated her with Aphrodite Ourania, the
greek goddess of love in her heavenly form, while elsewhere she was equated with
Athena due to her associations with war. Artimpasa was primarily a deity of fertility
and sovereignty whose name was cognate with the Zoroastrian deity called Ashi or Arti who was
also associated with fertility, but Artimpasa was more commonly associated with another Zoroastrian
goddess, Anahita, who was a goddess of waters and fertility. However Artimpasa was also an oracular
goddess and by the 4th century BC, she became the patron deity of the royal dynasty such that the
king was thought to derive his power from her and was seen as an intermediary between her and the
people. The royal hearth over which she presided was so sacred that any false oaths sworn over it
were believed to make the king sick and then the king’s shamans would be consulted to identify the
culprit who would be decapitated if found guilty. Many have claimed, for different reasons, that
this goddess was the result of foreign influences of various kinds. Herodotus reveals that the
priests of her religion, known as the enaree, which comes from a word meaning ‘unmanly’
were from an aristocratic caste and were all transvestites. It is never stated but
perhaps implied that they did gay stuff, but they can’t all have been gay since
it was probably an hereditary preisthood. Artimpasa’s oracular role becomes clear in the
activities of her enaree who were prognosticators. They employed a method of divination using
the green bark of the lime tree which they plaited about their fingers to
acquire the desired knowledge. They apparently learned this skill from
Artimpasa herself - rather like how the goddess Freyja taught the unmanly
magic of seidr in Norse religion. Herodotus says the Scythians considered
this shameful cult to be derived from a curse brought upon the priesthood when
they sacked a temple in Ashkelon, Israel. The inherited curse somehow prevented them
from having normal male sexual intercourse and so they became transvestites. This seems
to indicate that the Scythians only tolerated the gender bending cult because of religious
necessity and some scholars have claimed that the cult itself must have been adopted
from Semitic or other Levantine people. However it is likely Herodotus only said
this because he knew the priests at Ashkelon were also transvestites and since Scyths had
raided it - this connection was convenient. On the other hand, some depictions probably of
Artimpasa show her as a winged woman or a woman flanked by panthers, and some of these depictions
have clearly been influenced by Near Eastern iconography of the goddess Inanna or Ishtar who
was conflated with Anahita just as Artimpasa was. This is a gilded mirror from a
barrow in Kelermes in south russia. But even if Scythians had near eastern influences
on their art, I think the enaree being derived from a semitic cult is unlikely. Another ancient
author, Pseudo-Hippocrates explained that the reason the enaree were sexually weird was simply
because they had ridden on horses too much! The Roman historian Tacitus wrote in the first
century of a Germanic tribe who worshipped divine horse twins known as Alcis and he says that the
priests of their cult were male transvestites. He says this cult was indigenous
and not from foreign influence. There are some other Indo-European
cults with cross dressing so we need not necessarily ascribe the cult
of the enaree to Semitic influence. Indeed, besides Indo-Europeans and Semites, the
various Shamanic cultures of Siberia with which the Scythians mixed, are known even today
to associate crossdressing with shamanism. Since genetically the Levantines did not
influence Scythians but Siberians did, it seems more reasonable to ascribe
the cult to Siberian influence, if it must be considered foreign
at all. The use of tree bark in ritual is also found among certain Siberian
peoples, which lends weight to this theory. Artimpasa could just as well be a
native Indo-European goddess though. Some claim she was influenced by the Thracian
goddess of hunting Bendis but as a heavenly deity, she more closely resembles many of the
Indo-European goddesses of the dawn, all of which are associated with love
or sex. It seems perfectly possible that she was originally derived from someone
related to Ushas, the Vedic dawn goddess. A number of Scythian artefacts depict
a seated woman who is facing a male donor or devotee who is sometimes mounted. The
woman is often identified as Artimpasa and the scene itself is thought to represent
a symbolic marriage to the goddess. On this example from a wall hanging found at
Pazyryk the goddess is holding the tree of life. This gold foil was from a drinking cup called
a rhyton found in Merdzhany in south Russia. The goddess holds a round beaker - to her right
is a tree of life, represented with 7 branches, to her left is a ritual pole with a horse
skull mounted on it like the Nordic nidstang. To the left of that a bearded man on horseback
raises a cup as though in a toast to her. This image from a stele at the trekhbratniy barrow
shows a veiled woman drawn in a four horse chariot facing a rider. Between them we see this leather
bow case called a gorytos which is hung up on a pole or tree. The gorytos was a potent symbol of
warrior status among Scythian men who always wore it on their left side. They are sometimes made
from human skin. Herodotus wrote that among the Massagetae Skyths a man lays claim to a woman
simply by hanging his gorytos in front of her wagon and then immediately having sex with her.
That is clearly what is depicted here and this stele is much like the other depictions of the
seated goddess and rider. This stele from the Hellenised Bosporus kingdom is likely Sarmatian -
the rider carries his gorytos. It really appears that this motif depicts a scene from a lost myth
in which a Scythian hero has sex with Artimpasa. Yet another frequently occurring motif in
Scythian art depicts a woman known as the snake legged goddess. You may recognise
her from the Starbucks coffee logo. Her legs can be plant tendrils or snakes and they
are splayed apart in a sexual gesture or perhaps a gesture representing child birth. Herodotus says
that she lived in a cave and was the ancestor of the Scythians via her son Skythes who was fathered
by the Scyhtian Hercules as I shall explain later. The genealogical myth of the Scythians, like that
of the Nordic people in Rigsthula, explains the establishment of the three castes of Scythian
society: warrior, priest, and farmer. This also matches the hierarchy of leadership at the time
of the Persian king Darius, during which the Scyths were divided into three kingdoms with the
Royal Scythian king serving as high king over all. The same Scythian goddess is described by Diodorus
of Sicily, a Greek historian of the first century BC as equivalent to the Greek Echidna, and he
says she was the daughter of the river god Araxes. It is far more likely this snake legged goddess
is Artimpasa rather than Api and in this snakey form she represents a birth giving ancestral
protector - a great mother but not mother earth. She is sometimes also associated
with severed heads which indicates a relationship with the dead and the
underworld, just as the cave does too. Herodotus describes the Scythian god of war
in some detail but does not give his name, only referring to him as Ares,
the name of the Greek war god. He may be equivalent to the
Iranian god of victory Verethragna, who in one Avestan hymn (yasht 14) is said to be
highly armed and in constant battle with daevas. Herodotus says “It is their practice to
make images and altars and shrines for Ares, but for no other god.” a dubious claim
in the light of archaeological evidence. Yet he described in detail that he was also
represented in every Scythian district, not with a typical idol, but with a huge
square shaped structure made of sticks, and one side of the altar was sloped
allowing people to walk up onto it where: “On this pile there is set for each people an
ancient akinakes of iron, which is their image of Ares; to this akinakes they bring yearly sacrifice
of sheep and goats and horses, offering to these symbols even more than they do to the other gods.
Of all their enemies that they take alive, they sacrifice one man in every hundred, not according
to their fashion of sacrificing sheep and goats, but differently. They pour wine on the men's
heads and cut their throats over a vessel; then they carry the blood up onto the pile of
sticks and pour it on the akinakes. So they carry the blood aloft, but below by the sacred
building they cut off the slain men's right arms and hands and throw these into the air, and
presently depart when they have sacrificed the rest of the victims; the arm lies where
it has fallen, and the body apart from it.” The akinakes was a specific kind of
short sword invented by the Scythians. Archaeological findings indicate that the
medieval descendants of the Scythians, the Alans, built similar structures
and preserved this ancient custom. In the 6th century Jordanes's claimed that
Attila the Hun achieved dominance over the Alans by acquiring a blade known as the sword
of Mars - Mars being the Roman name of Ares. The Scythian Ares being represented by a
sword stained with human blood demonstrates his military associations. It is thought that
the sacrifice of men’s right arms may pertain to strength being offered to him in exchange
for strength being given to his worshippers. A similar logic applies in the
sacrifice of large animals like horses. The shape and dimensions of the stick
structure itself, if we consider that similar meanings are ascribed to temples in
related cultures, is likely to mirror that of the cosmos as perceived by the Scythians. Thus
the four sided platform represented this middle world in the tiered cosmos and the severed
arms were thrown upwards in a gesture to the celestial deity to whom they were offered. The
sword itself could then be like a world tree, an axis mundi uniting this middle
world with the upper world of the gods. Worship of Ares by the Scythians is also attested
by Strabo, Pliny the Elder, Claudius Ptolemy and Stephanus of Byzantium. The Greek Syrian
author Loukianos of Samosata claimed in the second century that the Scythians had
worshipped the Wind and the Sword as gods, and this may reveal that the Scythian
Ares was also associated with the wind. Besides Mars and Ares, he has also been compared
to the Vedic heavenly warrior god Indra, and might also be considered a relation
of the Germanic battle god Tyr. The next god of the third category of gods is
said by Herodotus to be an equivalent of Hercules. The Greeks and Romans had a habit of equating any strong-man god with a bludgeoning
weapon to their demigod Hercules. Thus, when the Roman Tacitus wrote in the first
century that the Germans considered Hercules to be their ancestor and loved him above all other
gods, he was referring to Thor. With the exception of the Greek and Roman pantheons, the strong man
bludgeoner god of all Indo-European religions is usually the thunder god so this Scythian Hercules
is likely to have been equivalent to Thor. Elsewhere, when recounting the
Scythian genealogical myth, Herodotus tells us that a man named
Targitaos, sometimes rendered as Dargatavah, was the son of the sky father and the daughter of
the Dnieper river. Targitaos had three children, the youngest of whom Colaxais outdid his brothers
and received a golden plough, golden yoke, golden sword and golden flask from the gods and
became a king and progenitor of the Scythian race. Herodotus contrasts this with the Greek
fable of the origin of the Scythians in which Hercules comes to Scythia and loses
his horses and chariot while sleeping. He looked for them and came to a cave in which he
found the snake legged goddess who said she would give him back his horses and chariot if he had sex
with her and so he obliged and begot three sons on her and told her that the strongest should remain
in Scythia. The youngest of the three was Scythes who was also strongest and from him came the race
of Royal Scythian kings. So it is clear that the two myths have a common origin and Targitaos
is the name of the Scythian hercules. Some people think the scenes of Scythian men on the
kul’-oba beaker depict Scythes and his brothers. Most Indo-European thunder gods, including Thor,
are the sons of the sky father just like Targitaos is - so it is very likely he was a similar figure.
Another aspect of Indo-European thunder gods is that they slay dragons or snakes. In Ossetia
Saint George the dragon slayer is revered by the name Uastyrdzhi and is believed to have
been the son of a king of the Alans. There is a festival each November during which Ossetians
sacrifice a yearling bull to him. This figure is very likely to derive from the cult of Targitaos
which was brought to the Caucasus by the Alans. Herodotus also reveals that the Scythians
identified what they considered to be a footprint of Hercules stamped on
a rock beside the river Dniester, which is about a yard long - possibly
an old cult site of Targitaos. The final god is equated by Herodotus
with Apollo and is called Goitosyros. Nothing more is said of this god and so
all interpretations are purely speculative. Apollo was not originally a sun
god, but during Herdotus’s time, Apollo was gradually equated with the Greek sun
god Helios. If Herodotus accepted this new trend, then he may have been saying that Goitosyrus
was a sun god, but I don’t think this is likely. An etymological argument has been made by
Rüdiger Schmitt that the name is a compound of two unattested Iranic words *gaithā- “herd,
possessions” and *sūra- “strong, mighty” and this may make him equivalent to the Iranian god Mithra
who is called the protector of cattle, and whose stock epithet is "of Wide Pastures.” However there
are many Indo-Iranic gods associated with cattle. The Rig Veda is full of comparisons of many gods
to cattle. The Aryans were obsessed with cows. Nothing further can be said with
any confidence about this god. Scythians preserved a prehistoric Indo-European
tradition of burying their dead in barrows. Their barrows, known in Russia as kurgans, are found
everywhere from the shores of the black sea to the frozen wastes of Siberia. The larger the barrow,
the more important the person inside it is. Their burials reveal a lot about their beliefs
concerning the afterlife. Scythians sometimes removed the organs of the dead and replaced
them with straw - a process which encourages mummification and has led to the preservation
of some remarkable Scythian bodies with their tattoos still visible. They even removed the
brains and filled the skulls with straw too. Like their bronze age predecessors of the
Srubnaya culture, the later Andronovo culture and the Scythians often constructed a timber
chamber into which the dead were placed before the barrow was erected. The Scythians built these
like log cabins and decorated the walls with felt, sometimes with designs of lions and other beasts.
These were effectively houses for the dead, even lined with insulation of moss
and birch bark to keep them warm. The dead are often laid in oak coffins before they
are placed in the barrow and they are accompanied by a range of grave goods which we must presume
were thought to be useful in the next world. These included small tables, mirrors, cannabis braziers,
small drinking vessels, knives, and leather bags and pouches. Offerings of meat were also left with
the dead, as though they were expected to feast in the underworld. Some graves also include exotic
riches like the famous Pazyryk rug from the Altai. We can presume that cannabis was burned as
an incense in the burial chamber since the braziers have been found with charred cannabis
seeds. Herodotus wrote of a Scythian funerary ritual in which heated stones were placed in
bronze vessels along with cannabis, and the smoke would fill up their tents so that all the
occupants would inhale the intoxicating fumes. A Scythian barrow called Sengileevskoe-2 in
South Russia close to the Caucasus mountains was excavated back in 2013. Inside were two large
gold vessels placed upside down and several other gold items. Scientists analysed residue from
inside the gold vessels and the results came back positive for opium and cannabis. Somehow
both drugs were used in a combined way such that they left residue in the same, obviously very
special, ritual containers. Local archaeologist Andrei Belinski believes that the ornate imagery
on the vessels depicts the Scythian underworld. The images include men fighting and also
griffins ripping the flesh from a rearing stag; Another interesting artefact found
in barrows of Sarmatian graves were portable stone altars. These ones are
from Samara and date to the 5th to 6th c BC. They would enable religious rites to
be performed in tents while travelling. The barrow was for the Scythian
man, the centre of his civilisation, as king Idanthyrsus explains to the Persian
king Darius in the account of Herodotus: “We Scythians have neither towns nor
cultivated land which might make us, through fear that they might be taken or
destroyed, to hurry to engage you in battle. If, however, you want, quickly, to come to
blows with us, look, these are our ancestors' tombs. Find them and attempt to interfere with
them; then you will see whether or not we will fight with you. Until you do this, you can
be sure we will not face you in battle-unless it pleases us.’
(Hist. iv. 127) The Fedorovo Aryans practised cremation and had
a fire cult like that of the later Scythians yet cremation was not widespread among Skythians
like it was among the Aryans who went to India. However the early Saka southeast of
the Aral sea did preserve a cremation rite. These might be identified as the Massagetae. The Scythians also inherited an ancient IE
tradition from the Yamnaya culture of Ukraine, such that they placed anthropomorphic
stone stelae on top of their barrows. These are known today by the Turkic word
balbal and the tradition was adopted and maintained by Turkic peoples in the medieval era. We know that the Turks revered these idols
not as gods, but as depictions of the dead within the barrows, and it is likely
the same was true for the Scythians. The Scythian balbals often hold a drinking horn,
perhaps indicating they were believed to enjoy alcohol in the afterlife like the Nordic Valhall
where dead warriors drink mead with the god Odin. So great was the Skythian reverence
for their ancestors that some tribes, namely the Issedonians and the Massagetae,
maintained a form of ritual cannibalism, where mourners would consume the flesh
of their most revered dead kinsmen - in this way the family shared in the vitalism of
the life force of the great ancestors. Similar practices persist to this day among some Papuans.
This life force could also be shared between the living in the ritual of blood brotherhood - a
sacred and unbreakable bond between two warriors. Depicted on this gold plaque found in the barrow
of Kul-Oba - the ritual required both men to drink from the same vessel a mixture of wine
and their own blood into which their weapons had first been dipped. Prior to drinking it, the
mixture was sanctified with holy incantations. The life force of blood was also
acquired from fallen enemies since every skythian had to drink the blood
of the first man he killed in battle. There are also many examples
of horse sacrifices in barrows. The corpses of the horses are
placed outside the burial chamber with the heads facing the rising sun. The
archaeological evidence closely matches a description of a Scythian king’s funeral by
Herodotus which involved horse sacrifice. The entire scene was replicated in the recent
Kazakh film ‘Tomiris’ - Herodotus says the Gerrhi tribe of Scythians near the Dnieper buried their
mummified king in a huge square grave with one of his concubines who they strangled to death, also
his wine server, his cook, his horse groom and his messenger and a number of horses and valuable
possessions and then raise a barrow over them. A contemporary account of a Viking funeral 1400
years later is very similar, including horse sacrifice and the strangling of a slave girl.
In one Scythian tomb from the Kuban River basin, 360 horse skeletons were found -and the
burial was not completely excavated. Herodotus describes the ritual of horse and
human sacrifice at a royal funeral as follows: “They take the most suitable of the rest of
the attendants... they strangle fifty of them and fifty of the finest horses and, having
removed their entrails, clean them and fill them with chaff and sew them up. Then they
attach half of a wheel, turned upside down, to two posts and the other half to another
pair and they set up many of these in this way. and then, driving thick stakes lengthwise
through the horses' bodies to their neck, they set them on the wheels so that the wheel in
front supports the horse's shoulder and the wheel behind props up the belly near the hindquarters
and the legs on each side hang down freely. Each horse is provided with a bit bridle which is drawn
out in front of the horse and attached to a peg. They mount each of the fifty strangled youths
on the horses, mounting them in this way: they drive an upright stake through the body
along the spine to the neck, and fix the end of this stake projecting from below the body
into a hole made in the other stake that passes through the horse. Having set up the fifty riders
thus in a circle around the tomb they leave.” This kind of sacrifice of humans is
supported by archaeological finds. A chief was buried at Arzhan-1 with eight of
his attendants. In the surrounding chambers were groups of horses, some with their trainers.
The barrow at Arzhan-2 is surrounded by 200 burnt offering pits; with plenty of human and horse
sacrifices. So Herodotus wasn’t exaggerating. Besides those at royal
funerals and rituals to Ares, Herodotus also describes a more typical
Scythian animal sacrifice as follows: “The victim itself stands with
its forefeet shackled together; the sacrificer stands behind the beast, and
throws it down by plucking the end of its rope; as the victim falls, he invokes whatever
god it is to whom he sacrifices. Then, throwing a noose round the beast's
neck, he thrusts in a stick and twists it and so strangles the victim, lighting
no fire nor offering the firstfruits, nor pouring any libation; and having strangled
and flayed the beast, he sets about cooking it.” Herodotus says they sacrificed all
beasts of the flock but chiefly horses, however archaeological evidence shows they
also inherited the bronze age tradition of deer sacrifice from the Andronovo
Aryans and the stag in particular features as the most important animal in
their artwork, as I shall explain later. Like the Germanic people, the
Scythians believed that the rigid social hierarchies of this world
were preserved in the afterlife. This reflects a wider Indo-European conception of
earthly hierarchy as a reflection of a divinely ordained order which exists also among the
gods - inequality as a moral and holy right. Another thing Scythians had in
common with Germanic people, is the custom of sacrificing
prisoners of war to their gods. To Ares they gave one of every 100 prisoners in
the ritual to that god which I already described. Scythians also collected the scalps or
the entire heads of enemies as trophies, or other bits of human skin or even an entire
skin which they turned into leather - this too mirrors recent Germanic pagan practices involving
making trousers or belts out of human skin which when worn were believed to facilitate shamanic
transformations or obtaining wealth. A ritual involving a belt made of human skin was recorded
in Sweden as recently as the 18th century. Besides slaves, animals and prisoners, wives
could also be killed in funeral rituals. This practice was also recorded among
Germanic people by the Roman historian Tacitus and more famously also survived
in India until it was recently banned by the British during the Raj, and
where it was known as Sati or suttee. In ancient Germany and in India, the practice
of wives following their husbands to the grave was often voluntary - but social pressure
made it difficult for widows to avoid. The archaeologist Elena Kuzmina has demonstrated
that the Indian custom derives from similar practices among the Andronovo culture which
is ancestral both to the Indians and to the Scythians. Since the Scythians invaded parts
of India from the middle of the 2nd century BC, some people think they, rather than the
earlier Aryans, brought the custom to India. However Strabo refers to an account
by Aristobulus preceding the Scythian invasion of India, which describes suttee
among the Cathaeans in Northern India. One of the largest rituals in the Scythian world
was an annual ceremony focused on the four sacred golden objects which fell from the sky in
the Scythian origin myth mentioned earlier. The event was presided over by the king of the
Royal Scythians so unless all the other tribes came to wherever his hearth happened to be,
then there must have been a fixed holy location where they all convened each year. Herodotus
describes such a site he visited called Exam-pacus “holy ways” situated between the Bug and the
Dnieper, where there was an enormous bronze bowl which could hold some 24,000 litres. The Scythians
told him that an ancient king Ariantas had asked all his subjects to bring him one arrow head
and these were melted down to make the cauldron. This story indicates that there
was a folk connection to the bowl such that all Scythians believed their ancestors
had a part in making it and indeed the bowl itself was likely an axis mundi for the Skytian race
- in which case it may well have been at the site of the aforementioned annual ceremony
of the golden objects. This gold pendant in the shape of a cauldron is testament to
the religious significance of this object. The ceremony was accompanied by a feast during
which one man was appointed as guardian of the gold. He had to remain awake all night or he would
die within a year, and his payment if he did not sleep was as much land as he could ride around
in a day. Cunliffe interprets this to mean that the man chosen annually as guardian of the gold
was sacrificed before the next year’s ceremony. It may be that this derives from an
earlier ritual in which the king himself was sacrificed until he was replaced by
a surrogate, and then the annual death and renewal of the king would mirror that of
the annual rebirth of the sun after winter. Today, Iranic peoples are mostly Middle
Eastern and most of them are Muslims. Shamanism is still practised by Turkic,
Mongolic and Uralic peoples in Siberia to this day but the Iranic Scythians
once also participated in such rituals. The Skythians, as previously stated, not only
lived right next to Mongolic and Siberian peoples but also mixed with them taking
undeniable cultural influences from them. Scythian art originates, like the people
themselves, in the Karasuk and Tagar cultures and these were both influenced
by the deer stone culture of Mongolia. This Petroglyph of a recumbent stag is from
the deer stone culture dating to around 900 BC and is clearly the same motif which spread, along
with images of other deer, rams, and big cats all across the Scythian world. This one is from the
6th century BC, and this one from 4th century BC. This one isn’t even Scythian. It comes from
North Eastern Europe in the 4th century AD and shows the influence Scythians had on
European art for long after they disappeared. However this petroglyph of an erect stag is from
the Aryan Fedorovo culture from before 1500 BC, so while the recumbent stag motif appears
to come from the deer stone culture, the stag itself was evidently already sacred
to the Aryans centuries before the Scythians. Another persistent motif is the stag used as a
finial for a ceremonial staff - probably used by shamans. The stag appears perched as though on
a mountain top. This is the most famous example, carved from a single piece of wood & originally
covered with gold leaf. It was made in the 5thC BC and was found in the Pazyryk burials.
Obviously of the same type is this example made by the Eastern cousins of the Scythians
in China, the Xiongnu at roughly the same time. Compare them to this example from
thousands of miles to the west in kuban region of southern russia, and which
predates the other two by a century or two. This one functioned as a rattle
with balls inside the sphere. Scythians also include elks in their art,
Americans call them mooses, and in this example from 5th century BC Inner Mongolia, we can see the
elk is in the same posture as the stag finials. Elk do not venture south to Persia at all and
this should confirm that the general motif of these finials is Siberian in origin, except for
the fact that these stag finials have been found in Anatolia and are dated to the Bronze age!
These are both from Alaca Hüyük and are of Hittite manufacture, dated to more than 4000 years
ago, making them much older than the Scythians. The Hittites, like the Scythians, were of
Indo-European origin, so perhaps the stag topped staff was actually an ancient Proto-Indo-European
tradition which Karasuk folk brought to Mongolia, rather than something they took from Mongolian
shamans - and then the Scythians altered it to use an elk instead of a stag. The same tradition
seems somehow to have survived in a pagan king’s burial from 7th century Anglo-Saxon England,
whose stone sceptre, a symbol of his royal power, was topped with a stag finial highly
reminiscent of the ancient Scythian motif. Other Scythian finds which appear to relate
to shamanic activities include these drums, not of the typical Siberian shaman type, but
drums nonetheless. And these ceremonial pole tops with bells, birds, beasts and human
figures. Such bells, drums and rattles as well as the spectacular decorations are typical
of the props used in a shamanic performance. In all shamanic cultures, the
shaman is distinguished from others by his strange ways
and peculiar mode of dress. The regalia differs from culture to culture
but often includes bells, head dresses, and coloured robes. The aforementioned enaree
transvestites certainly fit this description. Yet not all the Scythian shamans were enaree.
Siberian shamans sometimes attach antlers to their heads, and while we have no evidence of Scythians
doing that, they did attach antlers and elaborate headdresses to the heads of horses for certain
ceremonies. There is also a depiction of a man with a headdress on this petroglyph from the tagar
culture which is related to that of the Scythians. He appears to be holding a rattle or drumstick in
one hand and a drum in the other. Scythians are known to have worn quite elaborate and enormous
hats - this one is from the Pazyryk burials. From the early 5th century BC scythian art
took on more influence from Persia and Greece, becoming more detailed and advanced as a result.
It seems Scythians took the theme of animal predation from Persian art where such images were
common. Scythian art depicts diverse forms of predation; an eagle attacking a lamb, two griffins
mauling a horse. Nature red in tooth and claw. The religious significance of this theme is
not clear but it seems to somehow celebrate the brutality of nature which resembles so much
the brutal culture of the Scythians themselves. Rather than strictly an expression of Siberian
shamanic beliefs, this seems to be a uniquely Scythian fusion of Persian, Siberian and
general Indo-European religious beliefs. Besides the enaree Herodotus also tells
us about other kinds of shamanic diviners among the Scythians. Their favoured method was to
place a bundle of willow withies on the ground. They made their prophecies by removing
and laying each stick out individually and interpreting its meaning. This sounds a
lot like the form of divination seen among the Germanic people by Tacitus some 500
years later which also involved twigs. If the king fell sick the shamans could
accuse people of causing the illness, but if it was determined that the shamans had
falsely accused someone, then they were crammed into a wagon filled with brushwood and set on
fire while being drawn forth by oxen. This shows that the life of a shaman could be dangerous, even
though the kings took their power very seriously. The traditional role of the shaman in many
cultures is also a medicine man and healer, and this seems to have been the
case among the Scythians too. Besides the cannabis braziers and cannabis seeds
found in certain Scythian burials, the Scythians also had connections to the Jushi people of
Xinjiang in China, who most likely spoke an extinct Indo-European language called Tocharian.
The burial of a man identified as a Jushi shaman was found in Yanghai accompanied by cannabis. I
have made a film all about the history of cannabis and the crucial role the Scythians played in
spreading it from China into Europe and West Asia. The Achaemenid Persians referred to some Scythians
as Sakā haumavargā which means “the Saka who consume or lay down Haoma”. Haoma was both a plant
and a ritual drink made from many ingredients in pre-Islamic Iran. It is usually identified with
the stimulant ephedra which was commonly used by steppe peoples and people of the Tarim basin,
but also with cannabis. Karl Hoffmann, interprets the varga part of the compound haumavargā, to
mean laying down in the sacrificial context of a ritual fire, so that haumavargā means “laying
hauma-plants around (the ritual fire).” This seems to refer to the now well proven Scythian custom
of burning cannabis plants to inhale the smoke. The Scythians were also renowned for knowledge
of other medicines besides cannabis and ephedra. The king of Pontus in Anatolia, Mithridates the
6th, recruited Scythian medicine men despite the fact he waged war against them in crimea. Appian
of Alexandria revealed that after taking an arrow to the face and another to the knee at the battle
of Zela in 67 BC, the former adventurer king Mithridates was cured by his Scythian physicians
from the Agari tribe who made use of snake venom in their remedies. This king was renowned
for his knowledge of toxicology so it speaks highly in favour of Scythian pharmacology
that he recruited them as medicine men. We might also connect the Scythian tradition
of tattoos to shamanic rites. The specific themes seen in Scythian tattoos are familiar from
their artwork. The Ukok princess of Siberia has a sort of dancing stag on her left shoulder which
twists its hindquarters in the opposite direction. This man from barrow 2 at pazyryk also has a stag
in the same posture on his left shoulder and as on the woman, it has flowers in its antlers. This
seems to me to be some kind of nature spirit or deity incarnate. The man also has several
predators and a ram in the same twisted posture. This man from barrow 5 at pazyryk has a very large
tiger on his right shoulder, while his right arm has two horses in the twisting posture. Both men
also have a line of goats or deer running up their inner calf muscle. The second man has some images
of tigers preying upon stags. Were the stag and tiger competing spirits in their religion or is
this just a continuation of the predation theme seen in their art? Of course we really can’t say
for sure. Most people either think these images offered protective power or they pertained
to tribal affiliations or rites of passage. Surviving mummies with tattoos are limited to the
colder Siberian regions of the Scythian world, but the first century Roman writers Pomponius
Mela and Pliny the elder both wrote that the Scythians were tattooed, which indicates
the practice was widespread among them. the Modern Man may be tempted to see these motifs
of predation and animals as merely decorative and having a purely ornamental function but
you've got to understand that these people didn't cover their bodies with tattoos of these
motifs, the gold work on all their adornments, on their leather saddle artwork, on
the wall hangings in their houses, on the artwork that they wore about them, made of
gold and leather, and on wooden carvings - always we've seen repeated over hundreds and hundreds
of years this very consistent motif of animal predation I don't know what exactly it meant
but I can guarantee you, as someone who has studied different peoples and cultures, and I'm
sure most anthropologists would agree with me, that this must have had some kind of religious
significance. what it was exactly, I can't say, however I can say that I have on my left arm a
tattoo of an animal, it's a lion, and that lion is a family crest and the family crest goes back
to Medieval heraldry. medieval European heraldic motifs come from scythian artwork to some extent
so it's possible although not certain that these motifs represented tribal affiliations but that
doesn't preclude that having had a religious significance as well. it's also possible that
they had nothing to do with tribal affiliations but that they had a very significant mythological
reference so that each form of predation would evoke in the mind of a scythian a certain
mythological story but we don't know. we just don't know. but you can be certain that a Skythian
would see these images, whether on a saddle or on someone's clothing, or tattooed on their skin,
and they would know exactly what they meant. so now you know a bit more about the scythians
and their religion and their world view and perhaps that sparked your interest in The Wider
Indo-European world and you'd like to know more about the Pagan religions of the indo-europeans
who spread across Eurasia well I've made loads of videos about all kinds of different ones
Germanic people Celtic people the lycians in Anatolia the Hindu religion in India just take
a look through my archives and you'll find some pretty interesting documentaries and if you
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What is this place? The rules clearly state "No politics" and there's absolutely no conversation about the actual video, just people debating on his political affiliations.
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Scythians 💪🏻💪🏻💪🏿🐎🐎🏹🏹🏹
If STJ has legitimately supremacist associations over and above just Right leaning, you just have to take the content like you would listening to the music of Varg Vikernes - fantastic content by a dodgy guy. I really wish he'd stop using Aryan and Indo European interchangeably, though and the emphasis on they were blonde/red haired with blue eyes at awkward junctures is also incessant at times, admittedly.
Awesome documentation, though. I for one had no idea about the Tapiti connection, Tapati is a moderately common name in India and related to the word tapas/meditation. Strange how the warrior Andronovo horizon descendants got overrun by Turkic Mongol tribes in such a meaningfully large demographic way.
I'd always believed the origins of the Scythians to be in the Srubnaya culture, so it is interesting to hear that the culture originated far more to the east. Male lineages in the Steppes were quickly extinguished in the Early Iron age it seems or we simply do not have enough samples.
Amazing
Great one
Survive the jive is an amazing resource