Scythian culture

Russian University Friendship between nations

ABSTRACT

ON THE THEME “HOUSEHOLD CULTURE OF THE SCYTHIANS”

COMPLETED: student of FZhB-11 group

Kurov Artyom

© Moscow 2000

INTRODUCTION

Scythian culture- a term in which researchers put different meanings. In a narrow sense, this term refers to the culture of only the Scythians themselves, who occupied the territory of the steppes of the Northern Black Sea region between the Danube and the Don. In a broader sense, the term was used as the name of a culture common in the steppe and forest-steppe zones north of the Black Sea and the North Caucasus in the 7th-3rd centuries. BC e. In this era, the European and Asian steppes and the territories adjacent to them were inhabited by tribes of various origins who spoke different languages. However, their main occupation (pastoral cattle breeding, hunting, partly agriculture), material culture, social system, art of all these tribes had much in common. The Scythian culture is characterized by the widespread use of the kurgan rite during burials. Next to the burial of a noble Scythian or their king, they laid dead wives, concubines, servants, horse slaves. A high mound is poured on top. For example, the burial mound of the Ulsky aul (VI century BC), 15 m high, is famous for the fact that more than 400 horses were sacrificed to the deceased here. The expressive elements of the Scythian culture are bronze cauldrons, mirrors with eyelets and handles in the center of the disk, the spread of the animal style in art. The whole complex of these striking features was widespread in the cultures of the nomads of the steppes of Eurasia, the so-called Scythian-Siberian world. This is also the reason for the appearance of the term "Scythian-Siberian animal style".

The Scythians played a serious role in the political life of Western Asia, participated in the ethnogenesis of numerous peoples of our country, created an amazing art that became widespread geographically. Information about the Scythians is contained in Greek and Latin writers and in Assyrian-Babylonian cuneiform documents. We owe the most valuable information about the occupations, customs, lifestyle and beliefs of the Scythians to Herodotus, who devoted a significant part of his "History" to this people. It is known about the displacement of the Cimmerians by the Scythians and their military campaigns in the countries of Western Asia from the 70s. 7th century before the beginning of the VI century. BC e. under the leadership of Partatue, when they were partially destroyed by the Medes. In the VI century. BC e. Persian king Darius with a huge army (700,000 people) invades the Scythian possessions and is defeated. 4th century BC e. - the time of the highest economic, cultural and political upsurge in the history of the Scythian kingdom. The basis of its economy was the grain trade, exported to the Greek cities of the Northern Black Sea region. Many masterpieces of Greek jewelers and toreuts, discovered by archaeologists in the royal burial mounds, were received in exchange for exported bread. In the middle of the III century. BC e. Scythia turns into a deserted desert as a result of the invasion of the Sarmatians. However, by the II century. BC e. there is a revival of the state of the Scythians. In the 3rd century The Scythian kingdom was destroyed by the Gothic invasion.

STUDY OF THE SCYTHIAN CULTURE

The Scythian culture is part of a vast historical and cultural community covering a vast territory from the Danube to Mongolia. The study of the Scythian world remains one of the pressing problems of domestic archeology. One of the first discoveries in the field of Scythian studies was the excavation of the Litoy Kurgan, carried out in 1763 by order of the Governor of the Novorossiysk province A.P. Melgunov, by whose name this monument became known in science under the name Melgunovskiy Kurgan. Mid 19th century was the time of the discoveries of I. E. Zabelin in the steppes near Nikopol, among them - the excavations of the Chertomlytsky mound, which gained worldwide fame. Second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries - the period of the famous excavations of N. I. Veselovsky in the Kuban and the Lower Dnieper, when outstanding monuments of Scythian culture were discovered - the Kelermes, Kostroma, Ulsky barrows, as well as the famous Solokha barrow. A great contribution to the study of the problems of Scythian studies was made by Soviet archaeologists. From the 30s. excavations of mounds of the ordinary population of Scythia began, excavations of mounds unprecedented in scale began in the 60s. Kuban mounds, when prominent Scythian monuments were discovered, including the mounds Tolstaya Grave and Gaimanov's Grave. In the works of B. N. Grakov, A. I. Terenozhkin, B. A. Rybakov, wide circle problems related to the culture and composition of the population of Scythia. Each of the problems posed became the subject of discussion, including the problem of the origin of the Scythian animal style, we will return to this problem later.

LIFE AND CULTURE OF THE SCYTHIANS

Hippocrates wrote about the physical type of the Scythians: “Their figures are thick, fleshy, not articulate, weak, lethargic. With their wide beardless appearance, the Scythians are all on the same face ... The Scythian people are fair-haired from the cold, since the sun does not bake it. The white body is burned frost and it turns red. It follows from the above that the Black Sea Scythians, like the Central Asian Saks, with a pronounced Caucasoid type, had fair skin. The Scythians had lighter hair pigmentation compared to the Greeks. There are images of the Scythians on vessels and other items of Greek work found in the mounds of the northern Black Sea region. They represent Scythians of a pronounced Caucasoid type, with smooth or slightly wavy hair on their heads. The same Caucasoid type is also found in the Saks depicted on Persepolis bas-reliefs, as well as on a number of gold plates from the Amu-Darya treasure. Glos. Persepolis, Amu - Darya treasure.

From the images of the work of Greek masters, one can also get a complete picture of the clothes of the Scythians. They wore a short, furry, wool-down caftan with slanting, overlapping floors, tied with a leather belt. The outer surface of these caftans was embroidered with patterns. Headdresses were of two types: pointed, similar to Saks (fur or felt); or helmet-like, similar to hats with earflaps. Pants on some are depicted as narrow, fur or leather, on others - wide cloth or thin felt. They refueled in leather boots, which, like the Saks, were tied at the ankles with a belt.

Speaking about the peculiarities of the culture of the Scythians, first of all it is worth referring to the so-called "animal style" in the Scythian culture. The concept of "animal style" is used to denote the well-known pictorial manner of master artists of the first half - the middle of the 1st millennium BC. e. This manner of depiction had characteristic common features in the decorative and applied art of the Scythian, Sarmatian, Sako-Masaget and other nomadic tribes that inhabited the Great Steppe. It is impossible to name a single category of household items that nomads would not strive to decorate. Thousands of items made of metal, wood, birch bark, and leather found in the steppes of Eurasia had common artistic motifs - images of various animals (a deer with its legs tucked in, a curled up predator, a vulture, etc.) and scenes of predators fighting or predators attacking ungulates.

The discussion about the origin of the Scythian-Siberian animal style in domestic science for many years was conducted around two hypotheses. One group of researchers believed that Scythian art was entirely formed during the Scythian campaigns in Asia Minor on the basis of ancient Eastern art and in ready-made quickly transferred to the steppe Eurasia (M. I. Artaonov, N. L. Chlenova) Other researchers believed that Scythian art developed in the depths of the Eurasian steppes, that is, they put forward the Central Asian hypothesis (V. A. Ilyinskaya, A. I. Terenozhkin ). The modern view of this problem is determined by two points of view.

1. Excavations of the royal mound Arzhan in Tuva, where the most ancient objects of the Scythian-Siberian animal style of the 9th-8th centuries were found. BC e., allowed some researchers to assert that "the problem of the origin of the Scythian culture, art and the Scythians themselves can be considered generally solved. It has been established that their homeland should be sought in the depths of Asia, and not in the Northern Black Sea region and not in Asia Minor" (In A. Ilyinskaya, A. I. Terenozhkin, 1983).

2. "It is possible that it was the Scythian tribes who brought with them to the Near East the motif of a deer with crossed legs and branched horns, the motif of a panther, a stylized image of a vulture's head ... At the same time, not to mention the pose of a deer or a ram, which is very common widely in the art of Asia Minor as early as the 2nd millennium BC, in Iran, monuments depicting the same animals were found, although in a different style. there is a deer with lean legs on the Luristan "psalia" of the end of the 8th century BC." (V. G. Lukonin, 1984). Glos. Arzhan, cheek-pieces, Luristan or Luristan bronzes.

Brilliant examples of art were found during excavations of the world-famous Scythian royal mounds - Solokha, Chertomlyk, etc. A distinctive feature of Scythian art is the "Scythian animal style". Images of individual animals in Scythian items (deer, leopard, horse, etc.) are combined with complex compositions made with great skill. The treasures of the Scythian burial mounds are, as a rule, a set of items made by different masters belonging to different art schools. For example, in the Kelermes kurgans - the burial places of the Scythian nobility, some of the gold items are associated with ancient Eastern art, some with early Greek. Some things were not Scythian, but were obtained during the Middle Asian campaigns. Some of the items were made, obviously, by special order of the Scythian kings and nobility from the masters of various countries (Assyrians, Greeks, etc. In the 5th - 4th century BC, Scythian art developed under the influence of Greek masters who lived in the cities of the Bosporus. Bosporan masters they knew well the needs of their customers - the Scythians and made things according to their taste. "How quickly the early Scythian things lose that layer of fantastic images that is associated with the art of the Near East! e.) it disappears altogether: there Scythian art comes into contact with the art of Greece. But these images live on in the art of Iran of the Achaemenid era. They are found in Achaemenid seals, on silver and gold vessels (especially on rhytons). On the images of Achaemenid swords , even in "great" art - on the capitals of columns, on reliefs.

However, during their military and cultural heyday, the Scythians developed their cultural potential, and at the same time extended it to their neighbors.

The paradox lies in the fact that the militarily most powerful ethno-cultural group of the forest-steppe is being Scythized, while in weaker groups these processes are less noticeable.

In the same vein, it also works that on the territory of Azerbaijan, according to Herodotus, who served as the “Scythian road” for invasions to Asia Minor, in the Scythian time, the Khojaly-Kedabek culture continues to exist without significant changes, the Scythian influence on which is weakly felt and is limited to perception. individual elements of the triad. Eugen Moscalu notes that in sites like Szentes-Vekersug and Chiumbrud, the presence of elements of the triad in which served as the basis for a number of researchers to talk about the conquest of these territories by the Scythians, 99% and even 100% of the ceramic complex is local ceramics, but meanwhile, he writes, “no one talks about the Celts in Transylvania without Celtic pottery”

The thesis that nomads do not bring their own pottery with them, but use the local one, is not so indisputable. Nomads are not at all in a state of constant dominant symbiosis with the settled population, and during the periods of the formation of their power in one area or another, they are forced to make their own dishes themselves. This, of course, should be about home production, and, most likely, this was the lot of women and children. Therefore, even having conquered some settled population, the nomads were unlikely to be so interested in local ceramics, except perhaps in their ceremonial, prestigious forms. The refusal of this position should have been dictated by very serious reasons, and most likely one - the death of their wives and children. Such options are also possible, but it is ridiculous to believe that the nomads constantly and deliberately doomed them, their native blood, to death, rushing to campaigns and conquering new lands. Do not forget about the sacred function of some categories of ceramics. The fact that the nomads brought their ceramics with them is evidenced, in particular, by the fact that we find Scythian ceramics in the monuments of Dobruja, on the territory of the so-called “small Scythia”.

So the fact of the presence of the triad is clearly not enough to assert the conquest of any territory by the Scythians.

On the other hand, attention is also drawn to the fact that there is no single archetype of the triad even within the borders of the Northern Black Sea region, expressed, among other things, in a significant diversity and “lack of standard” in the design of individual elements of the triad even in one burial ground. According to V. G. Petrenko, “each region of the Scythian culture is still characterized by its own features of the development of material culture, and, in particular, the types of arrowheads”, only “the general trend in the development of forms” remains. In some local groups, there are no separate elements of the triad, even very bright ones, such as, for example, zoomorphic cheek-pieces that appear in the periodization scheme of the early Scythian culture proposed by I. N. Medvedskaya, a chronological indicator of the arrival of a new wave of the Scythians and the beginning of the second stage of the early Scythian culture, are absent in the West Podolsk group.

We also note that if we consider the steppe monuments as the very environment in which the triad was born, then they lack a number of its important elements, such as pommel, helmets of the Kuban type, mirrors with a side handle, and stone dishes are still represented in small quantities. - four copies.

All this is not consistent not only with the concept of the conquest of the forest-steppe by the Scythians - carriers of the triad, but also with the idea of ​​the triad as an integral complex inherent in a particular ethnic group. The triad is a collective, abstract image created not by the Scythians, but by the Scythologists. Therefore, the search for some hypothetical center of the origin of the triad is meaningless, which, by the way, has not yet been crowned with success.

From the manifested polycentrism of the origin of the elements of the triad, the idea arises of a fundamentally different mechanism for its distribution and, more broadly, a different model for the reconstruction of events. Not the conquests of the Scythians, but the interaction of cultures, during which common stereotypes are developed,

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Chapter 8. CULTURE OF THE SCYTHIANS

Ancient culture of the steppe nomads. Material and spiritual culture of the Scythians.

The Scythians and people close to them, who lived in the steppes of Eurasia in the first millennium BC, did not know urban settlements. Therefore, their culture is recreated mainly on the basis of brief information from the sources of other civilizations, as well as on the relatively poor finds of archaeologists in the surviving graves. There is reason to believe that the Scythians are the self-name of one of the tribes that laid the foundation for the early state formations of the nomads of the steppe Eurasia.

Modern studies of the world of the Scythians date back to the New Age, when they began to systematize information about them on the basis of the Greco-Roman tradition. The Greeks first met with these people on the northern coast of the Black Sea. According to the stories of Herodotus and the message of Diodorus Siculus, the Scythians came to the Black Sea region from Asia and drove out the Cimmerians. The ancestral home of the Scythians, called by Diodorus the valley near the Araks River, is referred by modern historians to the territory from Central Asia to the Don River. Most likely, the appearance of the Scythians in the Black Sea region was not a one-time, but a relatively long process of contradictory interaction between several close groups of tribes. Throughout the seventh century BC, Scythian and Cimmerian warriors actively participated in conflicts between the states of Asia Minor. Ancient Eastern civilization left a lasting mark on the culture of the Scythians. Having been defeated, the Scythians moved to the Black Sea region and dominated here for about four hundred years. The scarce data available allow scientists to assert that the Scythian language belongs to the Iranian group of the Indo-European family of languages. It is believed that the language of the Savromats is essentially a dialect of the Scythian.

The most popular among the Scythians were images of animals: ungulates, predators from the cat family and birds. The so-called animal style is considered the leading element of the Scythian culture. Items of military equipment and ritual vessels were decorated with strictly defined images of animals. The meaning of animal style remains a matter of debate. Some believe that it is based on magical ideas, others associate it with mythology, others see in it a sign system that conveys the Scythian ideas about the world.

Researchers believe that the stories of ancient authors about the military confrontation between the Scythians and the Persian army of Darius contain information from Scythian folklore. In the classic tactics imposed on the Persians to elude the nomads from a collision with a powerful enemy army, including small blows that constantly disturb the enemy, as well as the tactics of "scorched earth" along his route, the Scythians turned out to be invulnerable. After the departure of the Persians from the Black Sea region, almost two hundred years of the heyday of Scythia begins.

Absolute majority Scythian monuments this period - burial mounds. Low burials of ordinary warriors are difficult to see in the modern steppe, but giant earthen hills (about and over 20 meters in height), built over the graves of leaders or kings, are visible from afar. The grave, located under the embankment, is a cave-chamber dug under the side wall of a deep entrance well. There may be several cameras. The main equipment that accompanied the deceased was placed in the cell. In the burials of a noble Scythian, the bodies of servants and riding horses were laid. The subjects of the deceased erected a mound and participated in the feast - a grandiose funeral ritual. According to the number of bones of animals eaten during the feast, discovered by archaeologists during the excavation of one of the burial mounds, scientists suggested that the number of participants in the funeral ritual was close to three thousand people. The set of items in the Scythian graves is traditional, regardless of the place of the deceased in the social structure of society; in the graves of ordinary warriors, the inventory is the same, but simpler in material. Weapons are found in the male burials. The common weapons of the Scythians were powerful bows with bronze arrowheads, spears. Akinaki swords are more common in rich burials. For women's graves, personal jewelry is typical - bracelets, rings, earrings - as well as mirrors. In the burials of the nobility, objects are often decorated with gold plates with images. The women's headdress, the clothes of the deceased, and the bedspreads that hung the walls of the burial chamber were decorated with gold overlays. ritual vessels different shapes made of precious metal or wood with metal overlays.

According to the form and list of objects, the researchers concluded that there were cultural ties between the Scythians and Greeks. Many items, including those with classical Scythian images, were made by Greek craftsmen.

The cosmological representations of the Scythians, researchers believe, are made on the preserved pectoral (our decoration covering the chest and shoulders). The composition consists of three tiers: the lower one symbolizes the other world of chaos and death, the upper one is the world of people opposing chaos, the middle one connects the lower and upper worlds. On a silver vase from a burial mound, the researchers found a scene of a horse sacrifice in full accordance with the description of the ritual by Herodotus. There are plots of Greek myths on objects from the barrows.

According to Herodotus, the Scythians identified seven gods. The first in importance is Tabiti - the goddess of fire, the elements, revered by the ancient Indo-Iranian peoples. The gods-spouses of heaven and earth Papaya and Api, who were considered the progenitors of mankind and the earthly world, were revered. The next four gods, apparently, were associated with the earthly world. One of them was embodied in an ancient iron sword-akinak, domestic animals and one of a hundred captives were sacrificed to him. It is believed that a large bronze cauldron, symbolizing the unity and multiplicity of the Scythians, was a shrine for the Scythians.

The Scythians were divided into three classes: warriors, priests and community members. Each estate considered one of the sons of the legendary ancestor to be its progenitor. Sacred attribute: warriors - a battle ax, priests - a bowl, community members - a plow with a yoke. According to the myth of the Scythians, these objects of gold fell from the sky at the very beginning of the world. Initially, myths testify, at the head of the Scythians were three kings, then one Atei. The legendary Atey died in a tragic battle for the Scythians with the Macedonian army, led by King Philip. The final collapse of Scythia occurred as a result of the invasion of the Sarmatians. According to the description of Diodorus, the Sarmatians pursued and destroyed the Scythians without exception, so that most of the country turned into a desert.

The culture of the Scythians was preserved in the Nart epic, the property of many peoples of the Caucasus. Among the successors of the Scythian tribes, researchers primarily name the Ossetians, the Iranian-speaking people of the Caucasus.