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Scythians Research Paper

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“The Scythian soldier drinks the blood of the first man he overthrows in battle. […] he cuts off all their heads, and carries them to the king; […] thus entitled to a share of the booty.” This account of the people of southern Russia is observed and recorded by Herodotus of Halicarnassus, a Greek philosopher and a “Father of History” who set out to document the Persian War. In his efforts to detail this event in history, he included a vast variety of additional information, including the rituals and traditions of the Scythians. According to Herodotus’ descriptions and art found in southern Russia, it is evident that the Scythians had contact with the Greeks. In 1794 the ruins of an ancient town called Olbia was found followed by excavations …show more content…

The exposure of exotic animals that can be found in their art is mainly due to the mountainous area of the Altai Mountains in which some Scythians lived. Animals they would have encountered included the golden eagle, spotted leopards, snow leopards and the red deer of the area. It comes to no surprise that the animals in their art are found as predators attacking prey, mimicking the war-like nature of the Scythians. In the nomadic art, these themes can “symbolize death, in terms familiar to the steppe nomads […] one eating or tearing the flesh of the other.” This finding is parallel with the recording of Herodotus and his account of the Scythian’s war rituals of drinking the blood of their first defeated man. These predator-prey images would pass from their culture to the Greeks. The Vessel with Animal Combat (Fig. 1) is an example of this characteristic of their culture. On this silver gilded vessel are two pairs of animals amid combat. The first pair consists of two lions attacking a horse, their heads looking frontally. The second pair also consists of a lion but with a spotted leopard attacking a horned ibex. In the background is a rocky ground line with engraved plants that suggest a mountainous terrain reminiscent of the Altai Mountains. However, earthborn animals are not the only animalistic beings found in the Scythian and later Greco-Scythian

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