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Organized by the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore and the San Antonio Museum
of Art, in cooperation with museums of the Ukraine, the Brooklyn exhibit
presents a wealth of golden objects found in elaborate burial mounds
known as kurgans or kurhans. It also provides us with a history of the Scythians,
nomads who apparently moved west from the Altai Mountains early in the first
millenium, replacing the Cimmerian tribes to control the rich agricultural
lands north of the Black Sea (modern Ukraine) from ca. 600-300 BC. Much of
our knowledge of these horse-riding tribes comes from the 5th century BC
historian Herodotus who recorded such details as their custom of using the
skin of their enemies' hands to make quivers, and their propensity to drink
fermented mare's milk.
 Entering the main
exhibit hall we get our first look at these famed warriors, depicted on a
magnificent golden helmet uncovered in 1988 . Nearby is an elaborate gold
cover for a gorytos, or bow and quiver case (fig.1) one of four found in
Scythian burial mounds, each hammered against the same template, probably
by Greek craftsmen working in the kingdom of Bosphorus.
Fig.1: Gold cover for gorytos or quiver, 4th c BC (Gold of the
Nomads, Brooklyn Museum of Art).
Although Scythian women are rarely represented on works of art, we are provided
with some idea of how they looked by a display of their garments. Wealthy
Scythian women, it seems, were literally covered in gold from head to toe,
wearing such items as a headdress covered in 243 gold plaques depicting gorgon
heads, rosettes, lotuses and palmettes, a dress decorated with gold plates
showing various fantastical scenes, and shoes also appliqued in gold. A rare
depiction of a Scythian woman, on a golden diadem excavated one hundred years
ago, is probably of the principal Scythian deity, Tabiti (cat. #40). Here
she holds a mirror, objects frequently found in women's burials throughout
Central Asia (several bronze examples are in this exhibit), and is surrounded
by men playing instruments and participating in ritual drinking.
Considering the importance of horses in Scythian society, it is not surprising
that their mounts, too, were covered in adornment, especially those that
were sacrificed and buried alongside their riders to accompany them to the
next world. The exhibit features the silver trappings from one such horse,
buried along with thirteen others in the Khersons'ka Oblast' region. The
trappings include finely wrought cheekpieces in which a winged deity fights
a lion, and a noseband with a raised lions head. Another kurgan excavated
ten years ago in the same region contained not only the skeletons of horses
still wearing their gold and bronze bridle ornaments, but also a gold necklace
with horse-head finials and a magnificent gold phiale (cup) decorated in
high relief with six horse heads rotating in open- mouthed agitation around
a central amber inset (fig.2).
Horses, however, are not the animals most commonly depicted in Scythian art;
far more prevalent are the stag, feline and bird of prey, which can be seen
on everything from gold plaques, to bronze poletops, to a bone bow-tip. Scholars
believe these are meant to represent red deer, spotted and snow leopards
and the golden eagle, all animals which inhabit the forested region of the
Altai mountains, not the grassy steppes of the Ukraine. The depiction of
these animals thus appears to reflect a concern with prey and predator from
when the Scythians originated as a hunting society in eastern lands.
When more than one animal is depicted in a scene, they are often shown in
mortal combat, as in the gold quiver cover presenting a stag under attack
from a feline, eagle and snake (cat. #50). This scene also demonstrates one
of the central tendencies of Scythian art, that of transformation from one
form to another, probably reflecting the centrality of movement and evolution
in this nomadic society. In this case, we note that the lion's jaw emulates
a bird's head, while other birds' heads can be seen in both the hooves and
antlers of the fallen deer. This transformation of antlers to birds' heads
is apparent in a number of other objects in the exhibit, and may express
the Scythian belief in rebirth and regeneration, and probably stems from
the observation that the male red deer sheds his antlers every year, only
to grow them anew the next spring. Some scholars thus believe the antlers
were seen as branches in the Tree of Life, which themselves evolved into
birds in an eternal life-cycle, a hypothesis which certainly makes sense
of an unusual bronze staff finial in which a man is surrounded by four 'branches'
or antlers, each topped by an eagle with outstretched wings (cat. #39). The
nude, phallic figure, unusual in Scythian art, is probably a deity (perhaps
Papaeus, next in importance to Tabiti in the Scythian pantheon). Attached
pendants and bells were undoubtedly meant to chime as the finial was carried
in some religious ceremony, reflecting the Scythians interest in sound as
well as movement.
The remainder of the exhibit focuses on Scythian contacts and relationships
throughout the ancient world. Early in their wanderings westward, it is known
that  they played
a considerable role in the power struggles of the Near East, becoming enough
of a military threat to the Assyrians that the king Esarhaddon (681-668 BC)
married his daughter to a Scythian noble. The influence of the Near East
clearly shows in both Scythian art and daily artifacts, including such motifs
as the griffin (which fit well with the Scythian fondness for both felines
and eagles, and their conceptions of transformation between the two) and
objects such as the rhyton, or drinking horn.
Fig.2: Cup with horse heads, 5th c BC (Inst. of Archaeology,
Kyiv).
The establishment of Greek trading colonies, including Olbia, Cheronesos
and Pantikapaion on the Black Sea coast in the 7th century BC, brought additional
influence from the Greek world on Scythian culture. Greek objects become
increasingly common in Scythian burials, as the Scythians exchanged local
resources such as grain, sturgeon, animal pelts, honey and amber for imported
Greek wine, oil and luxury items. A striking example of how deeply Greek
trade-goods penetrated into Scythian territory is the discovery a large cache
of Greek bronze vessels in a peat bog 300 miles (500 km) up the Dneiper River.
All of the finds were manufactured in Greece, but include decorations, such
as an eagle-headed griffin attacking a stag, which undoubtedly were chosen
to appeal to popular Scythian tastes (cat # 84).
While Greek items such as helmets, amphoras and even rings made from Greek
coins, as well as locally-manufactured copies of Greek objects, become
increasingly common in Scythian tombs, equally noteworthy is the growing
Greek influence on Scythian art. It is difficult to determine the exact ethnicity
of the craftspersons who created many of the finest gold and silver objects,
since the Scythians themselves were already skilled metallurgists, while
the prospect of wealthy customers must have attracted metal-workers from
regions as far as southern Italy. Most scholars, however, now believe that
many of these objects were produced by Greeks living in Pantikapaion, the
capital of the kingdom of Bosphoros. Catering directly to the Scythian market,
these metalworkers often modified their style to local preferences. In the
gold gorytos described above, for instance, the artist must have been aware
of Scythian modesty, for the genitalia of the male figures are carefully
covered in a manner the Greeks would not have thought necessary. In many
cases it is also seems that local craftspersons worked in collaboration with
Greek masters; thus, on the gold helmet discussed earlier, we can note the
difference between the detailed, skilled rendering of the heads of the combatants
and the less practiced hand evident in the depiction of the garments.
One of the final objects in the exhibit, a brilliant, 4th century BC, gold
pectoral (cat.#172) shows influence from both the Near East and Greece, in
style and subject matter. Yet in its own way, it is uniquely Scythian. In
its outer register we see, finely sculpted in the round, a world that evolves
from wild and mythical death-struggles to everyday, mundane conflict: in
the center, griffins attack horses, flanked by scenes of leopards and lions
assailing a boar and a stag, towards the edge a hound chases a hare, and
finally, two grasshoppers face-off. Quite different is the top register which
depicts rare scenes from daily peaceful Scythian life: at center, two men
stitch a fleece, their bow and quiver cases at rest near-bye; they are surrounded
by horses and cows with their young, some of whom are nursing. Then on each
side, shepherds are at work, one milking, while the other holds an amphora,
followed by goats, kids and a bird. Perhaps here we are witnessing the
domestication of the Scythian people, who, at the time the pectoral was created,
were becoming increasingly sedentary and eventually, vulnerable to attack
from newer immigrants from the east, the Sarmatians.
Michele A. Miller
This article appears in Vol.2, No.4 of Athena
Review.
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