Rites of the Scythians - Archaeology Magazine

Rites of the Scythians - Archaeology Magazine

Spectacular new discoveries from the Caucasus set the stage for a dramatic hilltop ritual

By ANDREW CURRY

Monday, June 13, 2016

(Courtesy Andrey Belinski)

One of two 2,400-year-old gold vessels found under a mound at the site of Sengileevskoe-2 in southern Russia depicts griffins attacking a stag.

Russian archaeologist Andrey Belinski wasn’t sure what to expect when he found himself facing a small mound in a farmer’s field at the foot of the Caucasus Mountains. To the untrained eye, the 12-foot feature looked like little more than a hillock. To Belinski, who was charged with excavating the area to make way for new power lines, it looked like a type of ancient burial mound called a kurgan. He considered the job of excavating and analyzing the kurgan, which might be damaged by the construction work, fairly routine. “Basically, we planned to dig so we could understand how it was built,” Belinski says. As he and his team began to slice into the mound, located 30 miles east of Stavropol, it became apparent that they weren’t the first people to take an interest. In fact, looters had long ago ravaged some sections. “The central part was destroyed, probably in the nineteenth century,” Belinski says. Hopes of finding a burial chamber or artifacts inside began to fade.

It took nearly a month of digging to reach the bottom. There, Belinski ran into a layer of thick clay that, at first glance, looked like a natural feature of the landscape, not the result of human activity. He uncovered a stone box, a foot or so deep, containing a few finger and rib bones from a teenager. But that wasn’t all. Nested one inside the other in the box were two gold vessels of unsurpassed workmanship. Beneath these lay three gold armbands, a heavy ring, and three smaller bell-shaped gold cups. “It was a huge surprise for us,” Belinski says. “Somehow, the people who plundered the rest didn’t locate these artifacts.”

 

(Courtesy Andrey Belinski)

Beneath the pair of gold vessels, archaeologists also discovered gold armbands at Sengileevskoe-2, thought to be a ritual site associated with the Scythian culture.

As he continued to excavate the area surrounding the kurgan, he spotted postholes near the stone box, as though tree trunks had once been sunk in the earth to support a pavilion or roof. Belinski and Anton Gass of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation in Berlin, whom Belinski had invited to participate in the excavation, realized that they had found something far beyond a simple burial mound. In fact, some scholars think the site may have been the location of an intense ritual and subsequent burial rite performed by some of the ancient world’s most fearsome warriors.

From about 900 to 100 B.C., nomadic tribes dominated the steppes and grasslands of Eurasia, from what is today western China all the way east to the Danube. All across this vast expanse, archaeological evidence shows that people shared core cultural practices. “They were all nomads, they were heavily socially stratified, they had monumental burial structures and rich grave goods,” says Hermann Parzinger, head of Berlin’s Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and former head of the German Archaeological Institute. Today, archaeologists refer to the members of this interconnected world as Scythians, a name used by the Greek historian Herodotus.

(Courtesy Andrey Belinski)

Gold ring unearthed at Sengileevskoe-2Although the Scythians were united by their nomadic, horse-centered lifestyle, historians and archaeologists do not think they were ever a single political entity. Based on regional differences in their art, artifacts, and burial practices, scholars posit that they were, rather, a collection of tribes who spoke related languages and had a broadly shared artistic and material culture. They had no written language and their nomadic lifestyle has left relatively little in terms of settlements for archaeologists to uncover. Thus, modern scholars have had to rely heavily on the accounts of ancient historians to interpret the archaeological evidence. “Archaeological finds are, by their nature, mute,” says Askold Ivantchik, director of the Centre for Comparative Studies of Ancient Civilizations at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. “The main source we have is texts from other cultures, primarily the Greeks and Romans.” 

The historians’ accounts are rarely complimentary. The ancient Greeks dismissed their neighbors to the west as “mare milkers” and drunks, and the Scythians’ nomadic lifestyle must have seemed strange and threatening in contrast to their own settled urban one. And the Greeks weren’t the only ancient power the steppe nomads encountered—and sometimes clashed with. The Scythians periodically crossed the Caucasus Mountains to terrorize the mighty Assyrians and Medes to the south. There is even textual evidence from Persian and Egyptian sources that they vanquished Assyria, pushed west into modern-day Syria, plundered Palestine, and made it as far south as Egypt’s borders, where a cowed pharaoh paid them to back off in the sixth century B.C.

(SEF/Art Resource, NY)

Images of Scythians can be found on monumental architecture, including this relief from a wall in the Apadana, or audience hall, of the Persian ruler Darius I at the site of Persepolis in modern Iran. 

Though the Caucasus is dotted with Scythian burial mounds, the region has long been ignored in favor of more monumental kurgans farther west, or better-preserved tombs many hundreds of miles to the east. In fact, over the last few decades, Parzinger and others have uncovered Scythian tombs in the Altai Mountains, where Russia, China, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan meet today, preserved by permafrost and ice. The bodies and grave goods in these burials have added to what was already known about Scythian culture from earlier excavations in western Russia and Ukraine, some of which yielded fantastic gold artifacts. But the site excavated by Belinski, dubbed Sengileevskoe-2, is the first such golden treasure to be uncovered in the Caucasus. “This is one of the most outstanding archaeological discoveries of Scythian artifacts in recent years,” says Parzinger. “They are sensational.”

(HIP/Art Resource, NY)

Scythians, who were known as great horsemen and warriors, are portrayed on a variety of artifacts, including this gold comb dating to the late 5th to early 4th century B.C. found in a royal tomb at Solokha, eastern Ukraine.

The find was so remarkable, Belinski says, that when he showed the objects to Scythian experts in St. Petersburg, they initially suspected foul play. “Some scientists from the Hermitage said that it was unbelievable,” he says. “At first, they claimed it was fake, until they heard that everything was found in situ, at an excavation. If the artifacts had emerged from the black market, they would certainly have been dismissed as modern forgeries.” Adds Gass, “This sort of thing comes along once every 50 years. The quality of these objects, their craftsmanship, is nearly unique.”

Though undeniably authentic, the discovery still raises other questions about the objects and what they can tell archaeologists about the warrior-nomads who left them behind. The vessels are likely not the product of the Scythians themselves, but of ancient Greek craftsmen working on commission somewhere close, such as on the northern Black Sea coast. “It’s not only solid gold,” says Gass. “It took the highest art of the Greek world to produce work like this.”

(Igor Kozhevnikov/Courtesy Andrey Belinski)

Both vessels from Sengileevskoe-2 are pierced, a common feature of similar artifacts found in graves across the Scythian world, though most other examples are made of bronze and none are as ornately decorated.

The first mystery is what the artifacts might have been used for. Small cup- or bell-shaped vessels with holes in the bottom (or top) are common in Scythian graves. They are often made of bronze and, rarely, of gold or silver. Archaeologists have suggested they functioned as decorative ornaments, originally hung from horses’ bridles. At first, Belinski thought the two large, elaborately decorated artifacts from Sengileevskoe-2, each of which also has a hole, were simply oversized examples of these common horse trappings. But there was something odd about the vessels. When he pulled them out of the ground 2,400 years after they had been buried, he noticed crusty patches of sticky black residue on both. Before cleaning the gold, Belinski asked the crime lab in Stavropol to take samples for analysis. The results came back positive for opium. Looking at the residue under a microscope, experts identified cannabis particles as well. The residue seems to confirm stories told by ancient authors, Herodotus among them, that the Scythians marked important occasions with drug-fueled rituals. “A dish is placed upon the ground, into which they put a number of red-hot stones, and then add some hemp-seed,” the Greek historian writes. “Immediately it smokes, and gives out such a vapor as no Grecian vapor-bath can exceed; the Scyths, delighted, shout for joy.” Hemp seeds and small metal pipes have been found in frozen tombs far to the east, but it was never clear how they were used, and some archaeologists have argued the plants were medicinal. The residue on these gold vessels appears to be evidence of a more meaningful ritual. There’s no sign of charring or burning, so Belinski thinks the opium was consumed as a concentrated drink, perhaps while cannabis was burning nearby. “That both drugs were being used simultaneously is beyond doubt,” he says.

The results of the residue analysis provide more than just titillating evidence that the ancient Scyths were enthusiastic about the mind-bending power of certain plants. It has long been known that in cultures around the world, drugs were—and often still are—at the center of religious rituals. The drink itself may have had a holy aspect, like an embodiment of the divine.

Both Gass and Belinski suggest that the small cups, which are not much bigger than a thimble, were worn or carried the way Christians wear crosses today. If they’re correct, it could help explain ritual practices all across the Scythian world. “These conical objects with holes are known from other assemblages, but interpretation has always been a problem,” says Ivantchik. “We now know the purpose was preparation of opium or a narcotic substance for sacred rites. Cultic connections with such rare substances are very important. That Belinski detected the use of these substances is another proof the objects have cultic character.”

 

(Igor Kozhevnikov/Courtes Andrey Belinski)

Griffins assault a horse (left) and trees are shown dead and bare (right) in two artfully rendered scenes hammered into the pail-like gold vessel from Sengileevskoe-2.

The collection of this very particular type of artifact in this location may also provide a strong clue as to what may have been happening on that hilltop with its majestic view of the valley below in 400 B.C. If the vessels were holy chalices for a powerful narcotic, were the stunning decorations on their outsides packed with meaning as well? Do their motifs, as Belinski and Gass wonder, reveal insights into the Scythian worldview—and perhaps provide even more confirmation of Herodotus’ histories?