2023-12-22 16:49:24
Herodotus, the famous Greek historian, was not exaggerating when he told in his ‘Histories’ that the Scythians drank the blood of their defeated enemies, used human scalps as trophies and skinned the defeated to use their skin in their quivers. At least he was right about the macabre custom of these nomadic peoples who inhabited the vast Eurasian steppes during the first millennium BC of turning the skin of their enemies into leather sheaths for their arrows.
The analyzes carried out by researchers from the University of Copenhagen to 45 leather samples and two leather objects recovered from 18 graves excavated at 14 different Scythian sites from the 5th and 4th centuries BC in southern Ukraine show that they mainly used the skin of domesticated species such as sheep, goats, cows and horses to produce leather and skins from wild animals such as foxes, squirrels and felinesbut also humans.
In the remains of a quiver found in Ilyinka and another in Bulhakovo, the team formed by Luise Ørsted Brandt, Meaghan Mackie, Marina Daragán, Mateo J. Collins and Margarita Gleba discovered two samples of human skin which, “for the first time, provide direct evidence« from Herodotus’ accountas highlighted in a report published in Plos One.
Macabre customs
Other of the macabre Scythian customs described by Herodotus had already been supported by archaeological finds. Near one of the largest Scythian royal burial sites in southern Ukraine, the Aleksandropol mound, a funerary banquet space was discovered with 11 tombs of men, women and children who appear to have been murdered and buried there as part of the funerary rituals of the royal occupant of the tumulus, as the Greek historian related at the funeral of a Scythian king.
The authors of the study also recall that their description of how mourners self-mutilated at the burials of their monarchs has also been confirmed in excavations at the Chortomlyk burial mound, “where six phalanges of human fingers were found, two of them with marks of courts, belonging to three or four different towns.
Not only gold
The spectacular pieces of gold found in elite burials are famous from these nomads who occupied the steppes north of the Black Sea and between the Danube and Don rivers and served as a union for the various sedentary societies of Europe and Asia. Ukraine has recently recovered some of these valuable objects that left Crimea for an exhibition before the Russian invasion of the peninsula.
However, less attention has been paid to Scythian leather objects, which are often highly degraded, fragmented and unphotogenic. Experts believe that some of those now examined were probably articles of clothing (possibly pants), boots or vessels, but the majority are remains of emblematic Scythian objects, such as aljabas to store arrows o’gorytoi‘, containers to store and transport both the arrows and the bow.
A quiver set has been found in almost all Scythian burials, although often only the arrowheads have survived, and archers are depicted in ancient iconographies with these quivers.
Researchers have observed a clear Hellenic style in the relief decoration of some of the quiver fragments studied. They believe they may have been produced or decorated in Greek settlements on the northern coast of the Black Sea or decorated in the Greek style by Scythian craftsmen. It would not be strange, since the scabbards of Scythian swords and other objects found in elite tombs carry decorative and Greek mythological motifs.
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