Posted on 07/09/2016 3:17:30 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
...As he and his team began to slice into the mound, located 30 miles east of Stavropol... 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... 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...
Although 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... modern scholars have had to rely heavily on the accounts of ancient historians to interpret the archaeological evidence...
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...
(Excerpt) Read more at archaeology.org ...
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.
Beth-Shan guards the road from Gilead in Trans-Jordan and also from Galilee along the valley of the Jordan; consequently it is an important strategic point at a crossroads, protecting the eastern gate of the Esdraelon Valley against encroachment from the north and east. In the days of Assurbanipal's father, Esarhaddon, the Scythians came down from the steppes of Russia and, crossing the Caucasus, arrived at the lake of Urmia. Their king went to the help of Assur-banipal when the Medes and the Babylonians marched against Assyria. Herodotus narrates that the Scythians descended from the slopes of the Caucasus, battled the Medes who were pressing on Nineveh, and, moving southward, reached Palestine. There they were met by Psammetichos, the pharaoh, who for a long time tarried in Palestine. Chapters 4-6 of the young Jeremiah are generally regarded as expressing the fear of the people of Palestine at the approach of the Scythian hordes. The prophet spoke of the evil that would come down from the north and a great destruction (4:6), of whole cities that would "flee for the noise of the horsemen and bowmen" (4:29), of "a mighty nation . . . whose language thou knowest not" (5:15). "Behold, a people cometh from the north country, and a great nation shall be raised from the sides of the earth" (6:22). The Egyptian king, however, succeeded by persuasion in halting their advance toward Egypt. He, like the Scythians, was an ally of Assurbanipal. According to Herodotus, Psammetichos was besieging a city in Palestine when the Scythians reached that country. I have identified Seti the Great with Psammetichos of Herodotus... Seti-meri-en-Ptah Men-maat-Re, who left his steles in Beth-Shan, was Psammetichos of Herodotus. It was the seventh century. There is a mural that shows Seti capturing a city called Kadesh. Modern scholars recognized that this Kadesh or Temple City was not the Kadesh mentioned in the annals of Thutmose.
Palestinian archaeology is a confused terrain dug upside down. The Mycenaean ware is thought to be a product of the pre-Israelite period, whereas actually it denotes the period between Solomon and Hezekiah and even Josiah. The time of Judges is thought to follow the time of the Mycenaean ware, whereas it was antecedent to it and, together with the time of the wandering in the desert, comprises the Hyksos period in Palestine. Thus there seems to be no level for the time of the Kings in the earth of Palestine. This can be well illustrated by the excavations at Beth-Shan. This city in the valley of the Jordan played a notable part in all the periods of Palestinian history. During the time of the Judges it was an unsubdued Canaanite city defended by chariots of iron. When Saul fell in the war with the Philistines his body was carried to Beth-Shan and hung on the city wall. The city was an administrative center in the days of Solomon. Scythians occupied it in the days of Manasseh (Menashe) or Josiah... The real meaning of the strata archaeology of Beth-Shan is as follows: Strata IX to V (Thutmose III to Ramses II) cover the period of the kings from Solomon to Zedekiah and the exile. Stratum IV covers only the end of the Neo-Babylonian period (Nabonidus) and the old Persian, which is contemporaneous with the Later Ramessides. Strata III, II, and I are correctly presented as Hellenistic-Roman, Byzantine, and Arabian... Dealing with the finds of the Ramses II level, the archaeologist writes: "The disturbance of the levels immediately above leaves us in uncertainty concerning the length of time during which these buildings were occupied, and we are therefore not entitled to assert that every object found upon or near the floor-level must be even approximately of the date of Rameses II. The presence of the Cypriote bottle No. 27 is sufficient by itself to rebut any such assumption, as this type is, apparently, not earlier than the eighth century." ...In Lachish we had a similar case. One area of a certain stratum was described as containing ashes from the time of Ramses, and another area of the same stratum was said to contain ashes of the time of Nebuchadnezzar, because in one place scarabs of Ramses II were found and in the other, a short distance away, ostraca belonging to the war with Nebuchadnezzar were discovered. However, in ashes the ostraca of a vase of the Nineteenth Dynasty was found."
"According to the account which the Scythians themselves give," reported the fifth-century Greek historian Herodotus, "they are the youngest of all nations."1 It was the great disturbances and movements of people of the eighth and seventh centuries before the present era that brought these nomadic tribes from the depths of Asia to the doorstep of the civilized nations of the ancients East -- Assyria, Egypt and Greece. Formerly the Scythians dwelt east of the Araxus -- their first settlements in southern Russia date to the end of the eighth century, about the time also that the Assyrians clashed with them in the vicinity of Lake Urmia. In the course of the decades that followed the Scythians attained the peak of their power, menacing Egypt and helping to bring about the downfall of Assyria. Later the powerful Chaldean and Persian empires succeeded to confine them to the steppes north of the Caucasus. The appearance of the Scythians on the scene of the ancient East coincides in revised scheme with the final years of the Mycenaean civilization; the accepted timetable, however, needs to place their arrival fully five centuries after the last of the Mycenae citadels had been abandoned. The tombs of the Scythian kings in the Crimea were built in a way "surprisingly reminiscent of Mycenaean constructions," the burial chamber consisting of "enormous blocks of dressed stone set to overlap each other so as to meet in the center in an impressive vault." To explain the use by the Scythians of the corbelled vault of the type common in the Mycenaean period, it was suggested that there must have been a continuing tradition going back to Mycenaean times, despite the lack of even a single exemplar between the twelfth and seventh centuries. "I have no doubt," wrote the historian Rostovzeff, "although we possess no examples, that the corbelled vault was continuously employed in Thrace, and in Greece and in Asia Minor as well, from the Mycenaean period onwards. . ." We, on the contrary, must begin to have doubts about a scheme which needs to postulate a five hundred year tradition of work in stone for which not a thread of evidence exists. Stone constructions of the type, had they existed, would have survived. Gregory Borovka in his Scythian Art writes of "the striking circumstance that the Scytho-Siberian animal style exhibits an inexplicable but far-reaching affinity with the Minoan-Mycenaean. Nearly all its motives recur in Minoan-Mycenaean art." Solomon Reinach, long ago, called attention to certain striking resemblances between Scythian and Minoan-Mycenaean art. For instance, the design of animal bodies in " 'flying gallop" in which the animal is represented as stretched out with its forelegs extended in a line with the body and its hind legs thrown back accordingly, is at once characteristic of Minoan-Mycenaean art and foreign to that of all other ancient and modern peoples; it recurs only in Scythia, Siberia and the Far East." Another example of great similarity in style is in "the Siberian gold and bronze plaques depicting scenes of fighting animals." Borovka supplies his description with illustrations. "How often are the animals depicted with the body so twisted that the forequarters are turned downwards, while the hind quarters are turned upwards? Can the agonized writhings of a wounded beast or fury of his assailant be more simply rendered?" "Other motives of the [Scythian] animal style, too, reappear in Minoan and Mycenaean art. We may cite the animals with hanging legs and those which are curled almost into a circle. Conversely, the standard motif of the Minoan-Mycenaean lion, often represented in the Aegean with reverted head, reappears again in Scythian and Siberian art." The similarity first observed by Reinach and elaborated upon by Borovka is very unusual. But what appeared to them most surprising was the fact that two such similar art styles should be separated not only by a vast geographical distance, but also by an enormous gulf in time. "How are we to explain this far-reaching kinship in aim between the two artistic schools? It remains, on the face of it, a riddle. Immediate relations between Minoan-Mycenaean and Scytho-Siberian civilizations are unthinkable; the two are too widely separated in space and time. An interval of some 500 years separates them. . . Still, the kinship between the two provinces of art remains striking and typical of both of them."
Are the Mycenaean lions, carved in the peculiar position of standing erect on their hind legs facing a pillar that divides them, contemporary with similar Phrygian monumental sculptures, and if not, how does one explain the many centuries' gap? How is it that the wall of the Phrygian Gate at Gordion is built like that of Troy VI, if some five hundred years separate them? In what way does one explain the affinity of Mycenaean art of the pre-twelfth century with the art of Scythia, the Danubian region, and Etruria of the eighth and seventh centuries? Was the great strife between Furtwaengler and Doerpfeld ever resolved? Because two timetables are applied simultaneously to the past of Greece, a clash of opinions is almost inevitable. How is it that Greece and the entire Aegean area of the Mycenaean Age suddenly became depopulated, with scarcely any traces of human activity surviving? ...When the decipherment of the Mycenaean Linear B script, to the surprise of many Hellenist scholars proved the language to be Greek, the so-called Homeric problem did not approach a solution but, contrariwise, grew more urgent, more enigmatic, more perplexing. The historians were startled because the Minoan-Mycenaean inscriptions are ascribed by them at the latest to the twelfth century, and the earliest Greek texts were of the eighth century. How could a people that was already literate forfeit its literacy so completely for over four hundred years? The very fact that none of the Greek philosophers, historians, geographers, statesmen or poets ever referred to a Dark Age preceeding the Ionic Age and separating it from the Mycenaean Age, should have been enough to cast doubt on the soundness of the overall construction... When a cartouche of Queen Tiy was found at Mycenae, that stratum was dated accordingly to ca. -1400. When in the short-lived city of Akhet-Aton, built by Akhnaton and abandoned in the same generation, Mycenaean ware was found in profusion, the ware was regarded as contemporary with Akhnaton, and was dated to the fourteenth century... In Ages in Chaos we have seen that, with the fall of the Middle Kingdom and the Exodus synchronized, events in the histories of the peoples of the ancient world coincide all along the centuries. For a space of over one thousand years records of Egyptian history have been compared with the records of the Hebrews, Assyrians, Chaldeans, and finally with those of the Greeks, with a resulting correspondence which denotes synchronism... Actually, when in the eighties of the nineteenth century, the Hellenists were coerced, upon the evidence presented by Egyptologists, to introduce those five dark centuries, they did it only after a period of protest and resistance. But now that three generations of historians have lived with those dark centuries as a historical reality, it is even more difficult to part with them. Nevertheless, sooner or later, they will have to part with the phantom centuries, and have the history of Greece and the development of its writing as a normal process without a four-hundred-year gap... between the Mycenaean and the Ionian Ages there was no Dark Age, but one followed the other, with only a few decades intervening... The field has been plagued by the presence of the Dark Age -- a presence only schematic, never in effect... The removal of the Dark Age from the historical sequence unshackles what was for centuries shackled and releases the scholarly endeavor from travelling on the same circular paths with no exit from the modern version of the Cretan Labyrinth. Moreover, it rehabilitates scholars accused of ignorance or negligence, their having been guilty only of not perceiving that the problems they dealt with were not problems at all, as soon as unreal centuries are stricken out.
Awesome. An amazing fact about the Scythians is that the sheer weight of gold recovered from Scythian sites aggregates to more than that of all other ancient cultures -combined-. Serious hoarders, with a love for bling!
If I recall correctly, it was the Scythians who had the golden fleece. Probably the story of Jason and the Argonauts arose from all the gold in the area.
That is an amazing fact! I learn someting new from GGG threads every day.
They were reputed to wear trousers made from the skins of their enemies. But its the craftsmanship and sheer bulk of their gold ornaments that catches most peoples’ attention. As far as “mare milkers” (what some Greeks called them) being an insult, the Mongols did likewise and still do. Warrior horse cultures separated by a thousand years roaming some of the same wide spaces.
I just wanted to chime in to tell you how awesome you are.
Thanks Defiant!
Evidence suggests Jason and the Golden Fleece was based on true events
http://www.sciencealert.com/new-evidence-suggests-jason-and-the-golden-fleece-was-based-on-true-events
That’s probably nonsense, as it would be difficult at best to verify, but regardless, the surviving accounts of Alexander the G’s conquest of Persepolis has some actual figures for the Persian treasury. No surprise that his call for professional soldiers for the expansion of the campaign in Central Asia resulted in the arrival at Balkh (Bactria) of 250,000 men, mostly Greek and Macedonian.
For such ruthless roving killers, spending so much time making an elaborate comb seems a little girly.
And then the dummy killed most of them when they refused to go any further into India.
Few years ago I read about a tribe in Afghanistan who attributed their “religion & customs” to Alexander’s conquest. Lots of green & blue eyed people with light sandy hair - and not muslim.
I don’t recall ever reading where Alexander had any of his army killed except for individual instances.
I saw a program on one of the news channels where they interviewed Afghanis who still spoke of “Sander Khan” who conquered Afghanistan.
That is based on the recovery of artifacts. I would expect the major settled civilizations to have amassed more - but it probably just kept getting melted down and kept in circulation. A rhyton in one era, a handful of coins or ingots in another. The Scythian gold is almost all grave goods. Massive number of weapons too, but that is based counting arrowheads as weapons.
As I recall their name meant “skinners”. They did indeed flay or scalp, and made drinking cups of the skulls of enemies. The brain pan, not the face. https://books.google.com/books?id=l8Uy2k1srAIC&pg=PA83&lpg=PA83&dq=scythian+skull+cup&source=bl&ots=jBknx2Dpvk&sig=Tc5uN9CSglA9iWbzkBy1E9HkIh0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwifuIi36ufNAhWE3SYKHWa_AN0Q6AEIQzAI#v=onepage&q=scythian%20skull%20cup&f=false
“8. ...Such is the account which the Scythians give of themselves, and of the country which lies above them. The Greeks who dwell about the Pontus tell a different story. According to Hercules, when he was carrying off the cows of Geryon, arrived in the region which is now inhabited by the Scyths, but which was then a desert. Geryon lived outside the Pontus, in an island called by the Greeks Erytheia, near Gades, which is beyond the Pillars of Hercules upon the Ocean. Now some say that the Ocean begins in the east, and runs the whole way round the world; but they give no proof that this is really so. Hercules came from thence into the region now called Scythia, and, being overtaken by storm and frost, drew his lion’s skin about him, and fell fast asleep. While he slept, his mares, which he had loosed from his chariot to graze, by some wonderful chance disappeared.
9. On waking, he went in quest of them, and, after wandering over the whole country, came at last to the district called “the Woodland,” where he found in a cave a strange being, between a maiden and a serpent, whose form from the waist upwards was like that of a woman, while all below was like a snake. He looked at her wonderingly; but nevertheless inquired, whether she had chanced to see his strayed mares anywhere. She answered him, “Yes, and they were now in her keeping; but never would she consent to give them back, unless he took her for his mistress...” “
Love Herodotus’ Histories!
“...in an island called by the Greeks Erytheia, near Gades, which is beyond the Pillars of Hercules upon the Ocean... “
That Hercules, he really got around.
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