Ancient History

IN THIS ISSUE: ENCOUNTERS AND INTERACTIONS BETWEEN THE GREEKS AND SCYTHIANS (ca.
650-50 BC)
ANCIENT
NO. 47
HISTORY
WHERE THE STEPPE AND

THE SEA MEET
GREEKS & SCYTHIANS ALONG THE BLACK SEA
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GRIFFINS AND GOLD WARRIOR WOMEN FAR FROM HOME BORN TO RULE
Greco-Scythian art combined The weapon-wielding women Phoenicians interacted with The daughter of Cleopatra
Greek and Scythian motifs to of the Scythians influenced and influenced their host VII came to be a queen in
create a new style. the Amazons of Greek myth. societies in many ways. her own right.
7
ANCIENT
TABLE OF CONTENTS
HISTORY
Editor-in-chief: Jasper Oorthuys
Editor: Owain Williams
Assistant editor: Lauren van Zoonen
Design & Media: Christianne C. Beall
Design © 2017 Karwansaray Publishers
Contributors: Selim F. Adali, Denise Demetriou,

Manon Henzen, Richard Kendall, John Brendan
Knight, Ben Kolbeck, Philip Matyszak, Mogens
Trolle Larsen, Adrienne Mayor, Lindsay Powell,
Benjamin Sharkey, Christa Steinby
Illustrators: Andrey Fetisov, Zvonimir Grbasic, Marek

Szyszko, Richard Thomson, William Webb GREEKS AND SCYTHIANS
Special thanks: Carole Raddato (followinghadrian.com), When the Greeks colonized the Black Sea coast, they encountered the Scyth-
Gary Todd (worldhistorypics.weebly.com), and Jona
Lendering (livius.org) for their photographs
ians, nomadic pastoralists who wandered the steppe. They lived side by side for
centuries, creating a unique culture on the northern shore of the sea.
Print: Grafi Advies
Editorial office
PO Box 4082, 7200 BB Zutphen, The Netherlands
Phone: +31-848-392256 (Europe),
16 The Scythians 34 The Amazons
+1-740-994-0091 (US) People from the world beyond Mythology history, and the Scythians
E-mail: editor@ancienthistorymagazine.com
Customer service: service@karwansaraypublishers.com 21 Greek knowledge of Scythians 40 Greek gold in Scythian tombs
Website: www.ancienthistorymagazine.com Explorers, geographers, historians Artistic interaction on the steppe
Contributions in the form of articles, letters, reviews, and
news are welcomed. Please send to the above address 26 Greco-Scythian trade 58 Further reading
or use the form on www.ancienthistorymagazine.com From steppe to sea and back again More books on Greeks & Scythians
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8 Cleopatra Selene 44 Ancient Kanesh
and by subscription. The exclusive distributor for the Destined to rule A commerical colony in Anatolia
UK and the Republic of Ireland is Seymour Distribution
Ltd, 2 East Poultry Avenue, London, EC1A 9PT, United 10 Phoenicians bearing gifts 50 Fabricae
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Phoenician migrants in Greece Supplying the army in late antiquity
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4 Preliminaries 54 A dangerous event
copyright holders, but in few cases this proves impossi- What's new in ancient history Roman pregnancy and childbirth
ble. The editor and publishers apologize for any unwit-
ting cases of copyright transgressions and would like
to hear from any copyright holders not acknowledged.
48 A Roman cake with no recipe 56 Book reviews
Articles and the opinions expressed herein do not nec- Experimental culinary archaeology A look at new ancient history titles
essarily represent the views of the editor and/or pub-
lishers. Advertising in Ancient History magazine does
not necessarily imply endorsement. 21 50
Ancient History is published every two months
by Karwansaray B.V., Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
ISSN: 2451-8700
Printed in the Netherlands.
ON THE COVER
An intricately-designed
gold pectoral from Tovsta
Mohyla, a large royal Scyth-
ian kurgan, dated to the fourth
century BC. While decorated
with Scythian motifs, the pectoral was made
by Greeks. Scythians and Greeks lived side by INTERESTING INQUIRY HAMMER AND TONGS
side on the north Black Sea shore for centuries, Greek historians travelled widely to com- Late Roman arms manufactories were
their cultures mingling all the while.
plete their works, including to Scythia. given an administrative overhaul.
© Terminator/ Wikimedia Commons
Ancient History 47 3
BY LINDSAY POWELL
PRELIMINARIES
EDITORIAL – ALL THE SCYTHIAN'S HORSES AND ALL THE SCYTHIAN'S GOLD
Ever since the Scythians emerged from the however, were wont to exaggerate, fabricate,
steppes and into the historical record in the and make mistakes. Thus, the term ‘Scyth-
seventh century BC, they have captured peo- ian’ came to be applied to any people that
ple’s imagination. Wandering the sea of grass emerged from the steppe, and even took on
across Central Eurasia in their covered wag- mythical connotations.
ons and with their vast herds of horses, they As such, in this issue we have striven
were the antithesis of the settled agricultural- to explore Greek and Scythian interactions
ist communities around the Mediterranean. on the Black Sea coast in an attempt to un-
Subsequently, the fear and awe the Scythians derstand how their relationship developed.
inspired became curiosity, especially as the From art to myth and history, the Scythians
Scythians seemed set to stay. had a profound effect on Greek thought.
The Greeks were particularly curious
about the Scythians. Along the northern
Black Sea coast Greeks and Scythians lived
side by side, offering an up-close perspec- Owain Williams
tive to these fascinating people. The Greeks, Editor, Ancient History
Parthenon sculptures reveal their true colours

Traces of pigments have been found on mar- British Museum to identify traces of carving
ble sculptures that once adorned the Parthe- and colour on their surfaces.
A coloured reconstruc-
tion of one of the korai non of the Acropolis in Athens, confirming Using close examination and archaeo-
statues found on the that their original appearance was colourful metric techniques, they identified that the
Athenian Acropolis, dated
and naturalistic, not white as they are today. ancient Greek sculptors finished surfaces with
to ca. 570-480 BC.
© Livius.org
A team from the British Museum, King’s textures which reflected specific elements –
College London, and the Art Institute of Chi- such as skin, wool, or linen – and these were
cago studied the Parthenon Sculptures at the then enhanced by applying colour.
Excavations at Hattusa reveal once-lost language
© Andreas Schachner / Deutsches Archäologisches Institut

Excavators at Hattusa in central Anatolia, the capital of the
Bronze Age Hittite empire (ca. 1650–1200 BC), have discov-
ered evidence of a new Indo-European language in Anatolia.
Since excavations began over 100 years ago, over
30,000 tablets have been discovered at Hattusa. Most of
the texts from Hattusa are written in the Indo-European
Hittite language, also known as Nesite, but there are also
other Anatolian languages, such as Luwian and Palaic,
both Indo-European, and Hattic, in addition to Mesopo-
tamian languages. However, a recent excavation by the
German Archaeological Institute unearthed a cuneiform The excavation site in Bogazköy-Hattusa where a cuneiform tablet with a
tablet recording an incantation in a previously-unattested previously unknown Indo-European language was discovered.
Anatolian language.
The tablet begins with a passage in Hittite introduc- an area of Anatolia associated with the Palaic language,
ing the following incantation as one written in Kalašmaic, Kalašmaic appears to more closely resemble Luwian.
the language of the land of Kalašma, believed to have As with much of Bronze Age Anatolia, what little
been on the northwestern edge of the Hittite heartland we know of Kalašma comes from Hittite sources.
in central Anatolia. As it is a newly-discovered language, The Annals of Mursili II, for example, tells us that
Kalašmaic is largely undecipherable, but Professor Elisa- the Hittite king replaced the region’s ruling coun-
beth Rieken of Philipps-Universität Marburg, a special- cil of elders with a governor, Aparru, who in
ist in ancient Anatolian languages, believes that it is an turn made himself ruler of Kalašma and fought
Indo-European language. Moreover, despite coming from with the Hittites. We now know a little more.
A clay tablet from Hattusa, dated

x
to the thirteenth century BC,

recording a treaty between the
Hittite king Suppiluliuma I and
4 Ancient History 47 Hukkana in the cuneiform script.
© Neuroforever / Wikimedia Commons
“We detected Egyptian blue, in combi- of the Panathenaic festival commemorating A detail of the East frieze of the Par-
nation with two white pigments, gypsum and the birthday of the goddess Athena; metopes thenon reliefs, possibly depicting the
presentation of the peplos, upon which
probably bone white, on 11 pedimental sculp- (sculpted relief panels) depicting the battle traces of pigment have been discovered.
tures and one figure from the frieze,” write between Centaurs and Lapiths at the mar- The Parthenon frieze was carved in the
the scientists in their report. Traces of a purple riage-feast of Peirithoos; and figures of the mid-fifth century BC.
© Twospoonfuls / Wikimedia Commons
pigment, tentatively identified as an anthraqui- gods and legendary heroes that originally
none-containing colourant, were also found. stood in the temple’s pediments.
Blue was used extensively to paint elabo- The British Museum’s collection has 75
MORE ONLINE
rate figurative designs on the carved textiles. metres (247 ft) of the original frieze, 15 me- A closer look at the
Despite the complexity of the carved drapery, topes and 17 figures. Parthenon's colours:
The author’s findings are published as https://bit.ly/46knqFn
elaborate ornament was applied to the finish.
The Parthenon Marbles were carved ‘The goddess’ new clothes: The carving and
between 447 BC and 432 BC. They com- polychromy of the Parthenon Sculptures’ in
prise: a frieze, which shows the procession Antiquity 97 (395).
Bronze Age jewellery unearthed in Switzerland

While scanning a plowed field, a metal detec- weighing a total of over 21 g. Two
torist heard the telltale signal of a find. It turned spiral finger rings with decoration
out to be a cache of 3500-year-old jewellery. of double spirals were also found.
The discovery in Güttingen, in the Swiss To excavate the items a sec-
canton of Thurgau, has been described by an tion of sod was cut out of the ground
archaeologist as “typical costume jewellery” and taken to the conservation lab in
that would have been worn by women around Frauenfeld in Thurgau. The individual
the year 1500 BC, during the Bronze Age. pieces were then carefully removed from the
The pieces included a necklace compris- moist soil using tweezers.
ing more than 100 tiny amber beads approxi- Recovered from around the field – like- A cache of Bronze-Age jewellery contain-
mately the size of pinheads with 14 spiked ly spread by plowing – were a bronze ar- ing an amber necklace, finger rings, gold
spirals, and a necklace of spiked discs,
bronze discs. Each bronze disc featured three rowhead, a fossilized shark’s tooth, a beaver
discovered in Thurgau, Switzerland.
ribs and a raised spike in the centre. On one tooth, a perforated bear's tooth, several lumps © Canton of Thurgau
side there was a narrow grommet through of polished ore, an ammonite (an extinct spe-
which a thread or leather strap could be pulled. cies of marine mollusc), and a rock crystal. MORE ONLINE
Eleven of these spirals were found in Güttingen. After study and conservation, the ar- Watch a video about
the discovery:
In addition, eight slightly larger spirals tefacts will be exhibited at the Museum für https://bit.ly/40QmeIE
made of fine gold wire were discovered, Archäologie in Frauenfeld.
Solution to Bronze Age ‘tin mystery’ refuted
Consisting of the two metals copper and tin, A new analysis has since challenged that
bronze was the earliest alloy to dominate conclusion. A different team studied the in-
an entire era of human history. Although tin gots by comparing their isotropic signatures.
deposits are known, there is scant proof of Their finding “emphasises the similari-
exactly which sources were used to produce ties with Late and Middle Bronze Age tin in-
tin and bronze in the Bronze Age. gots from Israel and Britain, and alternatively
Both raw materials occur as ores in nat- suggests a common origin of part of the Ul-
ural deposits. However, compared to copper, uburun cargo with these items. South-west
which is almost ubiquitous, tin is much rarer England is considered a very likely source
and inconsistently distributed throughout region, but other tin ingots of the Uluburun
Eurasia. As a result, tin was traded over hun- wreck could also originate from Afghanistan
dreds, even thousands, of miles. The routes and perhaps somewhere else.”
and connections by which tin travelled are The new study is published as ‘Why
of great interest to historians. Central Asia’s Mushiston is not
The raw materials and products from the
Scientists recently analyzed samples of a source for the Late Bronze
smelting experiments carried out with
the secondary ores from Mushiston tin tin from a cache of ingots recovered from the Age tin ingots from the Ulubu-
deposit in northwestern Tajikistan. Uluburun shipwreck in 1982, which sank off run shipwreck’ in Frontiers in
© Frontiers.org
the Turkish coast in the Late Bronze Age shortly Earth Science 11 (2023).
before 1320 BC. A theory recently published
MORE ONLINE One of the copper ingots
in Science Advances postulated that the metal recovered from the Ul-
x
Read more about the
came from the Mushiston tin deposit in north- uburun shipwreck, which
scientists' findings: was transporting 9000 kg
https://bit.ly/3RiyM8V western Tajikistan and the Taurus Mountains of copper when it sank.
near the present-day Turkish-Syrian border. © Panegyrics of Granovetter / Flickr
Domus Tiberiana reopens to the public

Having been closed for half a century, tourists ana once again. The visible superstructure of
to Rome can now explore the Domus Tiberi- the palatial building climbs up the side of the
Deceased found on a bed in a tomb with frescoes
© Soprintendenza Archeologia Belle Arti e Paesaggio per l’Area Metropolitana di Napoli

Left undisturbed and unlooted for 2000 years, a mausoleum has
been discovered in Campania. When entered it was found to
contain human remains on a bed and frescoes.
During excavations conducted ahead of laying new in-
frastructure for a public water supply in Giugliano, archaeolo-
gists discovered the front of a monumental chamber tomb. Its
entrance was sealed with a slab made of tuff. Superintendent
Mariano Nuzzo was the first to enter the burial chamber.
Three painted klinai (couches), an altar with vessels for li-
bations, and the remains of the deceased still resting on the
funeral bed with rich funerary objects make this find unprec-
edented, according to the Superintendent of Archaeology, Fine
Arts and Landscape for the Naples Metropolitan Area.
The frescoes inside are all in remarkable states of pres- A fresco from the recently-discovered Tomb of Cerberus depicting two ichthyo-
centaurs holding a clipeus shield between them.
ervation. Their lines are clear, the colours bright as if recently
painted on the white plaster. Depicting mythological scenes, cles, in which the hero captures the “brazen-voiced hound of Ha-
they cover the ceilings and walls. In one scene two ichthyocen- des” (Hesiod, Theogony 311). The tomb has been named after it.
taurs hold a clipeus (round shield), while being attended by two The ‘Tomb of Cerberus’ is one of several graves in the ne-
winged Erotes on the front wall. cropolis in Giugliano. Both inhumation and cremation burials
The image of the three-headed dog Cerberus is particularly have been found there. The site was used for at least four centu-
notable. The scene depicts the last of the Twelve Labours of Hera- ries, from the Roman Republican age to the Imperial age.
6 Ancient History 47
Palatine hill in a series of bonded brick and ce- Darius Arya, director of American Insti-
ment arcades and vaults that tower above the tute for Roman Culture (AIRC), said: “New
Roman Forum. The sloped Via Tecta links the access to the palace of Tiberius on the Pala-
Forum up to the palace complex. Stairways ac- tine hill is extraordinary!”
cessed the corridors and private rooms in the Exhibits contain a variety of artefacts dis-
building and the presumed peristyle villa on covered during excavations. There is an exqui-
the top floor. It originally included a library. site pair of wings from a marble statue of Vic-
Although named after Rome’s second em- tory. Many fragments of frescoes and mosaics
peror, Tiberius, it was variously the home of lie in situ. Video screens explain features of the
Caligula, Claudius and Nero. The superstruc- Domus, including a virtual 3D reconstruction.
ture actually dates to Nero – after the Great Fire Domus Tiberiana is part of the Parco Ar-
of Rome in AD 64 – and Hadrian. The building cheologico del Colosseo. Entrance to the site
was later used by the Antonine emperors. is with the ‘Super Ticket’.
Trident recovered from fountain at Assos

The unmistakable three-pronged head of a Excavations in the city are being carried
trident has been discovered by archaeologists out by a team led by Nurettin Arslan, a humani-
working at the ancient city of Assos in Turkey. ties and social sciences professor at Canakkale
The iron trident is believed to be 1700 Onsekiz Mart Universit. Support for the exca-
years old. It was found in the Nymphaion vations is provided by the Culture and Tourism
(eastern fountain) during the excava- Ministry and the Turkish Historical Society.
tions. The wooden shaft has rotted Assos is situated in the village of Behram- (Top) A view of the Domus Tiberiana, the
away, leaving just the metal part. The kale in the south-western part of the Biga Pen- home of the Roman imperial family, from
the Forum Romanum.
iron harpoon was badly corroded, insula (Troad). Assos was founded by Methym-
© YKD / Shutterstock
but it has been treated to prevent nian colonists from the island of Lesbos in the
(Bottom) A Parian marble statue of a
further deterioration. While tri- seventh century BC. It grew to become a pros-
male figure from the Domus Tiberiana,
dents were used for fishing in an- perous city beneath a sheer-rock-walled acrop- dated to the Julio-Claudian period.
cient times, its findspot suggests it olis. The temple of Athena on the eastern side of © Carole Raddato / Flickr
was a part of a statue – perhaps of Po- the acropolis is the only known example in the
seidon (Neptune) – in the fountain. Doric order in Archaic Anatolia.
The iron trident recently discov-

x
ered in a fountain of ancient As-

sos, Turkey, which likely belonged
to a statue of Poseidon.
© Cigdem Munibe Alyanak - Anadolu Agency Ancient History 47 7
SPECIAL
500 AD
NORTH AFRICA: ca. 40 – 5 BC
Detail of a Roman relief from the Avellino Monument. Dated to ca. AD 14-37, it depicts the defeat of Mark Antony at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC.
1 AD
DESTINED TO RULE By Owain Williams
CLEOPATRA SELENE
From the moment of her birth, Cleopatra
Selene was likely expected to eventually rule
Egypt alongside her half-brother Caesarion,
Cleopatra VII was the last Ptolemaic ruler of Egypt. She Cleopatra VII’s son by Julius Caesar, in a
sibling marriage – sibling marriages were
was not the last Ptolemaic monarch, however. Cleopatra
long practiced by the rulers of Egypt, from
Selene, her only daughter, became queen of Mauretania.
O
the Ptolemies to the Egyptian pharaohs.
The Donations of Alexandria, the gifting of
f the many Cleopatras of the Ptolemaic dynasty, Cleopatra Roman provinces by Antony to Cleopatra
VII is, without question, the most famous. The last of the and their children, reinforce the idea that
Ptolemaic pharaohs, her reign marked the end of the Hel- Cleopatra Selene was expected to rule. As
500 BC
lenistic period and the beginning of the Roman Princi- part of the division, Cleopatra was given Cyre-
pate. Thoroughly embroiled in the politics of the period, naica, a region that had once been a part of
she is rightly afforded an important place in history. Her fame, however, the Ptolemaic empire but had been gifted to
overshadows the remarkable life of her daughter, Cleopatra Selene II. the Romans by Ptolemy Apion in 96 BC (Dio,
49.41.3; Appian, Mithridatic Wars 17.121).
Heir to Egypt Cleopatra Selene would never come to rule
The earliest event in Cleopatra Selene’s life we learn Egypt, however, as relations between Antony
of is when she, along with her twin brother Al- and Octavian soon soured, culminating in the
exander Helios, are first presented to their fa- Battle of Actium (see Ancient Warfare V.5) and
ther Mark Antony. As ruler of the east under the the Roman annexation of Egypt.
Second Triumvirate, Mark Antony had wintered
in Alexandria with Cleopatra VII in 40 BC. Dur- Trophy and prisoner
ing his stay, Cleopatra became pregnant with the As the Romans took control of Egypt, Caesa-
1000 BC
twins, but they would not meet their father until rion was murdered, as was Antyllus, Antony’s
37 BC (Plutarch, Antony 28–30, 36.3). son, as they posed a potential threat to Oc-
tavian’s rule (Plutarch, Antony 81–2).
At Caesarea Iol (modern Cherchell), art and culture flourished Yet Antony and Cleopatra’s other
during the reign of Cleopatra Selene II and Juba II. The bust is
believed to depict Cleopatra Selene II. children – Cleopatra Selene,
© Carole Raddato / Flickr
A sardonyx gem (cameo) with gold

x
frame, dated to the first century AD.

It depicts a portrait of Cleopatra Se-
lene, possibly once a pair with another
8 Ancient History 47 cameo depicting Alexander Helios.
© The State Hermitage Museum
Alexander Helios, and Ptolemy Philadelphus 5.10). Additionally, Juba, who

– were spared. It is possible that Octavian had written a history of the thea- An aureus depicting the triumvirs
had intended to put them on the throne of tre, may also have ordered the con- Antony and Octavian. The Second Triumvi-
a weaker Egypt, a client state of Rome. First, struction of the theatre that can be seen rate of Mark Antony, Octavian, and Lepidus
had divided rule of the Roman empire
however, he intended for them to appear in there today. They also created a well-stocked between them. Eventually, however, rela-
his triumph. library in the city, which was said to have had tions broke down, until Octavian was left
Cassius Dio tells us that, of the three, only a wealth of Punic literature (Ammianus Mar- undisputed ruler of the Roman world.
© www.cngcoins.com
Cleopatra Selene and Alexander Helios partici- cellinus, 22.15.8). Cleopatra Selene would
A bust of King Juba pated in the triumph, rule Mauretania alongside her husband until
II of Mauretania, walking before her death, ca. 5 BC, when she was interred in (Top) A fresco from the House of Marcus
husband of Cleopatra Fabius Rufus in Pompeii depicting both
Selene, dated to ca. Octavian’s chariot a grand mausoleum.
x
Venus and Cupid. It is possible that the

25 BC-AD 23. (51.21.8). What hap- Cleopatra Selene had been born a scion figures actually represent Cleopatra VII and
© Hichem algerino /
Wikimedia Commons
pened to Ptolemy is of one of the most powerful dynasties of the Caesarion as Venus and Cupid, respectively.
unknown, and the tri- Hellenistic period. Despite the fall of Egypt and © PericlesofAthens / Wikimedia Commons
umph is the last mention of Alexander the destruction of her family, she died a queen. (Bottom) The Royal Mausoleum of Maure-
Helios. It is possible that both children The queen of a Roman client kingdom, but a tania where both Cleopatra Selene II and
queen, nonetheless. AH
Juba II were interred. It was possibly built
died soon after they came to Rome. by Bocchus II, the previous ruler of Iol, but
Cleopatra Selene, however, was raised it was more likely built by Cleopatra and
in Octavia’s household (Plutarch, An- Owain Williams is the editor of Ancient His- Juba in imitation of Augustus' Mausoleum.
tony 87.1). There she would meet her tory magazine. © Dan Sloan / Flickr
future husband, Gaius Julius Juba.

Much like Cleopatra Selene, Juba’s
father had died during a Roman civil
war, having sided with the Pompeiians
against Caesar (Caesar, The African War
94) and he was also taken to Rome
to be raised, after also being parad-
ed in a triumph (Plutarch, Caesar
55.2–3). While there, as part of
the imperial household, he may
have accompanied Marcellus and
Tiberius on campaign in Spain, where,
in 25 BC, Octavian (now Augustus) decided
to give him the lands of Mauretania to rule
with Cleopatra Selene as his wife and co-
ruler (Dio, 51.15.6).
Queen of Mauretania
Juba and Cleopatra chose the city of Iol,
modern Cherchell, on the Mediterranean
coast, to be their new capital, which they
renamed Caesarea
(Strabo, 17.3.12). In
much the same way
that Augustus rebuilt
Rome, Juba and Cleopatra
rebuilt Caesarea Iol. According
to Juba’s coinage, they may have
constructed a temple to Augus-
tus, while Pliny tells us that there
was a temple to Isis in the city,
likely built under the orders of
Cleopatra Selene (Natural History
A bronze statuette of a
discovered in Alexandria, datboy
to the mid-first century ed
believed to be Alexander Hel BC,
x
ios.
© The Metropolitan Museum
of Art
SPECIAL
Phoenician ships criss-crossed the Mediterra-
nean, trading from Tarsus to Tartessos. Pirates
were not the only worry for traders, however.
PHOENICIAN MIGRANTS IN ANCIENT GREECE Dangerous beasts awaited them on the shore,
PHOENICIANS
such as lions, as Antipatros (known in Phoeni-
cian as Shem-) discovered.
© Zvonimir Grbasic
BEARING GIFTS
500 AD
The Phoenicians are mostly cast in ancient sources and

modern scholarship alike as enterprising seamen, hu-
man traffickers, master metal and glass craftsmen, and
cunning traders. Despite such stereotypes and the pau-
city of surviving Phoenician material culture and written
sources, usually some lines of text inscribed on stone,
there is no doubt that the Phoenicians made impor-
tant contributions to the ancient Mediterranean world.
T
By Denise Demetriou
1 AD
he Phoenicians originated on the Levantine coast of

Syria-Palestine and are often considered to be the Iron
Age descendants of the Canaanites, the Bronze Age civ-
ilization mentioned in the Bible. They were a Semitic-
speaking people who, at the dawn of the first millen-
nium BC, were organized into powerful and wealthy independent
city-states: Tyre, a thriving metropolis and commercial centre that
later established dozens of settlements throughout the Mediterrane-
THE AEGEAN: ca. 1000 – 150 BC
an region, including Carthage; Sidon, praised in antiquity as a pro-

duction centre of intricate and highly desired glass and silverware,
purple dye, and embroidery; Byblos, famous for its timber and for
having produced the earliest Phoenician writing; and Arados, one of
the northernmost Phoenician cities on an island off the coast of pre-
500 BC
sent-day Syria. From these sites, Phoenician merchants,

craftsmen, and settlers migrated in the ninth century
BC, first to Cyprus, where they established several
urban centres, the most famous of which was Ki- Making the Mediterranean
tion. The migration west continued in the eighth Throughout the Mediterranean basin in the ear-
century BC as Phoenicians founded settlements in ly first millennium BC, the Phoenicians trans-
Sicily, Sardinia, Malta, the western coast of North formed the societies they encountered. One of
Africa, Iberia, and the Balearic Islands, and in this the most visually striking changes was the ap-
same period, started to settle in Egypt and in Greek pearance of an artistic aesthetic scholars have
communities around the Aegean Circle. By the sev-
conventionally called ‘orientalizing’: art that
enth century BC, Phoenicians had established
included decorative motifs such as sphinxes,
an extensive network of settlements and
rosettes, and griffins, borrowed from the Near
trading posts throughout this vast region.
1000 BC
East. Orientalizing art became popular from

The Phoenician city of Tyre established colonies the eighth to the sixth centuries BC and af-
throughout the Mediterranean, such as Gadir fected the artistic aesthetics not only of Greek
(modern Cádiz), founded ca. 1100 BC. This stat-
ue of the Phoenician goddess Astarte, dated to
communities but also of societies throughout
the fifth century BC, was discovered there. the Mediterranean region: Iberia, Etruria, Sic-
© VIATOR IMPERI / Wikimedia Commons
ily, Sardinia, and Malta. Both imported and above also included monumental stone sculp- A gilded, flat-bottomed silver bowl from
Praeneste, Italy, dated to ca. 710-675 BC.
locally produced ceramics exhibit this style ture, architectural elements, and minor arts
Decorated with Egyptian and Assyrian
and became part of a common Mediterranean (especially ivory and metalwork), could have representations of warriors with shields,
material culture. From the first discovery of been imported, locally produced by Phoeni- horsemen on the hunt, and various
such vases, as early as the seventeenth cen- cian craftsmen, or adopted by local artists who other scenes, it is an excellent example
of orientalizing art.
tury AD, to today, scholars have debated added their own styles. No matter how it ar- © Rijksmuseum van Oudheden
who brought them or produced them. While rived in a particular location, the Phoenicians
early scholarship attributed these vases to undeniably created the most important artistic
Greek artists and traders, it is now clear that movement of the eighth to the sixth centuries
it was the Phoenicians, travelling along their BC in the Mediterranean.
extensive trade networks or settling in cities Phoenicians were also responsi-
throughout the region, who made orien- ble for the reintroduction of a writing
talizing art popular among many different system in the region, several centu-
peoples. Such material culture, which ries after writing was lost during the
besides the decorative motifs mentioned collapse of the Bronze Age Aegean
A bronze arrowhead
x
inscribed with the Ca-

naanite proto-alphabet.
© Lauren van Zoonen
civilizations. The Phoenician alphabet, networks that facilitated extensive cross-cultur-
named after its first two letters, aleph al interactions with other groups also enabled
and bet, was used to write several Se- the transfer of knowledge and technologies to
mitic languages, including Phoenician, Greeks and others. The Greeks, always aware
Hebrew, and Aramaic, among others. of their debt to the Phoenicians, even after they
But the travelling Phoenicians brought changed some letters, called the letter symbols
the alphabet with them to other areas Phoinikeia grammata – Phoenician letters.
of the Mediterranean, where it was first
adopted by the Greeks, then the Etruscans, Transforming Greek societies
followed by other groups, such as the Romans, The unprecedented mobility of the Phoeni-
each, each time with some modifications. cians also resulted in substantial communities
The ancient Greek historian Herodo- of Phoenician immigrants who lived in and
tus was aware of a tradition that Phoenicians transformed Greek communities. One famous
A Boeotian terracotta lekane (dish),
depicting a frieze of animals, dated to taught the Greeks the alphabet (5.57–61). For example of a Phoenician immigrant is Zeno,
ca. 550–540 BC. contemporary scholars, the possible locations the founder of the philosophical school of Stoi-
© The Metropolitan Museum of Art
where sometime between 850–750 BC the cism, widely recognized today as one of the
Greeks adopted the alphabet from the Phoe- major contributions of the ancient Greeks.
nicians, were all sites where Phoenicians and Zeno was not actually Greek. He was a Phoe-
Greeks co-existed, such as the islands of Cy- nician immigrant in Athens, originally from
prus, Rhodes, or Crete, the trading post of Al Kition, a mixed Phoenician and Greek city-
Mina in Syria, or the city of Methone in North- state on the island of Cyprus. The ancient bi-
ern Greece. The expansive Phoenician trade ographer Diogenes Laertius describes Zeno’s
What's in a name?
Name changing has long been a familiar lenized his name into Domsalos by adding a
practice among immigrants. There are many Greek masculine ending.
stories of immigrants arriving at Ellis Island in The common translation of Phoenician
the United States and either declaring English- names derived from a deity’s name, such
sounding names or officials giving them ones, as Abdashtart, into their Greek equivalents
for example. This custom was one of the most suggests that through migration Greeks and
The tombstone of a Phoenician man common adaptive strategies used by ancient Phoenicians became intimately familiar with
who died in Greece, dated to ca. 300 Phoenician immigrants. Many Phoenician each other’s divinities. Such translations are
BC. The tombstone is inscribed in both
Phoenician and Greek. In Phoenician,
immigrants living in ancient Greek commu- present in most bilingual tombstones. Anoth-
the deceased's name is 'Shem-', but 'An- nities seem to have voluntarily changed their er example is a fourth-century BC tombstone
tipatros' in Greek. Name changing was a names in one of three ways: translating their from Athens, of a certain Benhodesh from
common strategy Phoenician immigrants
Phoenician name into a Greek one, adopting Kition, whose name means ‘son of the new
used to integrate into their host society.
© Gary Todd/ Flickr
a Greek name unrelated to their Phoenician moon’. He adopted the Greek name Noume-
one, or modifying their Phoenician name by nios, which means ‘child of the new moon’,
Hellenizing it in spelling or grammar. These a fitting translation and conveniently a pre-
permutations of name changing among Phoe- existing Greek name.
nician immigrants are illustrated by the Greek Phoenicians were not trying to hide
and Phoenician epitaphs inscribed on Antipa- their foreign origins by changing their
tros’ tombstone. Shem— adopted the Greek names – they continued to use the Phoeni-
name Antipatros to use in Athens, a name that cian alphabet and language and they iden-
does not correspond to his Phoenician name. tified themselves by including their home
Antipatros’ father’s name, Aphrodisios, is a state of origin. Rather, this practice might
close translation of his Phoenician one, as Ab- have made them seem more familiar to their
dashtart means ‘servant of Astarte’, a Phoeni- host society, allowed them to acquire more
cian goddess traditionally identified by both social mobility, job opportunities, prosper-
Greeks and Phoenicians with the Greek Aph- ity; and access to stronger professional net-
rodite. Domseleh, a Phoenician from Sidon works; and engendered a stronger sense of
who commissioned Shem—’s tombstone, Hel- belonging in their host societies.
A bronze griffin head, among its adherents, and continues to enjoy During the Orientalizing period, Greeks
x
dated to ca. 650-625 BC, started to build their temples out of stone.
that would have decorat- popularity even today. Yet were it not for mo-
Temple A in the ancient city of Rizinia,
ed the rim of a cauldron bility and migration in the ancient Mediter-
- a common element of Crete, dated to ca. 650–600 BC, is the earli-
orientalizing art. ranean region and collaboration among dif- est known example with sculpture, much
© The Metropolitan Museum of Art ferent cultural groups, especially on the part of which utilizes orientalizing motifs.
© C messier / Wikimedia Commons
inauspicious arrival in Ath- of Phoenicians, Stoicism may not have devel-
ens sometime in the fourth oped into one of the most influential philo-
century BC: sophical schools of antiquity.
Zeno was a famous Phoenician immigrant
He was shipwrecked on a voy- but there were hundreds, if not thousands,
age from Phoenicia to Peiraeus with a of others living in Athens and in other Greek
cargo of purple. He went up into Athens states. Scholars know this from the many tomb-
and sat down in a bookseller’s shop, be- stones and religious dedications Phoenicians
ing then a man of thirty. As he went on left in these Greek communities. Among the A relief depicting a Phoenician warship,
reading the second book of Xenophon’s thousands of tombstones in the main cemetery dated to ca. 700-692 BC. The Phoenicians'
renown as seafarers was utilized by several
Memorabilia, he was so pleased that he of ancient Athens, known today as the Ker- conquerers over the centuries,
inquired where men like Socrates were ameikos, visitors would have found the grave such as the Assyrians
to be found. Crates passed by in the nick monument of one Antipatros. When Antipatros and Persians.
© Livius.org
of time, so the bookseller pointed to him died and was buried in Athens at the turn of the
and said, “Follow yonder man.” From that third century BC, his burial plot was marked
day he became Crates's pupil with a funerary stele that at first
(7.2.3, trans. Hicks) glance looks typical
of other Athenian
Zeno subsequently established his own school funerary monu-
in the heart of Athens, at the Stoa Poikile (the ments from the
Painted Stoa), located in the agora, the public same period.
marketplace and civic centre of the city. Stoi- Made from mar-
cism later flourished among the Romans, win- ble, it is shaped
ning over emperors such as Marcus Aurelius like the façade of a
The so-called Azatiwada inscription, dating Greek temple with a triangular pediment on
An Etruscan necklace with a
to the eighth century BC, was discovered in top. Below the pediment is inscribed a funer- Phoenician glass pendant in
x
Karatepe, in the region of Cilicia. Inscribed the shape of a head, dated to
in both Phoenician and Luwian hieroglyphs, ary epitaph, beneath which appears an im-
ca. 525-500 BC.
the inscription records the activities of the age carved in low relief that is followed by a © The J. Paul Getty Museum
kings of Adana, rulers of Que. longer poem inscribed on stone.
© Klaus-Peter Simon / Wikimedia Commons mistakes, suggesting it was
Upon a closer look, each of these fea-
written by someone for whom
tures raises questions about the identity of
Tartessos, a metal-rich realm in the Iberian Greek was a second language.
peninsula, was a target of early Phoenician the deceased. The epitaph is written twice,
This remarkable tombstone was
trade expeditions. The Phoenicians estab- once in Greek and once in Phoenician, and
lished several colonies and trading out- a hybrid product of two different
the names of the deceased and his father are
posts on the peninsula, where they lived cultures. Despite its baffling look and
side by side with the locals. This bronze different in each language. He is Antipatros
puzzling imagery, Antipatros’ tombstone
Tartessian jug depicts the Lady of Animals in Greek but Shem— in Phoenician (the lat-
on the handle, who was associated with was not one of a kind but resembles many
the Phoenician goddess Astarte.
ter part of his Phoenician name is missing) other grave monuments from cemeteries
© Proyectos DIASPORA y REMAN3D / Flickr and his father is Aphrodisios in Greek and throughout Athens and other Greek states
Abdashtart in Phoenician. The epitaph an- that similarly bear bilingual texts in Greek
nounces that Antipatros was from Ashkelon, and Phoenician and unusual iconogra-
a coastal city now located in southern Israel phy that drew from foreign artistic traditions
that at different points in its history was con- as well as Greek ones. The presence of such
sidered to have been Phoenician. The image, monuments that included inscriptions in a
which has intrigued scholars for decades, de- foreign language and unfamiliar iconographic
picts a corpse lying on a bed, with the prow motifs changed the physical landscapes and
of a ship emerging in the background, a lion societies of Greek cities.
menacingly hovering over the corpse on one
side, and a nude man reaching over the dead Professional associations
body as though to protect it from the lion on Phoenician immigrants’ adaptive strategies in-
the other side. This combination of elements troduced new social institutions in their host
is unusual in Athenian art or Greek art gen- states. To bypass legal and other restrictions im-
erally, combining some motifs drawn from posed on immigrants, for instance, in the fourth
Phoenician traditions and others that are fa- century BC, Phoenicians collectivized and
miliar images on Athenian tombstones. The formed professional associations. Without the
poem that follows the image is in Greek and ability to own land – one of the constraints im-
follows Greek metrical forms, but the Greek migrants in Greek societies faced – immigrants
is unidiomatic, containing many grammatical could not build their own temples; without the
A silver octodrachm from
the reign of the Sidonian
x
king Abdashtart I, dated

to ca. 354 BC.
© Sailko / Wikimedia Commons
A gold belt decorated with orientalizing motifs from
x
the Treasure of Aliseda, a Tartessian treasure hoard,
dated to the seventh-sixth century BC.
© Proyectos DIASPORA y REMAN3D / Flickr
right to participate in government, they had lit-

of Phoenicians: intel-
tle political say over the conditions in which
they lived. Organizing as a group served much lectuals like Zeno introduced new
the same purpose as today’s special interest ideas; traders created new institutions that be-
groups and non-governmental organizations: came part of Greek states’ political economy,
working as a collective, groups of foreigners and even ancient Athenian democracy; and (Top) The ruins of the establishment of the
were able to pool their resources and gain ac- immigrants collectively helped form multieth- Poseidoniastai, a Phoenician trade associa-
tion, on the island of Delos. The building,
cess to avenues through which they could peti- nic and diverse societies that thrived. While tra-
dated to ca. 125-100 BC, served as a guild
tion their host state and negotiate privileges for ditionally ancient Greek thought, politics, and hall or club house where the community
themselves and other immigrants. art have been idealized, it is unlikely that they met and where goods could be stored.
© Bernard Gagnon / Wikimedia Commons
An association of Kitian traders in Ath- would have taken the form they did without
ens, for example, approached the Athenian the contributions of migrants in general and of (Bottom) A reconstructed section of the
state in 333/332 BC to request the right to own Phoenician immigrants in particular. AH decorated bronze bands of the Balawat
Gates, a series of scenes depicting the
property for the specific purpose of establish- reigns of Assyrian kings. Dated to 883-824
ing a sanctuary – a sacred space that often Denise Demetriou is Professor of History BC, this scene could represent Phoeni-
at the University of California, San Diego, cians (who were conquered by Shalma-
had a temple – dedicated to Aphrodite. This neser III (r. 859-824 BC)), bringing tribute.
event is recorded on an inscription discovered where she holds the Gerry and Jeannie © Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg) /
from Piraeus, the port of Athens, a bustling Ranglas Chair in Ancient Greek History. Wikimedia Commons
neighbourhood where many immigrants

lived. The inscription indicates that the
association of Kitian traders presented
their request to the Athenian council
as a collective and that the Athenians
accepted their request. The Kitians
subsequently inscribed the decision
of the Athenians on a stone and set
it up in the courtyard of their sanctu-
ary to publicize the service they per-
formed for their immigrant community.
The Kitians most likely erected a sanctuary
to Astarte, the most prominent divinity in Ki-
tion, and translated the goddess into her Greek
equivalent, Aphrodite. Several other examples
of Phoenician professional associations – most
of traders – are recorded from fourth-century
Athens and second-century BC Delos. Such
trade associations were Phoenician innova-
tions that emerged because of migration. They
played an important role in commerce, al-
lowed migrants to maintain the religious tradi-
tions of their homelands, and they became po-
litically and socially integrated into their host
state, giving immigrants the power to petition
their host state and thus participate in its delib-
erative processes and influence its policies.
Over time, tombstones with foreign alpha-
bet inscriptions, temples dedicated to foreign
gods, and names of individuals that sounded
Greek but were actually Phoenician became
integrated into the social fabric of society,
changed how cities looked, and altered the
daily sounds of communities. Greek societies
were profoundly altered by the contributions
THEME: Greeks and Scythians
PEOPLE FROM THE WORLD BEYOND

THE SCYTHIANS
THEME
Many peoples inhabited the great expanse of the steppe

from Manchuria to Central Europe. Among the earliest at-
tested of such peoples were the Scythians, who emerged
500 AD
from the steppe in the early Iron Age. The Scythians left
a prominent imprint in Greek memory, revived once
again when burials and remains of steppe peoples and
their lifestyle began to be discovered in the modern era.
By Selim F. Adalı and Richard Kendall
T
he tenth and ninth centuries BC in the Eura-
sian steppe witnessed the transition of vari-
ous communities from agricultue to forms
of agropastoralism and nomadism, and the
1 AD
emergence of a military-political elite reli-

ant on horsepower. The Scythians, as they were known
PONTIC STEPPE: ca. 800 – 100 BC
to the ancient Greeks, Assyrians, and their neighbours,

were one of these earlier known nomadic pastoralists.
The earliest undisputable mention of the Scythians
comes from the inscriptions and divination reports
of the Assyrian Empire during King Esarhaddon
x
A bronze beaker from Mannea, dated to ca.
(r. 681–669 BC). Around the second quarter 1000-800 BC, depicting a kneeling archer.
© Los Angeles County Museum of Art
of the seventh century BC, a Scythian king
named Išpakāya fought Assyrian forces for his queries is unknown, but Herodotus
control and influence over Mannea – a re- (ca. 484–425 BC) writes of a tradition
gion around Lake Urmiya in northwestern whereby Protothyes’s son Madyes sup-
Iran. Here, the Scythians also competed ported Assyria against the Medes and
dominated Anatolia during the 630s
500 BC
with several other polities. One example

is the Cimmerians, another pastoral- BC when the Assyrians were in relative
ist people, who during the late-eighth decline. The main rival of the Scyth-
century BC defeated Urartu – a king- ians during the 630s–610s BC were
dom based around lake Van in eastern the Medes under the Phraortes-Cyax-
Anatolia – and established themselves ares dynasty. It was Cyaxares who eventu-
in northwestern Iran. Additionally, ally defeated the Scythians, some of whom,
Mede warlords were spread across according to legend (transmitted by Hero-
the Assyria Empire’s Zagros frontier dotus), migrated back to the Pontic Steppe,
and in western Iran. Towards the end Crimea, and the northern Black Sea, which
of the 660s BC, another Scythian king by at least since the eighth century BC was the
the name Bartatua (ancient Greek: Proto- Scythian homeland. However, this was not
thyes), perhaps Išpakāya’s successor, sought their original homeland.
1000 BC
an alliance with Assyria. The outcome of

The earliest steppe migration
A reconstruction of the costume worn by the occupant of the At Olbia on the Black Sea coast, Herodo-
Issyk kurgan (near the village of Esik in Kazakhstan), dated
to the fourth - third century BC. Among the grave goods were tus encountered two different traditions ex-
warrior's equipment and over 4000 golden objects. plaining the Scythian presence on the Pontic
© eggry / Flickr
Steppe. These traditions focused on the rul- ian tradition about their dynasty starts with A scene in relief on the southern wall of
Targitaos, son of Zeus and daughter of River the east stairway of the Apadana Palace
ing dynasty. The Greek tradition narrated that
in Persepolis. It depicts a delegation from
Heracles slept with a native Pontic Steppe Borysthenes (Dnieper). Targitaos had three the Saka Tigrakhauda, the Scythians of
goddess, shaped as a snake below her waist sons – Leipoxais, Arpoxais, and Colaxais – the pointed hats, who lived east of the
and a woman above it. The goddess asked who ruled different parts of Scythia. Colaxais Caspian Sea.
© Lukiyanova Natalia frenta / Shutterstock
Heracles what to do with their three sons; was recognized as divinely blessed when the
Agathyrsus, Gelonus, and Scythes. Heracles flames that prevented his brothers from tak-
instructed that the son who could draw his ing certain sacred objects were extinguished
bow and put on his girdle should rule the upon his attempt to pick them up. Colaxais’
land. Scythes succeeded and sired the Scyth- line then served as the lineage for the leading
ian dynasty with the goddess’ blessing. This king, whereas the other two lineages provid-
goddess could be a representation of the ed subordinate kings, a system with parallels
goddess Argimpasa (equated in Greek tradi- with other Central Asian polities.
tion with Aphrodite Ourania). Other mem- While their exact origin was not known,
bers of the Scythian pantheon known to the Greeks and their other neighbours knew
Herodotus (with Greek equivalents) were at least that the Scythians came from east of The Pazyryk carpet is the world's old-
the Pontic Steppe. Aristeas of Proconnesus est surviving pile carpet, dating to the
Tabiti (Hestia), Papaeus (Zeus), Api (Gaia),
fifth century BC. It was discovered in a
Goetosyrus (Apollo), and two other deities (seventh century BC), cited by Herodotus in Scythian burial in the Pazyryk Valley of
named only after their Greek equivalents, his Histories (4.13), mentioned a migration the Altai mountains (Siberia).
Heracles and Ares. Targitaos, the legendary of peoples from Central Asia, with one tribe © The State Hermitage Museum
figure who was regarded as the ancestor of pushing the other. Pushed by the Issedonians
Scythian rulers according to native Scyth- in the distant east, the Scythians migrated
ian beliefs, can be compared with Heracles, across the Steppe Corridor and
who in the Greek tradition sired the ances- in turn pushed
tors of the Scythian rulers. The native Scyth-
the Cimmerians out of their homeland in and migratory movements during the eighth
the Pontic Steppe. Herodotus also writes century BC, most of which are impossible to
of a tradition about the migration routes fully trace with the extant written evidence.
of the Cimmerians and Scythians. The Following Scythian pressure, some Cimmeri-
Cimmerians divided into separate migra- ans migrated into parts of Eastern and Cen-
tion trajectories upon the arrival of the tral Europe, whereas the ones who crossed
Scythians. The Cimmerians going along the Caucasus dominated parts of northwest-
the Black Sea coast entered northern Ana- ern Iran until the 660s BC and parts of Ana-
A gold tolia, whereas others crossed the Caucasus tolia between the 660s–640s BC, at the end
plaque, dated to the possibly across the Dariali or a nearby pass, of which their tribal federation dissolved and
eighth - sixth century BC,
discovered in 1947 near Ziwiye, Iran. The
similar to the Scythians who, when entering some of their tribes were defeated by differ-
artwork from Ziwiye shares similarities northwestern Iran, had “the Caucasus at their ent local Anatolian forces, the Scythians, and
with contemporary art from Assyria, right” (Herodotus, 4.12), the latter probably then finally by the Lydians under Alyattes
Urartu, and Scythia.
traversing the Derbent pass. These accounts around the 630s or 620s BC. After this, the
appear to be transmitted versions of complex Cimmerians are rarely mentioned. Most nota-
movements borne out of different conflicts ble among these mentions are the later Greek
traditions concerned with some of these
events, and the use of the term 'Cimmerian'
© Roman Zymovets / Wikimedia Commons

by Babylonian scribes to generally refer to the
'Saka'. the Persian name for the peoples on
their Steppe frontiers from the Pontic Steppe
to the northeast of Iran. As for the Scythians,
they remained active in Anatolia and north-
western Iran until they were defeated by the
Medes under Cyaxares around the 620s or
610s BC. Some Cimmerians and/or Scythians
remained and assimilated to local cultures in
Anatolia and Iran. Other Scythians returned to
their homelands in the North Caucasus and
the Pontic Steppe, where the larger Scythian
communities remained recognizable.
The ‘Scythian’ lifestyle

The military-political elite of these pastoralist
peoples, whatever names they were given by
The earthen walls of Bilsk, a contender for the Scythian city of Gelonus, described by Herodotus. the Greeks or other outsiders, shared a simi-
lar nomadic material culture to their neigh-
Scythian cities bours going as far east as Siberia. This not
The dominant image of the Scythians is of hordes of nomads travelling across the only complicates modern scholarly attempts
steppes with their covered wagons and vast herds of horses, never settling in one to identify the original Scythian homeland
place. Herodotus, however, wrote that the Scythians consisted of both pastoralists before they came to the Pontic Steppe, but it
and agriculturalists. In Scythia and the Pontic Steppe, nomadic or pastoralist com- also makes it difficult to provide the steppe’s
munities co-existed with cities and settled communities. An example Herodotus political-geographical map in antiquity.
provides of a large Scythian city is Gelonus, which has high walls of wood and tem- Radiocarbon dates and archaeological
ples to both Scythian and Greek gods within, also constructed out of wood (4.108). research indicate that the burials of pastoralist
There are several fortified settlements on the Pontic Steppe that resemble elites under mounds known as kurgans are first
Herodotus’ description of Gelonus, often located along the Dnipro River. The attested in the Altai and Tuva regions around
most famous of such sites is the fortified settlement of Bilsk, on the Vorskla River, the ninth century BC, and later appear at the
a tributary of the Dnipro. It had ramparts ca. 33 km in length enclosing an area of Pontic Steppes starting from the eighth century
nearly 4000 hectares. Bilsk, like the other fortified settlements, probably served BC. The grave goods found within these kur-
as a market centre where grain, slaves, and other Scythian commodities were sent gans, especially in their types of short swords
500 km downriver to the Greek colonies with the merchants who had brought known as the akinakes, the battle pickaxes,
the Greek pottery found at the site. bilobate/trilobate arrowheads, the curved bow,
Dating to the fifth-fourth ent kurgans also gave clues about the Scyth- The ruins of the Greek colony of Olbia on
century BC, this wooden the Black Sea coast, founded by colonists
ians’ economic well-being, lifestyle, and their
x
plaque demonstrates the sort from Miletus by the sixth century BC.
of stylized animal forms the trade with their neighbours. The many lavish Located at the mouth of the Buh River,
Scythians are famous for.
gold artefacts found within the kurgans point Olbia sat at the start of the inland trade
to trade and other methods of extraction, such routes into Scythian lands.
and works of art in gold representing as pillaging. The fact that gold was processed
© Andrey Skaternoy / Shutterstock
a unique animal art, amazed archaeologists with the very finely worked animal art points
working across the steppe. Animal art artefacts to the high degree of artistic ability available
were first recognized in Siberia, and starting among the Scythians. The elaborate horse buri-
in the eighteenth century, burials were uncov- als in turn display their pastoralist and horse-
ered in the kurgans of Pontic Steppe, North dependent military and economic life. The
Caucasus, and the eastern part of the Steppe maintenance of productive grasslands for large
Corridor, in regions like Tuva and Altai. Some herds was deemed critical for the elite and the A facsimile of a sarcophagus from Cla-
of the kurgans, such as Arzhan 1 (late ninth pastoralist community. zomenae, a Greek city on the west coast
century BC), also had the deceased royal’s The unique nomadic lifestyle of pastoral- of Anatolia, that possibly depicts Greek
warriors fighting nomadic invaders, from
servants and horses buried within, reflect- ist communities with horse-archer forces under the seventh or sixth century century BC.
ing beliefs in the afterlife. Artefacts in differ- the command of the Scythian horse-archer elite © Public domain
An akinakes, a dagger or short sword

typically associated with the Scythians.
19
x
It dates to sixth-fifth century BC. Ancient History 47

© Dorieo / Wikimedia Commons
impressed outsiders to such an extent that the en, whom Herodotus calls enarees (4.67),
Scythians came to embody ‘the nomad’ – until but Pseudo-Hippocrates, who describes how
then they were known more in mythical termi- this role was a divine calling, more accurately
nology, such as Hippemolgi (mare-milkers) and names them anarieis (On Airs, Waters, and
Galactophagi (milk-eaters) from the Homeric Places 22), from the Scythian anarya (‘unman-
epics – all across the distant lands about which ly’). Ephorus (fourth century BC) challenged
sedentary communities in Europe and Asia contemporary prejudices against barbarian
knew next to nothing. The name ‘Scythians’ peoples, and regarded the Scythians as a peo-
eventually went beyond the historical Scyth- ple who had their own civilization.
ians and became a general term for pastoralist The Persians during the Achaemenid pe-
peoples in later Greek and Latin traditions, well riod (sixth-fourth centuries BC) had a similar
into the Byzantine period. usage with the term Sakā, and they tried to dis-
The Scythians featured not only in Hero- tinguish between such communities beyond
dotus but also several other Greek authors their northeastern frontier based on knowl-
during the fifth century BC and onwards. On edge of some of their customs (e.g. headgear
Airs, Waters, and Places (17–22), ascribed to or rituals). They referred to the Sakā
Hippocrates (fifth century BC) from the island Tigrakhaudā (Sakā of the
of Cos, describes aspects of Scythian society pointed hats) east of
(Top) The term 'Scythian' came to be ap- the Caspian Sea, Sakā
plied to many politically-distinct nomadic around Lake Maeotis (the Sea of Azov). He re-
Haumawargā (the
groups, such as the Sauromatae and the fers to the ability of women to fight alongside
Massagetae, who lived across the Central haoma-consuming
men among the Sauromatae, a Scythian-like
Eurasian steppe. Sakā) near Sogdi-
© Richard Thomson
people (On Airs, Waters, and Places 17). Such
ana and Choras-
women were also known as the Amazons (see
(Bottom) An Attic Nolan neck-amphora, mia (the haoma
dated to ca. 440-430 BC, depicting Mayor, this issue). Burials with female warriors
plant was used for
a Greek warrior fighting an Amazon have been found around Azov and across the
dressed as a Scythian. an inebriant used
Steppe. Scythians also had priestly figures who
© The Metropolitan Museum of Art in feasts and rituals),
performed female work and spoke like wom-
Dating to the fifth-fourth cen-

x
tury BC, this complete set of

horse tack, including, saddle,
blanket, and face mask, was
found in Pazyryk barrow no. 5.
A Scytho-Sarmatian gold pendant
in the shape of a horse, dated to
x
the fourth-third century BC.
and Sakā tayai Paradraya (Sakā connecting the Black Sea and
beyond the sea, possibly refer- the Sea of Azov. The Bosporan
ring to the Black Sea). Herodotus Kingdom maintained close trade
(1.205–214) writes that Cyrus II links with ancient Greece, especially
(ca. 600–530 BC), founder of the Per- Athens, and tried to resist contempo-
sian Empire, crossed the Syr Darya River for his rary Scythian rulers. Beyond the Danube, in
final campaign and was killed at the hands of 339 BC king Philip II of Macedonia battled the
the Massagetae, a people similar to the Scyth- Scythian King Ateas, whose kingdom stretched
ians and the Sakā, and their queen Tomyris. from the Sea of Azov to the Danube. Under
The Behistun relief (ca. 520–519 BC) of Darius Philip’s successor, Alexander the Great, the
I depicts peoples who revolted against his ac- Macedonian general Zopyrion died in 331 BC
cession to the throne. Among the subjugated is after trying to wrest Olbia (a Greek colony on
a certain Scythian/Sakā lord named Skunkha of the western Black Sea shore) from the Scyth-
the Sakā Tigrakhauda. After gaining control of ians. From the third century BC and onwards,
the Achaemenid Empire, Darius I organized a traditional Scythian polities began to decline.
campaign in 513–512 BC against the Scythians Some Greek colonies, the Bosporan
in the Pontic Steppe, travelling through Thrace Kingdom, and a neighbouring Scythian
and along the western Black Sea coast. This kingdom based in Neapolis (modern Sim-
campaign was a failure according to Hero- feropol) established during the mid-second
dotus. The Scythian forces were too mobile century BC, remained independent until the
The grave stele of Staphilos, dated to the
for the Persian army to properly engage them. first century BC. Crimea and the Bosporan
second century BC, from the city of Pantica-
Chinese sources also mention several pastoral- Kingdom were first conquered in 110–107 paeum, the seat of the Spartocid dynasty.
ist peoples, some of whom probably referring BC by Diophantus, a general of Mithradates They were the rulers of the Bosporan
VI Eupator of Pontus. By the second century Kingdom, which included both Greeks and
to the Sakā known by the Persians, the Greeks,
Scythians. The relief depicting Staphilos
and the Romans. Some Sakā migrated to parts AD, when the Pontic Steppe was dominated shows him wearing Scythian clothing.
of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and north-west India by the Sarmatians, the term ‘Scythian’ had © Carole Raddato / Flickr
as the Indo-Scythians by the first century BC become a general term for steppe nomads,
and the first century AD. whereas the descendants of the Scythians,
The Greeks who settled on the Black Sea while they had a sense of their past, now The Behistun inscription was created by
coast starting from the seventh and sixth cen- lived in sedentary communities. AH Darius the Great, ruler of the Achaeme-
nid Persian empire, in 520 BC to com-
turies BC established colonies that par- memorate his victory over contenders
took in the daily life of the com- Selim Ferruh Adalı is Professor of Ancient His- for the throne and peoples who rebelled
munities in the Pontic Steppe. tory at Social Sciences University of Ankara. against his rule. Before him stand the
leaders of the rebellious peoples, includ-
Pastoralist political rule al- His interests lie in ancient Eurasia, Assyro-
ing Skunkha, the last figure on the right,
lowed for settled Greeks and Babylonian literature, cuneiform studies, and ruler of the Saka Tigrakhauda.
pastoralist Scythians to co- the Iron Age in West Asia and Europe. © Livius.org
exist in Greek colonies,

communities using the
pastures, and numer-
ous villages. It also
provided space
for the spread
of Greek arts and
trade. Greek artisans ex-
pressed their own myths in works
of art, which they produced and shared
in Scythia. The growing Greek commu-
nity and the Scythians and other peoples
who lived in the same realm started to
become a unique community. In the fifth
century BC, the Bosporan Kingdom was es-
tablished along the Cimmerian Bosphorus, the
strait between the Kerch and Taman peninsulas
While researching his Histories,

Herodotus travelled through
the Greek world and beyond,
learning about different cultures.
Here, Herodotus speaks with a
Scythian nomad, with a Greco-
Scythian acting as interpreter.
© William Webb
500 AD
1 AD
AEGEAN AND THE BLACK SEA: ca. 650 – 400 BC
500 BC
1000 BC
EXPLORERS, GEOGRAPHERS, AND HISTORIANS By Christa Steinby
GREEK KNOWLEDGE OF THE SCYTHIANS

THEME
The Greeks were fascinated by the Scythians, nomadic pastoralists who roamed the plains
of the Central Eurasian steppe. Herodotus, whose account is one of the most important
for understanding Scythian culture, is just one of several Greek writers who studied them.
F
rom natural philosophy to geography and ethnog- that contained information about sea routes and the differ-
raphy, the Greeks were curious about the world ent people one would meet on them, to mention just a few
and its many different inhabitants. They explored of their accomplishments.
sailing routes and coastlines, planting colonies The so-called logographers contributed to the increase
throughout the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, of knowledge and how the Greeks saw the world. Hecat-
encountering many disparate peoples. Geography and eth- aeus, also from Miletus, made improvements to the world
nography were developed mostly out of practical needs map drawn by Anaximander. In his writings about geogra-
connected to this exploration: one needed to know the out- phy, he made information about the areas and the peoples
line of the coast along which one sailed and the locations one would encounter when sailing in the Mediterranean and
where one might find safe landing places, and it was useful the Black Sea available to his readers. Hecataeus described
to know about the culture of the peoples one would meet the coasts starting from the Strait of Gibraltar and going
when arriving there. These considerations also underscored clockwise all the way to Morocco on its Atlantic side. On
the Greeks’ understanding of the Scythians. the way, he discussed the Mediterranean islands, and what
can be found inland in Scythia, Persia, India, Egypt, and Nu-
Early explorers bia. Unfortunately, his work is largely lost, with about 300
The Greek colonization of the Mediterranean began in fragments preserved. We cannot say to what extent his work
the eighth century BC, as trading posts and colonies were is based on his own observations.
founded on the eastern coast of Sicily and in the south of Hellanicus was a logographer from Lesbos who was
Italy (see AH 38). In this, the Greeks competed with the active in the mid-fifth century. Thucydides was aware of
Phoenicians, who created trading posts and colonies in his work of Athenian history, for example (1.97). Much
Spain, western Sicily, Sardinia, and north Africa. In the like Hecataeus, his work, also only surviving in about
Black Sea, however, the Greeks were the only outsiders 200 fragments, was concerned with myths, peoples, and
attempting to colonize the area, and from the beginning events in Greece, Egypt, Cyprus, Scythia, and Persia.
of their efforts in the seventh century BC they were free
from competition. The most important colony in the area The father of history
was Olbia on the north coast of the Black Sea, founded by Unlike his predecessors and contemporaries, Herodotus
the leading Ionian city Miletus. of Halicarnassus’ work has survived intact. Due to the im-
In addition to founding many colonies, Miletus was portance of his work, he has been given two titles, the
also the birthplace of natural philosophy. In early Greek father of history and the founder of ethnography. While he
thought, the gods and their interference had worked as the was not a geographer, he was interested in the land and
standard element in Greek mythology to explain a rainbow, did travel extensively in Egypt, Persia, and Scythia, using
an earthquake, or any other natural phenomenon. Natural important cities as bases in his journeys such as Memphis
philosophers, however, abandoned the idea of the gods’ in Egypt and Babylon in Mesopotamia. In these places he
influence and tried to find explanations for everything in found guides or translators who were able to speak Greek,
the natural world. The first and most famous natural phi- with whose help he was able to find answers to his many
losophers were Thales from Miletus, who was able to pre- questions. He does not name his sources, but he does
dict an upcoming solar eclipse in 585 BC, and his student claim to have travelled to many places and describes the
Anaximander (born ca. 610 BC), who created the first map people he interviewed by nationality.
Herodotus had many interests that drove him to write hundred and twenty stades long. The Bosporus reaches
his Histories. First, military and political history. He ex- as far as to the Propontis; and the Propontis is five hun-
plained the growth of the Persian empire and how it had dred stades wide and one thousand four hundred long;
conquered Egypt, taken the east coast of the Mediterranean its outlet is the Hellespont, which is no wider than seven
and a part of Scythia, and how it finally also attacked main- stades and four hundred long. The Hellespont empties
land Greece twice. In his account of Persia’s conquests, into a gulf of the sea which we call Aegean.
Herodotus was also keen to record moments where Per- (4.85.3–4, trans. Godley)
sian military campaigns did not go well, and in this respect,
There were many regional variations in the ancient world
he was interested in the military prowess of the Scythians
for the length of a stadium, ranging from 177 to 213 me-
as they had been able to repulse Darius’ army. Second,
tres. Herodotus’ figure lies between 710 to 840 metres.
Herodotus explained the people whom the Persians had
The modern Bosporus is about 780 metres wide, so Hero-
conquered and who were not so well known to his Greek
dotus’ figure is fair enough. The bridge he refers to is the
readers. In this respect he discussed the landscape and the
one the Ionian fleet was forced to build for Darius and his
habits of the people in Egypt, for example.
troops to enable them to start the campaign against the
Herodotus also discussed the peoples and their habits
Scythians. Herodotus has a neat way of discussing recent
to point out differences, often comparing different cultural
history and natural sciences in the same sentence.
practices to those of the Greeks. His two longest ethno-
Some of the measurements he mentions, especially for
graphic descriptions are on Scythia and Egypt, comparing a
the Black Sea, are not that accurate, however, and these is-
society of nomads to one with a long history of settled agri-
sues have raised the question of whether Herodotus actual-
culture. He also pointed out the differences between Greek
ly visited Scythia himself or whether he had just been read-
and Egyptian societies, discussing women’s status in each
ing Hecataeus. For example, Herodotus claims the distance
society, for example, as he noticed that in Egypt women
from the mouth of the Black Sea to Phasis, a city at the east
went to the marketplace, whereas in Athens doing busi-
coast of that sea, was 2000–3000 kilometres, but it is only
ness in a public place was largely restricted to men. Moreo-
about 1200 kilometres. The error can be explained by the
ver, the Egyptians had a well-developed idea about history
unreliable system by which the days and nights navigated
compared to the Greeks, as Herodotus learned in Thebes
were turned into a system of distance. The margin of error
when he met with the priests at the temple of Karnak. Long
became greater with longer distances. It has been noted
genealogical tables of former priests were presented, and
that sailors tended to overestimate the speed of the vessel.
Herodotus noticed that they were all humans; no gods or
Herodotus must have misunderstood information given by
demi-gods were included as was the habit in Greek gene-
the sailors who offered him the passage.
alogies. Moreover, many Greeks would have only recently
Herodotus’ account of the Scythians begins with a
encountered Persian society which, with its wealth and dif-
discussion of their origin story:
ferent customs, was all quite overwhelming to the Greeks,
and which Herodotus sought to explain. The Scythians say that their nation is the youngest in
the world, and that it came into being in this way. A
Herodotus and Scythia man whose name was Targitaüs appeared in this coun-
It is unknown to us when Herodotus visited Scythia. All we try, which was then desolate. They say that his parents
can say is that it was before he moved to Athens, where he were Zeus and a daughter of the Borysthenes river (I
lived for a few years in the mid-440s and received a prize do not believe the story, but it is told). Such was Targi-
for the public readings of his work. taüs' lineage; and he had three sons: Lipoxaïs, Arpox-
When he did travel there, he went by ship and acted aïs, and Colaxaïs, youngest of the three. In the time of
the natural philosopher, estimating the travel distances in their rule (the story goes) certain implements—name-
the Bosphorus and the Black Sea. He explains the voyage ly, a plough, a yoke, a sword, and a flask, all of gold—
from the Black Sea to the Aegean as follows: fell down from the sky into Scythia.
(4.5.1–3, trans. Godley)
The channel at the entrance of this sea is four stades
across; the narrow neck of the channel, called Bospo- While Herodotus does not say specifically who told him
rus, across which the bridge was thrown, is about one this version of the Scythians’ origin story, simply attribut-
ing it to the Scythians as a whole, he does later include a different ways of living among the inhabitants, from the
version “told by the Greeks who live in Pontus” (4.8). These nomads to the farmers, information he likely drew from
two stories, which do share similarities, suggest that Hero- local merchants if not the inhabitants themselves. Hero-
dotus had consulted a Scythian during his travels. The likeli- dotus’ description of the river Hypanis and the people that
hood that Herodotus did speak to Scythians is strengthened can be found there is emblematic of his approach:
when we consider his account of Scythian royal burials:
North of the port of the Borysthenites (Olbia), which lies
Then, having laid the body on a couch in the tomb, midway along the coast of Scythia, the first inhabitants
they plant spears on each side of the body and lay are the Callippidae, who are Scythian Greeks; and be-
wooden planks across them, which they then roof over yond them another tribe called Alazones; these and the
with braided osiers; in the open space which is left Callippidae, though in other ways they live like the Scyth-
in the tomb they bury one of the king's concubines, ians, plant and eat grain, onions, garlic, lentils, and mil-
his cupbearer, his cook, his groom, his squire, and his let. Above the Alazones live Scythian farmers, who plant
messenger, after strangling them, besides horses, and grain not to eat but to sell; north of these, the Neuri; north
first-fruits of everything else, and golden cups; for the of the Neuri, the land is uninhabited so far as we know.
Scythians do not use silver or bronze. Having done (4.17.1–2, trans. Godley
this, they all build a great barrow of earth, vying eager-
It seems that, of the Pontic Steppe generally, Herodotus
ly with one another to make this as great as possible.
knew the region around Olbia best. While he never claims
(4.71.4–5, trans. Godley)
to have visited Olbia, Herodotus does claim to have trav-
Herodotus’ description is very close to the archaeological elled north of Olbia to see a giant cauldron in the region
finds within the many kurgans that dot the Pontic Steppe. called Exampaeus (4.81), suggesting he likely did.
Either Herodotus had witnessed such a burial, which is Herodotus uses Darius’ campaign against the Scyth-
not impossible, or he had spoken to someone familiar ians as a device to allow his wider discussion of the Scyth-
with the burial procedure – a Scythian. ians themselves, and so, having explored the Scythians’
culture, he discusses how Darius’ campaign failed. The
Herodotus also discusses the geographical limits of
Scythians decided not to meet their enemy in the open
Scythia and what lies beyond. He tells us that he con-
field, but fell back, driving off their herds, choking the
sulted the work of Aristeas of Proconnesus, a hexameter
wells and springs, and destroying the pastureland as they
poem called the Arimaspea, dated to the seventh century
did. Consequently, the Persian troops could not find any
BC, recording his travels in Scythia and beyond. Unfortu-
water or wood to use, nor could they find the Scythians to
nately, the work has not survived.
fight them. The frustrated Darius came to understand how
As for the land (Scythia) of which my history has be- difficult it is to overcome people who had no cities or forts
gun to speak, no one exactly knows what lies north of that one could conquer and who were quick to change
it; for I can find out from no one who claims to know their positions on the wide plains.
as an eyewitness. For even Aristeas, whom I recently Finally, the Scythian troops stopped and arranged
mentioned—even he did not claim to have gone be- themselves in line to battle against the Persians; but then,
yond the Issedones, even though a poet; but he spoke suddenly a rabbit ran out between the armies, and the
by hearsay of what lay north, saying that the Issedones Scythians started to chase it. No battle took place and
had told him. But all that we have been able to learn Darius and his army left. The lesson learned from this was
for certain by report of the farthest lands shall be told. that although the Persians were able to conquer settled
(4.16, trans. Godley) peoples, they were quite clueless when it came to fighting
those with a nomadic lifestyle. The Scythians became the
Herodotus uses the rivers of the Pontic Steppe to explore heroes of Herodotus as they had successfully repulsed the
the geography of the Scythians’ land by describing the Persians. Just like the Greeks were able to. AH
rivers and what areas lay between them. He follows the
course of the rivers from the sea to their sources, a nar- Christa Steinby is a historian with an interest in ancient
rative structure he has probably taken from Hecataeus. warfare and seafaring, the Greco-Persian Wars, the Punic
While describing the land, Herodotus also described the Wars, Herodotus, Thucydides, Polybius, and Livy.
500 AD
Dated to ca. 300-250 BC, this fleet of civilian ships was once carved into the walls of a cult centre in Nymphaeum (near modern-day Kerch, Ukraine).
1 AD
FROM STEPPE TO SEA AND BACK AGAIN By John Brendan Knight
GRECO-SCYTHIAN TRADE
THEME
NORTHERN BLACK SEA: ca. 700 – 200 BC
The movement of people, ideas, and objects was a characteristic feature of the Black Sea and its hinterland in
ancient times. The arrivals of Scythian nomads and Greek traders in the seventh century BC was the catalyst for
economic growth on a vast scale. Within a few centuries, a massive system of exchange proliferated over the
sea, up-river, and across the steppe with profound implications for the peoples of the region and further afield.
I
magine, for a moment, that it is the sixth century BC. A lone lands, or eked a living from the very soil, the
500 BC
herder watches over his grazing cattle somewhere on the west- ‘Royal’ Scythians, the elite of the western
ern Eurasian steppe. A low rumble drifts towards him, at first nomads, were an ever-present threat in
barely a whisper, then slowly but surely, a dust cloud forms this great sea of grass.
out of the shimmering haze on the distant horizon. There is To the south and west, the rhythms
little time for the herder to flee, even on horseback he of life were different. The sea at its cen-
is no match for the incoming riders on their thorough- tre was of the literal kind. Small villages
bred mounts, thundering across the plain. If he somehow and towns clung to the coasts of the
managed to outpace them, or they simply dark waters which stretched off to the
lost interest in the pursuit, his cattle – the horizon. Our herder, captured by the rov-
life and livelihood of the steppe pastoralist ing nomads, would be chained together with
– would be left at their mercy. his fellows – men, women, and children –
These sights and sounds were the dread of and marched southwards to the coastal mar-
all who inhabited the vast steppes of Eurasia in kets or else to the massive wooden fortified
1000 BC
antiquity. Whether they fished its bountiful riv- towns of the western forest region. He might
ers, herded their cattle across the unending grass-
even be kept by the nomads to process the
produce of their vast herds, blinded to pre-
A bronze vessel discovered in the village of Pischane on the Dnipro
river. The winged figure is a Greek motif, suggesting that the vessel vent escape amongst the ubiquitous horses
was made by Greek artisans before being transported upriver. and deadly weapons.
© O.Mustafin / Wikimedia Commons
An Attic red-figure kylix,
dated to ca. 500-490 BC,
x
depicting a sleeping Scythian.
© ArchaiOptix / Wikimedia Commons
The drunken Scythians the Greek cities on the coast,

If the enslaved of the steppe were at one though some were produced in
end of this great trade pathway, at the other the cities of the Crimea. The lack
was a product which exemplified Greek of locally produced wine ensured
life, and one which the Scythians soon its importation into the Black Sea
gained a reputation as intemperate consum- and its hinterland in vast quantities.
ers of: wine. Deep within the kurgans which Amphorae are regularly found even
dotted the steppe, alongside the remains in obscure rural contexts. Wine drink-
of the nomadic elite, were all the accou- ing played a large part in the consumption
trements of their lifestyle and signifiers of habits of both Greeks and non-Greeks, ce-
their wealth. Horses, menting the need for the development of a (Top) The earthen rampart of Nemyriv fort,
A quiver, presum- part of a large, walled settlement on the
ably belonging to plentiful gold, sacri- regular organized supply system to which Pontic Steppe. Much Greek pottery has been
a Scythian, dated ficed retainers and the export of enslaved peoples provided a discovered within the settlement, dated to
to the eighth-third the seventh - fourth centuries BC, when the
concubines, and lucrative counterpoint.
x
centuries BC. fort was abandoned.

© The Metropolitan wine. The liquid it-
Museum of Art © Zarakhovskyi / Wikimedia Commons
self does not survive, Establishing emporia
but the accompanying equipment, When the Greeks first arrived on the north- (Bottom) The Scythians and Greeks were
not the only people living along the Pon-
which would not be out of place ern and western shores of the Black Sea, tic Steppe. About the Sea of Azov, known
in the andron of a wealthy Aegean they established a series of small settle- in antiquity as Lake Maeotis, dwelt the
Greek, can be found in abundance. ments called emporia. These early villag- Maeotians, after whom the sea was
Delicately painted cups, bowls, strain- named. This is a Maeotian burial, dated
es – they hardly constituted cities or even to the fourth - second centuries BC.
ers, jugs and, above all, amphorae, the towns – were located at important com- © Scythian23 / Wikimedia Commons
ubiquitous marker of the whole trade
from steppe to sea, were placed in these
graves. There they stood out as a marker
of elite status and conspicuous con-
sumption, as well as a demonstration
of the deceased’s participation in far-
off exchange networks.
Such amphorae also reveal a discerning
consumerism amongst these Scythian lead-
ers. The wine consumed in the hillforts of the
forest steppe was often of the cheaper variety
from places such as Thasos in the north Ae-
gean, but the nomads themselves consumed,
or wanted to be seen as consuming, more
expensive wines, including much desired
vintages from Mende on the Chalcidice pen-
insula and Chios.
While their drinking habits do not fit in
with Greek ideas of civilized consumption
within an exclusive drinking party, the sym-
posium, the equipment associated with these
gatherings held value for the Scythian nomads.
East Greek and particularly finely painted Athe-
nian pottery was extremely popular and had
socio-cultural value for the nomads. It must
have been valuable marker of status to have
found a place amongst the rich goods of their
burials, perhaps to ensure a plentiful supply of
merriment in the world beyond.
Climatic conditions made
it difficult to grow vines among
A golden drinking horn,

x
discovered as part of the

treasure from the tumulus of
a Scythian prince in Maikop,
dated to ca. 450 BC.
© Gary Todd / Flickr
munication nodes. The earliest, Istros and adjacent to Olbia and Berezan were devoid
Orgame, were situated amongst the of settled native populations until the fifth
navigable network of lakes, la- century BC at the earliest. There, the Greeks’
goons, and distributaries stretching nearest neighbours lived hundreds of miles
south from the Danube delta. In the away in massive walled settlements located
following decades, a small community in the forest steppe regions of central and
grew on the island of Berezan in south- northern Ukraine, up the great rivers which
ern Ukraine, before relocating its centre to characterize the region. Archaeological in-
Olbia, just north of the confluence of the vestigation of these sites, including Bilsk,
lower Buh and Dnipro rivers. Panticapaeum Kamianske, and Nemyriv, has uncovered a
was founded on Mt Mithridates overlooking wealth of Greek pottery beginning in the late
the narrowest point of the straits of Kerch. seventh century BC down to the time of their
To the north and east, small trading stations abandonment in the fourth century BC. The
were positioned at modern Taganrog in the forts eventually came under the hegemony
northeastern corner of the sea of Azov, and of the Scythian nomads who moved west-
around modern-day Anapa below the west- wards towards the end of the sixth century
A black-figure hydria, dated to ca. ern foothills of the Caucasus range. BC and became important transit locations
530-520 BC, depicting several Scythian The Greek settlements in the eastern for slaves, wine, and luxury goods moving
cavalrymen. By the late sixth century BC,
half of the Black Sea were well placed to between the steppe and the sea.
Greeks in the Aegean may have become
accustomed to seeing Scythians, whether interact with local tribes, particularly the In 1961, in the village of Pishchane, 100
as travellers, mercenaries, or slaves. Maeotian peoples living on the coasts of the km south of Kyiv on the Dnipro, the remains
© Sailko / Wikimedia Commons
Sea of Azov and the Sindi of west of modern of a submerged dugout canoe were found
Krasnodar, as well as the Scythian tribes who which carried a cargo of Greek-made bronze
roamed the region. In contrast, the lands vessels from the early fifth century BC. The
Scythian slaves, Athenian police

Scythian slaves, so-called by the Greeks be- suggesting this date is not accurate. While the
cause they were purchased from Scythia rath- exact date the police force was implemented
er than necessarily being ethnic Scythians, remains unknown, the Scythians often ap-
were sold throughout the Mediterranean pear in Attic comedy as bumbling stock char-
and Eurasian worlds. Athens appears to acters speaking a garbled form of Greek. In
A coloured reconstruction have been a particularly receptive mar- total, over 250 Scythian names are evident
of the fragmentary Parian ket for Scythian slaves. For example, in Greek inscriptions and literature, and yet
marble sculpture of a
horse and its rider known a pair appear on a list of confis- even this must represent but a fraction of the
as 'The Persian or the cated property at Athens in the overall forced movement of people.
Scythian Rider', dated fifth century BC. They are priced Remarkably, an invoice for the sale of a
to ca. 520-510 BC.
significantly higher than the other slave bought by a resident of Phanagoria on
© Livius.org
contraband slaves. Maybe they had the Taman peninsula in the northeastern Black
some specialist skills or perhaps their Sea, inscribed onto a piece of lead, has sur-
exoticism merely represented a social vived. This document reads, “This slave was
cache for potential buyers. As the Athe- sold from Borysthenes, his name is Phaulles,
nian state held a cadre of Scythian bow- all debts must be paid.” Not only does this
men as a kind of quasi-police force, demonstrate the existence of an internal,
they perhaps acted as bodyguards for Black Sea trade in enslaved people, it estab-
an elite citizen. The earliest record lishes the existence of a slave market on the
for the introduction of the Scythian island of Berezan at the mouth of the Dnipro
police force is Andocides’ speech On estuary, where Borysthenes was located, and
the Peace, written ca. 392 BC, which reveals the use of sophisticated sales mecha-
notes that the police force was imple- nisms such as downpayments and balances
mented in 446 BC. Yet his chronology of debts. The breadth of the trade in human
for the other events he notes, such as stock must have made these a necessity for
the creation of the Long Walls, is off, buyers and sellers.
A silver strainer, likely

x
meant for the Scythian drink

koumiss, discovered in Kara-
28 godeuashkh tumulus, dated to
Ancient History 47 the fourth century BC.
A tattoo on the right shoulder of nomads. Those decorated in 'animal style', An aerial view of the Roman ruins of
a Scythian noble interred in a
x
Istros. Istros was originally founded as a

kurgan at Pazyryk, dated to the an elaborate stylized series of motifs often
Greek colony south of the Danube delta
fifth century BC. It has been including stags, feline predators, and mythi- by settlers from Miletus, one of the earli-
preserved by permafrost.
© The State Hermitage Museum cal hybrids, were common. Precursors to est Greek colonies in the Black Sea along
with its neighbour Orgame. The city likely
this nomad style can be found in jewellery
boatman himself was identified as served as a stopping point for ships
and the monolithic deer stones found in the travelling further north.
hailing from the Mediterranean. By Altai mountains in western Siberia. The im- © Porojnicu Stelian / Shutterstock
ancient standards, this was trade over a ages held a particular social and religious
truly momentous distance. If the vessels significance, clear from the preserved tattoos
were made at Olbia, they had been carried which adorned the bodies of the nomads liv-
almost 700 km up the Dnipro before being ing in the frozen regions further east. A wooden sarcophagus, dated to the
lost. How much of their journey remained to Metals, and more often wine, can be fourth century BC, from Yuz-Oba, the
go is a tantalizing unknown. necropolis of Panticapaeum, a Greek
identified through archaeological excava- colony and heart of the Bosporan
tion, but the Black Sea was also the source Kingdom, which ruled both Greeks and
Cargoes: hidden and visible of many ‘invisible’ products which did not Scythians. Yuz-Oba means 'a hundred
Metalworking, such as the bowls and vessels hills', referring to the many tumuli of
leave such a trace. Fortunately, a handful
the necropolis, most of which date to
found at Pishchane, was an important indus- of ancient authors showed enough interest ca. 360-330 BC. This sarcophagus was
try in the Greek cities of the Black Sea. They in the region’s trade to widen the economic decorated with reliefs representing the
obtained ores from the mineral-rich forest gods Apollo and Hera.
picture. For example, according to the Greek
© Netelo / Wikimedia Commons
steppe regions. These metals were brought to historian Polybius (4.38), cattle, slaves, hon-
the coast where Greek craftsmen manufac-
tured them into intricate objects, including
decorations for humans and horses, jewel-
lery, and the so-called Olbian mirrors. One
such place of manufacture was located at
Yagorlyk, on the Kinburn peninsula opposite
Olbia, where seasonal workshops produced
metal and glass products.
Intricate gold and bronze objects such
as combs, weapons, torques, and equestrian
appliques, were particularly prized by the
π THE CENTERFOLD
The Pontic Steppe was dotted with hillforts, both
greater and smaller, that served as economic and
social centres for the Scythians. Traders would
often travel to these sites, bringing valuable goods,
even from as far as the Greek cities on the coast of
the Black Sea. Here a Greek trader arrives at a fort
bringing many amphorae of wine.
© Marek Szysko
ey, wax, and salted fish were the pri- at the Hellespont. Environmental evidence,
mary Black Sea exports to the cities however, demonstrates significant fluctua-
of the Aegean basin. Large herds of tions in rainfall and yield in the northern
cattle were kept by both nomadic Black Sea. Grain may only have been ex-
and sedentary peoples of the steppe. ported periodically and in small quanti-
As a result of the significant difficulties. In comparison to the staples of wine
ties and expense involved transport- and slaves, its provision was not reliable
ing livestock across maritime routes, enough to be depended on, particularly for
the actual materials exported were a city as populous as Athens, traditionally
probably leathers and hides, a com- thought to be its primary market.
modity mentioned in a fragment of While slaves were the mainstay of
the historian Philochorus (fr. 162). Greco-Scythian trade, other more luxu-
The Black Sea has often rious goods travelled the steppe to sea
been thought of as the breadbas- route, oftentimes from far
ket of the Classical Greek world, beyond the Pontic hinter-
particularly fifth-century BC Ath-
A golden Scythian dress
ens. Yet Polybius tells us that the ornament in the shape
x
A relief, possibly created by a Greek supply of grain was often a two-way of a stag, dated to the
fifth century BC.
sculptor, depicting a Scythian warrior with street depending on local and seasonal © The Metropolitan Museum of Art
an axe, bow, and spear. It is dated to the conditions. Herodotus, writing a couple of
fourth - second centuries BC. It contains
traces of red paint and gold leaf. centuries earlier, places more importance land. One of the two main
© Walters Art Museum on this trade and speaks of farming com- amber routes from the Baltic to the
munities amongst the Scythians, some of Mediterranean followed this path (the oth-
A view of some ruins at Panticapaeum,
a Greek colony on the Kerch peninsula whom grew grain exclusively for export to er passed through central Europe to Italy)
founded in the late seventh or early the Greek cities of the Black Sea and be- and, though there was much debate on the
sixth century by colonists from Miletus. yond (4.16–17). Indeed, according to Xen- ultimate origins of this substance, ancient
In the fourth century BC, under the
Spartocid dynasty, the city became the ophon (Hellenica 2.2.2), the final Spartan authorities were explicit in noting its trade
centre of the Bosporan Kingdom. campaigns of the Peloponnesian War were through Scythian hands (Herodotus, 3.115;
© Skif-Kerch / Wikimedia Commons aimed at choking off Athens’ grain supply Pliny, Natural History 37.11). Lastly, while
unmentioned by Polybius, timber was an-
other important Pontic export. According to
Strabo, good shipbuilding wood could be
obtained from the foothills of the Caucasus
(11.2.15). Despite this, the elites of the Bos-
poran Kingdom also imported wood, usu-
ally specialized species which were used in
their sarcophagi, a form of burial also used
by some elite Scythians.
Talking with traders

Letters, inscribed onto lead sheets and
fragments of ceramics, periodically found
in excavations of the coastal cities, illu-
minate the day-to-day functioning of the
northern Black Sea economy. They reveal
that trade was often conducted by proxy
agents, employed by the rich to purchase,
sell, and transport goods and people for
their clients. These agents were frequently
of low social status, often also slaves. One
of these documents tells us about an in-
dividual named Achillodorus who was al-
legedly mistaken for a slave of his client
Anaxagoras. He complains that his person
has been confiscated as compensation
in a dispute with a third man who bears
the non-Greek name Matasys. We do not
know what happened to Achillodorus or
even whether his letter arrived at its des-
tination. It may have been lost in transit,
sealing his unfortunate fate.
The letters shine a dimmer light on the
role of the Scythian tribes in commercial
transactions. In his letter, Achillodorus tells
his son to fetch the rest of his family who are
living amongst a local tribe and bring them
century BC, and the city of Olbia, whose (Top) A facsimile of a hoplite arming
to Olbia, probably to ensure their safety scene from a black-figure Greek vase de-
from enslavement. In another letter, the cor- very name meant ‘wealthy’, became tre-
picting a Scythian archer. Scythians were
respondent asks the recipient to find out who mendously affluent, exhibiting all the char- often employed as mercenaries by Greek
is paying taxes to the nomads, though it is acteristic features of the classic Greek city cities, and could also have been hired or
bought as bodyguards.
not clear why he is seeking this information. state; temples, theatres, and agorae amongst
© Public domain
much else. Yet their populations remained
heterogenous. In these cities could be found (Bottom) A collection of pottery fragments
Wealthy Pontus from the island of Berezen, at the mouth
In the latter part of the Classical period, Thracians, Scythians, Anatolians, Colchians, of the Dnipro-Buh estuary, the site of an
around the end of the fourth century and, of course, Greeks, a result of their ex- ancient Greek colony which may have origi-
BC, trade between the Scythian-dom- tensive commercial networks which drew in nally been called Borysthenes. The island
was also the site of a slave market.
inated peoples of the northern Black people, wealth, and resources from across © PhotoDocumentalist / Wikimedia Commons
Sea coast and the Aegean Greeks the ancient world. AH
had grown into a vast network of A Scythian horse bit cheekpiece in the
interconnected people, places, and shape of a horse's head, dated to
John Brendan Knight has taught at the Uni-
the seventh century BC.
institutions. The Bosporan Kingdom, versity of Liverpool. His research focuses on © The Metropolitan
which had appeared during the fifth migration in the Black Sea and Anatolia. Museum of Art
A wine amphora, dated to the sixth cen-

tury BC, from Clazomenae in Asia Minor,
x
but discovered in Poland. This attests to

the long-range trade networks between
the Aegean and northeastern Europe.
© Archeologia Zywa / Wikimedia Commons
MYTHOLOGY, HISTORY, AND THE SCYTHIANS
THE AMAZONS
THEME
In Greek mythology, Amazons were fierce female warriors who

lived around the Black Sea, the Caucasus, and beyond, in the vast
territory that became known as Scythia. Amazons were said to
500 AD
glory in hunting and warfare – exclusively male activities in an-

cient Greece – and the women were as tough, courageous, and
skilled in battle as men. What might have influenced such tales?
By Adrienne Mayor
T
he earliest written mention of Amazons appears in Homer’s
Iliad, where they are called “the equals of men” (3.189;
6.186). Amazons were cast as formidable foreign adver-
CENTRAL EURASIAN STEPPE: ca. 650 BC – AD 70
saries of the greatest Greek heroes. Battles with Amazons

were suspenseful, although the Greeks ultimately emerged
1 AD
victorious. In the Trojan War, the warrior queen Penthesilea and her band
of Amazons fought as allies of the Trojans. In her duel with Achilles – a
scene illustrated in numerous vase paintings and sculptures – the Greek
champion wins, but he falls in love with the Amazon as she dies. A pair of gold appliques from the cos-
The great hero Heracles and Athens’ founder Theseus also tume of a Scythian princess, discovered
x
proved their valour by overcoming powerful Amazon queens. In his in a kurgan at Ryzhanivka, Ukraine.
© Virtual Museum Malopolski / Wikimedia Commons
Ninth Labor, Heracles’ mission was to obtain the war belt of Hip-
polyte, queen of the Amazons. In the battle between the Amazons Asia, descriptions of Scythian cultures centered
and Greeks, Heracles killed Hippolyte, taking her war belt, and the on horses and archery filtered back to Greece.
Athenian hero Theseus captured the Amazon Antiope, Hippolyte’s By ca. 650 BC, Aristeas wrote about his jour-
sister, bringing her to Athens as his wife. In Athens’ foundation myth, ney to the Altai Mountains in his lost epic Ari-
the young city achieved a hard-won victory over a powerful army of maspea (Scythian for ‘people rich in horses’),
Amazons and Scythians that had invaded Attica to rescue Antiope. and he said that Amazons roamed around
Amazons were wildly popular in Greek art, the Sea of Azov and the Don River.
500 BC
second only to Heracles in mythic scenes on By 450 BC, Greek colonies were
vases. As a testament to the warrior women’s established all around the Black
popularity, we have more than 200 personal Sea, and contacts between Greeks
names of Amazons. The Greeks surrounded and Scythians were increasingly fre-
themselves with lively images of Amazons on quent. Consequently, ancient Greek historians
privately owned pottery and in public temple began to associate the Amazons of myth with
reliefs, wall paintings, mosaics, and sculpture. real women of Scythia. In the mid-fifth century
Amazons were consistently portrayed as attrac- BC, Herodotus interviewed Scythians around
tive, brave, and heroic, always running toward the Black Sea and reported extensively on their
danger, and fighting and dying valiantly. histories and customs. Many of his accounts
of Scythian life have been confirmed by mod-
Greek historians and Scythian Amazons ern archaeology. He noted that boys and girls
As travellers ventured deeper into Scythia, learned riding, archery, and combat skills, and
1000 BC
along the trade routes to the Altai Mountains and that women rode to battle along with men. Ac-
cording to a local tradition about the origin of
An Attic red-figure amphora dated to ca. 400 BC, depicting the Sarmatians recounted by Herodotus, a band
an Amazon, dressed in typical Scythian clothing and wielding
a sagaris axe, fighting a Greek warrior. Such scenes were a of Amazons from the southern Black Sea had
popular decoration on ancient Greek vases. joined forces with some Scythian men of the
Azov region and agreed to raise their children moved west of the Don, joined with other The Amazonomachy, or 'battle against the
as equals. Herodotus commented that young males and became known as Maeotians. Dio- Amazons', was a common mythological
motif in Greco-Roman culture. This relief
Scythian women did not choose partners until dorus of Sicily (65–50 BC) also identified Ama- from a Roman sarcophagus is centered on
they had proved themselves by killing a foe in zons with Scythian women who were as brave Achilles holding a wounded Penthesilea,
battle, a plausible custom that likely applied to and aggressive in battle as the men. People “in the Amazon queen who fought against the
Greeks in the Trojan War.
the young men as well (4.110–17). my day wrongly consider ancient stories about
© Colin / Wikimedia Commons
Plato (fourth century BC) compared the Amazons to be fictitious,” declared Dio-
The ruins of Tyras, a Greek colony on the
Amazons of myth to the women of egalitar- dorus. According to his sources, Scythians were Black Sea believed to have been founded
ian Scythian tribes. He praised the women’s often ruled by strong women “endowed with by Miletos in 600 BC. A kurgan contain-
ing the remains of a warrior woman who
training and prowess in warfare as a model exceptional valor.” They “train for war just like
died in battle were found nearby.
for an ideal Greek state, writing that women the men and in courage they are in no way in- © Haidamac / Wikimedia Commons
should be able shoot a bow “like an Ama-
zon” (Laws 7.805a–806b). In 380 BC, the
Athenian orator Isocrates recalled that the
Athenians had repelled an “invasion of
the Scythians, led by the Amazons,” allud-
ing to the legendary Battle for Athens. After
their defeat, remarked Isocrates, the army of
women went to live with their Scythian allies
in the north (4.68; 12.93; 7.75).
The geographer Skymnos (ca. 185 BC)
told how a Scythian tribe from the Sea of
Azov lost their male leaders in battle.
They were replaced by women who
were successful warriors
in their own right.
Under their lead-
ership, the group
x
relief
A terracotta bas-wear-
of an Am az on
cap and
ing a Phrygian aces of
pelte shield. Tr
sible.
paint are still viCommons Ancient History 47 35
dia
© Rama / Wikime
ferior to the men.” These women car- [and] train horses, but the strongest among
ried out “many great deeds” throughout them spend most of their time away, hunt-
Scythia (2.44–46; 4.28). ing on horseback and making war” (11.5.1).
The geographer Pomponius Mela (ca. Strabo’s account is a realistic description of a
AD 43) located Amazons, expert arch- semi-nomadic lifestyle, where the best hunters
ers and riders, around the Don and and warriors could be male or female. Nota-
Sea of Azov, the Caspian Sea, and bly, Pliny the Elder (ca. AD 70) used the phrase
in the vast expanse stretching east “Amazons and their husbands” when writing
toward the land of the Seres (China). about the Scythians (6.6.19).
He said the people around the Sea
of Azov were referred to as “Ruled by Archaeology of Amazons
Women.” He described the horsewom- Now, thanks to recent and spectacular ar-
en’s expertise with lariats, which they used chaeological discoveries – and to bioarchaeol-
in battle, and commented that they remain sin- ogy – we have confirmation of the existence
gle until they prove their mettle in combat, ech- of Scythian women who matched the ancient
oing Herodotus (1.11–12; 1.88–116; 3.38–39). definition of ‘Amazons’. Archaeological exca-
Greeks and Romans knew of real histori- vations of hundreds of women’s graves with
cal warrior queens of Scythia, such as Tomyris weapons and horses, from Ukraine to Cen-
of the Massagetae who defeated Cyrus the tral Asia, demonstrate that warrior women
Great of Persia in the sixth century BC; Tirga- flourished in antiquity in the lands where
An Attic calyx-krater, a bowl for mixing tao, ruler of the Ixomatae on the Sea of Azov the Greeks located Amazons. The evi-
wine and water, dated to ca. 460-450 BC,
depicting the Amazonomachy. The scene
in the fifth century BC; and Amage who led the dence recovered from kurgans (grave
blends different ways of depicting Ama- Roxolani in the second century BC. Historians mounds) reveals that women re-
zons, with some dressed in Phrygian caps reported that Alexander the Great encountered ceived the same honors and grave
and wielding bows and others wielding
women warriors in his campaigns across Asia goods as men: spears, daggers, bat-
Greek weapons and wearing Greek armour.
© The Metropolitan Museum of Art (e.g. Diodorus, 17.75–77; Curtius, 6.5.24–32). tle-axes, armour, war-belts, arrows,
In the first century BC, Pompey the Great cap- quivers, mirrors, tools, jewelry, horse
tured a group of ‘Amazons’ during the Third gear, cannabis-smoking equipment,
Mithridatic War and displayed them in Rome and clothing. Notably, the Scythian
An aerial view of the kurgan known as
Arzhan 2 in Russia, dated to the seventh- as part of his Triumph. Around the same time, weapons, clothing, and other equip-
sixth centuries BC. The kurgan contained the geographer Strabo located Amazon tribes ment match those included in images of
the remains of a man and a woman, in the Don region and the Caucasus moun- Amazons in Greek vase paintings.
sixteen slain attendants, and over 9000
grave goods. Among the woman's grave
tains, defining them as an ethnic group con- The ages of women with weapons
goods was a hilted iron dagger. sisting of both men and women. According range from 10 to 50 and their bones indicate
© Wowanturan / Wikimedia Commons to Strabo, “the men and women plant crops a lifetime of hard riding and heavy use of the
bow. Some display combat injuries identical to
those of male warriors: arrowheads embedded
in bones, skull wounds from pointed battle-
axes, slashes from swords, and punctures from
projectiles and spears. In many cases, bioar-
chaeologists can determine whether wounds
were sustained in face-to-face combat, while
in motion, on foot or horseback, or after death.
Descriptions of the women’s injuries conjure
up scenes of violent combat as a way of life.
The densest concentrations of armed fe-
male graves found so far lie in Ukraine and
southern Russia, around the
Sea of Azov-Don Valley,
territory strongly identified
with Amazons in antiq-
uity. Burials of warrior
women are also found in
A golden crown discov-
ered among the 20,600
objects interred in six
graves - five women and
x
one man - at Tillya Tepe,

Afghanistan, dated to the
first century BC - the
36 Ancient History 47 first century AD.
© H Sinica / Flickr
A leather saddle found
in a female grave at warlike women of Scythia. A fourth-century Graves of warrior women can be found
x
Yanghai cemetery in throughout the Central Eurasian steppe

BC kurgan near ancient Tyras on the Dniester
the Turfan basin. and beyond, from Pella in ancient Mac-
© iflscience River belonged to a warrior woman who per- edonia to the Altai Mountains.
ished in combat. A sagaris (pointed battle-axe) © Richard Thomson
Kazakhstan, Tuva, Mongolia, Sibe-
had pierced her skull and a bronze arrowhead A warrior woman's skeleton from a
ria, and the Altai region. Over 1000
was still embedded in her leg. Like many other grave in Kazakhstan, dated to the fourth
burials have been excavated across century BC. She was buried with an iron
Scythian warrior tombs, two iron lances were
the Eurasian steppes. By 2023, more dagger at her hip and two iron arrow-
planted in the ground at her grave’s entrance. heads between her legs.
than 300 have been identified as female war-
Near her body were two spearheads, a massive, © James Vedder
riors. Archaeologists find that armed women
make up 20–37 per cent of warrior burials.
Archaeologist Elena Fialko notes that more
than 130 graves in southern Ukraine contain
women’s skeletons with arrows and lances.
In southwestern Siberia, Natalia Berseneva
excavated kurgans from 580–350 BC and
found many women’s remains accompanied
by arrows. Russian archaeologist Valeri Guli-
aev has excavated dozens of woman warrior
graves in the Don region and concludes that
the influence of horsewomen-archers on an-
cient Amazon imagery and tales is confirmed
by the archaeology, and that the women of
these graves were the Amazons of Greek
mythological tradition.
The details of the women’s
skeletons and their weaponry
paint a remarkable picture of the
A fragment of a Roman
x
terracotta oil lamp, dated

to the first century AD,
depicting an Amazon who
has fallen off her horse.
Influence of Scythian culture
Although oral tales about warrior women took part in a rugged, outdoor lifestyle
women arose in the Greek storytell- and rode to war led to an outpouring of thrill-
ing imagination at an early date, with ing tales of warrior women.
the earliest vase paintings depicting As Greeks learned more about steppe
Amazons armed and armoured as nomads, artists began to portray Amazons
Greek hoplites, with round shields and as mounted archers, with Scythian-style
swords, later ideas about the Amazons’ weaponry – recurve bows, special quivers
appearance, lifestyle, weapons, and with two compartments (gorytos), crescent
homeland were influenced by increas- shields, pointed battle-axes, and spears. The
ing knowledge of real-life warrior wom- women were shown on horseback, some
en of Scythia. carrying out the nomads’ feat of galloping
The Scythians’ nomadic lifestyle, ground- away while shooting arrows backward. Art-
ed in archery and horses, meant relative ists even depicted Amazon archers stringing
equality for the sexes, which made a powerful Scythian bows and using the nomad-style
impression on the Greeks. For the Greeks, who Mongolian thumb draw instead of the open-
mostly farmed and lived in towns, a bound- hand Mediterranean draw. Vase painters re-
less, uncultivated expanse of land inhabited by vised Amazon dress to resemble practical
war-loving male and female mounted archers Scythian clothing designed for cold weath-
was an intimidating notion, arousing mixed er, strenuous activity, and riding. Thus,
An Attic red-figure volute-krater dated emotions of awe and anxiety. In Greek male- Amazons were outfitted in long-sleeved
to ca. 450 BC that depicts Greek hoplites
dominated society, women were expected to tunics, boldly patterned leggings or trou-
fighting against Amazons dressed in
Scythian clothing. remain indoors, weaving and caring for chil- sers, fur-lined leather boots, and distinctive
© The Metropolitan Museum of Art dren. It is easy to see how a society where caps with ear flaps.
armored belt decorated with iron plaques, and near Chortomlyk and Pokrov in Ukraine in-
a quiver of 20 bronze arrows. There were also clude an arrowhead embedded in the spine of
bronze and silver bracelets, a bronze mirror, a a woman buried with her lance and quiver of
needle, an iron knife, glass beads and pearls eighteen arrows, another woman had
signaling long-distance trade, and food for the an arrow in her knee, and one wom-
afterlife. A burial from the sixth century BC on an’s finger bones showed evidence of
the Dnipro River yielded a warrior woman repeated use of a bow. Other graves
with gold earrings, a bronze mirror, a quiver held a man, woman, and child, all wear-
with 92 arrows, and an iron spear; a nearby ing boots and tunics of scaled armor engraved
The Amazonomachy was not only
popular among the Greeks, but proved
kurgan held a woman with 21 arrows in her with fantastic animals, along with their horses,
to be so among the Italic peoples who quiver, plus her horse and a young child. In yet and a girl of about ten with iron armor and
regularly interacted with Greek colonists another grave of the fourth century BC on the spears, evidence of childhood military train-
and traders. This coffin, known as the
Tyasmin River, the warrior woman wore silver ing. Near Rostov-on-Don, a young woman
Sarcophagus of the Amazons, dates to
ca. 350-325 BC. It was discovered in the earrings and necklace of bone and glass beads; warrior aged about 20 had been killed with an
Etruscan city of Tarquinia and was in- with her were a pair of iron lances, a quiver arrow. Her grave goods included a battle-axe,
tended for a woman called Ramtha Huzc- holding 47 trilobate arrows, knives, a whet- horse equipment, and a magnificent gold and
nai. All four sides of the sarcophagus
are decorated with paintings of Amazons stone, and a pile of sling pebbles. turquoise neckpiece of Chi-
fighting Greek-style warriors. Discoveries from graves nese design.
© ArchaiOptix / Wikimedia Commons A grave in Tuva
Republic held the
naturally mummi-
fied body of a girl
of about thirteen,
interred 2600 years
ago in a wood coffin.
Russian archaeologists
reported in 2020 that
A bronze statuette of coat, and leather boots, seated on a finely Detail of a Roman mosaic, dated to the
x
Penthesilea being killed

by Achilles. crafted, well-worn saddle, one of the oldest second half of the fourth century AD,
from Antioch on the Orontes. It depicts a
© Carole Raddato / Flickr saddles ever discovered. The saddle was de-
battle between an Amazon and a cavalry-
signed for comfort of both horse and rider man, who grabs the Amazon's Phrygian
she was wearing a leath-
for long-range travel, and shows that women cap. This was a common motif in scenes
er cap, tunic, trousers, took part in vigorous, daily riding and ex- depicting the Amazonomachy.
and a fur cloak, and she had tended journeys across the steppes.
a full set of weapons – pointed The details of these examples bring to

battle-axe, quiver of arrows, and a life the reality of Amazon-like women across
birch bow – further proof that youngsters in Scythia. Finally, we are learning how genu- A relief depicting Achilles and Penthesilea,
Scythian tribes were trained for battle. ine Amazons lived and died. Until the Rus- one of the so-called Aphrodisias Reliefs
A stunning discovery of four Scythian that once decorated the Sebasteion of
sian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, new ar- Aphrodisias. Penthesilea's Phrygian cap
‘Amazons’ buried 2500 years ago was re- chaeological evidence for warrior women and axe mark her as a barbarian.
ported in 2019 by Valeri Guliaev’s team near buried with weapons north of the © Carlos Delgado / Wikimedia Commons
Devitsa, western Russia. The oldest woman Black Sea was coming to light at
was about 50 years old; two other women an impressive rate. Unfortunately,
were about 25; the youngest was about thir- the ongoing war in Ukraine has
teen. They represent three generations of halted those discoveries. One can
warrior women, confirming that females of only hope that grave mounds of
all ages participated in battle. Among their Scythian warriors will survive un-
grave goods were daggers, 30 iron arrow- scathed, allowing future archae-
heads, spears, and horse harnesses. One of ologists to unlock their hidden
the women was placed in the position of wealth of knowledge about an-
riding a horse. cient Scythia. AH
Another remarkable recent discovery
occurred in 2023, in the Turfan Basin be- Adrienne Mayor is the author of
tween the Tien Shan and Altai mountains. In The Poison King, The Amazons,
a grave from more than two millennia ago, and Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, and
archaeologists unearthed a Scythian horse- Scorpion Bombs: Unconventional
woman dressed in wool trousers, a rawhide Warfare in the Ancient World.
A Greek silver tetradrachm,

dated to ca. 150 BC,
depicting the head of the
x
Amazon Kyme on the ob-

verse, who gave her name
to Kyme in Asia Minor,
where the coin was found. Ancient History 47 39
© U Penn Museum
500 AD
A Scythian gold gorytos, dated to the fourth century BC, utilizing Greek artistic styles. Copies of this gorytos were discovered throughout the Pontic Steppe.
1 AD
ARTISTIC INTERACTION ON THE STEPPE By Benjamin Sharkey
GREEK GOLD IN
THEME magnificent silver Greek decanter. The tomb
was then filled in amidst a great fit of mourning
SCYTHIAN TOMBS
as mourners may have cut parts off their ears,
NORTHERN BLACK SEA: ca. 480 – 300 BC
pierced their hands with arrows, and even cut

off their fingers (six were thrown into the grave).
Turf was piled high for days afterwards, forming
Among the many wonderful artworks of the Scythian world, those a great mound that reached over twenty metres
produced on the Pontic Steppe offer us unique insight into the tall and darkening the grasslands around for an
artistic interactions between Greeks and Scythians, while also area of seventy-five hectares. The meaning of
the burial scene and its preparation, whether it
opening a window on the meaning of the Scythian animal-style.
I
was intended to provide for the king’s wander-
500 BC
ing spirit or whether the corpse and treasure-

n the latter half of the fourth century BC, while Alexander the Great strewn scene narrated the intense tragedy felt
and his successors were reshaping the Greek-speaking world away by the tribe at the loss of their leader, or some-
to the south, on the northern bank of the great Dnipro River, a tribe thing of both, is lost to time.
of Scythian nomads gathered to bury their king. His subjects dug a
Today located at Chortom-
chamber deep underground, where they laid the king. At his side they
lyk, near the city of Nikopol in
placed two pieces of gold war gear of exquisite Greek manufacture: a
Ukraine, this Scythian burial
Scythian-style scabbard and a gorytos (a flat case which held both bow
mound, known as a kurgan,
and arrows at the hip). Then the slaughter started. The king’s concubine
was one of the largest ever ex-
or queen, adorned in fine clothes and jewels, was strangled, along with
cavated. Opened in 1863, it
three retainers, eleven horses, and two grooms.
proved to be one of very
The king’s cupbearer was also strangled, and his
few Scythian burials
body laid out among more than a doz-
not previously looted
en amphorae of Greek wine, beside a
1000 BC
and yielded some of the

most remarkable exam-
Dated to the fifth - fourth centuries BC, this cup de- ples of Greco-Scythian art
picts two Scythians hunting a lion. As the Scythians
did not tend to depict humans on their artwork, so far discovered. Such
this bowl was likely created by a Greek metalworker. burial finds are our main
A helmet, dated to the fifth -
fourth century BC, discovered in
x
the Solokha kurgan.
source of historical evidence for the art and onies, founded in the seventh century by set-
material culture of the Scythians. They left no tlers from the Ionian Greek city of Miletus.
writings of their own and, as nomads, very lit- It became a centre for agriculture as well as
tle archaeological imprint other than the great trade with Scythian tribes upriver. However,
kurgan burials. Into these they piled great more significant still were the settlements of
works of art and craftsmanship, in gold, silver, the Cimmerian Bosporos, today’s Kerch Strait,
wood, and fabric. These latter organic mate- between the Taman and Crimean Kerch Pen-
rials have in most cases decayed, yet in the insulas, which separates the Sea of Azov from
kurgans around the Altai mountains and Yen- the Black Sea. These included some dozen cit- (Top) A view of the ruins of Nymphaeum,
sei river in Siberia, permafrost has preserved ies, most dating to the sixth century, and others a city on the Kerch Peninsula founded by
incredible examples of wood and felt art. founded by Athens in the fifth century. In 480 Greek colonists in the sixth century BC.
The kurgans of Nymphaeum contained a
Scythian art was characterized by its dis- BC, these cities formed a defensive confedera- mix of Greek and Scythian artefacts.
tinct and stylized depiction of animals, known tion which by 438 BC had transformed into a © Lumos2527 / Wikimedia Commons
as ‘animal style’. It primarily depicted wild kingdom centred on the city of Panticapaeum,
feline predators and ungulate prey, but also (Bottom) The entrance to the Royal Kur-
ruled by the tyrants of the Spartocid dynasty. gan, dated to the fourth century BC, near
birds and fantastical predators such as griffins. modern Kerch, ancient Panticapaeum.
Within these colonies there was frequent
These animals were portrayed vibrantly, often The tomb may have been built for a
intermarriage. The orator Demosthenes’ (384– member of the Spartocid dynasty, rulers
contorted in the midst of dynamic contests
322 BC) maternal grandmother had been a of the Bosporan Kingdom.
between predators and prey, their distinct at-
Scythian, while the fifth-century Scythian king © Anatoly Shcherbak / Wikimedia Commons
tributes, such as antlers, claws, maws, and en-
gorged throats, accentuated and exaggerated.
Rarely did Scythians depict herd or domestic
animals in their art, and they almost never
showed people. The exceptions to this were
artefacts like those found in the Chortomlyk
kurgan, fine objects of Greek craftsmanship
that mixed Hellenistic artistic styles and sub-
jects with those of the Scythian animal style. In
the Solokha kurgan, situated on the opposite
bank of the Dnipro to Chortomlyk and dating
to ca. 400–350 BC, an exceptionally fine gold
comb was uncovered, topped by a dramatic
battle between Scythian warriors. The middle
warrior, mounted, combines a Corinthian hel-
met with his scale mail and other Scythian war
gear. The main individual buried at Solokha
had himself been buried with Greek-style
bronze helmet and greaves. The kurgans of the
Pontic Steppe are filled with such evidence of
Greek influence.
Greeks in Scythia
Scythians and Greeks came
in contact with each other fre-
quently in and around the numer-
ous Greek colonies of the north
shore of the Black Sea, known to
the Greeks as Pontos Euxeinos (‘the
hospitable sea’). The city of Olbia,
situated near the mouths of both the
Buh and Dnipro rivers, known to the
Greeks as the Hypanis and Borysthenes,
was one of the earliest major Greek col-
A Scythian saddlecloth,
x
dated to the fifth - fourth

century BC, discovered in
one of the Pazyryk burials
in the Altai mountains. Ancient History 47 41
Scylas had mixed Greek-Scythian parentage
and split his time between his camp and a
townhouse in Olbia. Greek merchants also
mixed with Scythians at settlements far upriv-
er. Herodotus describes a great wooden trad-
ing town far up the Borysthenes containing
Greek style temples made of wood. The traces
of similar wooden settlements have been ex-
cavated at sites like Bilsk, on the Vorskla tribu-
tary of the Borysthenes, containing plenty of
Greek amphorae and drinking ware. Close to
Panticapaeum, the kurgan of Kul Oba, dat-
ing from the same period as the Chortomlyk
kurgan, displays a mixture of burial traditions:
a stone Greek tomb within an earth kurgan,
containing paintings of Nike alongside hu-
man and horse sacrifices.
This silver vase was discovered as part of Greek artisans, Scythian artefacts
the burial goods of the Chortomlyk kurgan. The burial goods from Chortomlyk represent
The lower part of the vessel is decorated
some of the finest examples of Greco-Scythian
with floral motifs and birds, with spouts in
the shape of lions and a winged horse. The art still in existence. Executed in naturalistic
upper bands show men taming a horse and Hellenistic style, they mix Greek anthropo-
lions hunting a stag. The vase is an excel-
morphic and Scythian animal style subjects on
lent example of the blending of Scythian
and Greek artistic styles. Scythian-style objects of Greek manufacture.
several other kurgans, such as Ilintsy on the
© shakko / Wikimedia Commons The rich gold sword scabbard and gorytos are
of a Scythian type worn by Scythian warriors on Buh, Melitopol near the Azov Sea, and ‘Five
both the comb from Solokha and golden ves- Brothers’ on the Kuban River. These were all
A 3-metre-high funeral chariot made of
sels from Kul Oba. The scabbard depicts a bat- made with the same mould and must have
wood and leather from the Pazyryk burial
grounds. During the burials of royal Scyth- tle scene with Hellenic warriors bearing down originated in the same workshop in one of the
ians, their bodies were carried in a wagon
on barbarians, above which a griffin mauls a Black Sea Greek colonies. Quite possibly they
through the camps of their subjects
stag in a typical scene of animalistic predator- represent diplomatic gifts from a Greek ruler,
before being interred in a kurgan.
© Netelo / Wikimedia Commons prey contest. Both creatures are depicted in a perhaps Bosporan king Paerisades I (r. 347–
Greek style, naturalistic rather than 309), to various Scythian rulers.
exaggerated. The gorytos dis- The meaning of Scythian art is notoriously
plays similar classical Hellenic impenetrable, as it is largely composed of styl-
scenes, this time a succes- ized animal motifs and scenes. However, ob-
sion of scenes from the life of jects of mixed Greek and Scythian styles and
Achilles, bordered by scenes subjects, in which such scenes are positioned
of animal contest, the largest parallel to one another, offer an opportunity for
of which shows two griffins its possible interpretation. On the Chortomlyk
battling a leopard. Exact cop- scabbard, the predatory griffin bearing down
ies of the scabbard and gory- on its stag prey reflects the Greek warriors de-
tos at Chortomlyk were also scending on their fleeing barbarian foes. The
found in series of animal contests on the gorytos echoes
the successive contests that characterize the life
of Achilles. These compositions raise the pos-
sibility that in these scenes, the artisans were
representing the same or similar meanings in
different cultural styles, the meaning of both
classical Greek scenes and traditional Scyth-
ian animal motifs intelligible to Scythians in
this region of intercultural mixing.
A Scythian gold the horse’s neck reflecting that of the stag’s, One of the Scythian tumuli in the Altai
comb, dated to ca. mountains where examples of wood
430-390 BC, from its legs similarly bent beneath it. It seems
and felt art, which normally would have
the Solokha kurgan, quite possible that in this mixed Greco- decomposed, have been preserved due
depicting a battle.
© Maqs / Wikimedia Commons
Scythian artwork, the artisans were seeking to permafrost.
x
to render the same scene from two different © Valerii_M / Shutterstock

These paral- perspectives, represented in the artistic lan-
lel meanings are per- guages of two different cultures. In stylized
haps nowhere better A felt swan figurine, dated to the fourth -
scenes of contest between wild predators and
third centuries BC, which was discovered
evidenced than in the prey, Scythians perhaps saw more than just in a Scythian tomb in the Pazyryk Valley.
exquisite silver decanter the particular animals depicted, but rather Permafrost has preserved perishable
from Chortomlyk. The low- an abstract and universal image of conflict. materials like this in excellent condition.
er part of this vessel is patterned with flo- Set alongside these, other scenes of Hellenic
ral designs and doves, as well as spouts for myth and daily Scythian life served to trans-
straining wine or kumis (fermented mares’ late these archetypes into specific narratives
milk), two shaped like lions and one like a from the human and domestic world shared
winged horse, both distinctly Greek animals. by Greeks and Scythians.
Above this, the vessel is banded by realistic Deep in the kurgans of the Pontic Steppe
scenes of Scythian life. Scythian men are we find art that speaks of a world of cultural
engaged in taming horses, the succession of contact, in which objects, styles, people, and
scenes showing them lassoing, training, and beliefs crossed the lines between Greek and
harnessing lively horses. The scene directly Scythian. It is also perhaps art that whispers of
above these is much more stylized, depicting a more distant steppe world, in which ani-
the typical Scythian theme of animal contest, mals swirled and struggled and shaped
two griffins tearing at a recumbent stag. The the pattern of nomadic life. AH
weighting of this composition directly paral-
lels that of the two Scythians Benjamin Sharkey is a doctoral re-
pulling from either side at searcher at the University of Oxford. His
the horse below, the arch of research covers the history of
A fragment of a sad-
x
dlecloth from the Pa-

zyryk burials depicting
a predator, possibly a
tiger, hunting an elk.
SPECIAL
1000 BC
An aerial view of the ruins of Kültepe ('Ash Mound'), the site of the ancient Anatolian city of Kanesh. The Old Assyrian trading colony was located
outside the walls of Kanesh in a separate community.
1500 BC
A COMMERCIAL COLONY IN CENTRAL ANATOLIA By Mogens Trolle Larsen
ANCIENT KANESH
pen the excavations at Kültepe. By the time of
his death in 2005, Tahsin Bey had discovered
CENTRAL ANATOLIA: ca. 1950 – 1700 BC
a further 19,000 of them.

In the central Anatolian city of Kanesh, the discovery of
The tablets
thousands of Assyrian documents revealed a complex trade The site has so far yielded some 23,000 tab-
network between Assur and Anatolia in the early second mil- lets, almost all of them discovered in the
lennium BC, along which vast quantities of goods travelled. archive rooms of the private houses in the
N
lower town, rather than in palaces or tem-
ples, as is often the case in Mesopotamia.
ortheast of the modern Turkish city Kayseri, which lies While the tablets initially proved difficult to
in the shadow of the dramatic extinct volcano Erciyas, understand, a series of path-breaking stud-
2000 BC
the landscape opens in a fertile plain surrounded by low ies in the early twentieth century laid the
mountain chains. In the middle, close by a village called groundwork for a reasonably clear under-
Karahöyük lies the archaeological site known as Kültepe
standing of the documents.
(‘Ash Mound’). The site is divided in two parts with a large, tall mound The first basic fact was that all the thou-
and a lower city. The site was the subject of archaeological interest sands of documents were private texts. They
after it became clear that cuneiform tablets bought by European and were concerned with the lives, interests, and
American museums in large numbers came from here. In 1924, Czech activities of families of merchants who lived
scholar Hrozny demonstrated that the tablets in these houses. There were no royal inscrip-
came from a lower city east of the mound, tions, no administrative archives reflecting
not the citadel. His brief excavation in that the working of institutional bureaucracies,
area led to the discovery of more than no literary texts with hymns to the gods or
a thousand further tablets. In 1948, stories of heroes and fabulous creatures.
the young archaeologist Tahsin Özgüç Instead, there were contracts, debt notes,
2500 BC
from Ankara university decided to reo- records of legal proceedings, caravan ac-
counts, and thousands of letters.
A clay model of a donkey with packs on its The texts were also written in an archaic
back from Egypt, dated to ca. 1991 -1450 BC. The
domestication of the donkey in Africa facilitated the version of the Assyrian language. When the
beginning of large-scale, long-distance trade. tablets were discovered, Assyrian was almost
s sup-
A Babylonian bronze plaque with two male figure It was
© Stock City / Shutterstock
- 1600 BC.
x
porting a roller, dated to ca. 2000
possibly used in textile manufacture.
entirely known from the palace archives found it attractive for foreign traders to bring their
in the imperial cities Nineveh and Nimrud, goods to the market in Assur. The relatively
about a millennium younger than the archives small city on the Tigris thus became an im-
at Kanesh. The Old Assyrian language that now portant transit centre for trade between
appeared had to be studied on its own. Babylonia and the West, and caravans
The presence of these archives and from Babylonia brought the tin that had orig-
consequently of large numbers of Assyrians inally come from Central Asia together with
in central Anatolia was somewhat mysteri- quantities of luxury textiles produced in the
ous. It was first thought that they had con- large weaving establishments we hear of in (Top) A ninth-century BC relief depicting
quered this region, but the study of the texts administrative texts from cities like Ur in the a procession of tribute bearers from the
showed that the Assyrians had developed a Syro-Anatolian state of Unqi to Assyrian
deep south. The merchants of Assur devel-
king Shalmaneser III, attesting to the con-
complex system of long-distance trade that oped the further network, sending caravans tinued importance of metals and textiles
linked Kanesh and other cities in the region across the North Syrian plain that eventually long after the Assyrian trading colony at
with Assur, some 1500 km away. Most of the gained them control of the supply of tin and Kanesh was abandoned.
© Neuroforever / Wikimedia Commons
letters found in the archives at Kanesh had textiles to Anatolia.
been sent from people living in Assur, and The caravan trade that linked Assur with (Bottom) The ruins of the palace of War-
shama, an Anatolian ruler of Kanesh, exca-
they showed that a steady stream of donkey Anatolia was hugely successful. Both tin and vated on the Upper Mound of the site.
caravans carrying tin and textiles to Anato- textiles – a large part probably made in Assur – © Carole Raddato / Flickr
lia linked the people at the two ends of the
network. Not a single private text of the type
known from Kanesh has been discovered at
Assur. So, the conclusions to be drawn from
the Anatolian texts seemed to reflect a com-
pletely different world.
The commercial system

The texts from Kanesh can be dated to the
nineteenth and eighteenth centuries BC, and
they have revealed the existence of a vast, so-
phisticated trade network that reached far into
Central Asia and probably to the Aegean. This
Bronze Age system was built on the metal tin,
a necessary but scarce ingredient in the pro-
duction of bronze. There are small deposits
in Anatolia, but the Old Assyrian merchants
relied on large supplies that came from mines
thousands of kilometres away in Central Asia.
How the large quantities of tin were brought
to southern Mesopotamia is quite unknown,
but a system of trade routes crossing the Ira-
nian plateau must have existed.
The texts from Kanesh are entirely con-
cerned with the connection to Assur,
for it was only this part of the system
that was directly controlled by the
Assyrians, and only a few offhand
references mention the larger net-
work into which their circuit was
embedded. The royal texts from
the city mention efforts to es-
tablish it as an important link
in the commercial system by
abolishing taxation, making
A cuneiform tablet, dated to the twentieth -

nineteenth centuries BC, recording a lawsuit
between two merchants that took place be-
x
fore witnesses representing the authority of

the merchant government in Kanesh.
© The Metropolitan Museum of Art Ancient History 47 45
could be sold in Kanesh for at least embark on business trips in the Anatolian area,
double the cost in Assur, and sub- where they could sell the goods. The profit of
stantial quantities of silver mined in these trips was somewhat higher, but many
Anatolia could be sent back to As- texts refer to the difficulties involved in securing
sur. Donkey caravans were sent off prompt payment from merchants who might be
with loads that often belonged to holed up in some town or village, or who for
several individual merchants. Some some reason were unwilling to pay in time.
more modest traders could perhaps When things went well, a completed caravan
send one or two donkeys, where procedure in many cases yielded a net gain of
others could pay for 20 or 30. Each some 50 per cent, and the resulting profit in the
animal could carry a standard load form of silver could be sent back to Assur.
of two saddlebags containing each It is impossible to produce reliable sta-
65 pounds of tin plus a top pack tistics concerning the volume of the trade, for
with perhaps 20 textiles wrapped at least half of the excavated texts remain un-
in waterproof bags. published, and the archives that we have are
Caravan accounts pro- far from complete or satisfactorily analyzed.
An ivory object from Kültepe dated to the duced at the conclusion of each trans- However, a cautious extrapolation of
period of Kanesh, the Old Assyrian Trading action provide elaborate accounts of the sale our figures tells us that over a period
Colony. The site was a focal point of Meso-
of the goods and the various payments in the of thirty years about 110 tonnes of tin
potamian trade with Anatolia, and goods
such as textiles, tin, and ivory were taken form of taxes to the palace at Kanesh, which and 115,000 textiles were imported
there to then be shipped on to other areas also had the right to purchase a limited num- to Kanesh from Assur; every year some
of Anatolia and possibly even the Aegean. 110 donkey-loads of tin comprising 4
ber of textiles at a favourable price. After arriv-
© Ingeborg Simon / Wikimedia Commons
ing, the caravans were inspected and taxed in tonnes, and 55 loads of textiles consisting of
the palace, and then they were either sold for 3800 textiles arrived to be dealt with by the
While Assur was only a city-state in the cash on the local market, shipped further on Assyrian merchants. Thus, at least 600 kg of
early second millennium BC, it was a
major trade hub in the region. Caravans to other towns in Anatolia, such as the west- silver was sent back to Assur every year.
of textile-laden donkeys from Assur ern Anatolian city of Purushaddum, a favourite Copper was mined in Anatolia itself,
would travel across the Syrian steppe to destination for caravans, and then possibly on and the Assyrians appear to have controlled
the Anatolian city of Kanesh, where their
goods were traded for silver, or further
to the Aegean. The caravan could also be split a large part of the regional trade in both this
on to other Anatolian cities. Purushad- up, so that the wares could be sold on credit metal and locally produced wool. A dossier
dum was another favourite destination to Assyrian merchants who would normally re- of texts from the archive of the Assyrian trader
for Assyrian merchants.
ceive about three months in which they could Shalim-Assur informs us in detail about one
© Richard Thomson
transaction that involved a shipment of about
45,000 pounds of copper (22.5 tonnes) that
was to be sent to Purushaddum, where it
would be sold and exchanged for what must
have been an enormous amount of wool.
Politics
It goes without saying that the relations between
the Assyrians and the local kingdoms was quite
complicated, and we have several references to
treaties that regulated the interaction of the two
parties. We know from the lower city at Kanesh
that the merchants were permitted to live in the
urban area, and to own houses there. Obvi-
ously, the palaces were interested in charging
taxes on the trade, and in return the authorities
guaranteed the safety of the roads in their terri-
tory and accepted the responsibility for finding
and prosecuting robbers. The Assyrian
enjoyed the right to have their
own judicial and governmen-
A model of a saddle
bag for a donkey from
x
the Egyptian Middle

Kingdom, dated to ca.
2030-1640 BC.
A ceramic rhyton in the
family, but already the next generation brought
x
A detail of a relief from the eastern stair-

shape of a lion from case of the Apadana Palace in Persepolis,
Kanesh, dated to ca. 1900 their wives to Kanesh or married local women,
- 1800 BC. depicting an Assyrian delegation bringing
© Rijksmuseum van Oudheden
and at the end of our documentation many As- tribute, including textiles and rams, to
syrians had become firmly entrenched in the the Persian king Darius the Great.
tal institutions, so that colonies life of the Anatolian communities. For rea- © Wojciech Kocot / Wikimedia Commons
like the one at Kanesh had their sons that are not clear, the archives stop after
own council and an assembly of all around thirty years, and the trade with Assur
citizens who took decisions following an elab- must have had a different character during the
orate set of rules. long period until ca. 1700 BC, when the politi-
The most common infringement of the cal landscape of Anatolia and Mesopotamia
A gypsum wall panel from the palace of
treaties was smuggling, where Assyrian mer- changed dramatically. the Neo-Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser III in
chants tried to avoid paying the agreed taxes The Old Assyrian commercial system is Nimrud, dated to ca. 733-732 BC, depicting
to the palace. Such practices are openly dis- uniquely well documented, and we can fol- three rows of captured sheep and goats.
© Tiia Monto / Wikimedia Commons
cussed in many letters, where transporters low events and even individual
receive instructions about how best to avoid lives through three or some-
being caught. We hear in a few cases that the times four generations. We
authorities at Kanesh did succeed in catch- have no similar evidence from
ing smugglers, and the consequence was the ancient world, but we must
often a spell in the jail at Kanesh, even for be wary of concluding that it
some of the most prominent Assyrians. was also a unique historical
The system constructed by the Anatolians phenomenon. AH
and the Assyrian merchants was hugely suc-
cessful for a time, and both parties benefited Mogens Trolle Larsen is an
from it. The archives found give a detailed associate professor emeritus
picture of the trade and of the lives of the As- at the University of Copen-
syrians living at Kanesh. The first generation of hagen and author of Ancient
merchants were closely linked to their home- Kanesh: A Merchant Colony
town Assur, where their wives lived with their in Bronze Age Anatolia.
A green jasper cylinder

x
seal, dated to ca. 1920-

1700 BC, which was used
to stamp letters.
© Los Angeles County Museum of Art Ancient History 47 47
ANCIENT COOKING
EXPERIMENTAL CULINARY ARCHAEOLOGY
A ROMAN CAKE
WITH NO RECIPE
When I went to university and moved into my first
student accommodation, I put a print of a fresco
AD 500
of a cake from the Roman Villa Poppea in Torre An-

nunziata (near Naples) on my wall. For years I won-
dered how the cake must have tasted. It always felt
like too great a challenge to attempt to make it.
Pompeii, THE ROMAN EMPIRE: ca. AD 69
By Manon Henzen
AD 1
500 BC
1000 BC
© Jeroen Savelkouls
© Jeroen Savelkouls
uring my studies, I delved with honey and candied fruit with
into culinary history and dried fruit. Instead of sugar, I made
cooked many historical the marzipan with honey mixed with
dishes, from antiquity to ground almonds and some beet juice.
the Second World War, It made a very smooth, very workable
but the Roman kitchen was my favour- ‘dough’. All the elements were there,
ite. It wasn't until a few years after my so it was just the challenge left of put-
studies that I had the courage to try the ting the cake together. It took me from
Villa Poppaea cake. 1997 (my first year at the university) to
2017 (my first Roman cookbook), but The cake is shown in a fresco from the Villa Pop-
Cooking without a recipe now I’m very satisfied with my recipe. paea, which was buried by Vesuvius in AD 79.
I just had a fresco of a cake. There is

as savoury, like pepper, cumin, and
no recipe in ancient written sources Roman cakes
that even comes close to a cake like garum (fishsauce), like a fruit or milk
While the Romans liked sweets, there
custard with pepper, cumin, and gar-
this. The cake clearly has a white top: aren’t many recipes for desserts, cakes,
um, or roasted sweet peaches with a
could fresh cheese be the base of this or pastries handed down to us from his-
spicy cumin sauce.
cake? What about the decoration on tory. Multiple sources sporadically men-
How sweet is sweet? That is al-
top? Fruit? And the most interesting: tion biscuits, cakes, and desserts, like
ways the question with Roman dishes.
that red side of the cake. A mystery! dishes with fruit or sweet soft cheese,
So, my last addition to my version of
Many experiments followed. I be- which we know were eaten at the end
this recipe is a hint of black pepper in
came more and more enthusiastic, but of a meal or as a snack between meals,
the filling of the cake. It really makes
I was never satisfied. The eureka mo- sometimes as an appetizer. However,
it a very exiting cake and a showstop-
ment came during a holiday in Sicily, Apicius hardly describes any real sweet
per for your next party. I think it was a
where I learned about cassata. Pas- dishes or desserts that fit our modern
very special dish, for very special oc-
try made from firm, fresh sweetened definition. Let alone cake recipes.
casions – a real sweet treat. AH
ricotta, with a layer of marzipan or Recipes that we might think of
fondant on top or on the sides, and of- as cakes, desserts, or otherwise sweet Manon Henzen is a culinary historian
ten filled with candied fruit. At home dishes today, often were not. Most of and writer. Check out more of her arti-
I dived into the kitchen and went ex- these recipes are combined with sea- cles and historical recipes at:
perimenting again. I replaced sugar sonings or ingredients that we define www. Eat-history.com.
Recipe for Roman fresco cake

INGREDIENTS Put a piece of baking paper on the bottom of til it is completely mixed and looks nice and
Base a baking tin with a loose bottom. Cut another smooth. Set aside two heaped tablespoons
» 50 g hazelnuts piece of baking paper in a long strip, as high for the top.
» 50 g almonds as the side of the baking tin. Place the strip all
» 40 g sesame seeds around in the baking tin, against the inner side. Cut the dates, apricots, and figs into very
» 140 ml honey small pieces. Add them to the ricotta with the
For the base, roast the hazelnuts, almonds, pepper, and stir until this is also well mixed.
Filling and sesame seeds in the oven or in a frying Put this mixture on top of the nut mix base in
» 1300 g ricotta pan until golden brown. Please note, sesa- the baking tin and smooth out. Finally, add
» 6 tbsp honey me seeds are ready faster than the hazelnuts the two reserved spoons of ricotta without
» 12 dates and almonds! Let them cool. Grind the nuts dried fruits and smooth it out nicely. Place
» 12 dried apricots and sesame seeds finely in a mortar or food the cake in the refrigerator and let it set.
» 6 dried figs processor.
» 2 tsp black pepper Put the almond flour in a bowl and add the
Boil the honey in a pan over low heat for ex- honey with the raspberry or beet juice or the
Decoration actly 7 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat, red food coloring. Knead together with your
» 200 g almond flour add the nuts and sesame seeds to the honey, hands into a dough. Roll it out between two
» 4 tbsp honey mix everything vigorously and let cool slightly. pieces of baking paper into a long strip. Cut
» Raspberry juice, beet juice, or red food
strips as wide as the baking tin is high. When
colouring Put the nut mixture on the bottom of the bak-
the cake has set properly, carefully remove
ing tin and spread it evenly. Put in the refrig-
Preparation the side of the baking tin. Place the red al-
erator to set while you make the filling.
Put a sieve in a bowl and place a tea towel in it. mond strips all around it. It will stick to the
Put the ricotta in the tea towel and tie it up. Let For the filling, put the drained ricotta in a ricotta. Decorate the top with pieces of fresh
the ricotta drain for a few hours. bowl and add the honey. Stir vigorously un- or dried fruit. And enjoy!
SPECIAL
An agens in rebus, accompanied

by two soldiers, inspects a helmet-
producing fabrica.
© Andrey Fetisov
ANCIENT ROME: ca. AD 285 – 550
500 AD
1 AD
500 BC
1000 BC
the sector less enticing, and with more of the soldiers’ pay
SUPPLYING THE ARMY IN LATE ANTIQUITY
FABRICAE
coming directly in grain, bypassing the debased silver, the
rank-and-file had less to spend. Instead, in the later em-
pire (after AD 284), we find references to a new kind of
fabrica, usually translated as ‘factory’ or ‘arsenal’ (rather
than the lowly ‘workshop’ of the early empire). These are
Even after its earlier period of expansion, the army mentioned in the fifth-century Notitia Dignitatum, an ad-
ministrative register listing the officials, civil services, and
remained an important part of the Roman empire
military units of the late empire, and seems characteristic
into Late Antiquity. Under Diocletian and the Tetrar- of the types of innovations instituted by the emperor Dio-
chy, the Roman military system was reorganized, cletian and his colleagues (the Tetrarchy) which helped to
stabilize the empire after the turbulence of the mid-third
from its command structure to how it was paid.
century. The Notitia tells us that these fabricae were situat-
How the army was outfitted was also reorganized, ed in strategically important provinces, and were special-
with state-organized fabricae appearing through- ized, focusing on, for example, shields, spears, cuirasses,
out the empire. Was this new system of fabricae re- or bows, and so on. A law of the emperor Theodosius II,
of AD 438 (Novels of Theodosius 6), refers to the men
ally that different from its predecessors, however? belonging to the guild (corpus) of factory-workers – the
fabricenses – as serfs, tied to their profession for life, which
By Ben Kolbeck was to be inherited by their children. This development fits
I
with the dominant image of the late Roman empire: ad-
ministratively thicker and more complex than its forebear,
n the early empire, the supply of equipment to the relying more heavily on compulsion, and operating on a
Roman army was fairly decentralized. Fortresses con- principle of centralization.
tained workshops (fabricae) where equipment would
be maintained, and in some cases produced, by sol- The fabricae and the Tetrarchy
diers with specialist skills. But much of this work was According to the Notitia, there were fifteen such factories in
outsourced: independent workshops, manned by civilians the Eastern empire, and twenty in the West, generally in ur-
(often veterans), sprung up in military towns and in the ban centres. They were under the command of the magister
civilian settlements which clung to the walls of forts like officiorum, a civilian official (to the degree that a separation
limpets. What they produced was not necessarily always of ‘civilian’ and ‘military’ makes sense in such a context).
purchased in an ‘official’ capacity by the Roman army, but The military fabricae were part of a larger state-managed
might have been bought privately by individual soldiers, manufacturing sector, characterized also by state textile
who were expected to pay for their own equipment. In ar- (gynaecea and linyphia) and dye (baphia) manufactories.
eas in which there were large numbers of these independ- Based on the distribution of factories in the Notitia,
ent producers and traders, they might join together in vol- it has been proposed that the manufactories throughout
untary associations – collegia – in order to better express the Roman world were a coherent system with a single
their corporate identity, capture large orders from army foundation date. The distribution of factories depends
units, and gain rewards for their important work from the on the provincial structure promulgated by Diocletian
Roman state (typically, members of these guilds would be and the Tetrarchic emperors (AD 284–305), in which the
exempt from public liturgies, such as appointment to the earlier provinces were broken up into smaller units, and
local town council, a fate which most other local notables grouped within dioceses and, above them, praetorian
would be hard pressed to avoid). prefectures. Each diocese with significant military activ-
During the third century, the needs of the army ity contained two armour-producing fabricae, and each
changed. New tactics and unit structures demanded a frontier province along the Rhine and Danube housed a
new panoply of weapons and armour. The enhanced mo- single fabrica scutaria (‘shield factory’). The distribution
bility of some of these units made reliance on a network of was therefore planned with regard to the dispensation of
well-known, and settled, civilian suppliers more difficult. the frontier and was accomplished within the structure
Finally, runaway inflation made voluntary participation in of the Diocletianic administrative reorganization. This is
strengthened by the odd literary reference to the founda- Constantine and sat in the consistorium (the emperor’s in-
tion of the fabricae – topics elite authors were generally ner council). He oversaw a number of vital state functions,
not particularly interested in – which are often Tetrarchic such as the cursus publicus (the imperial post and trans-
in date (e.g. Lactantius, On the Deaths of the Persecu- port system) and was thus well positioned to manage the
tors 7.8–10 for Nicomedia in Asia Minor; John Malalas, transport of supplies produced in the fabricae. The Codex
Chronographia 12.38 for Antioch in Syria). of Justinian includes a letter of the emperors Leo and An-
‘State arms factory’ conjures an image of a huge, in- themius to the magister officiorum Euphemius, instructing
dustrialized warehouse, belching smoke, but that may be him to liaise with the praetorian prefect to arrange for the
a modern misapprehension. It may well be that fabrica in movement of military supplies using requisitioned trans-
the Notitia does not necessarily refer to a particular physi- port at public expense (11.10.7). He utilized a powerful
cal factory, but rather a mode of organizing work. After all, staff of agentes in rebus, who have sometimes anachronis-
what is a factory but its workers? Instead of a single physi- tically been described as ‘secret service agents’, to assist
cal space, we could imagine an association of individual him in his role. From among the highest ranking agentes,
workshops all producing goods under the aegis of the fab- the magister officiorum appointed officials called subadiu-
rica, within a unified organization. That would suggest a vae fabricarum to assume management of the system of
less dramatic break with what came before and would not fabricae, underlining its importance.
require positing such an enormous material investment in Moving down the chain of command, each fabrica
this new system. That is not to say that no new workshops was commanded by a praepositus (e.g. Corpus Inscrip-
or factories were required; literary evidence suggests that tionum Latinarum Vol. 5, no. 8697), sometimes called a
there was building work associated with the reorganiza- tribunus in literary references (e.g. Ammianus Marcellinus,
tion. A fabrica did not need to be constructed ex nihilo, 14.7.18, 15.5.9). Ammianus’ references to these men sug-
however. Its creation could also be achieved by the redes- gest that it was important for a would-be usurper to get one
ignation of workers and capital already collected at a loca- onside, to ensure arms for his revolution. Praepositi are
tion which was important to army supply (for example, at sometimes met in the epigraphic record as viri perfectis-
Antioch, where the Notitia lists two factories). simi, ‘most perfect men’ – that is, high ranking equestrians.
This helps shift the focus from the physical spaces The nature of the terms praepositus and tribunus hints at
to the people who actually worked in the fabricae, about the military organisation of the fabricae, and the names of
whom we are marginally better informed thanks to scat- the officers who served below the praepositus – primic-
tered epigraphic, literary, and legal references. It is very erius, senator, ducenarius, centenarius, circitor – are also
likely that the first fabricenses were simply those civil- borrowed from the late Roman army. Men who had served
ians who had previously supplied the army ‘voluntarily’, in these positions were eligible for highly prized postings
and the soldiers who had worked in fortress workshops elsewhere in the imperial service, such as the emperor’s
as immunes (soldiers exempt from normal duties due to bodyguard, and some of their funerary monuments betray
their specialist roles). The nature of their obligations and significant wealth and means. Service in the fabricae as an
their ties to their work, were reorganized along the lines officer, then, could represent a significant stepping-stone to
of other occupational groups in the Tetrarchic period. For middling success in the late empire.
example, membership of certain collegia was made com- The workers themselves were regarded as soldiers –
pulsory by Constantine in the early fourth century, due milites – although this was a status marker and does not
to their value to the state, whereas previously, the right mean that they were serving military men. Indeed, many
to join a collegium was a favour granted for work under- roles within the late imperial administration were regarded
taken voluntarily. However, existing expertise would also as a military service – militia – even though they involved
have been utilized. There may, therefore, be more con- no soldiering or fighting. What this meant in practice is
tinuity between the pre- and post-Diocletianic arrange- that the sorts of obligations and rewards which the fabri-
ments than the stark presentation of the Notitia suggests. censes were subject to were determined by military ana-
logues. So, legal evidence tells us that once chosen, ser-
Organization of the fabricae vice was mandatory, and was hereditary. Like soldiers,
As stated above, the Notitia shows that the fabricae were the fabricenses were branded or tattooed so that escapees
under the authority of the magister officiorum – a civilian could easily be identified, and desertion was punished.
official. The magister officiorum was a post established by Moreover, abetting a deserter would ensure that you, too,
would be forced to serve in the factories (Theodosian – is the Notitia incomplete, partial, and perhaps inventive
Code 10.22.2). On the other hand, they were not slaves, account, which has misled credulous modern historians
earned a steady wage, and were granted certain privileges, hoping to find a systematic description? Similarly, no fac-
such as exemption from having to billet troops and other tories producing siege equipment are listed in the East. It
imperial officials in their homes (Theodosian Code 7.8.8). cannot be that the Eastern army was worse equipped for
They were organized in guilds, corpora, which enshrined siege warfare than its Western counterpart; perhaps the
their rights and obligations, but also represented them cor- army in the East continued to rely on civilian workshops
porately and bore the cost of funerals for those who died for certain types of equipment. Indeed, a law of the sixth-
without heirs. A law seeking to restrict eligibility of entry century emperor Justinian demanding that private persons
to the ranks of the armorers suggests that the descendants cease manufacturing arms, and also that fabricenses stop
of town councillors (decuriones) sometimes tried to join privately selling the items that they produce, shows that
the fabricenses in an attempt to avoid their own heredi- civilian manufacture of supplies continued to occur on a
tary obligations, underlining that this could be an attrac- significant scale even in his time, though he tried to stamp
tive position (Theodosian Code 10.22.6; see also 12.1.37). it out (Novels of Justinian 85.1). Such reservations suggest,
Gregory of Nazianzus complains about the entitlement of again, that the picture of a tightly controlled, completely
the fabricenses who behaved in public with impunity – an centralized system of arms manufacture and supply is, at
age-old expression of disdain by a member of the lettered least in part, a product of the Notitia Dignitatum itself,
elite at lower-class upstarts who are granted privileges by amplified by nineteenth-century scholarship which saw
the state (Orations 43.57). For a skilled urban artisan, then, the late Roman empire as entirely Byzantine in its opera-
there were worse lots than to serve in the fabricae. tion. If our evidence were better, we might be able to sub-
Archaeologically, these factories are difficult to iden- stantiate a greater degree of continuity between the early
tify. None of the fabricae of the Notitia have been conclu- empire and Late Antiquity than is commonly assumed.
sively identified archaeologically, though they are unlikely As it is, we will have to make do with these tantalizing
to have differed enormously from the legionary workshops glimpses at the persistence of a plurality of sources in late
of the early empire. Indeed, as suggested above, it is pos- Roman military equipment supply. AH
sible that in many cases there is no single site to identify
as ‘the’ factory. What we do have access to, on the other Dr Ben Kolbeck, teaches at the University of Cambridge.
hand, are some of the items produced in these late impe- He specializes in Christian responses to Roman perse-
rial fabricae. Most famously, Roman helmet design under- cution, the governance of the Roman empire, and the
went a significant change in the last decades of the third place of the army within Roman society.
century. The earlier complex and heterogenous tradition
(characterized by a single-piece ‘skull’, and ever more
elaborate fittings and guards) was seemingly replaced in FURTHER READING
short order with a distinctive and simple design in which • Coulston, J.C.N. “Late Roman military equip-
the ‘skull’ of the helmet was produced from two pieces, ment culture.” In War and Warfare in Late
joined by a metal strip which ran from the wearer’s fore- Antiquity, Alexander Sarantis and Neil Chris-
head to their nape (the ‘ridge’). This design change has tie (eds.), 463–491. Leiden: Brill, 2013.
been interpreted as driven by the needs of simplicity and • James, Simon. “The fabricae: state arms
standardization (and concomitant ease of quality assur- factories of the later Roman empire.” In Mili-
ance) which state-organized mass production entails: an tary Equipment and the Identity of Roman
indirect testimony to the changing patterns of equipment Soldiers. J.C.N. Coulston (ed.), 257–332. Ox-
supply heralded by the fabricae system. ford: British Archaeological Reports, 1982.
Unanswered questions • Lee, A.D. War in Late Antiquity: A Social His-

Significant unknowns remain. Why are the important tory. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007.
military provinces of Britain and Egypt, omitted from the • Liu, Jinyu. Collegia Centonariorum : The
list in the Notitia? Were they supplied by the fabricae Guilds of Textile Dealers in the Roman West.
of other provinces? Did they have alternative supply ar- Leiden: Brill, 2009.
rangements? Or – disquietingly, the most likely answer
LIVING LIKE AN ANCIENT
500 AD
ANCIENT ROME: ca. 100 BC – AD 150
A Roman marble plaque depicting a woman giving birth while a midwife holds her newborn infant and other female attendants help the mother.
1 AD
PREGNANCY AND CHILDBIRTH IN ANCIENT ROME By Philip Matyszak
A DANGEROUS EVENT
legally be cut from the womb rather than
dying along with the parent.
This leads to the grim observation that
Before the invention of germ theory and modern medicine, child- childbirth in the ancient world was an ex-
birth was a dangerous affair – for many it still is. Both mother and tremely hazardous event for both mother and
child. Even a safe birth in the classical era was
child were at risk of death. In Rome, things were no different.
T
painfully accomplished without the help of
aesthetics or disinfectant. Yet according to the
here is a common misconception that the phrase ‘cae- Greeks (Roman doctors tended either to be
sarean birth’ derives from Julius Caesar’s birth. This Greek or heavily influenced by them) wom-
story can be traced back to Pliny the Elder, who re- en were damned if they got pregnant and
500 BC
marked that the name ‘Caesar’ comes from the verb damned if they did not. It was believed that
‘cut’ (caes-) because “The first of the Caesars is said women’s wombs tended to get distorted and
to have been cut from his mother’s womb and the family take their slip out of place unless regularly exercised by
name from this” (Natural History intercourse and pregnancy. Therefore, girls
7.9). Except, of course, there were tended to get married soon after menarche
others with the name Julius Caesar and were expected to get pregnant at regular
before the first-century BC dictator. intervals thereafter.
Anyway, we know that this particular
Caesar was born normally because his Miscarriages
mother survived, and Roman mothers Even a lack of contraceptives failed to turn
did not survive a caesarean birth. The women into the baby-producing machines
whole point of the Lex Caesaria was their societies hoped for, however. Malnour-
that, if there was no chance that the ishment and disease often affected women’s
1000 BC
mother could be saved, a baby could reproductive abilities, and miscarriages were
very common. The Hippocratic school of
A funerary altar for a child named Anthus, dated medicine maintained that miscarriages were
to the first century AD. He is refered to as "(the)
sweetest boy". The deaths of children were due to pregnant women being severely fright-
common in ancient Rome, but still painful. ened, lifting heavy weights, or being beaten.
A Roman bronze bulla,
a protective amulet
x
worn by children.
© Rijksmuseum van Oudheden
© Wellcome Collection
The biographer Plutarch remarks that its were the

Cornelia, the daughter of Scipio Africanus, last things one
became pregnant a dozen times. Of these wanted at an al-
twelve pregnancies, only three children sur- ready hazardous
vived – this in the household of a noblewom- procedure such as
an whose doting husband gave her and their a birth.
children the best medical care available. The With her child safe-
casualty rate in poor households was prob- ly born, the mother had the
ably considerably higher. challenging task of seeing her infant through A Gallo-Roman terracotta ex-voto rep-
the dangerous months of early childhood. resenting a swaddled baby. If a baby
Generally, miscarriages were held to be
survived their birth, they were still not
the woman’s fault. We see this in one of the However, it seems very probable that at least out of danger. Great care had to be taken
letters of the Pliny the Younger as he writes to one in four babies never saw their first birth- to ensure that newborns survived. Sadly,
his wife’s grandfather in the Imperial period: day. The orator Cicero wrote “It should be as many as one in four babies never saw
their first birthday.
easy to get over a child who dies young. And
© TimeTravelRome / Wikimedia Commons
Knowing your eagerness for us to give if the child dies in the cradle, it's not even
you a great-grandchild, you will be all the worth paying attention” (Tusculan Disputa-
more grieved to know that your grand- tions 1.39).
daughter has miscarried. Through youth Yet there is considerable and mount-
and inexperience she failed to realize she ing evidence that the parents did care about
was pregnant, did things she should these young lives, and often cared deeply.
not have done, and took none of Even the brutally cynical satirist Martial
the proper precautions. composed a moving epitaph for a deceased
(Letters 8.10) child: “Let soft grass cover her fragile bones.
Lie lightly upon her, Earth, for she was never
The recriminatory tone of this heavy on you” (Epigrams 5.34). AH Fresco from the Golden House of Nero
letter is plain, even though showing a woman (perhaps Lucina, god-
dess of childbirth) presenting the baby
we know from his other let- Philip Matyszak is a regular contributor to Adonis to Aphrodite, the goddess of love.
ters that Pliny was very fond Ancient History magazine. © Carole Raddato / Flickr
of his wife. Nevertheless, he
felt the miscarriage was clearly
A gold glass me- her fault.
x
dallion, dated to the

fourth century AD, A difficult birth
depicting a mother could sometimes pre-
and her child. vent a woman from
© The Metropolitan
Museum of Art conceiving again. De-
spite his desperate de-
sire for an heir, the emperor Augustus fathered
but one child – a daughter, Julia – with his wife
Scribonia. His next wife, Livia, produced no
offspring at all after birthing her sons Drusus
and Tiberius in a previous marriage.
Births and deaths

Births happened at home, under the direc-
tions of a midwife – if the family could afford
one – with anxious female family members in
attendance. There were to be no knots or fas-
tenings in the room. The Romans were great
believers in sympathetic magic and believed
that knots or even tangled hair could lead to
tangles and kinks in the umbilical cord, with
disastrous consequences. Evil spirits took a
grip on any knot or fastening, and evil spir-
A small leather shoe

that possibly belonged
to a child in Roman
x
Britain, dated to ca.

AD 43-410.
© York Museum Trust
BOOK REVIEWS
such communities in later centuries. host societies is the main question of

According to the publisher, Phoeni- Demetriou’s work. While sources from
cians among Others “provides the host societies, such as Athens, reveal
first history of Phoenician immigrants much about the reception of immi-
in the ancient Mediterranean from grants, they do not reveal the integra-
the fourth to the first centuries BCE”. tion strategies of the immigrants. As
Demetriou is keen to demon- such, Demetriou primarily uses funer-
strate that, while they are the people ary inscriptions and other epigraphic
under discussion in this book, Phoe- and archaeological material from
nicians were not the only immigrants immigrants to demonstrate how the
in the Mediterranean world. They are Phoenicians “profoundly shaped the
simply the best attested, leaving be- political, cultural, social, economic,
hind a wealth of epigraphic material, and religious landscapes of their host
“more so than any other contempo- societies” (p. 4). The book contains
raneous immigrant group, includ- many images of artefacts and figures of
ing Greeks who lived in non-Greek archaeological sites, as well as a com-
states” (p. 10). Indeed, in the late fifth prehensive discussion of each piece of
century BC, metics (foreign residents) evidence, to aid the reader.
Phoenicians among Others made up sixteen to twenty per cent of Through infrequent asides,
the population of Athens (not includ- Demetriou demonstrates how simi-
By Denise Demetriou
ISBN: 978-0197634851 ing slaves). Many of these were, of lar the stereotypes facing Phoenician
Oxford University Press (2023) - £29.99 course, Phoenicians, but there were immigrants in Greek communities
global.oup.com also Syrians, Scythians, Egyptians, and and the strategies they employed are
Thracians, to name but a few. Moreo- reminiscent of the same stereotypes
ver, Demetriou does not limit her dis- and strategies facing immigrants in
The Phoenicians rightly deserve rec-
cussion to the Greek poleis, but, in the the modern period. For example,
ognition for their role in the creation
last two chapters, examines the place the adoption of names from the host
of the interconnected world of the
of Phoenician immigrants in both society, as evidenced by the Antipa-
Iron Age after the Late Bronze Age
Carthage, itself a Phoenician (Tyrian) tros-Shem–– stele, “one of the most
Collapse. The spread of the Phoeni-
colony, and Egypt, whose connec- common adoptive strategies used by
cians from the Aegean to the Atlantic, ancient Phoenician immigrants” (p.
tions to Phoenicia go back centuries.
creating a complex network of trade These case studies offer an interesting 24), resembles similar name changes
routes as they went, has been stud- parallel with which the experience of among immigrants on Ellis Island in
ied for decades. The ancient world Phoenicians in Greek communities the United States of America. The
would be a very different place if can be compared. so-called Phoenician ‘trade associa-
they had not done as they did. Demetriou demonstrates how tions’ in Greek states also resemble
However, after the rise of the “Phoenician immigrants, as well as modern lobby groups, capable of ex-
Achaemenid Persian Empire and immigrants from other polities, had erting influence on governing bodies
the Greek poleis, Phoenicians seem to contend with stereotyping, preju- for their benefit.
to largely disappear from the his- dice, and legal limitations imposed on Phoenicians among Others is
torical record. They certainly no them by the host states in which they an illuminating book not only for
longer appear to be the far-ranging lived” (p. 21). One such example is Phoenicians living throughout the
traders and settlers of the past. the Athenian citizenship law, which Mediterranean, but also those in
Yet to Denise Demetriou, the required both a person’s parents to Phoenicia, and the host societies
Phoenicians continued to be an im- have been citizens to become a citi- themselves, revealing how people
portant force in the development of zen themselves, and which was not thought about themselves in a multi-
the ancient world. It has long been always enforced. Indeed, Athenians cultural world, maintaining their own
recognized that Phoenicians dwelt had “anxiety regarding the perme- culture while also adapting to that of
among the peoples they met dur- ability of the contours of citizenship” their host societies, and how ancient
ing their travels, such as on Crete, or (p. 97), as their literature demonstrates societies interacted with immigrants.
founded their own colonies, such as, (see p. 22, note 18). How immigrants It is a valuable contribution of an-
famously, Carthage, but not so much faced such prejudice and how, despite cient social history. AH
that they continued to dwell among it, they managed to integrate into their – Owain Wiliams
and Persian Empires, what Beckwith is not the single unified account that
envisions as Scythian ‘successor people assume, and, instead, should
states’, and then on to the influence be understood as the compilations of
of Central Eurasian nomads on Chi- successive alterations made “by later
na. Beckwith has consulted an im- caretakers of the book” (p. 2), which
pressively wide range of sources to scholars have been free to pick and
construct his argument, from various choose seemingly at random. There
different disciplines and subdisci- are no references to any scholarship
plines. Indeed, Beckwith argues that that discusses this interesting idea,
this approach is the only way that nor does Beckwith provide examples
historians can properly appreciate of scholars’ picking and choosing of
the Scythians’ influence, as working passages. Unfortunately, it seems that
as a specialist on a single discipline Beckwith falls into a similar trap. In
“discourages thinking in terms of a his discussion of the “dazzling Scyth-
sufficiently wide picture” (p. 261). ian contribution to philosophy” (p. 7),
Beckwith’s discussion of the specifically concerning Anacharsis,
linguistic case for a Central Eurasian Beckwith largely relies on Roman-
Culture Complex is the highlight of era sources with no recognition of
The Scythian Empire the book, whether he is discussing the inherent issues in using such late
the spread of variants of the term ariya sources and no reference to Herodo-
By Christopher I. Beckwith
ISBN: 978-0691240534 throughout Central Eurasia or the ap- tus’ mention of the Scythian philoso-
Princeton University Press (2023) - £35.00 pearance of three seemingly identical pher (the earliest evidence we have).
www.press.princeton.edu names for cities in steppe-peripheral Similarly, Beckwith states that “there
societies that, Beckwith argues, were were no chattel slaves among the
settled by or subject to Central Eura- Scythians” (p. 36), erroneously citing
It is relatively common for academic
sian nomads. Beckwith’s translation Herodotus, 4.73 (4.72 is the relevant
disciplines to develop orthodoxies –
of linguistics into history, however, passage). However, the passage states
dominant interpretations of evidence
is somewhat weaker. Doing so is no that there were no slaves “bought
– that go largely unchallenged and
mean feat, of course, for it relies on the with silver” among the Scythians –
upon which future studies are built.
author using all manner of evidence one can be a slave and not bought
Christopher Beckwith’s latest book, with silver. Beckwith’s unfamiliarity
available, such as archaeology and
The Scythian Empire, according to historical documents, to supplement with the wealth of secondary schol-
the publisher, “presents a remarkable the linguistic material. Unfortunate- arship discussing the Greco-Scythian
new vision” of Central Eurasian no- ly, Beckwith does not demonstrate a slave supply is, unfortunately, indica-
mads in the ancient world, certainly full appreciation of the value of these tive of a wider trend of a limited en-
intended to revitalize discussions sources alongside the linguistic ma- gagement with secondary literature in
surrounding the Scythians. He sug- terial. Archaeology, for example, ap- the book (claims to differing views go
gests that, rather than the horde of pears only infrequently, and when it undiscussed and unreferenced).
destructive warriors descending from does it is usually dismissed in a single Despite this, Beckwith’s work is
the steppe, these nomads were sig- line – “archaeology has shown the important, particularly the linguistic
nificant influences upon the societies Hsuing-nu culture to be practically study. If Beckwith’s aim with this
they encountered on the periphery of identical to western Scythian culture” book was to revitalize the discourse
the steppe zone. Beckwith has turned (p. 180). Furthermore, as for histori- around the Scythians, I believe his
to linguistics to demonstrate that cal documents, there is a distinct lack work has raised several arguments
there was a “Central Eurasian Culture of source criticism, with the Behistun that can be explored in the future by
Complex” (p. 264), the titular Scyth- inscription being taken seemingly at other academics, whether expand-
ian Empire. In doing so, Beckwith face value, for example. ing upon or arguing against him. I
“reconsiders the key participants and Beckwith’s engagement with sincerely do hope that this book
events in the traditional view of an- Herodotus, a very important early sparks further debate, and I am ex-
cient history” (p. 4). literary source on the Scythians, is cited to see where it goes. This book,
The core of the book begins indicative of wider issues with the however, is not suitable for readers
by discussing what we know of the work. Very early in the book, Beck- unfamiliar with the Scythians. AH
Scythians before turning to the Mede with states that Herodotus’ account – Owain Wiliams
FURTHER READING
READINGS: GREEKS & SCYTHIANS Want to learn more about Scythian and Hellenistic re-
lations? Here are some books and articles to check out.
THE AMAZONS: LIVES AND LEGENDS OF WAR- THE WORLD OF THE SCYTHIANS
RIOR WOMEN ACROSS THE ANCIENT WORLD
By Renate Rolle
By Adrienne Mayor University of California Press, 1989
Princeton University, 2018 ISBN: 978-0520068643
ISBN: 978-0691170275
By comparing the Amazons of Greek myth, from their ear- First published in German in 1980, Renate Rolle’s study
liest mention to their depictions in Roman literature, with of the Scythians was one of the first to study the ancient
the archaeology of the warrior women of Scythians culture people on their own merit, offering a modern study of the
and their representation in Greco-Roman histories, Mayor Scythians, from their appearance to burial customs and
traces the influence Greek interactions with the steppe even the Scythian economy. While it is not the most up-to-
nomads had on Greek myth. date study, it is a good introduction for readers.
THE SCYTHIANS: CLASSICAL OLBIA AND THE SCYTHIAN

NOMAD WARRIORS OF THE STEPPE WORLD FROM THE SIXTH CENTURY BC TO
THE SECOND CENTURY AD
By Barry Cunliffe
Oxford University Press, 2019 By David Braund and Sergey D. Kryzhitskiy
ISBN: 978-0198820123 Oxford University Press, 2007
ISBN: 978-0197264041
Despite being a nomadic people, the Scythians left a re- This book is a collection of essays by historians and archae-
markable footprint in the archaeology record, particularly ologists discussing the Greek colony of Olbia on the Black
their burial mounds filled with grave goods. These artefacts Sea coast from its foundation to its status in the Roman em-
form the basis of Barry Cunliffe’s study of the Scythians, pire. Covering interactions between settlers and the Scythians,
offering a complete overview with a wealth of full-colour ancient historians’ interactions with Olbia, and its society and
plates bringing the ancient steppe to life. economy, this book reveals the Greco-Scythian world.
Other books and articles

The Scythians (Selim F. Adalı) • Gabrielson, Vincent, and John Lund. The Black Sea in an-
• Adalı, Selim F. “Cimmerians and the Scythians: The Im- tiquity: regional and interregional economic exchanges.
pact of Nomadic Powers on the Assyrian Empire and the Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2007.
ancient Near East.” In Eurasian Empires in Antiquity and • Parmenter, Christopher S. “Journeys into Slavery along the
the Early Middle Ages: Contact and Exchange between Black Sea Coast, c. 550–450 BCE.” Classical Antiquity 39
the Graeco-Roman World, Inner Asia and China, H.J. (2020): 57–94.
Kim, F. Vervaet and S.F. Adalı (eds.), 60–81. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2017. The Amazons (Adrienne Mayor)
• Ivantchik, Askold. “The Scythian ‘Rule Over Asia’: the • Guliaev, Valeri I. “Amazons in the Scythia: New Finds at
Classical Tradition and the Historical Reality.” In Ancient the Middle Don, Southern Russia.” World Archaeology 35
Greeks West and East, G.R. Tsetskhladze (ed.), 497–520. (2003): 112–125.
• Pankova, Svetlana V. and St John Simpson. Masters of the • Mayor, Adrienne, John Colarusso, and David Saunders.
Steppe: The Impact of the Scythians and Later Nomad “Making Sense of Nonsense Inscriptions Associated with
Societies of Eurasia. Oxford: Archaeopress, 2020. Amazons and Scythians on Athenian Vases.” Hesperia 83
(2014): 447–493.
Greek knowledge of the Scythians (Christa Steinby) • Mayor, Adrienne. “The Archaeology of Amazons.” In
• Ivantchik, Askold. “The Funeral of Scythian Kings: The Women in Antiquity, S.L. Bundin and M.F. Turfa (eds.),
historical reality and the description of Herodotus (IV, 71- 969–985. Abingdon: Routledge, 2016.
72).” In The Barbarians of Ancient Europe: Realities and
Interactions, Larissa Bonfante (ed.), 71–106. Cambridge: Greek gold in Scythian tombs (Benjamin Sharkey)
Cambridge University Press, 2011. • Farkas, Ann. “Interpreting Scythian Art: East vs. West.” Ar-
• Kim, H.J. “Herodotus’ Scythians viewed from a Central tibus Asiae 39 (1977): 124–138.
Asian Perspective: its Historicity and Significance.” An- • Sharkey, Benjamin. “Predators and Prey: Cosmologi-
cient West and East 9 (2010): 115–135. cal Perspectivism in Scythian Animal Style Art.” Arts 11
• Luce, T.J. The Greek Historians. Abingdon: Routledge, 1997. (2022): 120–159.
• Treister, Michael. “The Workshop of the Gorytos and
Greco-Scythian trade (John Brendan Knight) Scabbard Overlays.” Scythian Gold: Treasures from An-
• Braund, David. “Royal Scythians and the Slave-Trade in cient Ukraine, Ellen D. Reeder (ed.), 71–81. New York:
Herodotus’ Scythia.” Antichthon 42 (2007): 1–19. Harry N. Abrams, 1999.
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IN THIS ISSUE: ENCOUNTERS AND INTERACTIONS BETWEEN THE GREEKS AND SCYTHIANS (ca.

WHERE THE STEPPE AND

Design © 2017 Karwansaray Publishers

Contributors: Selim F. Adali, Denise Demetriou,

Illustrators: Andrey Fetisov, Zvonimir Grbasic, Marek

Printed in the Netherlands.

Parthenon sculptures reveal their true colours

Excavations at Hattusa reveal once-lost language

© Andreas Schachner / Deutsches Archäologisches Institut

A clay tablet from Hattusa, dated

to the thirteenth century BC,

Bronze Age jewellery unearthed in Switzerland

Domus Tiberiana reopens to the public

Deceased found on a bed in a tomb with frescoes

© Soprintendenza Archeologia Belle Arti e Paesaggio per l’Area Metropolitana di Napoli

Trident recovered from fountain at Assos

The iron trident recently discov-

ered in a fountain of ancient As-

DESTINED TO RULE By Owain Williams

A sardonyx gem (cameo) with gold

frame, dated to the first century AD.

Alexander Helios, and Ptolemy Philadelphus 5.10). Additionally, Juba, who

Venus and Cupid. It is possible that the

future husband, Gaius Julius Juba.

The Phoenicians are mostly cast in ancient sources and

he Phoenicians originated on the Levantine coast of

an region, including Carthage; Sidon, praised in antiquity as a pro-

sent-day Syria. From these sites, Phoenician merchants,

East. Orientalizing art became popular from

inscribed with the Ca-

king Abdashtart I, dated

right to participate in government, they had lit-

neighbourhood where many immigrants

PEOPLE FROM THE WORLD BEYOND

Many peoples inhabited the great expanse of the steppe

By Selim F. Adalı and Richard Kendall

emergence of a military-political elite reli-

to the ancient Greeks, Assyrians, and their neighbours,

with several other polities. One example

an alliance with Assyria. The outcome of

© Roman Zymovets / Wikimedia Commons

The ‘Scythian’ lifestyle

An akinakes, a dagger or short sword

It dates to sixth-fifth century BC. Ancient History 47

Dating to the fifth-fourth cen-

tury BC, this complete set of

exist in Greek colonies,

While researching his Histories,

GREEK KNOWLEDGE OF THE SCYTHIANS

FROM STEPPE TO SEA AND BACK AGAIN By John Brendan Knight

dated to ca. 500-490 BC,

The drunken Scythians the Greek cities on the coast,

centuries BC. fort was abandoned.

A golden drinking horn,

discovered as part of the

Scythian slaves, Athenian police

A silver strainer, likely

meant for the Scythian drink