Barry Cunlife - The Scythians

bodies clothed in skins
8.21 Stringed musical instrument from kurgan 2 at Pazyryk. The resonator is made from a single hollowed-out
piece of wood. The middle part of the body was covered by a wooden sounding board, while
sounding membranes were stretched over the open part of the body. There were at least four strings, suggesting
that the instrument may have been a kind of harp.
The Scythian love of undiluted wine has been described above (p. 54). The topos of
the drunken Scythian was well known in the Greek world. The phrase ‘get ourselves
as drunk as Scythians’, used by the sixth century poet Anacreon, would have brought
a knowing smile to the faces of his Greek audience. The archaeological evidence
supports the large-scale consumption of Greek wine by the Scythians of the Pontic
steppe. Amphorae are found in some numbers accompanying burials of the elite and
are often found with wine-drinking gear of the kind that would be expected in any
upper-class Greek household. Amphorae are also found at the large inland trading
sites. There can be little doubt that wine drinking was avidly taken up by those able
to obtain supplies. But further away from the Black Sea interface, in Central Asia and
beyond, nomads would have had to rely on koumiss with its significantly lower alcohol
content. The drunken Scythian, then, was most likely a product of contact with
the classical world—yet another example of the debilitating effect which interaction
with supposedly developed societies could have.
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