Barry Cunlife - The Scythians

bending the bow
9.28 Detail from a gold ornamented headdress found in the kurgan at Kurdžips in the northern Caucasus.
The warrior on the right holds the head of an enemy.
with an ox rib, and softening it by rubbing it between the hands he then uses it as a kind
of napkin.
(Hist. iv. 64)
The male buried in kurgan 2 at Pazyryk had been scalped. An incision had been made
across the forehead from ear to ear and the scalp had been torn back to the neck just
as Herodotus describes. He goes on to say that the Scythian is proud of the scalps he
has acquired and hangs them from his bridle rein to display his valour and success
in battle. He also made cloaks by sewing scalps together. It is tempting to see this
as a procedure adopted by the more successful warrior whose bridle reins could no
longer provide the required display space.
Headhunting is also depicted from time to time. A belt from Tli in the Caucasus
shows a mounted warrior returning from battle with a whip in one hand and his bow
and quiver of arrows to his left side. From the bridle of his horse hangs what is evidently
a severed head. In another representation on a gold plaque from a headdress
found in a kurgan at Kurdžips a warrior is shown carrying an over-large head, rather
unceremoniously by the hair, holding it well away from his body.
Herodotus notes other, more extreme behaviour related to the display of prowess.
Some, he says, ‘flay the right arms of their dead enemies and make the skin which
is stripped off, with the nails still attached to it, into a covering for the quivers’. He
compares the quality of human skin favourably to that of other animals. Others, he
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