Barry Cunlife - The Scythians

bending the bow
says, flay the entire body and carry the skin about with them stretched on a frame.
Beyond self-promotion, embedded in these practices is the belief that by owning the
scalp or skin of an enemy one exercises control over him, thus preventing the spirit
from doing damage.
The skull of a particularly detested enemy, such as a relative killed in a feud, might
be turned into a drinking cup. ‘Having sawn off the part below the eyebrows and
cleaned out the inside, they cover the outside with leather.’ A rich man would also
line the inside with gold. On the occasions when the cup was being handed round
to prestigious visitors stories would have been told of the exploits which led to its
creation. Here the intention seems to have been to insult the memory of the deceased
and induce the visitors to share in the insult. The veracity of Herodotus’ description
of skull cups is shown by the discovery of a workshop specializing in skull cup production
in the fortified settlement of Bel’sk. In 529, when the Sakā queen, Tomyris,
defeated the Persian leader, Cyrus, in battle, it is said that she took his head as a trophy.
The thought that the skull of the great conqueror could have ended up as a
drinking cup at Sakā feasts must have been hard for the Persian royal household to
contemplate.
The post-battle behaviours which Herodotus describes, involving the manipulation
of the physical remains of the dead enemy, served two deep-seated needs in
warrior society: it was a means of controlling spirits of the enemy and a way for the
warrior to display his valour. But the record had to be affirmed and, as has been mentioned
above, this was done in the public forum held once a year at which those who
had killed an enemy had the right to drink wine from a communal bowl, while those
who had not killed had to sit in shame for all to see. There could hardly be a more
effective way to incentivize a society whose survival lay in maintaining its predatory
ethos.
There was nothing exceptional about the attitudes and beliefs of the Scythians.
Their contemporaries in western Europe, the Celts and the Germans, and the tribes
on the northern borders of China, behaved in much the same way and head-hunting
was still practised in some parts of the world in recent times. The same logic, control
over enemies, prevailed: it was simply one of the many outward and visible signs of
innate aggression ritualized into warfare.
In fighting against, and fighting with, the armies of the Assyrians, Medes, and Persians,
in their contacts with the Greek world around the north shore of the Black Sea,
and in their campaigns against the sedentary communities of the forest steppe, the
Scythian warlords had ample opportunity to observe other modes of warfare and to
assimilate what they found to be of interest. Perhaps the most obvious change was
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