Barry Cunlife - The Scythians

of gods, beliefs, and art
Âseventh-century context at the Karmir Blur fortress. It is about 1.8 m in diameter and
1.5 m high and has the capacity of 1,000 litres, no match for the monster reported by
Herodotus.
At religious ceremonies cattle and horses were sacrificed to the gods using a ritual
that was widely practised among the Scythians (Hist. iv. 60–1). A rope is tied around
the front legs of the animal and the person making the sacrifice stands behind and
pulls the rope making the beast fall forward. As he does this he invokes the particular
god to whom the sacrifice is dedicated. He then ‘puts a rope around the animal’s
neck and, inserting a small stick, twists it and so strangles him’. The animal is then
cut up, the pieces put into a cauldron and boiled, the bones having been extracted
and added to the fire beneath the cauldron. When the meat is cooked, the person
initiating the sacrifice makes an offering to the god by throwing some of the cooked
meat and entrails onto the ground. For those who had no cauldron the paunch of the
animal could be used as a container. Herodotus implies that the fire was lit from the
raw bones but this could hardly be since bones will not easily burn without other
fuel. The probable explanation is that the bones were being added to an existing fire
so that they could be consumed according to the approved ritual.
In sacrifices dedicated to the Scythian Ares cattle and horses were slaughtered in
great numbers (Hist. iv. 62). In addition, when prisoners of war had been taken, one
out of every hundred was sacrificed. First of all a libation of wine was poured over the
heads of those chosen before their throats were cut over a vessel placed to catch the
blood. The vessel was then carried to the top of the platform and the blood poured
over the sword. Meanwhile, below, by the side of the mound, ‘the right hands and
arms of the slaughtered prisoners were cut off and thrown high into the air’. When
this activity was over, ‘those who had offered the sacrifice depart leaving the hands
and arms where they had chanced to have fallen with the bodies separate’. That prisoners
taken in battle should be sacrificed to the god of war would have been considered
entirely appropriate.
The open-air altars to Ares, which Herodotus says existed in each province, may
well have been the locations where annually those who had slain one or more enemies
in battle were acknowledged by being allowed to drink from a communal bowl
of wine before the assembled company (above, p. 262). Whether this performance
was carried out on the same occasion as the annual sacrifices is not clear.
The Intermediaries
Most societies have a class of specialists, broadly characterized as priests, who mediate
between humans and the gods. In the pan-Scythian ceremonies involving the
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