Barry Cunlife - The Scythians

of gods, beliefs, and art
sacred gold objects it seems to have been the king of the Royal Scyths who took on
the role, becoming for the occasions a priest king. In the Indo-Iranian tradition the
king had charisma (farnah-) which materialized in the form of gold, the royal metal.
Thus in controlling the sacred golden objects the king was displaying the outward
and visible signs of his extraordinary powers. In the rituals surrounding the worship
of Scythian Ares no intermediaries are mentioned, the implication being that the animals
offered in sacrifice were dispatched and prepared by those making the offering.
Who dealt with the human sacrifices is not specified.
That there was, however, a distinct priesthood practising among the Scythians is
mentioned by several sources. They were called Enarees, androgynous transvestites
drawn from prominent families and were therefore probably an hereditary priesthood.
Little is known about their activities except that they had a method of prophesying
that involved taking a piece of the inner bark of a lime tree, splitting it into
three strips, and twining the strips between the fingers. It was a skill, they claimed,
that was taught them by Aphrodite, implying a close relationship with the goddess
Argimpasa (Aphrodite Ourania). Herodotus, always looking for tidy explanations,
implicitly links the observation and the origin of their ‘female sickness’ to the curse
put on a band of Scythians by the goddess Aphrodite Ourania when they plundered
her sanctuary at Ascalon during their rampage through the Levant. The more sober
author, Pseudo-Hippocrates, put their altered sexual state down to too much horse
riding (above, pp. 219–20). The supposed link between the priests at Ascalon and
the Enarees may be little more than a rationalization based on the observation that
both priesthoods were strongly transgender. It is simpler to see the Enarees as shamans
born of a deep-rooted steppe tradition in which transgender behaviour was
the norm for such people and was believed to endow those who displayed it with
great power.
Herodotus also mentions that in Scythia there were many who could foretell the
future. Their favoured method was to place a bundle of willow sticks on the ground.
By untying the bundle and laying out the individual sticks they were moved to make
a prophecy. If the king fell sick these soothsayers were called in and asked to identify
who it was who had caused the king’s illness, the belief being that royal malaise was
caused by someone swearing a false oath by the king’s hearth. If, when a suspect was
identified, he claimed his innocence, six more soothsayers were consulted. If they
upheld the charge the first group decapitated the suspect and shared out his goods. If,
however, the second group acquitted him, another group was brought in to adjudicate
and so on. If the greater number decided that the man was innocent, then those
who first accused him were put to death by being crammed into a wagon filled with
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