Barry Cunlife - The Scythians

of gods, beliefs, and art
10.2 (Left) Drum made from two plates of ox horn sewn together. The
membrane covering the upper end was also stitched in place. From kurgan
2 at Pazyryk. The drum may have been used in religious ceremonies.
10.3 (Below) Long staffs with bronze rattles at the end were common
among the steppe nomads. They are likely to have been of ceremonial
use and carried by a shaman. This example is from a burial at Makhoshevskaya
in the Kuban region.
10.4 (Opposite top) Ceremonial pole top from the Dnepropetrovska
region of Ukraine.
10.5 (Opposite bottom) Highly elaborate ceremonial pole top from
Lysa Hora in the Dnepropetrovska region of Ukraine.
resembling antlers found in kurgan 1 at Pazyryk, were
decked out in this way by the shaman conducting the
burial ceremony. Another accompaniment to shamanic
rituals was drums. Drums were found in three of the
Pazyryk tombs but there is no proof that they were used
for rituals rather than simply as musical instruments.
Widely occurring across the steppe from Mongolia
to the Great Hungarian Plain are ornate pole tops, sometimes
incorporating rattles and often crowned with animals.
The earliest, dating to the eighth century, coming
from Tuva and the Minusinsk Basin, incorporate the
stag or ibex standing feet together as if balancing on a
rocky eminence. Later examples are often more elaborate.
One example, from the fourth century bc Alexandropol
kurgan, depicts a female goddess, hands on hips.
Another from the same kurgan shows a winged griffin
in a frame from which hang two bells, while a third
splits into three branches upon each of which perches a
hunched, predatory bird holding a bell in its beak. Staffs,
capped in this way, were symbols of authority and were
probably carried by priests, the rattling noise or tinkling
of the bells calling the audience to attend to the rites
about to be performed. The sound itself was unsettling
and the sight of the predatory birds in the flickering
lamplight looking as if they were about to swoop would
have unnerved the superstitious. It is upon such artifice
that priests build their power.
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