Barry Cunlife - The Scythians

of gods, beliefs, and art
10.9 Part of a gold rhyton (drinking horn) from Merdzhany in the Krasnodar region. The seated goddess,
holding a beaker, is flanked on one side by the Tree of Life and on the other by a horse skull on a pole. She
is approached by a suitor mounted on his horse. Similar scenes, known from elsewhere in the Scythian
world, may represent the union of the goddess and a hero warrior.
ing a rhyton approaches from the left. Some writers interpret this as a marriage
scene between the goddess and a local god or hero. Support for this comes from a
fourth-century relief from the Trekbratniy kurgan which shows a woman sitting
in a carriage pulled by four horses. She is approached by a young man on horseback
waving a gorytos. Between the two is another gorytos hung on a pole. This
seems to be a representation of an unusually efficient marriage custom described
by Herodotus as common among the Massagetae: ‘when a Massagetes desires a
woman, he hangs his gorytos before her wagon and has intercourse with her without
hindrance’ (Hist. i. 216).
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