Barry Cunlife - The Scythians

of gods, beliefs, and art
10.13 Gold plaque once adorning a tall headdress, from Karagodeuashkh.
It displays elite women, presumably deities, and their
attendants.
interpretation is that the two young men are holy twins
(like the Dioskouroi) while the females were probably
mythological attendants. In Indo-European mythology
the divine twins were companions of the mother goddess.
The cult of the Dioskouroi was well established in
the Greek cities on the Black Sea coast and here we see
it merged with the cult of Argimpasa, though what subtleties
the scene is meant to convey are beyond recovery.
It is possible that the two young men were conflated
with the sons of the Scythian Hercules and that the
monstrous female was Argimpasa, in which case they
represent the mythological founders of the Scythian
tribes, but this is pure speculation.
While Herodotus was right to say the Scythians had
no statues of the deities, small-scale images of their
goddesses abound, usually crafted into gold and silver
work. There is much variation in the way in which
they were depicted but that variation underscores the
breadth and power of the deity: she was the foremother
of the Scythians, the progenitor of the founding heroes
upon whom she bestowed regal authority. She was the
Mistress of the Beasts and controller of the Tree of Life.
For the ordinary Scythians roaming the wild steppe it
would have been reassuring to have such a powerful
and benign protector.
The Meaning of Scythian Animal Art
The very large number of decorated items made by the
steppe nomads over the period 900–200 bc embody
the visual expression of myths, beliefs, and events that
featured large in their folk consciousness. The motifs
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