Barry Cunlife - The Scythians

the way of death
tism. Another backward-looking observation was the statement that gold cups were
buried with the kings but never vessels of bronze or silver. The lavish use of gold vessels
is, indeed, well attested and may be linked to the belief that the charisma of the
king was associated with gold (above, p. 270), but the only tomb in which golden vessels
alone were buried is Kelermes; in all the others silver and bronze items were also
present. Either the informant was intent on stressing the old ways or Herodotus had
heard the story from another, less accurate source and had decided to insert it into his
main narrative.
In addition to giving a stage by stage account of royal burial rituals Herodotus
offers a briefer description of the burial of people of lesser status:
When anyone dies his nearest kin lay him on a wagon and cart him around to all his
friends in succession. Each receives them in turn and entertains them with a feast at
which the dead man is served with a portion of all that is set before the others. This is
done for forty days at the end of which the burial takes place.
(Hist. iv. 73)
After the burial the participants purify themselves by inhaling cannabis.
This brief account, shorn of all the trappings afforded to high-status individuals,
gives the essence of the rite-of-passage. For a period of forty days following death,
the spirit is believed to remain close to the body, and the body has to be honoured
as though alive by friends and family. Only when the liminal period is over can the
deceased be buried, after which those involved can purify themselves from the contamination
of death and return to the real world. A period of forty days or thereÂ
abouts for the interval between death and burial seems to have been widely adopted
among other Indo-Iranian people.
The Burial Ground of the Kings
Herodotus gives two pieces of information about where the kings were buried: first
that the burials took place in the land of the Gerrhoi at the highest point that the
river Dnieper can be navigated and second that they were buried in the most distant
region of all the tribes under Scythian rule. There is an apparent contradiction here
and much scholarly effort has been invested in trying to find a compromise. The simplest
explanation, however, is that two different traditions were used, both correct
but representing different periods of time. The first tradition implies that Gerrhos
was the region below the fast rapids on the Dnieper, 75 km upstream from the river’s
mouth. It is in this region, within a radius of 45 km from the rapids, that six of the
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