Barry Cunlife - The Scythians

the way of death
11.5 Kurgan 4 at Pazyryk. The log coffins for the male and female burials were placed on the floor of the
log-built burial chamber.
in the richest graves. Horse burials are also unknown in this period in the steppe zone
but from the fifth century they become common. Clearly, in the early centuries the
different tribes under Scythian authority had different attitudes to the provision of
horses for the dead.
The tradition of burying the king’s horses close to the burial chamber goes back to
the ninth century in the Altai–Sayan region. In the royal burial of Arzhan 1 six horses
were placed in the pit up against the wall of the burial chamber within which the
king and his female companion lay. At Pazyryk horses accompanied all elite burials.
In the case of kurgan 5 nine horses were stacked with other items outside the burial
chamber in the narrow space between it and the edge of the pit. In the other graves
within the cemetery the number of horses varied. The elite burials in the cemetery of
Berel at the western flank of the Altai adopted similar arrangements. Here, in kurgan
11, thirteen horses in full ceremonial regalia were placed in the burial pit to one side of
the timber burial chamber. Even the poorer graves, like kurgan 36, had a single horse.
The evidence from Pazyryk and Berel shows that the traditional way of placing the
deceased’s horses in the grave pit, while already underway in the ninth century, was
still being practised in the fourth and third centuries. It was only in the elite burials on
the Pontic steppe that separate grave pits for horses were being introduced.
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