Barry Cunlife - The Scythians

the way of death
11.7 The corpse of the female from kurgan 5 at Pazyryk. After her entrails and some muscle tissue had
been removed the body was sewn up.
As already mentioned, the procession which preceded the interment involved
transporting the corpse on a wagon from tribe to tribe and finally to the grave. The
funerary wagons are sometimes found incorporated in the burial. In the case of Tolstaya
mogila the wagon that had carried the female to her grave was dismantled and
lowered down the shaft to be placed at the bottom. At the Elizavetinskaya kurgan,
where the burial pit was reached by a ramp leading down from the surface, the sixwheeled
wagon was dismantled and laid on the floor of the ramp together with the
bodies of the six horses that had drawn it. Whether or not there is any symbolism to
be read into this it is difficult to say. It may be that the dismantling of the wagons and
the placement of the parts, in both cases close to the entrance to the burial chamber,
was to deter the departed from attempting to leave the grave. Once the wagon had
been dealt with the grave ramps or shafts could be filled in and work could begin on
building the great mound.
Raising the Mound
‘They all heap up a great barrow’, says Herodotus, ‘seeking to make it as great as
possible.’ Here is another example of conspicuous consumption since the mound
was intended to stand forever as a dramatic reminder of the ability of the king’s line-
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