Barry Cunlife - The Scythians

the way of death
Although Herodotus makes no specific mention of it, the completion of the mound
will have been a time of celebration and most probably of feasting. Impressive evidence
for feasting was found in the ditch surrounding Tolstaya mogila. Just over half of
the ditch was excavated, producing the bones of thirty-five horses, fourteen wild boar,
and two stags. If the unexcavated length of ditch had produced equivalent quantities
the total amount of meat available would have been about 13,000 kilos, enough to glut
340 people for a week or 2,400 people for a single night. Large quantities of sherds
of wine amphorae were also found, showing that it must, indeed, have been a festive
occasion. There is no absolute certainty that the feast was a single event, but if it was
not, the individual acts of feasting could have been spread over only a short period.
The source of the meat has interesting implications. The large number of horses is
only to be expected since the domesticated herds would have been the normal source
of protein, but the inclusion of stags and wild boar means that the feast is likely to
have been preceded by hunting expeditions. It is a reminder that physical recreation
in the form of hunting and games often accompanied funerary celebrations.
The final stage is likely to have been purifications, which Herodotus described in
detail, beginning with the washing of the head and ending with the inhalation of the
fumes of hemp seeds burning on red-hot stones in the confined space of a felt tent
(above, p. 46).
A Year Later
Perhaps the most intriguing part of Herodotus’ account is devoted to what happens
when the burial party returned to the mound a year later:
They take the most suitable of the rest of the attendants . . . they strangle fifty of them
and fifty of the finest horses and, having removed their entrails, clean them and fill them
with chaff and sew them up. Then they attach half of a wheel, turned upside down, to
two posts and the other half to another pair and they set up many of these in this way,
and then, driving thick stakes lengthwise through the horses’ bodies to their neck, they
set them on the wheels so that the wheel in front supports the horse’s shoulder and the
wheel behind props up the belly near the hindquarters and the legs on each side hang
down freely. Each horse is provided with a bit bridle which is drawn out in front of
the horse and attached to a peg. They mount each of the fifty strangled youths on the
horses, mounting them in this way: they drive an upright stake through the body along
the spine to the neck, and fix the end of this stake projecting from below the body into
a hole made in the other stake that passes through the horse. Having set up the fifty
riders thus in a circle around the tomb they leave.
(Hist. iv. 72)
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