Barry Cunlife - The Scythians

the scythians as others saw them
audience of their unique identity. But as archaeological
data began to accumulate, mainly from the excavation
of Scythian burials, the veracity of many of his observations
has become apparent. His famous description of
Scythian burial ritual can be matched detail by detail
with the excavation data (below, Chapter 11). To give just
one example, in describing the purification rituals following
burial he says:
They make a booth by fixing in the ground three sticks
inclined towards one another and stretching around
them woollen felt which they arrange so as to fit as
close as possible: inside the booth a dish is placed on
the ground into which they put a number of red-hot
stones and then add some hemp seed.
(Hist. iv. 73)
2.5 Pazyryk kurgan 2. Six wooden poles wound with birchcherry
bark formed a framework supporting a cover of felt.
Within this small tent-like structure was a bronze brazier containing
heated stones on which hemp seeds had been thrown.
The Scythians inhaled the fumes as part of the purification rituals
concluding the process of burial.
He relates how they then went inside the booth and
inhaled the fumes ‘shouting for joy’ at the effects of the
drug. Tent poles and bronze basins full of burnt stones
and charred hemp seeds found in excavations, Ânotably
at Pazyryk, show that the practice was widespread
throughout the steppe (below, p. 306).
Elsewhere he mentions Gelonus, a vast city ‘surrounded
by a high wall thirty furlongs [about 6 km]
each way, built entirely of wood’ (Hist. iv. 108). That such
a place could have existed was thought to be pure fantasy
until the discovery, in the 1970s, of a huge fortification
at Bel’sk in the valley of the Dnieper with ramparts
extending around a circumference of 33 km (below, pp.
133–4). Another example of Herodotus vindicated.
To write his Scythian ethnography Herodotus must
have had access to a variety of sources in addition to
his own observations and interviews conducted during
his visit to Olbia. He certainly knew of the works
of Hecataeus and may have had access to Hellanikos
but he made his own judgements. In one instance
Hecataeus (quoted by a late source) notes that the Melanchlaeni
and Issedones were Scythian people, while
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