“Scythian Empire”, in J.M. MacKenzie (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Empire, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2016. PDF

Preview

Summary

1 Scythians,” who “consider all other Scythians Scythian Empire their slaves” (4.20), should perhaps be seen as CASPAR MEYER a “master tribe,” ruling the other districts. Birkbeck, University of London, UK Herodotus’ text also mentions the names of several Scythian kings who had dealings with Skytha...

Description

Accelerat ing t he world's research.

“Scythian Empire”, in J.M. MacKenzie (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Empire, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2016. Caspar Meyer

Related papers

Download a PDF Pack of t he best relat ed papers 

Religion, Rit ual Behavior and Landscapes in Iron Age Cent ral Eurasia Kat hryn MacFarland HERODOT US’ SCYT HIANS VIEWED FROM A CENT RAL ASIAN PERSPECT IVE: IT S HIST ORICIT Y AND SIG… Hyun Jin Kim Fant ast ic Beast s Of T he Eurasian St eppes: Toward A Revisionist Approach To Animal-St yle Art PET YA ANDREEVA

1

Scythian Empire CASPAR MEYER Birkbeck, University of London, UK

Skythai is an umbrella term which the ancient Greeks applied to a range of nomadic peoples who inhabited the northern Black Sea steppe between the rivers Danube and Don from around the same time as Greek traders and agriculturalists began to settle along the coast. The modern usage of the term Scythian approaches the Greek insofar as it is taken to designate a phase in the cultural history of Iron Age Eurasia characterized by diverse horse-borne warrior elites. The Greek historian Herodotus, writing in the 5th century BCE, reports, however, that the term Scythian derived from Skoloti, a selfdesignation of a restricted ethnic group which traced itself to a mythical ancestor (Hdt. 4.5–6). Whether some of the nomadic archaeological finds conventionally labeled “Scythian” can be securely identified with the ethnic Scythians known from Herodotus is a vital question for specialists, since Herodotus’ descriptions provide the only evidence of Scythian state institutions, whereas archaeology provides the only independent control to verify the historicity of Herodotus’ observations. Some of the tombs excavated in the region closely resemble the Scythian royal burial described by Herodotus (4.71–72); but some of these finds could also be accounted for by the non-Scythian people in the region who had adopted Scythian cultural traits, according to Herodotus (4.17, 23). In Herodotus’ account the territory controlled by the Scythians was divided into administrative districts called nomes, each of which had its own leader. The “Royal

Scythians,” who “consider all other Scythians their slaves” (4.20), should perhaps be seen as a “master tribe,” ruling the other districts. Herodotus’ text also mentions the names of several Scythian kings who had dealings with the Greek cities on the Black Sea shore, but the nature and extent of their power is not specified. In his description of local conditions at Olbia, a major economic center on the Bug estuary, the historian mentions the presence of a Scythian deputy (4.76) and of a Scythian king being convoyed to the city by an army (4.78). Around the same period several cities in the region minted coins bearing non-Greek names instead of Greek civic legends, which may corroborate that some communities were required to pay tribute to Scythian suzerains. In later Greek and Roman sources we hear of a powerful Scythian king Ateas who was defeated by Philip II of Macedon; whether he was a tribal leader in western Scythia or the overlord of a centralized empire is unclear. Although Herodotus was certainly not the “liar” he was once made out to be, his “ethnographic” descriptions were nevertheless the outcome of auctorial choices determined by the overarching narrative of his book – the civilizatory clash between Greek liberty and oriental despotism that culminated in the Graeco-Persian wars. As F. Hartog has shown, many aspects of Herodotus’ reports can be explained by reference to the internal logic of his text. The division of Scythia into nomes, for instance, was mirrored by his division of the Egyptian and Persian empires into nomes and allows the author to frame his questions about despotism and barbarism in an overall structure of cultural enquiry. In viewing the Scythians through external representations, we risk

The Encyclopedia of Empire, First Edition. Edited by John M. MacKenzie. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2016 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. DOI: 10.1002/9781118455074.wbeoe036

2 judging their culture against the presumptions of literate city-dwellers who equate state-formation with civilization. Archaeology leaves no doubt that the Eurasian nomads of the early Iron Age produced sophisticated social organizations. The appearance of a characteristic set of material traits at northern Black Sea sites – mounded tombs containing armor, missile weapons, and bridle attachments with distinctive animal decoration – indicates that nomadic elite detachments had been known in the region from at least the 7th century BCE. Although similar assemblages from southern Siberia (Arzhan) date as early as the 9th century BCE, physical anthropology has not been able to verify Herodotus’ report (4.11) that the Scythians had migrated westward as a corporate unit. In the most likely scenario, climatic fluctuations in central Asia, along with innovations in bridle design and vehicle construction, had encouraged pastoralist groups to enlarge their herds and range more widely for grazing land and water sources. Competition with neighboring groups is thought to have given rise to martial units specializing in herd management, raiding, and surplus extraction from settled communities, which led in turn to the progressive mobilization of groups further east and west. Conflict with societies in neighboring ecological zones is attested in Herodotus and Assyrian texts mentioning Scythian incursions into the Near East in the 7th century BCE. Finds from the elite tombs of the Kuban and Dnieper regions demonstrate that nomadic leaders controlled far-flung exchange networks and were able to raise labor, troops, and contributions in kind informally through gift-giving and convivial largesse.

The notion of a unified Scythian Empire, although difficult to corroborate with independent sources, has gained popularity through the work of the Russian historian M. I. Rostovtzeff. A classicist by training, he applied J. G. Droysen’s concept of Hellenistic cultural fusion to northern Black Sea archaeology and argued that the symbiotic relations between Scythian nomads and Greek colonists provided the archetype for all multiethnic conglomerates in the region, including the primeval Russian state of the Slavs and their Viking rulers and its Muscovite successor, formed under Mongol occupation. His work on Russia’s “ancestral” steppe empire, particularly his descriptions of enduring state structures sustained by cosmopolitan elite collaboration, proved attractive to the Eurasianist school of historiography which thrived in the 1920s among Russian émigré scholars in Central Europe and the United States. SEE ALSO: Nomads; Steppe empires FURTHER READING Hartog, F. 1988. The Mirror of Herodotus. Berkeley: University of California Press. Meyer, C. 2013. Greco-Scythian Art and the Birth of Eurasia. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rolle, R. 1989. The World of the Scythians. Berkeley: University of California Press. Rostovtzeff, M. I. 1922. Iranians and Greeks in South Russia. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Taylor, T. 1994. “Thracians, Scythians, and Dacians, 800 BC–AD 300.” In B. Cunliffe (Ed.), The Oxford Illustrated Prehistory of Europe: 371–410. Oxford: Oxford University Press....