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객원연구원논문 Scythian mounds and burials 1

Oleksandr Ishchuk 객원연구원

2020.04.07 | 조회 6827

Scythian mounds and burials in VII to III-II centuries BC in Ukraine

 

Oleksandr Ishchuk (Candidate of Historical Sciences, Ukraine)

 

Scythian tombs (or Scythian mounds) are burial monuments of Scythian time, in the form of an earth embankment above the burial pit.

 

1. Localization.

 

Scythians who lived on the territory of Ukraine (steppe and forest-steppe zone, including Dnieper, Crimea) from VII to III-II centuries B.C., left behind a large number of burial mounds. I must say that the Scythian graves were also found in the North Caucasus, in the Kuban region.

The most famous Scythian graves in the territory of Ukraine - Zhabotin mounds, Chortomlyk graves, Oguz, Kul-Oba, Great Rizhan mound, Solokha, Kozel, Gaymanova mogyla (Gaimanova Tomb), Tovsta mogyla (Fat Tomb), Melitopol mound, Melgunovsky mound, Oskandropol and Ak-Mechetska, Perepyatikha and others.

In general, in Ukrainian lands only 20 Scythian graves dated from the period of VII-VI centuries B.C. From the end of VI-V centuries B.C. - about 100 Scythian burial mounds. Peak construction of burial structures-tombs falls on the IV BC - the heyday (period of the blossom) of Scythia. The grand burial mounds (“Imperial Mounds”), which show great values, are mostly localized in the Lower Dnieper. But at the turn of the IV-III centuries B.C., the decline of their construction and, in general, the manifestations of declining Scythian culture.

The artifacts of the Scythian culture of Ukraine indicate that it was an ethnically and culturally heterogeneous conglomerate,that included nomads and proto-farmers (proto-Slavic tribes). Also they carrying in part the remains of Cimmerian culture.

 

So it is not surprising that along with the cattle-breeding inherent in the nomadic Scythians, in the graves were found unique gold jewelry of the characteristic Scythian "animal" style, large ritual bronze coppers, thousands of objects made of gold, silver, iron, etc. availability of mining and metallurgical technologies.

In the Scythian settlement near the town of Kamianka-Dneprovsk of the Zaporizhzhia region, the remains of mining and metallurgical crafts were found - mounds of marsh iron ore, iron crusher, blacksmith tools.

 

2. Technology of construction of graves.

It is very interesting to compare Herodotus' description of how the Scythians buried their leaders. And to compare this data with the results of archaeological excavations of Scythian mounds. In this case, written and archaeological sources complement each other very well: «The burial-places of the kings are in the land of the Gerrhi, which is the end of the navigation of the Borysthenes. Whenever their king has died, the Scythians dig a great four-cornered pit in the ground there; when this is ready, they take up the dead man - his body enclosed in wax, his belly cut open and cleaned and filled with cut marsh-plants and frankincense, and parsley and anise seed, and sewn up again - and transport him on a wagon to another tribe. Then those who receive the dead man on his arrival do the same as do the Royal Scythians: that is, they cut off a part of their ears, shave their heads, make cuts around their arms, tear their foreheads and noses, and pierce their left hands with arrows. From there, the escorts transport the king’s body on the wagon to another of the tribes that they rule, and those to whom they have already come follow them; and having carried the dead man to all in turn, they are at the place of burial, in the country of the Gerrhi, the farthest distant tribe of all under their rule. Then, having laid the body on a couch in the tomb, they plant spears on each side of the body and lay wooden planks across them, which they then roof over with braided osiers; in the open space which is left in the tomb they bury one of the king’s concubines, his cupbearer, his cook, his groom, his squire, and his messenger, after strangling them, besides horses, and first-fruits of everything else, and golden cups; for the Scythians do not use silver or bronze. Having done this, they all build a great barrow of earth, vying eagerly with one another to make this as great as possible» .

But this did not end there. Herodotus continued: «After a year has past, they next do as follows. They take the most trusted of the rest of the king’s servants (and these are native-born Scythians, for only those whom he tells to do so serve the king, and none of the Scythians have servants bought by money) and strangle fifty of these and fifty of their best horses and empty and clean the bellies of them all, fill them with chaff, and sew them up again. Then they fasten half of a wheel to two posts, the hollow upward, and the other half to another pair of posts, until many posts thus prepared are planted in the ground, and, after driving thick stakes lengthways through the horses’ bodies to their necks, they place the horses up on the wheels so that the wheel in front supports the horse’s forequarters and the wheel behind takes the weight of the belly by the hindquarters, and the forelegs and hindlegs hang free; and putting bridles and bits in the horses’ mouths, they stretch the bridles to the front and fasten them with pegs. Then they take each one of the fifty strangled young men and mount him on the horse; their way of doing it is to drive an upright stake through each body passing up alongside the spine to the neck leaving enough of the stake projecting below to be fixed in a hole made in the other stake, which passes through the horse. So having set horsemen of this fashion around the tomb, they ride away» . «This is the way they bury their kings. All other Scythians, when they die, are laid in wagons and carried about among their friends by their nearest of kin; each receives them and entertains the retinue hospitably, setting before the dead man about as much of the fare as he serves to the rest. All but the kings are carried about like this for forty days and then buried. After the burial the Scythians cleanse themselves as follows: they anoint and wash their heads and, for their bodies, set up three poles leaning together to a point and cover these over with wool mats; then, in the space so enclosed to the best of their ability, they make a pit in the center beneath the poles and the mats and throw red-hot stones into it».

Archaeological excavations largely confirm the stories of Herodotus. The construction of the giant tombs themselves required thousands of workers, who were to be led by trained people who embodied the design of the earthen tombs. This required the extraction and transportation of hundreds of thousands of tons of soil, as well as some mining engineering knowledge.

To build a burial mound for the Scythian king could have taken a long time. It's hard to say how many. It depended on the number of workers. And also - from the qualification of masters. It is clear that these works could not last a month.

Thus, the Chortomlyk tomb (near the city of Nikopol in Dnipropetrovsk region) is a 20-meter earth embankment inside which is a giant underground structure - an 11-meter mine and 5 - 8 burial chambers. Without the preliminary plan, the relevant drawings, the strict organization of land and mining, such an idea could not be realized.

The technology for creating graves by the Scythians is to build them from rollers at the burial site. The noble kings were buried deep underground (up to 15-20 meters from the field level), in a carved clay cave. They stoned the entrance with stones, and built a "pyramid" above the place of burial from earth rollers. The grave was built of layers of turf, rolls of a mixture of earth and grass, reeds. The building material was taken from a swampy area, flooded rivers and transported within 5-10 kilometers. Sometimes the hills were covered with stone crepe and then again with layers of rollers.


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