ANST - More on Tattoos, Scythians, and Celts

[Gunnora Hallakarva]

'wolf asked:
> is this a decent resource?  have a particular fondness for
> the "horse barbarian" ciltures, especially the scythian and
> was thinking of incorporating something with scythian /
> pictish iconography into the master plan.

Your fondness is perhaps more Celto-tribal than you know.  The Romans fetched with them to Britain fairly large numbers of... you guessed it,  Sarmatian auxiliaries (a people very closely related to the Scythians).  Some very well-researched scholarship beginning with Georges Dumezil, has gone into quite a lot of detail proving that the origin of the entire Grail Cycle was these auxiliaries.  (For instance,
see http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~tomgreen/arthur.htm)

But even before then, the Celts originally migrated from the area that the Scythians and Sarmatians called their home, so it is also very possible that the Celts brought these legends (and art and other cultural baggage) with them in their migrations north and west.

Here are some sources:

I believe that the first report of Scythian tattoos surviving in freeze-dried kurgan occupants was in the May 1965 Scientific American.

Rolle, Renate.  The World of the Scythians.  London: B.T. Batsford.  1980. ISBN 0520068645. [Contains some very incorrect information, but also has some of the best pictures of horse trappings, tattoos, and line-art of Scythian artifacts I've ever seen.  Get the book for the pictures.  Get better sources for the real meat of the subject.]

Rudenko, Sergei I. Frozen Tombs of Siberia: the Pazyryk Burials of Iron Age Horsemen. Berkeley: The University of California Press. 1970.
[Probably the best over-all source on the kurgans and their frozen inhabitants.]

"Nyt om gammelt m, artikel af Søren Nanche-Krogh om hans tatoveringer". Skalk No 4, 1969.
[Magazine with article on Scythian tattooing, in Danish.]

Cernenko, E.V.  The Scythians: 700 - 300 B.C.  Men-at-Arms Series 137.  London: Osprey.  1983. [Very good book -- nice reconstructions of Scythian costume, arms and armor. No tattoos.]

M. I. Artamonov. Treasures from Scythian tombs in the Hermitage Museum, Leningrad.  ISBN 0500231125.[Contains some of the most famous and most beautiful photos of Scythian artifacts, particularly the gold belongings of chieftains.]

Glusker Irwin, Christian von Rosenvinge and Lilly Hollander, eds.  From the Lands of the Scythians: Ancient Treasures from the Museums of the U.S.S.R., 3000 B.C.-100 B.C.  New York:  (Museum Catalog)  Metropolitan Museum of Art in conjunction with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.  1975. [This book has many gorgeous photos of the most spectacular Scythian art and artifacts known today.  No tattoos, but
lots of very worthwhile art and art design.]

Michael Vickers. Scythian Treasures in Oxford (Ashmolean Museum Archaeology, History & Classical Studies) Oxford: Ashmolean. 1979.  ISBN 0900090618. [I have a copy of this one.  This contains info only on the Scythian artifacts held at the Ashmolean Museum, and this is a fairly small collection.  None the less, the information is very interesting and there's some nice jewellry pictured. No tattoos.]

Minns, Ellis H.  Scythians and Greeks:  A Survey of Ancient History and Archaeology on the North Coast of the Euxine from the Danube to the Caucasus.  Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. P.  1913.  [Very dry, but also very informative. Predates the frozen kurgan finds.]

Herodotus.  Selections from the Persian Wars, Book IV. from The Greek Historian.  ed. Francis R. B. Gondolphin.  New York: Random House.  1942. [This is the famous description of the Scythians and the Sarmatians.]

Here's another website that shows more of the Scythian tattoos... too bad the book being advertised is $108 -- you might, however, ask Sir Corey or Lady Jan if they own a copy.  The tattoo shop in San Marcos isn't too far to go to look at it:
http://www.zapcom.net/~phoenix/TriBible.html

see also

Mummified Scythians and their Tattoos
http://tattoos.com/jane/steve/mummies.htm

Scientists work to preserve 3,000-year-old mummy found in Siberia
http://detnews.com/menu/stories/14161.htm

Scythian Archaeology of the Middle Don River Basin
http://www.upenn.edu/museum/News/CentralAsiaArchy/Scythians.html

A HairRaising Report of A Modern Archaeological Excavation of a Kurgan
http://www.asianart.com/forum/golden.html

The Center for the Study of the Eurasian Nomads
http://garnet.berkeley.edu/~jkimball/table.contents.html

Ukrainian Museum of Historical Treasures (Scythian Gold) in the Monastary of the Caves-Pecherska-Lavra
http://mat.hut.fi/Ukraine/Kiev_Historical.html

This should get you started!

::GUNNORA::


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