The Scythians and nomadism

The peoples scythians practiced nomadism. According to Herodotus, “Scythia therefore has the shape of a large quadrilateral; two of its sides extend along the sea and the space it occupies towards the middle of the land is perfectly equal to that which it has along the coasts. In fact, from Istros to Borysthenes, there are ten days' journey; from Borysthenes to Palus Maiotis, there are ten others: and from the sea, going up through the middle of the land to the country of the Melanchlaines, who live above the Scythians, there are twenty days' journey.

But I count two hundred stadia for each day of the journey. Thus Scythia will have four thousand stadia to cross along the coasts and four thousand other stadia to take straight through the middle of the land. Such is the extent of this country. "

This text curiously combines geometrization and more traditional and imprecise methods of measuring space, characteristic of the genre of itineraries and journeys and based on the number of days of travel.

In another description (II. 32), Herodotus describes the superposition of the different zones of Libya, from the Mediterranean to the desert, the land of sand, without water, devoid of everything.

The schematization creates an effect of ordering and hierarchy: geography leads to anthropology, with a course in the depths of the African continent, which also leads from civilization to the empty space of the desert, passing through the area. wild beasts. (1)

The steppes of Scythia

Some European travelers and Chinese saw in the steppe only a horrible desert where only the last of the savages could survive. “The climate – said Jean de Plan Carpin in the 13th century after having traveled the steppe Mongolian – is strangely irregular. The wind blows in icy storms to the point that it is difficult to ride horses.

In short, the land is huge and different [from our countries]. He is infinitely more miserable than we can describe him ”. Yet in Taras Boulba, Nicolas Gogol sang the Ukrainian steppe, the ancient Scythia of Herodotus, like a sea of grass and flowers:

The Scythians and nomadism

“So all the south to the Black Sea itself was a green and virgin desert. The plow never passed through the endless waves of wild plants. Only the horses, which hid there as if in a forest, trod on them. Nothing in nature could be more beautiful.

The whole surface of the earth formed a green and gold ocean, in which thousands of various flowers sprang up.

The air was filled with a thousand cries of various birds. The hawks hovered motionless in the sky, their wings outstretched, their eyes fixed on the grass. The cry of a flight of wild geese passing out to sea echoed over God knows what distant lake. May the devil take you, steppes, but how beautiful you are! "

Scythian nomads - detail of a vase discovered in the kurgan of Kul-Oba - Russia

Of all the peoples described by Herodotus, the Scythians are arguably among the strangest and most fascinating. They are the very embodiment of the nomadic lifestyle, as Herodotus unfolded the implications of this condition in all aspects of everyday and social life.

Nomads do not live in houses, ignore plowing and sowing. They therefore embody the reverse side of city life. Ignoring agriculture, they cannot be bread eaters and, in Stories, all nomadic peoples are distinguished by aberrant diets from the point of view of the norm Greek :

  • milk drinkers and cheese eaters (the Galactophages): Libyans, Massagetes, Scythians;
  • fish eaters: the Massagetes (I. 216);
  • eat cooked or raw (Indians or Blood sausages);
  • carnivorous, but not all: some herbivorous Indians; the Blood sausages eat pine needles;
  • Androphages: eater of men. The wildest.

The nomadism of the Scythians constitutes a major strategic asset against the armies of Darius who want to conquer their territory: “These advantages consist in not letting those who come to attack them escape and in not being able to be reached when they do not want to be: because they have neither towns nor fortresses. They drag their houses with them; they are skilled at archery while on horseback. They do not live on the fruits of plowing, but on cattle, and have no other house than their wagons ”(IV. 46).

One of the peculiarities of the religion of the nomadic Scythians is to venerate first the goddess Hestia, then Zeus and Gê (the Earth; IV. 49). The presence of Hestia is paradoxical to say the least, since it precisely embodies the sedentary space of the house and the domestic hearth, the element of continuity and rooting of the family stock.

The nomadic Scythians nevertheless had a form of domestic hearth: the king carried away every day, from camp to camp, his own hearth, thus symbolically recreating a place of rooting and a center for his power.

Among the Scythians, Hestia is therefore the goddess of the royal hearth, place of the solemn oath taken by the Scythians, the symbolic center of their ever mobile society. Herodotus in fact describes the paradox of the home of a nomadic city ...

The Scythians mentioned in the Bible

The texts of the prophet Jeremiah which evoke the invasion of horsemen from the North must relate, at least in part, to the ravages of the Scythians:

Scythian warriors

“Before the clamor of the horseman and the archer, the whole city is on the run (4:29). I will bring a nation upon you from a great distance. (…)

It's a lasting nation, it's a very old nation, a nation whose language you don't know and don't understand what it's saying. His quiver is a yawning sepulcher; it is a nation of heroes (5, 15-16).

Behold, a people come from the north, a great nation arises from the ends of the earth; they hold the bow and the javelin firmly, they are barbaric and pitiless; their noise is like the roaring of the sea, they ride horses, they are ready to fight as one man against you, daughter of Zion ”(6,22-23).