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The Scythians : nomad warriors of the steppe / Barry Cunliffe.

by Cunliffe, Barry W. author.

Oxford ; New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2019.

vii, 400 pages : illustrations (chiefly color), maps (chiefly color) ; 26 cm

Discovering the Scythians -- The Scythians as others saw them -- Landscapes with people -- Enter the predatory nomads -- The rise of the Pontic Steppe Scythians: 700-200 BC -- Crossing the Carpathians -- Scythians in central Asia: 700-200 BC -- Bodies clothed in skins -- Bending the bow -- Of gods, beliefs, and art -- The way of death -- Scythians in the Longue Dur?ee.

Brilliant horsemen and great fighters, the Scythians were nomadic horsemen who ranged wide across the grasslands of the Asian steppe from the Altai mountains in the east to the Great Hungarian Plain in the first millennium BC. Their steppe homeland bordered on a number of sedentary states to the south - the Chinese, the Persians and the Greeks - and there were, inevitably, numerous interactions between the nomads and their neighbours. The Scythians fought the Persians on a number of occasions, in one battle killing their king and on another occasion driving the invading army of Darius the Great from the steppe. 0Relations with the Greeks around the shores of the Black Sea were rather different - both communities benefiting from trading with each other. This led to the development of a brilliant art style, often depicting scenes from Scythian mythology and everyday life. It is from the writings of Greeks like the historian Herodotus that we learn of Scythian life: their beliefs, their burial practices, their love of fighting, and their ambivalent attitudes to gender. It is a world that is also brilliantly illuminated by the rich material culture recovered from Scythian burials, from the graves of kings on the Pontic steppe, with their elaborate gold work and vividly coloured fabrics, to the frozen tombs of the Altai mountains, where all the organic material - wooden carvings, carpets, saddles and even tattooed human bodies - is amazingly well preserved. 0Barry Cunliffe here marshals this vast array of evidence - both archaeological and textual - in a masterful reconstruction of the lost world of the Scythians, allowing them to emerge in all their considerable vigour and splendour for the first time in over two millennia.

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