Myths about the origin of the Scythians. Torop S.O

Herodotus reports three legends about the origin of the Scythians:

5. According to the stories of the Scythians, their people are the youngest. And it happened this way. The first inhabitant of this then uninhabited country was a man named Targitai. The parents of this Targitai, as the Scythians say, were Zeus and the daughter of the river Borysthenes, the goddess Api. Targitai was of this kind, and he had three sons: Lipoksai, Arpoksai and the youngest - Kolaksai. During their reign, golden objects fell from the sky onto the Scythian land: a plow, a yoke, an ax and a bowl.

6. The elder brother was the first to see these things. As soon as he approached to pick them up, the gold began to glow. Then he retreated, and the second brother approached, and again the gold was engulfed in flames. So the heat of the flaming gold drove away both brothers, but when the third, younger brother approached, the flame went out, and he took the gold to his house. Therefore, the older brothers agreed to give the kingdom to the younger. So, from Lipoxais, as they say, came the Scythian tribe called the Avchatians, from the middle brother - the tribe of the Katiars and Traspians, and from the youngest of the brothers - the king - the tribe of the Paralats. All the tribes together are called skolots, that is, royal ones. The Hellenes call them Scythians.

7. This is how the Scythians tell about the origin of their people. They think, however, that from the time of the first king Targitai to the invasion of their land by Darius, just 1000 years passed. The Scythian kings carefully guarded the mentioned sacred gold objects and revered them with reverence, making rich sacrifices every year. If at a festival someone falls asleep in the open air with this sacred gold, then, according to the Scythians, he will not live even a year. Therefore, the Scythians give him as much land as he can travel on horseback in a day. Since they had a lot of land, Kolaksais divided it, according to the stories of the Scythians, into three kingdoms between his three sons. He made the largest kingdom where gold was stored (not mined). In the region lying even further north of the land of the Scythians, as they say, nothing can be seen and it is impossible to penetrate there because of flying feathers. And indeed, the ground and air there are full of feathers, and this is what interferes with vision.

8. This is how the Scythians themselves talk about themselves and their neighboring northern countries. The Hellenes who live on Pontus convey it differently. Hercules, driving the bulls of Geryon (usually cows), arrived in this then uninhabited country (now it is occupied by the Scythians). Geryon lived far from Pontus, on an island in the Ocean near Gadir behind the Pillars of Hercules (the Greeks call this island Erythia). The ocean, according to the Hellenes, flows, starting from sunrise, around the entire earth, but they cannot prove this. It was from there that Hercules arrived in what is now called the country of the Scythians. There he was caught by bad weather and cold. Wrapping himself in a pig's skin, he fell asleep, and at that time his draft horses (he let them graze) miraculously disappeared.

9. Having awakened, Hercules went throughout the country in search of horses and finally arrived in a land called Hylea. There, in a cave, he found a certain creature of a mixed nature - half-maiden, half-snake (the Goddess with snakes, the ancestor of the Scythians, is known from a number of ancient images). The upper part of her body from the buttocks was female, and the lower part was snakelike. Seeing her, Hercules asked in surprise if she had seen his lost horses somewhere. In response, the snake woman said that she had the horses, but she would not give them up until Hercules entered into a love affair with her. Then Hercules, for the sake of such a reward, united with this woman. However, she hesitated to give up the horses, wanting to keep Hercules with her as long as possible, and he would gladly leave with the horses. Finally, the woman gave up the horses with the words: “I kept these horses that came to me for you; You have now paid a ransom for them. After all, I have three sons from you. Tell me, what should I do with them when they grow up? Should I leave them here (after all, I alone own this country) or send them to you?” That's what she asked. Hercules answered this: “When you see that your sons have matured, then it is best for you to do this: see which of them can pull my bow like this and gird himself with this belt, as I show you, let him live here. Anyone who does not follow my instructions will be sent to a foreign land. If you do this, then you yourself will be satisfied and fulfill my desire.”

10. With these words, Hercules pulled one of his bows (until then, Hercules carried two bows). Then, having shown how to gird himself, he handed over the bow and belt (a golden cup hung at the end of the belt clasp) and left. When the children grew up, the mother gave them names. She named one Agathirs, the other Gelon, and the younger Scythian. Then, remembering Hercules' advice, she did as Hercules ordered. Two sons - Agathirs and Gelon could not cope with the task, and their mother expelled them from the country. The youngest, Skif, managed to complete the task and remained in the country. From this Scythian, the son of Hercules, all the Scythian kings descended. And in memory of that golden cup, to this day the Scythians wear cups on their belts (this is what the mother did for the benefit of Scythians).

11. There is also a third legend (I myself trust it most). It goes like this. The nomadic tribes of the Scythians lived in Asia. When the Massagetae ousted them from there by military force, the Scythians crossed the Araks and arrived in the Cimmerian land (the country now inhabited by the Scythians is said to have belonged to the Cimmerians since ancient times). As the Scythians approached, the Cimmerians began to hold advice on what to do in the face of a large enemy army. And at the council, opinions were divided. Although both sides stubbornly stood their ground, the kings’ proposal won. The people were in favor of retreat, considering it unnecessary to fight so many enemies. The kings, on the contrary, considered it necessary to stubbornly defend their native land from invaders. So, the people did not heed the advice of the kings, and the kings did not want to submit to the people. The people decided to leave their homeland and give their land to the invaders without a fight; The kings, on the contrary, preferred to die in their native land rather than flee with their people. After all, the kings understood what great happiness they had experienced in their native land and what troubles awaited the exiles deprived of their homeland. Having made this decision, the Cimmerians divided into two equal parts and began to fight among themselves. The Cimmerian people buried all those who fell in the fratricidal war near the Tiras River (the grave of the kings can still be seen there to this day). After this, the Cimmerians left their land, and the Scythians who arrived took possession of the deserted country.

12. And now in the Scythian land there are Cimmerian fortifications and Cimmerian crossings; There is also a region called Cimmeria and the so-called Cimmerian Bosporus. Fleeing from the Scythians to Asia, the Cimmerians occupied the peninsula where the Hellenic city of Sinope is now. It is also known that the Scythians, in pursuit of the Cimmerians, lost their way and invaded the Median land. After all, the Cimmerians constantly moved along the coast of Pontus, while the Scythians, during the pursuit, stayed to the left of the Caucasus until they invaded the land of the Medes. So, they turned inland. This last legend is conveyed equally by both Hellenes and barbarians.

Herodotus. Story. IV.5 - 12

Tribes of Scythia

The main area of ​​settlement of the Scythians is the steppes between the lower reaches of the Danube and Don, including the steppe Crimea and areas adjacent to the Northern Black Sea Coast. The northern border is unclear. The Scythians were divided into several large tribes. According to Herodotus, the dominant ones were royal Scythians- the easternmost of the Scythian tribes, bordering the Don with the Sauromatians, also occupied the steppe Crimea. To the west they lived Scythian nomads, and even further west, on the left bank of the Dnieper - Scythian farmers. On the right bank of the Dnieper, in the basin of the Southern Bug, near the city of Olvia, they lived callipids, or Helleno-Scythians, north of them - alazons, and even further north - Scythian plowmen.

Ancient sources mention a number of other tribes that lived in Scythia or adjacent territories, both related to the Scythians and foreign: Boruski, Agathirs, Gelons, Neuroi (Nervii), Arimaspi, Fissagetae, Iirki, Budins, Melanchlens, Avhatians (Lipoxai), Katiars (arpoxai), traspia (arpoxai), paralates (koloksai, scolota), issedons, taurians, argippea, androphages

Story

Emergence

Scythian culture is actively studied by supporters of the Kurgan hypothesis. Archaeologists date the formation of the relatively generally recognized Scythian culture to the 7th century BC. e. . There are two main approaches to interpreting its occurrence:

§ according to one, based on the so-called “Third Legend” of Herodotus, the Scythians came from the east;

§ another approach, which can also be based on legends recorded by Herodotus, assumes that the Scythians by that time had lived in the Northern Black Sea region for at least several centuries, having separated from the successors of the Timber-frame culture.

Heyday

The beginning of the relatively generally accepted history of the Scythians and Scythia is the 8th century BC. e., the return of the main forces of the Scythians to the Northern Black Sea region, where the Cimmerians had ruled for centuries before. The Cimmerians were forced out of the Northern Black Sea region by the Scythians by the 7th century BC. e. and the Scythian campaigns in Asia Minor. In the 70s of the 7th century BC. e. The Scythians invaded Media, Syria, the Kingdom of Israel and, according to Herodotus, “dominated” in Western Asia, where they created the Scythian Kingdom - Ishkuza, but by the beginning of the 6th century BC. e.were forced out of there. Traces of the presence of the Scythians are also noted in the North Caucasus.

Close relations with the slave-owning cities of the Northern Black Sea region, the intensive trade of the Scythians in cattle, grain, furs and slaves strengthened the process of class formation in Scythian society. It is known that the Scythians had a tribal union, which gradually acquired the features of a unique state of the early slaveholding type, headed by a king. The power of the king was hereditary and deified. It was limited to the union council and the people's assembly. There was a separation of the military aristocracy, warriors and priestly stratum. The political unity of the Scythians was facilitated by their war with the Persian king Darius I in 512 BC. e. - the Scythians were led by three kings: Idanfirs, Skopas and Taxakis. At the turn of the V-IV centuries BC. e. The Scythians became more active on the southwestern borders of Scythia. Expansion into Thrace intensified under King Ataeus, who probably united Scythia under his leadership. This caused a war with the Macedonian king Philip II. However, Justin does not report that Philip crossed the Danube during the campaign against Ataeus, but says that Philip sent ambassadors ahead to inform Ataeus that he was heading to the mouth of the Istra (modern Danube) to erect a statue of Hercules. Based on this, the question of what territories Atey owned remains debatable.

In 339 BC e. King Atheus died in the war with the Macedonian king Philip II. In 331 BC e. Zopyrion, the governor of Alexander the Great in Thrace, invaded the western possessions of the Scythians, besieged Olbia, but the Scythians destroyed his army:

Zopyrion, left by Alexander the Great as governor of Pontus, believing that he would be considered lazy if he did not carry out any undertaking, gathered 30 thousand troops and went to war against the Scythians, but was destroyed with the entire army...

An archaeological study of the Kamensky settlement (with an area of ​​about 1200 hectares) showed that during the heyday of the Scythian kingdom it was the administrative, trade and economic center of the steppe Scythians. Sharp changes in the social structure of the Scythians by the 4th century. BC e. reflected in the appearance in the Dnieper region of grandiose burial mounds of the Scythian aristocracy, the so-called. “royal mounds”, reaching a height of more than 20 m. The kings and their warriors were buried in them in deep and complex funeral structures. The burials of the aristocracy were accompanied by the burial of slain wives or concubines, servants (slaves) and horses.

Warriors were buried with weapons: short akinaki swords with gold sheath linings, a mass of arrows with bronze tips, quivers or goritas lined with gold plates, spears and darts with iron tips. Rich graves often contained copper, gold and silver dishes, Greek painted ceramics and amphorae with wine, and a variety of jewelry, often fine jewelry work by Scythian and Greek craftsmen. During the burial of ordinary Scythian community members, basically the same ritual was performed, but the grave goods were poorer.

A series of Kurganov remain silent.
Both glory and sorrow are buried in those mounds.
Alas forever.
Centuries flashed by, rushing by like a moment.
The planet is spinning as before.
The one who had power over the world yesterday...
That one is now dust and decay, and forgotten by everyone.
No one values ​​him more on earth,
The ringing of swords does not disturb the young heart.
And the glory of victory does not hurt.
Everything calmed down.
And will not return from the graves.
And there was time. Glory carried them.
Like a golden chariot.
But clouds gathered over the Scythian country.
The power of this cloud is dark and formidable.
And within it lurks a fatal flame.
The flame burns everything it meets in front of it.
It will sparkle and be hidden in the clouds again.
They cannot find a shield from the arrows that throw death!
The army and people are in full view.
In the boundless steppe there is no shelter for anyone...
And the enemy is merciless and rude.
The Scythians' strength is running out.
And the steppe was covered in horror.
The grass turned gray from fear.
Everything that bloomed and pleased the eye.
Everything turned to dust... and blood flowed in the steppe.
The vault of the sky turned black with grief, groans and prayers.
There is no more peace under this sky - alas.
Huts burned down. Palaces have been destroyed.
And countless treasures were destroyed...
27.01.08

(Epigraph: “I greet you, who has found death here!”)
Almost next to the dacha, on the shore of the Taganrog Bay, in one row to the left and right of the “Tsarsky” mound there are five smaller mounds along the road. This is a place between Tanais and Taganrog.

Historical information from various sources.

We all studied History at different times. But without encountering this science professionally, many of us experience the so-called substitution of information. This means that instead of the truth, “Fictions” settle into our consciousness. Sometimes these fictions are beautiful. But nevertheless less, they remain fictions.

Scythians (Greek) - an exoethnonym of Greek origin, applied to some tribes and peoples who lived in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Siberia during the era of antiquity and the time of the Great Migration.
The Scythians were divided into several large tribes. According to Herodotus, the dominant ones were the royal Scythians - the easternmost of the Scythian tribes, bordering the Sauromatians along the Don.
To the west of them lived the Scythian nomads, and even further west, on the left bank of the Dnieper, the Scythian farmers.
On the right bank of the Dnieper, in the basin of the Southern Bug, near the city of Olbia, lived the Callipids, or Hellino-Scythians, to the north of them - the Alazons, and even further north - the Scythian ploughmen, and Herodotus points to agriculture as a difference from the Scythians of the last three tribes and clarifies that if the Callipids and Alazons grow and eat bread, then the Scythian plowmen grow bread for sale. Nowadays, the Scythians are usually understood as Iranian-speaking nomads who in the past occupied the territories of Ukraine, Moldova, Southern Russia, Kazakhstan and parts of Siberia.
After the Scythians' victory over the Egyptians, Asia paid tribute to the Scythians for 1500 years. Then the Assyrians ruled Asia for 1300 years, and the Medes for 350 years. The end of the rule of the Medes was associated with the reign of the Persian king Cyrus (mid-6th century BC); the victory of the Scythians, according to Pompey Trogus, dates back to approximately 3700 BC. e.

The Scythians are the youngest people, as Herodotus said. 1000 years passed from the first king Targitai to the campaign of Darius. According to his own data, Pharaoh Sesostris, who conquered the Scythians, ruled two generations before the Trojan War.
The visit of the Scythians by Hercules, from whose son Scythian the Scythian kings descended, Herodotus recounts later the story of Targitai, and, according to Greek ideas, Hercules lived a generation before the Trojan War. Therefore, the appearance of the Scythians corresponds approximately to the 16th century BC. e., and their war with the Egyptians and the birth of Scythian, son of Hercules - XIII century BC. e.
By the end of the 3rd century BC. e. The Scythian power was significantly reduced under the onslaught of the related Sarmatians, who came from beyond the Don. The capital of the Scythians was moved to Crimea, where Scythian Naples arose on the Salgir River (within the boundaries of modern Simferopol), probably founded by King Skilur.
Tanai (Tanauzis) - king of the Scythians, who fought with one of the pharaohs.
There are several options for explaining the name mentioned in Justin and Jordan. According to one of them, it is associated with the name Tanais, according to another, it is simply a handwritten distortion of the Iandis variant, which in turn represents a modification of Herodotus’ Idanfirs.
Atey - the most powerful king of the Scythians (IV century BC)
Skilur - king of the Scythians of Crimea and the surrounding area in the 2nd century. BC e.
Palak - the son of Skilur, unsuccessfully fought with Chersonese.
The tribes of the Sarmatians or Savromats, related to the Scythians, originally lived in the Volga region and the Ural steppes. According to Herodotus, the Sarmatians came from the union of Scythian youths and Amazons.
Herodotus reports that “the Sauromatians speak the Scythian language, but distorted from ancient times.” From the 4th century BC e. Several wars take place between the Sarmatians and the Scythians, as a result of which the Sarmatians took a dominant position in European Scythia, which was later called Sarmatia in ancient sources.

There is only one life measured in this world.
And we cannot ask for another in return.
What did you get from the almighty sky?
One moment!
Enjoy it to the end.
28.01.08

Mirfatykh ZAKIEV

From his book TATARS: Problems of history and language. (Collection of articles on problems of linguistic history; revival and development of the Tatar nation). Kazan, 1995. – P.12-37.

§ 1. Modern official historical science about the ethnic roots of the Tatar people. The ethnic roots of the Tatar people are connected with its linguistic components - the Turkic tribes. Official historical science claims that the first Turks came to Eastern Europe from Asia only in the 4th century. AD under the general name of the Huns (in Turkic: hen or sen), the so-called Great Migration of Nations allegedly began with their movement from Asia to Europe.

According to the widespread opinion of historians, before the Great Migration of Peoples, Eastern Europe, Western Siberia, Kazakhstan, Central Asia, and partly Central and Asia Minor were inhabited mainly by Iranian-speaking tribes. This opinion is based on the fact that the Scythians, who, according to Greek historians, lived in these regions in the 9th–3rd centuries. BC, as well as the Sarmatians, who in the 3rd century. BC. replaced the Scythians and lived until the 3rd century. AD, were supposedly only Iranian-speaking.

Indo-European linguists came to this conclusion on the basis of the etymologization of Scythian and Sarmatian words recorded in the sources only with the help of Indo-Iranian languages, stubbornly excluding other languages, especially Turkic, from these linguistic operations. In an uncontrollable desire to “prove” the Iranian-speaking nature of this population, scientists completely rejected those studies that were carried out before them and according to which the Scythians and Sarmatians were recognized as mainly Turkic-speaking.

Historians believed with great pleasure the conclusion of Indo-European linguists that the Scythians and Sarmatians were exclusively Iranian-speaking. They began to look for other historical arguments proving the adequacy of this theory. And Indo-European archaeologists also with great pleasure classified all archaeological cultures of the Scythian and Sarmatian period in the above regions as Iranian-speaking tribes. And now Indo-European linguists, who consider the Scythians and Sarmatians to be Iranian-speaking, refer to archaeological data to strengthen their conclusions. It turns out to be a vicious circle: archaeologists, guided by the opinion of linguists, classify the archaeological cultures of the Scythian and Sarmatian period as Iranian-speaking tribes, and Iranian linguists refer to the findings of archaeologists to confirm their theory. Thus, Indo-European linguists, historians, and archaeologists purposefully act towards expanding the territory of their ancestral homeland.

As for the Volga and Urals region specifically, the Scythians and Sarmatians lived here too, but next to the Finno-Ugric tribes, who occupied mainly the forest zone. Therefore, some archaeological cultures of this region, dating back to the period before the “arrival” here in the 4th century. Huns, are recognized as Iranian, and some as Finno-Ugric [Khalikov A.Kh., 1969, 3, 373]. Turkic archaeological cultures, naturally, have not been found, because before the arrival of the Huns there were supposedly no Turks in Eastern Europe at all.

The question of the time of the so-called Turkization of the Middle Volga and Urals remains controversial in official historical science. Some believe that the first Turks penetrated into this region in the form of the Huns immediately after their arrival in Eastern Europe in the middle of the 4th century. Other scientists are of the opinion that the Turkization of the Middle Volga and Urals regions supposedly occurred only in the 8th century. in connection with the arrival here of the first Bulgars from the disintegrated country of the Great Bulgars of the North Caucasus and the Black Sea region.

There are different opinions regarding the succession of the Bulgars and Tatars. Some, mainly Tatar scholars, believe that the Bulgars spoke a common Turkic language and were a language-bearing component of the Tatars. Others believe that the Volga Bulgars did not speak the usual Turkic language, but a Chuvash-like language, and their arrival was formed only by the Chuvash people; as for the Tatar people, it was allegedly formed mainly from those Tatars who came to the Volga region and the Urals along with the Mongol troops at the beginning XIII century, naturally, with the subsequent acceptance of part of the Chuvash-speaking Bulgars and local Finno-Ugric peoples. This view limits the roots of the Tatars in the Volga and Urals region to the 13th century. We cannot help but note the presence of such scientists who, based on a superficial study of Bulgar epigraphy, claim that allegedly part of the Bulgars, under the influence of the Kipchaks, separated from the Chuvash-speaking Bulgars only in the middle of the 14th century. and this allegedly marked the beginning of the formation of the Tatar people. There are even scientists who associate the beginning of the formation of the Tatars with the arrival and proliferation of the Kipchaks in the area where the Bulgar plague occurred in the middle of the 14th century. Allegedly after the widespread death of the Bulgars in the middle of the 14th century. Bulgaro-Chuvash words disappear from Bulgar epigraphy.

Thus, there are different opinions about the time of germination of the roots of the Tatar people in the Volga region and the Urals: this is the 4th century, and the 8th century, and the 9th century, and the 13th century, and the 14th century.

The study of the beginning and process of formation of the Tatar people or its linguistic component is complicated by the fact that some scientists are trying to place the so-called Greater Hungary in the Middle Volga and Urals regions.

As is known, Arab and Persian travelers of the 9th–10th centuries. in their descriptions of the Middle Volga region they write about the Magyars (Majars, Majgars, etc.) and always note that the Madjars speak Turkic. Despite the fact that the Volga region Madjars were definitely Turkic-speaking, some scientists of the 19th and 20th centuries, based on the identification of the Turkic ethnonym Madjar (variants: Mazhgar, Mozhar, Mishar, Mochar) with the Hungarian self-name Magyars, classified them as Hungarian-speaking Magyars and began to argue that that in the Middle Volga region and the Urals in the VI-VIII centuries. lived the Hungarians who formed “Greater Hungary” [Erdeyi I., 1961, 307–320]. Supporters of this point of view came to the conclusion that the Turkic-speaking Mishars and Bashkirs were then formed by Turkicizing the Hungarians who remained in our region after the departure of the main part of them in the 8th century. to the west.

Despite the fact that the Hungarian-Mishar and Hungarian-Bashkir theories were finally rejected at the beginning of the 20th century. and thus the inconsistency of the point of view about the presence in the VI-VIII centuries was proven. “Greater Hungary” in the Middle Volga region and the Urals, our local archaeologists persistently searched for traces of the Hungarians in this region and finally “found” them in the region of the Lower Kama and Belaya. This is the Bolshe-Tigansky burial ground in the Lower Kama region [Khalikova E.A., 1976, 158–178] and the Kushnarenkovo ​​archaeological culture in the Belaya River basin [Hungarians, 1987, 236-239].

But the issue with the Hungarians in the Middle Volga region and the Urals is complicated by the fact that there are no Hungarian borrowings in either the Tatar or Bashkir languages. This could be explained by the arrival here of the Turkic-speaking component of the ancestors of the Tatars and Bashkirs only after the Hungarians left to the West at the turn of the 8th–9th centuries. How can we explain the absence of Hungarian toponyms in the region under study? In our opinion, only because Hungarians did not live in the Middle Volga and Urals regions, and there was no “Greater Hungary” there. Consequently, eastern travelers, all unanimously pointing out the Turkic-speaking nature of the Madjars, wrote about the Turkic-speaking Mishars, and not about the Hungarian-speaking Magyars. Therefore, the travel notes of Arab and Persian travelers do not provide grounds for raising the question of the location of the Hungarians in the Middle Volga and Urals regions. If we take the similarity of the Bolshe-Tigan and Kushnarenkovsky burial grounds with the burial grounds in Hungary, then it could be explained by the fact that these burial grounds in Hungary belonged to Turkic tribes, which were somehow connected with the Turks of our region.

As for the Scythians and Sarmatians, who lived in the Volga region and the Urals before the “arrival” of the Huns here, then, as we will see below, they were not Iranian-speaking in this region. If they were such, then we should have a mass of Iranian-language place names in the Middle Volga and Urals regions. But we do not observe such a phenomenon here.

Thus, in the official historical science, which arose and developed only on the basis of Indo-European studies, there is still no consensus about the beginning of the formation of the main, language-bearing component of the Tatar people in the Volga and Urals regions.

§ 2. Historians about the Scythians and Sarmatians. In modern official historical science, although the Scythians and Sarmatians are recognized as Iranian-speaking (in particular, Ossetian-speaking), in the historiography of this problem we also encounter other points of view.

In the second half of the 18th century. Russian scientists are beginning to become interested in Greek historical sources. First, Herodotus’s work “History” is translated from German, then directly from Greek into Russian, which attracts the attention of the Russian historian Andrei Lyzlov, who knew Russian and Western historical works very well. He was also familiar with the Turkic world, for he translated into Russian the work of S. Starovolsky “The Court of the Turkish Caesar,” published in 1649 in Krakow in Polish. In 1692, Andrei Lyzlov completed his work “Scythian History,” which existed in manuscripts. In 1776 - partially, and in 1787 this work was published in full by the famous public figure and writer N.I. Novikov.

In his work, A. Lyzlov first proves his thesis that the Turks (in his terminology: Tatars and Turks) descend from the Scythians. In the subsequent sections of “Scythian History” the author sets out the history of the relationship between European peoples and Russians with the Tatars and Turks, i.e. descendants of the Scythians [Lyzlov A., 1787]. The historiographer of Herodotus’s “History” A.A. Neihardt concludes from this that “the name “Scythian History” thus turned out to be very conditional” [Neihardt A.A., 1982, 9]. Another specialist on the Scythians, S.A. Semenov-Zuser, considers A. Lyzlov’s work “the first work known to us in Russian literature” [Semyonov-Zuser S.A., 1947, 11].

At the beginning of the 18th century. interest in the Scythians is growing. At the request of Peter I, who was interested in the problems of the origin of the Slavs, the Viennese scientist G.V. Leibniz intensively begins to study the history of the Slavs and in one of his letters in 1708 he writes: “By Sarmatians I mean all the Slavic tribes, which the ancients called Sarmatians, before the name Slavs or Slavs became known” [Leibniz G.V., 1873, 211].

Next, Gottlieb Siegfried Bayer, invited from Germany in 1725 to the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, addressed the problem of the Scythian-Sarmatians. He reasons like this: the Scythians are a people who came from Asia, and the Slavs are autochthonous, therefore the Scythians cannot be considered Slavs. In his opinion, the descendants of the Scythians were Finns, Livs, and Estonians [Neihardt A.A., 1982, 12].

Russian historian of the 18th century. V.N. Tatishchev considers the word Scythian as a collective name. He writes: “... in the name Scythians, many different peoples, such as the Slavs, Sarmatians and Turks, Mongals, or even more so, the entire eastern-northern region of Asia and Europe, including Germany, Persia and China, were included, and this name, it seems, is about The 10th century after Christ died out, when people began to be more clearly informed about the peoples, however, those peoples did not disappear, but somewhere under other names they remained to this day... among Europeans in the third century in the tenth century after Christ the name of the Tatars became famous, and both of them they began to use Scythian instead” [Tatishchev V.N., 1962, 232 -233].

M.V. Lomonosov believed that the Finns were formed from the Scythians, and the Slavs from the Sarmatians [Neihardt A.A., 1982, 17–18].

At the end of the 18th century. N.M. Karamzin begins to take an interest in the history of the Scythians and expresses the idea that all the peoples of Eurasia in the time of Herodotus were called by the collective ethnonyms Scythians and Sarmatians [Karamzin N.M., 1818, 5–12].

In the 19th century archaeological excavations give scientists the opportunity to assert that Herodotus and other ancient Greek historians adequately reflected the history of the peoples of Eurasia. Translations into Russian of the works of other Greek historians are published. Conditions are being created for a broad study of the ancient history of the region.

In 1838, academician E.I. Eichwald, who previously worked at Kazan and Vilna universities, conducts research on Herodotus’ “History” and uses it to try to recreate the history of the Slavs, Finns, Turks and Mongols. He comes to the conclusion that the Scythians were not a single people, that the name Scythians meant those peoples who still live in the so-called Scythian territories [Eichwald E.I., 1838, v. 27].

In the first half of the 19th century. German historian B.G. Niebuhr considers the Scythians to be Mongols, which then included the Turks [Niebuhr B.G., 1847].

In his work, published in 1837 in Munich, K. Zeiss begins a new stage in the study of Scythian history. For the first time, he begins to identify the Scythians with Iranian-speaking tribes. In his opinion, this opinion is supported by religion, the location of the Iranians and general Scythian and Persian words [Dovatur A.I., 1982, 47].

Another German scientist K. Neumann in 1855, based on the same signs of religion and language, claims that the Scythians were Turks, and the Sarmatians were Slavs [ibid., 50].

P.I. Safarik considers the Scythians to be Mongols, which then included the Turks; Sarmatians - Persians; Budinov and Nevrov - Slavs [Shafarik P.I., 1948; Dovatur A.I., 1982, 48].

In the 60s XIX century K. Mullenhoff analyzes Scythian and Sarmatian words from the point of view of Indo-European languages ​​and comes to the conclusion that the Scythians were mainly Iranian-speaking, that Iranian-speaking tribes used to live far north of Iran, and what remains of them now are the Ossetians [Dovatur A.I., 1982 , 53].

After K. Mullenhoff, the Scythian-Iranian theory attracts many linguists and historians who find additional materials in its favor. This theory became attractive, apparently, because it made it possible to expand the ancestral homeland of the Indo-European peoples. A characteristic feature of scientists of this trend was their unity against dissidents; they criticized them very sharply, even considering them illiterate, insignificant scientists.

But, despite this, all the time there were scientists who criticized the Scythian-Iranian theory and proved the Slavic-speaking, Turkic-speaking, Mongol-speaking or Finno-Ugric-speaking Scythians.

§ 3. What is the Scythian-Iranian theory based on? If this theory corresponds to reality, then it must be based on all possible data: linguistic, religious-mythological, ethnographic and archaeological.

A well-known specialist in Scythian history, L.A. Elnitsky, based on a comprehensive analysis of historical works and factual material, comes to the conclusion that “the remnants of Scythian culture were long and stubbornly retained in the culture of the Turkic-Mongolian (and to a somewhat lesser extent, Slavic and Finno-Ugric) peoples” [Elnitsky L.A., 1977, 243]. Archaeological materials, especially the so-called animal style in art, also do not reject the closeness of the Scythian and Turkic-Mongolian cultures. As for religious characteristics, we can say the following: if the Scythians were Iranian-speaking, then they would have had the same common deity with the Persians and in no case would have been at enmity with each other for so long and stubbornly, as Herodotus describes. Next we will see that the names of the Scythian gods can be explained based on the Turkic language.

The totality of archaeological materials gives grounds for L.A. Elnitsky to assert that there were few Iranian elements in the Scythians. He writes: “I would like to think, moreover, that one can speak about the Iranianism of the Cimmerians and Scythians only in relation to some part of the tribes that bore these collective names” [Elnitsky L.A., 1977, 241].

Consequently, the Scythian-Iranian theory cannot be unconditionally based on ethnographic, religious-mythological and archaeological materials. Official historical science believes that it is based on linguistic data, which are of decisive importance for determining the ethnicity of ancient tribes.

The formation of the Scythian-Iranian theory begins with the “finding” of Iranian roots in those words that are preserved in various sources as Cimmerian, Scythian and Sarmatian. These etymological studies are begun by K. Myllengoff, continued by Vs. Miller and M. Vasmer. After them, the Scythian-Iranian theory becomes, as it were, an axiom for official historical science.

In Soviet times, V.I. Abaev persistently and purposefully studied Scythian etymology from the point of view of the Ossetian language, who invented a special Scythian or Scythian-Sarmatian language in the system of Indo-European languages. In his work “Dictionary of Scythian Words,” 353 Scythian words recorded in the sources are transformed into ancient Ossetian lexical units through phonetic transformations [Abaev V.I., 1949, 151-195].

Before we begin the analysis of Abaev’s etymologies, let us pay attention to the statement of V.I. Abaev about the significance of his research: “I analyzed undeniably Iranian elements and I hope that this puts an end to frivolous and irresponsible speculation on Scythian material, which has nothing to do with science ” [ibid., 148]. When a scientist rushes at his potential opponents with such zeal, this already indicates the weakness of his position. The etymologies of V.I. Abaev really suffer from unsystematic nature and many semantic inconsistencies.

V.I.Abaev and his predecessors begin their Scythian-Iranian etymology with the personal names of the ancestor of the Scythians Targitai and his sons Lipoksai, Arpoksai, Kolaksai.

Targitai, according to supporters of the Scythian-Iranian theory, consists of two parts: darga and tava: in ancient Iranian darga 'long' or 'sharp', tava 'power, strength', Targitai 'long-powerful or arrow-powerful* [Abaev V.I. ., 1949, 163; Miller Vs., 1887, 127].

From the perspective of the Turkic language, the word targitai consists of targy or taryg - other Turkic. ‘farmer’ and soy~toy ​​– Turkic. - 'genus'; in general – ‘the family or ancestor of farmers’. In addition, the name Targitai is found not only in Herodotus; it appears among the Avars as a Turkic name. Theophylact Simokatta (historian of the 7th century) reports that “Targitius is a prominent man in the Avars tribe” [Simokatta F., 1957, 35]. Menander the Byzantine reports that in 568, the leader of the Avars, Bayan, sent Targitai to the king demanding a concession from him [Byzantine historians, 1861, 392]. The Avars of the same Targitai sent ambassadors to Byzantium in 565 [ibid., 418]. In the 2nd century. Polien reports that the Scythians living near the Maeot (Azov) Sea had a famous woman named Tirgatao [Latyshev V.V., 1893, 567]. Consequently, these Scythians were Turkic-speaking.

Lipoksai is the eldest son of Targitai. Abaev borrows the etymology of this word from Vasmer. The second part, in his opinion, consists of the root xaya~khsay ‘to shine, shine, dominate’, Ossetian. – ‘princess, dawn’; the first part is not clear, there may be a distortion instead of Horaxais: cf. etc. Iran. hvar-xsaita ‘sun’, Pers. Xorsed [Abaev V.I., 1949, 189].

Let's compare this with Turkic etymology. Turk. soy ‘genus, surname, relatives, ancestors, generation, descendants, race, origin’; ak ‘white, noble, rich’; aksoy ‘noble, rich family, holy family, ancestor’, etc. Among the Turkic peoples, first names and surnames with the soy element are common: Aksoy, Paksoy, Koksoy. The first part is lip~lipo~lep ‘border’. In general, Lipoksai ‘a holy family that has (protects) boundaries, i.e. own country'.

Arpoksai is the middle son of Targitai. Abaev immediately turns the first part into apra and derives from the Iranian roots ap ‘water’ and oset. ra, arf ‘deep’; apra ‘water depth’; hsaya ‘lord’; apra-khsaya ‘lord of the waters’ [Abaev V.I., 1949, 189]. Let's compare this with Turkic etymology. We already know about the second part: aksoy ‘holy family, noble family’. The first part is arpa ‘barley, grain, product’; arpalyk ‘possession (of land)’; Arpaksai ‘head of a clan that owns arable land, land territory, or a clan of farmers’.

Kolaksai is the youngest son of Targitai. According to Vasmer and Abaev, the second part is khsay ‘to shine, shine, dominate’, in Ossetian khsart ‘valor’, khsin ‘princess’, khsed ‘dawn’, etc.; the first part is not clear, maybe a distortion instead of horaxais, cf. ancient Iran. hvar-khshaita ‘sun’ [Abaev V.I., 1949, 189]. Supporters of the Scythian-Iranian theory sometimes bring this name to the phonetic form of the Persians. Skolakhshaya and declare Kolaksai the king of the Scythian-Persian clan [Dovatur A.I., 1982, 207–208].

Let's compare this with Turkic etymology. The second part of the word Kolaksai is aksai ‘noble, holy family’; first part – Kola~kala ‘city, capital’; Kolaksai ‘noble, holy family, having (protecting) a capital, a country’.

If we systematize the Iranian etymologies of the names of father Targitai and his three sons Lipoksai, Arpoksai and Kolaksai, we get: Targitai ‘long-powerful’, Lipoksai ‘sunshine’, Arpaksai ‘lord of the waters’, Kolaksai ‘sunshine or clattered’. There is no etymological, semantic and lexical-structural system here.

Let us consider the system in the Turkic etymology of the names of a father and his three sons. Targitai ‘agricultural noble family’, Lipoksai ‘noble family guarding its borders’, Arpoksai ‘noble family guarding its possessions’; Kolaksai ‘noble family guarding the capital (i.e. kingdom). The last, youngest son, according to the stories of Herodotus, takes over the kingdom from his father after he brought to his house golden objects that fell from the sky: a plow, a yoke, an ax and a cup [Herodotus, 1972, IV, 5].

Another word, the etymology of which serves as proof of the correctness of the Scythian-Iranian theory, is the ethnonym Sak~Saka. Since the Persians call the Scythians this ethnonym, it is considered a Persian word. But at the same time, it could be accepted by the Persians from the Scythians themselves - non-Iranians. According to Abaev, other Persians. Saka (with the meaning Scythian) belongs to the deer totem [Abaev V.I., 1949, 179]. Ossetian. sag ‘deer’ from saka ‘branch, bough, deer horn, branch-horned’. As many historians think, Sak is the name of one of the Scythian tribes, which was accepted by the Persians as the ethnonym of all Scythians. None of the ancient authors notes the meaning of the ethnonym Sak ~ Saka in the sense of 'deer', and Stefan of Byzantium reports that “Saka is a people, so the Scythians are called from 'armor', because they invented it” [Latyshev V.V. , 1893, vol. 1, issue. 1, 265]. Here the word saka comes close to the Turkic sak~sagi ‘protection, security, careful’. In addition, we must take into account that in Turkic. sagdak ‘quiver’, i.e. ‘case for defense weapons’. Sagai is an ethnonym of the Turkic people between Altai and Yenisei, part of the Khakass people, Saka is an ethnonym of the Yakuts. Thus, sagay~saka~sak is a Turkic word that became the ethnonym of one of the Scythian tribes, and it was also adopted by the Persians as their common ethnonym.

Ababa (Hababa) is the name of the mother of the Roman Emperor Maximin, she is apparently an Alan. Thinking that Alans are Iranian-speaking, Abaev etymologizes this word as follows: Iran. hi ‘good, kind’; wab ‘to weave’; thus Hiwaba ‘good weaver’. In Turkic ab ‘hunting’, eb~ev ‘house’, aba ‘father, mother, sister’, Ababa ‘mother of the hunt or mother of the house, i.e. brownie in a good way’.

Sagadar according to Abaev: saka + gift ‘having deer’ – the name of a tribe on the Danube [Abaev V.I., 1949, 179]. In Turkic: saga is a Turkic ethnonym, -dar-lar is a plural affix; Sagadar ‘saga’.

In order to prove that the Scythians are unconditionally Ossetian-speaking, Vs.Miller calculated that in Scythian words the Ossetian plural affix is ​​repeated twenty times. date [Miller Vs. 1886, 281 -282]. A more careful analysis shows that -ta in the words given by Miller can be identified with Turkic affixes or plural. numbers -ta (-la in Balkar), or possession -ty (-dy-ly), or likening -tai.

All Scythian words collected by V.I. Abaev in his “Dictionary of Scythian Words” could thus be re-etymologized from the point of view of those languages ​​whose speakers lived and live in the so-called Scythian regions. Or rather, this must be done, but with subsequent comparison of the results of Iranian, Turkic, Slavic and Finno-Ugric etymological studies. Only after this operation can we definitely say which ethnic groups lived under the general name of first the Cimmerians, and then the Scythians, Sarmatians, and Alans-Asses. As the comparisons of Iranian etymologies with Turkic ones given here show, the Scythians most likely were not Iranians, or there were very few Iranian speakers among them; they were basically Turks, and must have been Slavs and Finno-Ugrians, for the latter did not fall from the sky, but lived in their (ancient “Scythian”) regions from ancient times.

§ 4. What do Scythian-Turkic etymologies talk about? Due to the fact that the Scythian etymologies of Herodotus are not confirmed from the point of view of Iranian languages, he is still considered a frivolous linguist, although he was recognized as an outstanding historian and ethnographer [Borukhovich V.T., 1972, 482, 493]. There is no doubt that if Herodotus' etymologies are examined from the point of view of the multi-ethnicity of the Scythian tribes, then the scientific integrity of Herodotus and the consistency of his linguistic descriptions of the peoples of Scythia will certainly be confirmed.

Now let's look at some Herodotus etymologies of Scythian words that do not find confirmation from the point of view of Iranian languages. Thus, Herodotus reports that the Scythians call the Amazons eorpata, which in Hellenic means ‘man-killers’: after all, eor means ‘husband’, and pata ‘kill’ [Herodotus, 1972, IV, 110]. There is a very transparent Turkic etymology here: eor~ir~er ‘husband’, pata~vata~wata ‘breaks, beats, kills’. In general, the meaning of eorpata coincides with the Turkic ervata ‘kills the husband’.

Herodotus reports that the Scythian word enarei means ‘effeminate men’ [ibid., IV, 67]. And the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates (5th century BC) explains that “among the Scythians there are many eunuchs, they do women’s work and speak like women; such men are called enareans [Latyshev V.V., 1893, 63]. V.I.Abaev gives this word an Iranian etymology: Iran. a ‘not, without’, nar ‘man’, a-nar-ya ‘not a man, half a man’ [Abaev V.I., 1949]. This word almost coincides with the Turkic ineir-anair, which is translated, like Herodotus, as ‘effeminate man’.

According to Herodotus, among the Scythians the word Arimaspi means ‘one-eyed people’. Among the Scythians, arima ‘unit’, and spu ‘eye’ [Herodotus, 1972, IV, 27]. If we assume that one-eyed people mean people with half-closed eyes, then arima can be defined as the Turkic yarim ‘half, half’, and spu~ sepi ‘slightly open eye’. Thus, the Scythian arimaspi and the Turkic yarymsepi ‘half-blind, half-open, half-sighted’ almost coincide.

Herodotus connects the city of Cyzicus with the ritual of the festival [Herodotus, IV, 76]. This city, located on the Asia Minor shore of the Sea of ​​Marmara, later became known as the city of Tamashalyk, which means ‘spectacle’. The same meaning is conveyed by the Turkic word kizik~kyzyk.

According to the first legend about the origin of the Scythians, Herodotus calls them the ancestors of Targitai and their sons Lipoksai, Arpoksai and Kolaksai. As we have already seen above, these names are etymologized more convincingly in Turkic than in Iranian.

The second legend about the origin of the Scythians says that Hercules, driving the bulls of Geryon, arrived in an uninhabited country. Here he was caught by bad weather and cold. Wrapping himself in a pig's skin, he fell asleep, and at that time his horses disappeared. Having awakened, Hercules began to look for horses. In one cave he found a certain creature - half-maiden, half-snake. She told Hercules that she had the horses, but she would not give them up until Hercules entered into a love affair with her. They had three sons. She named them Agathirs, Gelon, and the youngest - Scythian. On the advice of Hercules, the mother arranged a competition between her sons. Only Scythian was able to pull his father's bow and gird himself with his belt, so he remained in the country. From this Scythian, the son of Hercules, all the Scythian kings descended [Herodotus. 1972. IV, 8, 9, 10].

Türkic zh (j) alternates freely with y, which in Greek. usually transmitted through the city of Hercules - in Turkic Zhirakl~Yirakl ‘earthly mind’; The smart one defeats everyone, therefore, he is a hero, a hero. In Greek, Hercules is ‘famous hero, hero’.

The first son of Hercules is Agathyrs, or rather Agadiros. Here -os is the Greek ending of the name; up ‘man, person, people’; agad-agas-agach ‘tree, forest’ (the interdental d~t was written in Russian through the Greek letter theta and was rendered as f: Theodore-Theodore, skete-Scythian, Agadir-Agafir, etc.). Agadir ‘forest people or people whose totem is a tree’. Later we meet this ethnonym in the forms Akatsir-Agach Eri with the same meaning. With such semantics in the Turkic language we also have the ethnonyms Burtas (Burt-as ‘forest people’), Misher (Mishe-er ‘forest people’).

The middle son of Hercules is Gelon, in Turkic zhelon-zhylan-yylan ‘snake’. This is the natural name of the son of a half-snake mother.

The youngest son of Hercules is Scythian, or rather Skid-Skeet. Scythian is not decipherable in Iranian. In Turkic, the word monastery consists of ski-eski-iski and -t-ty-ly. The last affix is ​​the affix of possession in Turkic languages; the first part of eske apparently goes back to the word yshky, i.e. pychak ‘knife’. Isky-t~isky-ly ‘with a knife, a man with a knife’ [Zakiev M.Z., 1986, 35, 37, 38; Smirnova O.I., 1981, 249 - 255]. It is noteworthy that part of the eski (eske-ishky) was used by the Turks as an independent ethnonym [Kononov A.N., 1958, 74]. In addition, it must be borne in mind that the name Scythians appears in Assyrian documents of the 7th century. BC. as Asguza-Iskuza-Ishguza [Elnitsky L.A., 1977, 25]. Here the ancient name of the Turkic tribes As~ash and Guz~oguz (Ak-guz) emerges clearly.

Skolot is the self-name of the Scythians; its etymology could not be explained using Iranian languages. In Turkic, skolot consists of the part ysky-sko, -lo is an affix of possession, -t is the second affix of possession. Skolo is skity-skyt-skite, skolote ‘people mixed by Scythians’.

Along with the ethnonym Scythian, Herodotus also gives the ethnonym Sauromat, which was used to call a people related to the Scythians. Later, its modified form Sarmatian began to be used instead of Scythian. According to Abaev, Savromat~Sarmat is an Ossetian word with the meaning ‘black-armed or dark-armed’ [Abaev V.I., 1949, 184]. In order to call some black-armed, there must be others nearby, for example, red-armed or white-armed. Therefore, Abaev’s etymology is not at all convincing. In Turkic sarma ‘bags made of calf fur with the wool on the outside’. A rope twisted from horsehair was threaded through the ears, sewn to the upper edge of such a bag, with the help of which the sarma was attached to the saddle. A pack of provisions was transported in it [Khozyaystvo, 1979, 142]. Sarma-ty~sarma-ly is ‘a person with sarma’.

Herodotus reports on Argippaeans, mentioning that they feed on tree fruits. The name of the tree whose fruits are eaten is pontic. The ripe fruit is squeezed through a cloth, and black juice called ashi flows out of it. They lick this juice and drink it, mixing it with milk. They prepare cakes from the thickets of askha for food [Herodotus, 1972, IV, 23]. Many historians identify the Argippeans with the Bashkirs. This is quite likely, since the Bashkirs, when meeting the Greeks, could proudly introduce themselves as irat ‘real men’ and, perhaps, tried to translate this into Greek, but translated only the second part - at-hippei. This is how the word argippaeus could appear.

In this message there are also the words pontik and ashi, which can be etymologized as pontik - bun-tek - bunlyk, where the ancient Turkic word bun is ‘soup, stew’, and pontik means intended for making stew; and as ashi~asgy, i.e. suitable for human consumption (as-ash ‘food’). The Turks actually dry marshmallows from the thickets of ashi.

The etymology of the Scythian word Kaukas (Caucasus) is interesting. The first part - kau - in Turkic means ‘gray-yellow-white’, it is used in the ethnonym kyuchak~kyfchak~kypchak~kyu-kizhi, etc.; kyu ‘swan’. The fact that in the word Caucasus kau-kyu expresses the meaning ‘whiteness’ is proven by another Scythian name for the Caucasus - Kroukas. Pliny Secundus (1st century AD) writes that the Scythians call the Caucasus Mountains Kroukas, i.e. ‘white from snow’ [Latyshev V.V., 1896, vol. 1, issue. 2, 185]. In Turkic, Kyrau is frost, hoarfrost, snow. The second part of the words Caucasus and Kroukas is kas, it means ‘rock, rocky mountain’. Compare: in the Altai language kaskak ‘sheer slope’, common alt. kad~kaz ‘rock, cliff’.

There is interesting Scythian-Turkic material in Scythian mythological words.

Hestia - the goddess of the hearth - in Scythian Tabiti, apparently from the word taboo 'to find, to get out'.

Zeus is the supreme god, king and father of gods and people - in Scythian Papaeus, in Turkic babai ‘progenitor’.

Gaia is the personification of the Earth, she gave birth to Uranus (sky), Mountains, Pontus (sea); Gaia – in Scythian Api, in Turkic Ebi ‘progenitor’ [Zakiev M.Z., 1986, 27].

The given Scythian-Turkic etymologies show that among the Scythians, of course, there were also Turkic tribes. Therefore, the widespread opinion in official historical science is that there is supposedly one Scythian language, supposedly it is part of the Iranian group, supposedly the first Turks came to Europe only in the 4th century. AD under the ethnonym Huns, the Turkization of the Volga and Urals regions allegedly began only in the 4th or 7th century AD. – all this, of course, is not true.

§ 5. General view of historians on the ancient Turks. In official historical science, the Turkic tribes are considered relatively young, having separated from the Turkic-Mongol community only 6-8 thousand years ago. And in world historical science they find a place only as the Huns of Central Asia, starting only from the 4th–3rd centuries BC. Turkologists, who still do not have the scientific strength to thoroughly study the ancient Turks, are primarily to blame for this. Even this not very rich data about the Huns was obtained by non-Turkologists [Gumilev L.P., I960], so it is not surprising that Mongolian scientists began to classify the Huns as Mongolian tribes [Sukhbaatar G., 1976].

Back in the 19th century, scientists discovered that in the language of the American Indians, many lexical units with their semantic system resemble Turkic words. In the 20th century these similarities have been established in many ways, and scientists have concluded that in the language of the American Indians, traces of the Turkic languages ​​are preserved very clearly [Zakiev M.Z., 1977, 32–35]. If we consider that these Indians moved from Asia to America 20-30 thousand years ago and no longer communicated with the Turks, then we have to admit the presence of traces of a developed Turkic language in the language of the Indians left by the Turks 20-30 thousand years ago.

Vivid and irrefutable traces of the Turkic language were preserved in the cuneiform texts of the Sumerians, who lived between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers 6 thousand years ago [Suleimenov O., 1975, 192–291; Zakiev M.Z., 1977, 36]. The opinion that bright traces of the Turks were preserved in the language of the American Indians, Sumerians, and Elams was first expressed in Turkology by Zaki Validi Togan in his works written in the 20s of the 20th century. [Validi 3., 1981, 10–17].

According to Assyrian and other ancient Eastern written data, the name of the Uds (Kuts) can be traced back to ancient times, namely from the 3rd millennium BC; they can be associated with the Caspian uds - the later udins, bodins, budins [Elnitsky L.A., 1977, 4]. In our opinion, uds are later ties (Turkic), especially since the sounds d-z in various Turkic dialects easily replace each other.

Indian and Chinese written sources from the turn of the 2nd and 1st millennia BC. call the tribal names of East Asian nomads: dai, se (ti), unu, etc. Later they were preserved among the Cimmerians and Scythians, and some of them - in the form of sais, dai, Huns, Unns - were recorded in the westernmost part of Eurasia, right up to borders of Northern Italy [Elnitsky L.A., 1977, 4]. The So and Huns are famous Turkic tribes. Consequently, the Turks lived both in Europe and in Asia long before our era; they, naturally, were among the Cimmerians and among the Scythian-Sarmatians.

There is a reasonable opinion among scientists that the Etruscans, who inhabited the 1st millennium BC. the northwestern part of the Apennine Peninsula, who created a developed pre-Roman civilization, were also Turks in origin. The genetic affiliation of the Etruscan language has not yet been clarified in official historical science, but there are detailed studies, including by the Turkish scientist, the daughter of Sadri Maksudi Adilya Aida, proving the Turkic nature of the Etruscan inscriptions [Adilya Aida, 1992, 390].

Thus, the Turks were formed 20–30 thousand years ago and they lived in different regions of Eurasia under different ethnonyms. The ethnonym Turk has been known in history only since the 5th–8th centuries. AD, it was, along with other Turkic ethnonyms, an ordinary name. Only from the 19th–20th centuries did scientists begin to use it in a general sense to designate all Turkic peoples.

Historians who lived much closer in time to the Scythians and Sarmatians often identified them with Turkic tribes. At the same time, they have no case of identifying the Scythians and Sarmatians with Iranian-speaking tribes. Thus, Philostorgius (IV century AD) noted that “these Unns are probably the people that the ancients called the Neuroi,” i.e. Scythians [Latyshev V.V., 1900, 741].

Theophanes the Byzantine (5th century) considers the Huns to be Scythians. He writes: “Meanwhile, the Scythian Attila, the son of Omnudius, a brave and proud man, having removed his elder brother Vdela, arrogated to himself power over the Scythians, who are also called Unns, and attacked Thrace” [Theophanes the Byzantine, 1884, 81]. On the other hand, he classifies the Turks as Massagets: “To the east of Tanaid live the Turks, who in ancient times were called Massagets. The Persians in their language call them kermikhions” [Byzantine historians. St. Petersburg, 1861, 492]. What is noteworthy in this entry of Theophanes is that he knew well both the Massagetae (one of the Scythian tribes) and the Persians. If the Massagetae Scythians spoke Persian, he would certainly have noted this circumstance. But Theophanes identifies the Massagets with the Turks, and not with the Persians.

In the second half of the 5th century. Zosimus expresses some confidence that the Unns are the royal Scythians [Latyshev V.V., 1890, 800].

In the VI century. Menander the Byzantine writes that “the Turks, in ancient times called Saks, sent an embassy to Justin with peace proposals” [Byzantine historians. St. Petersburg, 1861, 375], and by Scythian language he means “Turkic barbarian language” [ibid., 376]. In another place, Menander the Byzantine writes: “... So all the Scythians from the tribe of the so-called Turks gathered up to one hundred and six people” [ibid., 417].

Procopius of Caesarea (VI century) identifies one of the Scythian tribes - the Amazons with the Huns and Sabirs [Procopius of Caesarea, 1950, 381]. By Cimmerians he means the Turkic Huns, Utigurs, Kutrigurs. “This “swamp” itself flows into the Euxine Pontus. The peoples who live there were called Cimmerians in ancient times, but now they are called Utigurs” [Procopius of Caesarea, 1950, 384 -385].

Agathias (6th century) also calls the Huns near the Sea of ​​Azov Scythians [Agathias, 1953, 148].

Theophylact Simokatta (VII century) also notes that the eastern Scythians are usually called Turks: “Exiled from his kingdom, he (Khosrow) left Ctesiphon and, having crossed the Tigris River, hesitated, not knowing what to do, because some advised him to go to the eastern Scythians, whom we used to call the Turks, while others advised him to go to the Caucasus or Atropaean mountains and save his life there” [Simokatta F., 1957, 106].

Theophan the Confessor (8th century) under the name Khazars also means the Scythians: “This year Vasilevo Leo married the son of Constantine to the daughter of Khagan, the ruler of the Scythians, converting her to Christianity and calling her Irina” (before baptism, her name was Chichak) [Chichurov I. S., 1980, 68].

The message of the “Tale of Bygone Years” (XII century) is also worthy of attention that the Scythians, Khazars and Bulgarians are one and the same people: “When the Slavs, as we have already said, lived on the Danube, they came from the Scythians, i.e. . the Khazars, the so-called Bulgarians, and settled along the Danube” [The Tale of Bygone Years, 28].

Above we saw that in the original Russian history the Scythians and Sarmatians were considered Turks, for example, by A. Lyzlov, V.N. Tatishchev and others. This view was initially characteristic of Western historians. Thus, the English historian of the 19th century. W. Mitford writes in “History of Greece”: “There are places in the world whose inhabitants are very different from other people in their customs and way of life. Of these, it is worth highlighting those called monasteries by the Greeks, and Tatars by contemporaries” [Mitford V., 1838, 419]. Here it is necessary to take into account that in the West at that time almost all eastern peoples were understood as Tatars, but the Muslim Turks were still considered the main Tatars.

In the middle of the 19th century. Russian historians and geographers were convinced that the Scythians were Turkic-speaking. Thus, R. Latama wrote in 1854 in the Bulletin of the Russian Geographical Society: “The Turkic origin of the Scythians at the present time ... does not require special evidence” [R. Latama, 1854, 45].

Thus, there were scientists who considered the Scythians only Turkic-speaking, i.e. they created the Scytho-Turkic theory, while others adhered to the Scytho-Iranian theory. In our opinion, neither one nor the other is adequate. The Cimmerians, Scythians, Sarmatians, of course, were multi-ethnic, among them were the ancestors of those peoples who now inhabit the so-called ancient Scythian territory - Eastern Europe, Siberia (except the Far East), Kazakhstan, Central, Central and Asia Minor. Among all the peoples of this vast region, the Turks occupy a significant place. This important factor and the fact that Scythian ethnological, mythological and linguistic traces were more preserved among the Turks, irrefutably proves that among the ancient Cimmerians, Scythians, Sarmatians there were significantly more Turks than the ancestors of the Slavs, Finno-Ugrians, perhaps even Iranians. linguistic Ossetians (if there were any).

§ 6. Which ancient peoples of Eurasia were Turkic-speaking? Official historical science claims that the first Turks came to Europe only in the 4th century. AD called the Huns, and in Asia they B.C. marked only as Huns. If the Turkic language existed 20-30 thousand years ago (remember its traces in the languages ​​of the American Indians), then there is no reason to think that they lived outside of Eurasia. Therefore, one must confidently look for the Turks already in the first Chinese, Indian, Assyrian, and Greek written sources.

In North Iranian, Caspian and Caucasian ethnonymy and toponymy, as well as according to Assyrian and other ancient Eastern written data back in the 3rd millennium BC. the Ud people are known, who are associated with the Caspian Uds, later the Udins, Bodins, Budins [Elnitsky L.A., 1977, 4]. Indian and Chinese sources from the turn of the 2nd and 1st millennia BC. they call the names dai, se (ti), unu, which are recorded among the Scythians in the form of sais, dai, and Huns; their territories reach the borders of northern Italy [Elnitsky L.A., 1977, 4]. Already in the post-Scythian period, these tribes were found as Uzes-Guzes, So, As, Unnu-Gun-Sen.

Tochars are a Turkic people who lived in 3-2 thousand BC. in Eastern Europe, no later than mid. 1st millennium AD – in Central Asia [TSB, vol. 26, 126]. Ptolemy back in the 2nd century. AD The Tagrs (Tochars) are located in Western Europe, near Dacia [Latyshev V.V., 1893, 232].

It is interesting to note that German Indo-Europeanists imposed a peculiar Iranian language on the ancient Tocharians. The fact is that at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, monuments in a special Western Iranian dialect were discovered in the oases of Xinjiang. A German Turkologist, in translating a Sanskrit text into Uyghur, discovered that the text was translated into Uyghur not directly from Sanskrit, but through Tohri. Based on this message, other German scholars called the Iranian texts “Tocharian”. “They associated the Uyghur word “Tokhri” with the name of the people “Tochars”, who, according to the testimony of the ancients, lived in Bactria... The name “Tocharian language” has been preserved to this day, despite the energetic protests of many scientists” [Krause V., 1959 , 41, 44]. Here, a violation of logic immediately catches the eye: the Uyghur text does not say that the Tohris spoke Iranian; most likely they were Turks if the Uyghurs used their language. In addition, we know that the Tocharians in Wed. Asia in ancient times were closely associated with the Saco-Massagets, who in the 5th–7th centuries were known as Turkic peoples among the Hephthalite Turks and Turks. M. Kashgari also considers the Tagars (Tokhars) to be Turks. The root of the word “Tokharistan has been preserved in topographic and ethnonymy associated with Uzbeks and Kazakhs” [Tolstova L.S., 1978, 10]. The Tochars took an active part in the formation of the Uzbeks. A people like the Tocharians, spread very widely (from Eastern Europe to Central Asia), cannot undergo Turkization so quickly; most likely, the Tocharians were Turks from the very beginning.

And from the point of view of the etymology of the ethnonym Tokhar (tokh~tog~dag 'mountain, tree, forest', ar 'people, men', Tokhar 'people of mountains and forests'), the Tokhars should be typical Turks, but this does not mean that among there were no other tribes, for example, ancient Iranian-speaking ones.

According to ethnonymy, the biblical Togars (Togarma) and Scythian Taurians are close to the Tochars. The Bible (Book of Genesis) notes that from the son of Japheth, Gomer, three were born: Askenaz, Rifat and Dogarma (chapter 10). This chapter of the Bible was written before our era. Further, Dogarma~Togarma becomes a common ethnonym of the Türks in the Hebrew language. They also called the Khazars who adopted the Jewish religion Togarma. In this ethnonym, the part Togar~Tohar is clearly distinguished in the meaning of “mountain or forest people”; -ma, apparently, is an interrogative particle, cf. sin of togarma? ‘are you a togar?’; or a truncated indicator of the predicate affix of the 1st person singular. part: togarmyn~togarmy ‘I am togar’. The mere fact that the Jews called the Turks with the ethnonym Togarma even BC indicates the presence of the Turks in Europe since ancient times.

Tavr is another dialectal pronunciation of the same ethnonym Tagar~Tohar: tav~tau ‘mountain, forest, tree’, er ‘people, men’, tauer~tavr forest or mountain people’. We know them well among the Cimmerians and Scythians: they lived on Taurica. Herodotus considers this territory to be primordial Scythia, a mountainous country that starts from the mouth of the Istra (Danube) and extends to the Kerch Strait [Herodotus, 1972, IV, 99]. Stravon calls the Crimean peninsula Taurian and Scythian [Latyshev V.V., 1890, 122]. Eustathius (12th century AD) writes that “the Tauri tribe received its name, they say, from the animal ox” [ibid., 195]. From the point of view of the Turkic language, the name of the animal ox Taur most likely comes from tuar (mal~tuar) ‘animal’, or it was brought to Greece from Taurica, therefore it was called Taur.

The Tauri were part of the Scythian confederation. When the Scythians needed to repel the offensive of the hordes of Darius, the peoples of this confederation gathered for a meeting consisting of “kings of the Taurians, Agathirs (Agadir-Agacher - M.Z.), Neuroi, Androphages, Melanchlens, Gelons, Budins and Sauromatians” [Herodotus, 1972, IV, 102]. If these tribes were Iranian-speaking, they would not have fought the Iranian-speaking hordes of Darius, and Darius would not have persecuted his relatives according to a single Iranian deity and language. There is reason to believe that the listed Scythians were all Turkic-speaking.

Before moving on to the description of the Scythian peoples, a few words about the Sogdians, recognized by Indo-Europeans as Iranian-speaking. Indo-European scholars impose some kind of Indo-European language on almost all peoples whose names are known from sources, but their languages ​​are not described. Thus, “one of the literary languages ​​in which documents and excerpts of works of religious literature were found during archaeological research in Wed. Asia, was called Sogdian” [Bartold V.V., 1964, vol. 2, part 2, 461]. In Chinese history, the Sogdians are considered Turks. By their origin, they are closely related to the Sakas, whom we also consider Turkic-speaking. Later, the Sogdians turned into Uzbeks, and, according to Indo-European historians, into Tajiks.

M. Kashgari the Sogdak people classify them as Turks. And the etymology of the ethnonym sounds in Turkic: -dak~-dyk~-lyk is a Turkic affix of an adjective; sag ‘health, mind’; sog ‘to milk’, sug ‘water’; Sogdak ‘healthy, clean, milking or aquatic, river’.

Chinese historians identified the Sogdians with the Aors (Aor~Auar~Avar) or Alans, whose Turkic-speaking nature was noted by the ancient authors themselves. V.V.Bartold, considering by tradition the Aorsi and Alans to be Iranian-speaking, writes: “The Chinese at that time also knew for the country of the Aorsi or Alans the name Sui or Sude, which, according to the late sinologist Hirt, is the word Sogdak or Sugdak. This is what the Turks called the region and the people of the Sogdians on Zeravshan” [Bartold V.V., 1964, vol. 2, part 1, 550]. V.V. Bartold is inclined to reason that the Sogdian language of the Iranian type allegedly turned into Turkic [Bartold V.V., 1964, vol. 2, part 2, 467]. We know that languages ​​do not change into others. Therefore, it is more reasonable to admit that the Sogdians (Sogdak) were Turkic-speaking from the very beginning.

Kushans in the 1st–2nd centuries. AD on Wednesday. Asia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, North. India and Xinjiang created the Kushan kingdom. They are also classified as Iranian-speaking, but the fact that many historians identify the Kushans with the Hephthalite-Turks [Procopius of Caesarea, 1876. Commentary by G. Destunis, 60] and the fact that they later turned into Turkic peoples speaks of the Turkic-speaking nature of the Kushans. But, unfortunately, the Kushans have been studied very poorly, their ethnicity has not been proven.

Let us now move on to the Scythian-Turkic peoples. First of all, it is necessary to say about the so-called agathyrs. As already mentioned in the 4th paragraph, this ethnonym in Turkic means ‘forest people or people with a tree totem’. Later, this ethnonym is found as Akatsir (akats ‘tree, forest’) and Agach Eri with the same meaning.

The Thracians had the closest relations with the Akatsirs; in a more adequate pronunciation, the Thracians, i.e. tracks. According to the tradition of Indo-Europeanists, a language of the Indo-European type was imposed on the Thracians (Thracians). Therefore, the opinion that they spoke one of the Indo-European languages ​​cannot be considered correct; they have not been studied from the point of view of the Turkic languages ​​[Budagov B.A., Geybullaev G.A., 1988, 126].

Melanchlen is an ethnonym translated into Greek, apparently from the Turkic language, for only the Turks have black hoods (Karakalpaks), who explained their ethnonym to Herodotus as black-capped people, but Herodotus understood this as a black-capped man and translated it into Greek as melanchlen.

We have already spoken about the Gelons, Taurians and Budins (Udy-Uzes) as Turkic-speaking tribes; Philostorgius identified the Neuroi with the Unni.

During the time of the Scythians, Herodotus also knew the former ethnonym of the Pechenegs. Herodotus wrote: “The Persians call this horse-drawn post angareon” [Herodotus, 1972, VIII, 98]. This word was formed from the Turkic ethnonym khangar-kangar. Among the Persians, khangars served as couriers, and therefore the word khangar was fixed in the Persian language in the meaning of ‘courier’.

We have already spoken about the Scythians and Sarmatians, whose ethnonym became a common political name among the Greeks, and recognized them as Turkic-speaking. Above we learned about the Massagets (Tissagets, Fissagets) and Hephthalites (White Huns) as Turkic-speaking peoples.

Among the Sarmatians at the end of the 1st century. BC. There are Aors, whose ethnonym goes back to Auar~Avar with the Greek ending in -s, -os. Later, the Auars~Avars are a famous Turkic people.

The following can be said about the Alans-Asses. They are considered Iranian-speaking due to a misunderstanding or according to the tradition of recognizing all Scythians and Sarmatians as Iranian-speaking. Both according to the recognition of their contemporaries, and according to their traces, as well as according to ethnonymy, the Alans-Asses should be recognized as Turkic-speaking [Zakiev M.Z., 1986, 40–43; Laipanov K.T., Miziev I.M., 1993, 97–113; Miziev I.M., 1986, 78–94; see in this collection the article “Alans: who are they?”].

Naturally, these hypotheses about the Turkic peoples among the Scythians and Sarmatians require additional thorough research. But now we can say with confidence that the Turks occupied a significant place among the Scythian-Sarmatians.

Summing up, we can say with confidence that the Turks have lived in Europe and Asia since ancient times. The opinion about the beginning of the Turkization of Eastern Europe, the Volga region and the Urals only from the 4th century. with the arrival of the first Turkic Huns from Asia, is incorrect and far-fetched. If in the IV century. From the periphery of the Roman Empire to its center there was a massive movement of peoples, then this was not a great migration, but their liberation movement, in which the Huns took an active part.

§ 7. Ethnic components and ethnolinguistic continuity of development of the Tatar people in the Middle Volga region and the Urals. The Turkic language of the Middle Volga and Urals region (i.e., the Volga-Kama region) was formed through the consolidation of various, primarily Turkic-speaking, and partly Turkified Finno-Ugric-speaking components. Like all other peoples, for external relations it bore the ethnonym of the component that dominated the others. This region was dominated by one or another tribe, therefore, at different periods of history, the Turkic-speaking people of the Volga-Kama region bore various common ethnonyms.

We can restore the names of the Turkic components of the ancestors of the Tatar people based on the ethnonyms of the tribes that became components of the local Turkic-speaking people of the Bulgars and Tatars, as well as from the ethnotoponymy of the Volga-Kama region.

The first Turkic ethnonym of this region that has come down to us was biar (varieties: biger, biler, buler), the root of which is the word bi ‘rich, master, hero’; the second part ar is from the word er ‘people, men’, biar rich people, masters’. Bilair (local pronunciation buler) is formed from the same word bi, but with a plural indicator. numbers. A variant of the word bi is bik-back, from this root the ethnonym biger (bik-er), which our ancient neighbors the Udmurts, according to ancient tradition, still call the Tatars.

An ethnonym with the same meaning, but in a different Turkic phonetic shell, we find in Herodotus. Next to the Argippei (ar-hippei is the Turkic ir-at, part of the at is translated by Herodotus into Greek with the word hippeus), he notes the Iirks, whose ethnonym consists of iyi~iye, which corresponds to the word bi: iyi~iye 'master, good, rich ', erk 'man, male'. Scientists have established that the Argippei (Irat) are the ancestors of the Bashkirs, and the Iirki are the ancestors of the Biars (Bilyars). Thus, the Turkic-speaking tribes - ‘rich masters’ (Irk, Biar, Biler, Biger) lived in the Volga-Kama region back in the 9th - 7th centuries. BC. And their ethnonym in the form biger has survived to this day as one of the names of the Tatars, and in the form biar it was the name of the state known in history Biarm (my biar), in Russian - Biarmia, in European - Biarmland.

It must be assumed that among the Biars there were already Turkic tribes of the Kipchaks, whose ethnonym means “white-faced, fair-haired” (kyu-kyf-kyp “white, yellow-white”, chak “exactly, just right”; kypchak “white”; chak~sak may be an ethnonym of one of the Turkic tribes: kyp-sak 'white Saki'). The Slavs translated this ethnonym into their language and instead of the ethnonym Kipchak they used the word Polovtsy from the adjective sexual ‘pale yellow’.

The fact that the Kipchaks already occupied not the last place among the Biars is evidenced by the presence of the meaning of this ethnonym in the Bulgar time. The Bulgarian state began to take shape on the lands of Biarmia, where the Kipchaks occupied a significant place.

As Ibn Fadlan writes, when the embassy of the Commander of the Faithful al Muktadir came to the Bulgars, the more common ethnonym of this people in Arabic was sakaliba ‘white-faced, pale yellow’. Consequently, the Kipchaks then well understood the meaning of their ethnonym and passed on this meaning to the Arabs (as they passed it on to the Slavs); from this meaning, the visiting ‘white-faced’ Arabs formed the Arabic ethnonym Sakaliba. Therefore, it can be argued that in historical literature the transmission of the Arabic word Sakaliba as Slavic does not withstand any criticism either from the point of view of ethnonymy or from the point of view of the relationship of tribes: if the Sakaliba were Slavs, the Bulgars among the Slavs could not remain Turkic-speaking.

The first king of the Sakaliba, Almas Shilki, was from the Bulgar tribe, and the state created by Almas Shilki was called Bulgar, so this name gradually replaced the common ethnonym Sakaliba-Kypchak. This is further confirmed by the fact that the Bulgars were Kipchak-speaking from the very beginning.

Various historical sources near the Sakaliba~Kypchaks also indicate the presence of Eskele tribes, who in the 9th–7th centuries. BC. occupied a dominant position among other Turkic tribes and came into contact with the ancient Greeks, passing on their ethnonym to the Greeks as a general name for the Turks, and not just the Turks of Eurasia. Eskele~eskede~eskete in Greek pronunciation sounded like skidai-skidy, in Western European - like a monastery, and in Russian - like a Scythian...

One of the oldest Turkic ethnonyms was the word as~az~oz~uz~ud, which is found in Assyrian sources as the name of tribes that lived in the 3rd millennium BC. We know that the Bulgars were called Asami differently (Andrei Bogolyubsky’s wife, a Bulgar, was called “Princess of Yassy”). Next to the Bulgar-Ases lived the tribes of Suas ‘river Ases’. The ancient neighbors of the Tatars, the Mari, still traditionally call them by the ethnonym Suas, and the modern Chuvash (historical Vedas) - Suaslamari.

The ancestors of the Perm Tatars bore the ethnonym Ostyak, which was formed from os~as and the affix -lyk-tyk-tak; Ostyak~ostyk ‘Asskie’.

As scientists have established, another name for the Ases was Alan. According to the ancient authors themselves, the Alans spoke the Turkic-Pecheneg language; according to ethnonyms, they were also Turkic-speaking [Zakiev M.Z., 1986, 41; Miziev I.M., 1990, 73–96; Laipanov K.T., Miziev I.M., 1993, 97–113]. But, believing the statements of Indo-Europeanists about the exclusively Iranian-speaking Alans, the Hungarian scholar J. Nemeth, having discovered an Iranian-Ossetian text in Hungary, attributed it to the local Alans. Thus, “irrefutable proof” of the Ossetian-speaking Alans appeared, who in all other respects were close to the Hungarian Kuns, i.e. Kuman-Kypchaks [Nemet Yu., 1959, 1960].

As the ethnotoponyms of Tatarstan show, the Alans-Asses became part of the components of the Tatar people and as Alans.

Another ethnonym formed using the word as is Burtas ‘forest aces’, who lived between the Bulgars and Khazars on the banks of the Volga. The Burtases became part of the Tatars as their significant component.

Another component of the Tatars, whose ethnonym means ‘forest people’, are the Mishars (Mazhgars, Mochars, Mozhars, Magyars). According to the semantics of the ethnonym and the Mishar pronunciation of the root agach as akats, the Mishars historically go back to the Akatsirs (Agadirs, in Russian translation Agathirs), who in Scythian times were very prominent tribes of the Northern Black Sea region.

The ethnonym of the Bulgars themselves means ‘river people’, with the same meaning we find the ethnonym Suar, whose bearers lived next to the Bulgars.

According to ethnotoponymy, the components of the Tatar people also included ancient Kangars, who were then called Pechenegs. Thus, the ethnonym Khangar was known back in the time of Herodotus, i.e. in the VI-V centuries. BC, now it is recorded in the form of Kungur in the name of the city in the Perm region. There is also the city of Osa, whose name comes from the ethnonym os~as. This opinion is further confirmed by the fact that the former ethnonym of the Tatars who lived in the vicinity of this city was Ostyak, i.e. os-tyk~os-lyk, which means ‘Ossky’.

The Huns also took part in the formation of the ancestors of the Tatars, i.e. Sen tribes in Tatar pronunciation, and Bashkirs pronounce this word as hen - hence hun and gun. This is evidenced by the presence of the ethnohydronym sen on the territory of Tatarstan.

The components of the ancestors of the Tatar people included the Turks, who created the Great Turkic Khaganate in the 6th century, and the Khazars, from whom the Volga Bulgars separated. Apparently, here we should point out the Sarmatians and Cumans, who were also included in the ancestors of the Tatars. According to our assumption, the ethnonym Sarmat - ethnohydronym or ethno-ononym Sarman, as well as the name of the genus Sarman, go back to the same root sarma ‘fur bag’. The ethnonym Kushan, recorded in Wed. Asia, and the ethnotoponym Kashan (the disappeared city on the Kama) also represent the same word: Kashan~Koshan - according to the pronunciation of the Volga Turks, Kushan - according to the pronunciation of the Turks Wed. Asia.

Special mention must be made of the Tatar component, which came to the Volga-Kama region from Central Asia along with the Mongol army and became part of the Bulgaro-Tatar people. But the newcomer Tatars, who spoke the Central Asian Turkic language, were so insignificant that they very quickly disappeared among the local Turks.

The ethnonym Tatars does not come directly from these Central Asian Tatars. It spread first in Western and Eastern Europe as a political and geographical term to designate all eastern peoples, only later it began to be used to designate all Muslim Turks, and only in the 19th century. The ethnonym Tatars was adopted as the self-name of the Bulgaro-Turkic Muslims of the Volga-Kama region.

Thus, the ancestors of the Tatars of the Volga region and the Urals were formed through a long consolidation of various ancient Turkic tribes; they naturally included representatives of the Chuvash - the former Vedas, Turkicized Mari, Mordovians and Udmurts. But the ethnolinguistic features of the Volga-Kama region developed long before our era, and the ancestors of the Tatars no longer lost these main features, i.e. in this region they have maintained ethnolinguistic continuity in development from ancient times to the present day.

As is known, language is the defining feature of an ethnos, therefore problems of ethnolinguistic continuity or discontinuity in the development of a people are solved primarily taking into account linguistic data. The Tatar language belongs to the Turkic languages, but along with Bashkir it is a unique language, different from the Turkic languages ​​of other regions.

Linguists have determined that in the Middle Volga and Urals a unique linguistic union was formed from the Turkic ancestors of the Tatar, Bashkir, Chuvash and Finno-Ugric ancestors of the Mari, Udmurt and Mordovian languages ​​[Serebrennikov B.A., 1972; Zakiev M.Z., 1987, 176–182]. This means that as a result of long-term mutual influence, some features of some languages ​​gradually penetrated into others. As a result, the Turkic language of the Volga-Ural region, under the influence of local Finno-Ugric languages, acquired unique lexical, phonetic and grammatical features that distinguish it from the Turkic languages ​​of other regions. In the same way, the Finno-Ugric languages ​​of this region, under the influence of local Turkic languages, acquired such features that distinguish them from the Finno-Ugric languages ​​of other regions. Consequently, the Turkic language of the Volga-Kama region (i.e. the language of the ancestors of the Tatars, Bashkirs and Chuvashs) with its local characteristics was formed in this region, and was not introduced from other regions, for example, from Asia Minor, from Central Asia or from Central Asia etc. If we take into account that the mutual influence of different systems of languages ​​at the level of phonetics and grammar gives tangible results only after thousands of years of contact, then we have to admit that the Volga-Kama language union of the Turkic and Finno-Ugric languages ​​was formed in ancient times in Scythian or even before Scythian times. Since then, the Volga-Kama region has maintained the ethno-linguistic continuity of development of the Tatar people, which at different times was called differently, because its leading components were different tribes. In other words, despite the frequent change of ethnonym, the ethno-linguistic composition of the Tatar people remained unchanged, although at different times it accepted part of the alien tribes: first the commonly Turkic-speaking Bulgars, then the Tatars with Central Asian features in the language, assimilated among the local Turks.

Scythians- ancient tribes in the Northern Black Sea region who lived in the 7th-3rd centuries BC. e. and managed to create a culture that was quite high for that time, which was subsequently absorbed by the peoples of Eastern Europe, Western and Central Asia.

In the history of civilization, the Scythians occupied second place after the Greeks and Romans; moreover, they were the direct heirs of their cultural traditions. The origin of the Scythians is still unknown. Despite the presence of a huge number of hypotheses, even now it is impossible to say with certainty where these people came from.

The ancient Greek scientist, “father of history” Herodotus, who lived in the 5th century BC. e., during one of his travels he visited the Northern Black Sea region and became acquainted with the morals and customs of the Scythians. It was he who wrote down two legends about the origin of the Scythians, one of them was told to him by the Scythians themselves, and the other by the Hellenes.

According to the first legend, in the land of the Scythians, which was at that time a deserted desert, a man named Targitai was born to the god Zeus and the daughter of the river Borysthenes. The boy grew quickly and soon turned into a handsome, strong young man. He married a beautiful girl who gave him three sons: Lipoksai, Artoksai and Kolaksai.

One day the brothers were walking across a field, and suddenly 4 golden objects fell from the sky: a plow, a yoke, an ax and a bowl. The elder brother was the first to notice them and wanted to take them. But as soon as he came closer, the gold suddenly ignited. Then the second brother tried to pick up the objects, but he too suffered the same fate. When the younger brother approached the things, the burning of gold stopped. Kolaksai picked up the objects and took them to him. The eldest and middle brothers understood the symbolism of this event and ceded the right to rule the kingdom to the younger.

Further, Herodotus says: “And from Lipoksay came those Scythians who bear the name of the clan of Avkhats; from the middle brother Artoxai - those called catiars and trapii, and from the younger king - those called paralates; the common name of all of them is chipped, after the name of one king; The Hellenes called them Scythians.”

The Hellenic legend tells about Hercules, who, “chasing the bulls of Geryon,” arrived in the country where the Scythians now live, and “since he was overtaken by a blizzard and frost, he wrapped himself in a lion’s skin and fell asleep, and at that time his horses “They miraculously disappeared into the pasture.” Quite an interesting clause: Hercules drove the bulls, but his horses disappeared. It is still unknown who made the inaccuracy - the Hellenes or Herodotus.

According to this legend, in search of bulls (horses), Hercules walked around the entire earth and came to Polesie. There, in one of the caves, he discovered a strange creature - a half-maiden, half-snake. Hercules asked if she had seen his horses, to which the half-maiden replied that she had mares, “but she would not give them to him before he communicated with her.”

Hercules agreed to her conditions, but the half-maiden, wanting to prolong their relationship, kept delaying the return of the animals. They lived together for a long time and had three sons. In the end, she decided to give Hercules the mares, but before that she asked him what to do with her sons when they grew up: keep them or send them to their father.

Hercules answered like this: “When you see your sons matured, it is best to do this: see which of them will draw this bow like this and gird himself, in my opinion, with this belt, and give him this land to live in, and which one will not be able to fulfill the proposed my tasks, they left the country.” Having said this, Hercules handed the half-maiden a bow and a belt with a golden cup at the end of the buckle.

When the sons grew up, the mother subjected them to the test proposed by Hercules. The eldest, Agathirs, and the middle, Gelon, were unable to repeat their father’s feat and were expelled from the country. The youngest son, Scythian, exactly reproduced his father’s movements and became the founder of the dynasty of Scythian kings.

Meanwhile, the ancient Greek historian had his own point of view on the problem of the origin of the Scythians. According to his hypothesis, the nomadic Scythians who lived in Asia, tired of repelling the constant raids of the Massagetae, retired to the Cimmerian land and several centuries later founded their state there.

Having settled in new lands, the Scythians established trade relations with the Greeks, as evidenced by dishes and metal products of Greek origin found by archaeologists. Commodity-money relations in those distant times were not yet developed, so the Scythian tribes were forced to pay for Greek dishes, gold and bronze jewelry with products of their own production, mainly bread.

In those distant times, the Scythians experienced a process of decomposition of tribal relations, which was reflected in funeral rites. The dead were buried in wooden structures on pillars, in pits simulating dwellings, in catacombs and in the mounds of mounds. Among the grave goods one can find battle axes, swords, armor and helmets of Greek work, various kinds of jewelry, and mirrors.

The patriarchal nature of the relationship is evidenced by the fact that free women were buried in mounds built for male burials. The burials of young women, in which, in addition to jewelry, weapons were found, deserve special attention. Apparently, while men were on campaigns of conquest, women were forced to defend their home from the raids of nomads with weapons in their hands.

The Scythians had the institution of slavery. In the early stages of the development of society, slaves became prisoners captured in military campaigns. When a master died, his slaves followed him to the grave. The unfortunate were buried in a bent position with their knees pressed to their stomachs.

The basis of the economy of the Scythian state was conquest against neighboring tribes. Herodotus tells of a campaign against the Medes that lasted 28 years. Tired, the Scythians returned to their native places, hoping to find comfort and peace there. However, their hopes were not destined to come true. Returning home, “they met a considerable army marching against them, because the Scythian women, due to the prolonged absence of their husbands, entered into relations with slaves...”

The young men born as a result of such misalliances decided to oppose the Scythians. They dug a deep ditch stretching from the Tauride Mountains to Lake Meotida. Nevertheless, the Scythians managed to overcome this obstacle, after which several battles took place, in which the returning warriors won. The values ​​brought from the campaign, which belonged to the class societies of the Near East, had a huge influence on the formation of the artistic style of the Scythians.

At the end of the 6th century BC. e. Darius, the king of the powerful Persian state, went to war against the Scythians. The Persian army, numbering 700 thousand people, invaded the territory of Scythia.

Scythian intelligence worked superbly. The military leaders had an idea not only of the number of Persian troops, but also of their route. The Scythians realized that they would not be able to defeat the Persians in open battle. Then they invited the kings of neighboring peoples - the Taurians, Agathyrsians, Neuroi, Androphagi, Budins and Sauromatians - to a military council.

It should be noted that most of the kings refused to help the Scythians, arguing that “the Scythians were the first to start the war and now the Persians, at the inspiration of the deity, are paying them the same.” Then the Scythians divided all available military forces into 3 fronts and began to defend their territory using guerrilla warfare methods.

For a long time, the Scythians managed to hold back the onslaught of the Persians. During this period, they managed to inflict significant damage on the Persian army. Then Darius sent a messenger to them with a proposal either to fight in open battle, or to submit and recognize the Persian king as their ruler.

In response, the Scythians said that they would fight only when it pleased them, and promised to send Darius gifts in the near future, but not those that he expected to receive. At the end of the message, the Scythian king Idanfirs allowed himself to express a threat to the Persian king: “For the fact that you called yourself my ruler, you will pay me.”

Military operations continued, and the Persian forces were melting away. Herodotus says that in the last days of the war, when it was already clear who would win, the Scythian king sent ambassadors to Darius with gifts consisting of a bird, a mouse, a frog and five arrows. No comments were attached to the gifts.

Darius understood the meaning of these gifts: the Scythians were given to him with land and water. The arrows, in his opinion, symbolized the Scythians’ refusal to continue hostilities. However, another Persian, Gorbiya, familiar with the morals and customs of the Scythians, interpreted the meaning of these gifts differently: “If you, Persians, do not fly away like birds into the sky, or, like mice, do not hide in the ground, or, like frogs, If you don’t gallop into the lakes, you won’t come back and will fall under the blows of these arrows.”

After sending the gifts, the Scythians prepared for a decisive battle. Suddenly, a hare ran in front of the formation and the Scythians rushed to pursue it. Having learned about this incident, Darius said: “These people treat us with great disdain, and it is now clear to me that Gorbia correctly explained to me the meaning of these gifts.” On the same day, the Scythians finally defeated the Persians and expelled them from the country.

After the victory over the Persians, the Scythians lived in peace with their neighbors for a long time. However, the Sarmatian invasion forced the Scythians to abandon their homes and move to Crimea. The new capital of the Scythian state began to be called Scythian Naples.

The last stage of the history of the Scythians is associated with their concentration on the Crimean Peninsula. The territory of the Scythian slave state became much smaller than before, and the number of neighbors also decreased. In the south, in the Crimean Mountains, these are the descendants of the Cimmerians - the Taurians, on the Kerch Peninsula - the Bosporan Kingdom and on the west coast - the Greek city of Chersonesos. Sarmatian tribes blocked their access to the Ukrainian steppes.

During this period, the Scythians developed especially close relations with the Tauri. The latter, apparently, were drawn into the general political life of Crimea and were no longer such savages as Greek historians painted them. The contact of the Scythians with the Tauri became known after studying the funerary monuments of the steppe Crimea. In particular, in some burial grounds, archaeologists discovered collective burials of ordinary Scythians, characteristic of the Tauri.

Interestingly, they lacked weapons. Such stone boxes are found mainly in the foothills of the Crimean Peninsula, that is, near the territories of the Tauri. At the beginning of our era, a new term appeared - “Tauro-Scythians”, discovered on one of the Bosporan inscriptions. Some researchers believe that it may indicate partial assimilation of the Tauri with the Scythians.

The Crimean Scythian settlements of this period studied in recent years are mainly of an ancient nature. This can be seen in the fortification system and residential buildings. The most indicative in this regard is Scythian Naples - a city that combined barbarian and Greek features; Turkish rampart and ditch bordering Crimea along the Perekop line.

In the 2nd century BC. e. Olbia, located on the periphery of the state, began to lose its former importance. Chersonesos acquired an increasingly important role, especially in trade. The Scythian state, despite the fact that it had lost a significant part of its territories and weakened economically, continued to pursue a rather active policy in Crimea. First of all, the Scythians tried to take possession of Chersonesos and completely subjugate it.

But Chersonesus, having enlisted the support of the Pontic king Pharnaces, who promised to protect the city from barbarians, defeated the army of the Scythians and Taurians. The war ended with the defeat of the Scythian army.

Despite the difficult times that came for the Scythian kingdom and the defeat in Crimea, these events did not lead to the death of the state. Historians testify that the Scythians started most of their wars due to a lack of money in the state. But after they lost their former power, the Scythians decided to improve their situation in another way.

The state decided to transfer ownership of its lands to those who wanted to cultivate them, and were content with the agreed payment. They fought with those who refused to pay them.

During this period, the Scythians could no longer maintain Olbia in their permanent power, and in the 1st century BC. e. it was defeated by the warlike Getae tribe. After this, the Scythians partially populated and restored Olbia, but it no longer resembled the once rich and flourishing city. Nevertheless, as a sign of its independence, the city issued coins with the names of the Scythian kings Pharzoi and Inismey.

During this period, Olbia was under the protectorate of the Scythians, but they did not influence the general political situation, and when in the 2nd century BC. e. The Romans decided to include it in their empire; the Scythian state was unable to resist this.

It should be noted that at this time the Scythian state could not conduct an independent policy on the Black Sea coast, much less resist Roman intervention. During the 2nd-1st centuries BC. e. Conflicts regularly occurred between the Bosporus and the Scythians, as a result of which the advantage was constantly on the side of the more powerful Bosporus state.

Thus, the Scythian state by the 1st century BC. e. was no longer viable: its economy was completely undermined, trade ties were disintegrating due to the inaccessibility of the points through which it constantly traded. In addition, at this time a mass movement of barbarians began. The state of Germanarich played a major role in this, uniting many tribes of the Northern Black Sea region, who, together with the Sarmatians, Proto-Slavs and Goths, penetrated into the Crimea.

As a result of their invasion, Naples and many other Scythian cities were destroyed. After this raid, the Scythian state did not have the strength to restore. It is with this event that historians associate the final death of the Scythian state, which existed from the 5th to the 2nd centuries BC. e.

The Scythians lived in the 1st millennium BC. in the steppes north of the Black Sea. These were a people who spoke an Indo-Iranian language, like the ancient inhabitants of the Dnieper region, in which the Eastern Slavs arose. Probably, some of the Scythians eventually converted to Slavs.

The mythology of the Scythians has not reached us completely. Only a few myths and legends are known, told by Herodotus and some other ancient authors. Some legends and the meaning of names can be established with the help of comparative historical linguistics.

Scythian goddesses and gods

The Scythians worshiped seven gods, like many other Iranian peoples. Tabiti was revered as their supreme goddess. Besides him, the pantheon included Papay, Api, Oytosir (Goytosir), Argimaspa, and 2 more deities whose names have not been preserved. Tabiti was the goddess of fire and hearth. She was called the "queen of the Scythians."

The Scythian king Herodotus mentioned that the most developed Scythian tribe - the "royal Scythians" - worshiped Poseidon, or Tagimasad, as they called him.

Herodotus retold the Scythian myth according to which Zeus married the daughter of the Dnieper River. From this marriage the first person was born - Targitai. He had three sons - Lipoksai, Arpoksai and Kolaksai, who gave rise to three branches of the Scythian people.

Under the sons of Targitai, a golden plow with a yoke, an ax and a bowl fell from the sky, which only Kolaksai managed to take. He became the ruler of ancient Scythia.

Scythian legend

Scythian mythology: archer Herodotus told another legend about the Scythians. In ancient times, the Scythians went to fight in Media, and they were not home for many years (information about the Scythians’ campaigns in Asia is confirmed by historians). But when they returned home, they found a whole army in front of them that did not want to let them in. It turned out that during their absence, their wives married their former slaves and rebuilt their lives.

The children from these marriages decided to prevent the return of their former owners. They dug a wide ditch, armed themselves and entered into battle with the Scythians.

The battle continued for many days, which did not bring an advantage to either side. Finally, one of the Scythians said that it was absurd to continue this battle with slaves - after all, the Scythians were dying, and their property (slaves) was decreasing. “As long as we go into battle with weapons, they consider themselves equal to us, but as soon as we take whips in our hands, they will immediately remember their slave origins.”

Scythian item made of gold The next day, the Scythians went into battle, armed only with whips. As soon as their opponents heard the sound of the blows of the whips, they immediately remembered their origin, panicked and fled. This is how the Scythians managed to regain their country and their homes.

Scythian heritage

Scythian animal style: golden deer The Scythians left behind a rich cultural heritage. Gold items with images of people and animals are often found in burial mounds. The style of these finds is unique - it is called “animal style”. The images usually contain everyday and mythological motifs.

edited news Core - 2-04-2011, 01:02

Of course, the best way to reveal the character of any people is through the legends and heroic tales they created. One of them came to us thanks to the ancient Greek writer Lucian (about 125-180 AD), who wrote it down from the words of the Scythian Toksaris. It tells the story of two Scythian youths - Dandamis and Amezoke...

Lucian (c. 125-180 AD)

On the fourth day, after the two young Scythians became sworn brothers, their camp, located on the banks of the Tanais (Don), was suddenly attacked by huge hordes of Sarmatians. Having captured rich booty and many prisoners, they moved east, beyond Tanais.

Sarmatian warriors with captured booty

Drawing by Torop S.O.

Among the captured Scythians was Amezok. Having learned about this, Dandamis rushed into the river and swam to the enemy bank. When Sarmatian warriors discovered him, he shouted loudly: “Zarin!” (gold, ransom). Then the Sarmatians took Dandamis to their king, who asked the young man what he had and what he wanted to give for the life of his friend. Dandamis said that he had nothing but life, but if the king wanted, he could give it for his brother-brother. The cruel king laughed and replied: “I don’t need your life, but if you want to rescue your brother-in-law, give only part of what you offer - your eyes”...

Sarmatian king

Drawing by Torop S.O.

Dandamis returned back with empty orbits, holding tightly to his comrade freed from Sarmatian captivity. Looking after them, the king of the Sarmatians said: “People like Dandamis can be captured by unexpectedly attacking them, but what will be the result of the battle with them?” And he gave his army the order to retreat. Grateful to Dandamis for saving Amezok, he also blinded himself. They lived for many more years and during their lifetime became part of a legend that was told not only throughout Scythia, but also beyond its borders.

Dandamis and Amezoc

Drawing by Torop S.O.

The Sarmatians mentioned in the legend were the eastern neighbors of the Scythians. Hippocrates (5th century BC) talks about their settlement “around Lake Maeotis” (Sea of ​​Azov) in Europe, west of Tanais (Don), which at that time was considered the border between Europe and Asia. In the V-IV centuries. BC. The penetration of the Sarmatians to the west occurred peacefully and was practically not accompanied by serious conflicts and predatory raids.

Sarmatian warrior unsheathing his sword

Drawing by Torop S.O.

The relations of the Scythians with the Sarmatians were alternately allied and hostile. The Sarmatians turned out to be one of the few peoples who assisted the Scythians in repelling the aggression of the Persian king Darius I (see the article “The Scythian Army”). However, in the middle of the 3rd century. BC, according to the legend conveyed by Polyenus, an army of Sarmatians came out against the Scythians besieging Chersonesos. The movement of the Sarmatians to the west took on a massive scale in the 2nd century. BC.

Sarmatian warrior with a spear

Drawing by Torop S.O.

Greek writers Diodorus Siculus (1st century BC) and Lucian of Samosata (2nd century AD) depict this movement in the form of devastating raids that turned a significant part of Scythia into a desert. At this time, most likely, the legend of Dandamis and Amezoke was created.

Sarmatian warrior

Drawing by Torop S.O.

Scythians who were captured were threatened with death or slavery, and only a ransom could save them from such a fate. The password that meant sending an embassy to negotiate a ransom was the word “sarin” or “zirin” (“gold”, “ransom”). Gold and jewelry, sheep, cows (sometimes even entire herds), and horses were used as ransom. Naturally, it was primarily the Scythian rich and nobility who could be saved in such a situation, and not ordinary Scythians. It is quite possible that the usual exchange of prisoners was also practiced, which left the latter a chance of salvation.

Captured Scythians

Drawing by Torop S.O.

A special rite of twinning, which existed among the Scythians since ancient times, is also described in ancient literature. Future brothers-in-arms cut their fingers and dripped blood into a vessel of wine. After this, weapons were immersed in the vessel: a sword, arrows, an ax and a dart. Then the future brothers-in-arms simultaneously, holding each other, drank from the vessel. Friendship sealed in this way was considered sacred by the Scythians - stronger and more inextricable than any ties of kinship. Each warrior, having gone through this ritual, was ready to sacrifice all his property and even his own life to save his friend.

On one of the gold relief plates discovered in Kul-Oba (Crimea), apparently made in the 4th century. BC, depicts a scene of Scythian fraternization. Two warriors, kneeling and holding each other, drink from the same rhyton.

Scythians are twin brothers. Relief plate. Gold. IV century BC. Kul-Oba

Some researchers believe that the plaque from Kul-Oba does not depict an abstract ritual of fraternization, but rather the legend of Dandamis and Amezok, which has come down to us thanks to the ancient Greek writer Lucian. True, the legend he recorded talks about Scythian youths, and the relief plate from a Scythian burial depicts rather fully mature warriors, as their mustaches and beards eloquently testify. And the legend itself, once told by the Scythian Toksaris, was most likely created much later than the 4th century. BC. Although, it is quite possible that the Scythians had more than one legend dedicated to their twin cities. Perhaps the plate from Kul-Oba depicts heroes of a legend more ancient than that recorded by Lucian. Alas, we will never know about their feat and names.

Interesting Facts

· The main object of worship among the Sarmatians, like the Scythians, was a sword, personifying the god of war: “They stick a sword into the ground and reverently worship it, like Mars” (Ammianus Marcellinus). The Sarmatians also worshiped water deities and the great goddess - the patroness of horses and fertility. The cult of the sun and fire was also associated with it, the guardians of which were special priestesses.

Marble slab from Tanais with the image of a Sarmatian warrior. II century AD

· Some ancient historians call the Sarmatians “gunaykokratumens” (“ruled by women”). Sarmatian women were distinguished by their warlike and courageous character, they always went to war with men and served as priestesses.

Sarmatian priestess

Drawing by Torop S.O.

· Until the 3rd century. BC. In ancient times, authors called the Sarmatians Sauromatians (“girt with a sword”). Pliny and Mela use the name “Sarmatians” as a collective name for different tribes, which “formed one tribe, but divided into several peoples with different names.”

Settlement of Sarmatian, Late Scythian and Slavic tribes

on the territory of modern Ukraine. Beginning of the 1st millennium AD

· With the arrival of the Sarmatians in the Northern Black Sea region, tamga-like signs became widespread, found on coins, bronze cauldrons, clay vessels, mirrors, buckles, bracelets, horse harness and other objects. Some of them served as tribal and family signs, as well as signs of ownership, others had religious and cult significance.

Diadem of a noble Sarmatian woman

Bracelet of a noble Sarmatian woman

· Traces of Sarmatian influence are found in some Scythian burial mounds. For example, in the Alexandropol Kurgan (Dnepropetrovsk region), round flares of the Sarmatian type, with relief decorations, were found among horse harnesses. In men's and women's clothing of the Scythians, iron and bronze brooches, also borrowed from the Sarmatians, were widely used as fasteners.

Alexandropol Kurgan

Drawing from the early 1860s.