Scythian

Scythian

Any member of a nomadic people of Iranian stock who migrated from Central Asia to southern Russia in the 8th–7th century BC. Fierce warriors, they were among the first expert horsemen, which enabled them to establish an empire from western Persia through Syria and Judaea to Egypt and to expel the Cimmerians from their territory in the Caucasus and north of the Black Sea. Although driven out of Anatolia by the Medes (see Media), they held territory from the Persian border into southern Russia; they repelled an invasion by the Persian Darius I c. 513 BC. Their civilization produced wealthy aristocrats (“Royal Scyths”), whose graves held richly worked articles of gold and other precious materials. The army consisted of freemen; on presentation of an enemy's head, a soldier could share in the booty. They fought with double-curved bows, trefoil-shaped arrows, and Persian swords. Burial called for the sacrifice of the dead man's wife and servants. In the 5th century BC the royal family intermarried with Greeks. The community fell to the Sarmatians in the 2nd century BC. See also Scythian art.

---

Scythian

1. of or relating to ancient Scythia, its inhabitants, or their language

2. a member of an ancient nomadic people of Scythia

3. the extinct language of this people, belonging to the East Iranian branch of the Indo-European family

---

Scythian 

the language of the ancient Scythians; the name usually given to the related Iranian dialects that formed a separate northeastern branch of the Iranian language group.

Speakers of Scythian were known to classical writers as Scythians, Sarmatians, Alani, and Roxolani. In the second half of the first millennium B.C. Scythian dialects spread throughout the extensive area north of the Black Sea and near the Caspian Sea, from the Danube to the Jaxartes (Syr Darya). No connected texts in Scythian have survived, but a considerable number of Scythian personal names, place-names, and names of peoples have been preserved in epigraphs and in the works of classical writers. The grammatical structure and vocabulary of the Scythian-Sarmatian dialects have not been sufficiently studied, but the Iranian character of the dialects is well known, and some essential features of the lexicon, phonetics, and word-formation have been established. The Ossetic language of the Caucasus is one of the descendants of the Scythian-Sarmatian dialects.

REFERENCES

Miller, V. “Epigraficheskie sledy iranstva na iuge Rossii.” Zhurnal Ministerstva narodnogo prosveshcheniia, October 1886.
Miller, V. “K iranskomu elementu v pripontiiskikh grecheskikh nadpisiakh.” Izvestiia Imp. Arkheologicheskoi komissii, 1913, issue 47.
Abaev, V. I. “Skifskii iazyk.” Osetinskii iazyk i fol’klor, issue 1. Moscow-Leningrad, 1949.
Vasmer, M. Untersuchungen über der ältesten Wohnsitze der Slaven [vol.] 1: Die Iranier in Südrussland. Leipzig, 1923.