Scythian religion

Scythian religion refers to the mythology, ritual practices and beliefs of the Scythians, an ancient Iranian people who dominated Central Asia and the Pontic-Caspian steppe in Eastern Europe throughout Classical Antiquity. What little is known of the religion is drawn from the work of the 5th century Greek historian and ethnographer Herodotus. Scythian religion is assumed to have been related to the earlier Proto-Indo-Iranian religion, and to have influenced later Slavic, Hungarian and Turkic mythologies, as well as some contemporary Eastern Iranian and Ossetian traditions.
Archaeological context.
The primary archaeological context of horse sacrifice are burials, notably chariot burials, but graves with horse remains reach from the Eneolithic well into historical times. Herodotus describes the execution of horses at the burial of a Scythian king, and Iron Age kurgan graves known to contain horses number in the hundreds.
The Scythians had some reverence for the stag, which is one of the most common motifs in their artwork, especially at funeral sites (see, for example, the Pazyryk burials).
Pantheon.
According to Herodotus, the Scythians worshipped a pantheon of seven gods and goddesses (heptad), which he equates with Greek divinities of Classical Antiquity following the "interpretatio graeca". He mentions eight deities in particular, the eighth being worshipped by the Royal Scythians.
The structure of the Scythian pantheon was typically Indo-Iranian, being divided into three ranks:
The eighth deity mentioned by Herodotus was Thagimasadas ("Θαγιμασάδας"), whom he equated with the Greek god Poseidon.
The pantheon was thus also a reflection of the Scythian cosmology, headed by the primeval fire which was the basic essence and the source of all creation, following which came the Earth-Mother and Sky-Father who created the gods, who were the four custodians of the four sides of the world regulating the universe. The world inhabited by humans existed between this celestial realm and the chthonic realm below the earth.
Tabiti.
Tabiti ("Ταβιτί"), equated by Herodotus with the Greek goddess of the Hearth, Hestia, is thought to be a Hellenized version of a name similar to Hindu Tapati and related verb "tapayati" ("burns"/"is hot"), as well as Avestan "tapaiti", Latin "tepeo" and several other Indo-European terms for heat..
Tabiti was the most venerated of all Scythian deities and called the "Queen of the Scythians" around 450 BCE by the king Idanthyrsus. Tabiti was a primordial sovereign deity of fire similar to the Vedic Agni and the Greek Hestia, therefore being connected to the common Iranian cult of fire. Due to being a deity representing an abstract notion of fire and divine bliss, Tabiti was rarely depicted in Scythian art, but was instead represented by the fireplace, which constituted the sacral centre of any community, from the family to the tribe. As a goddess of the Hearth, Tabiti was considered the goddess of the home, ensuring prosperity to a well-functioning household, as well as the patron of society, the state and families who protected the family and the clan.
As a symbol of supreme authority, Tabiti was assigned the superior position among the other gods through her role as the guardian of the king, due to which as well as her to link to the common Iranian cult of fire, she was connected to the importance of fire and of royal hearths in Iranian religions. The king's hearth was hence connected with Tabiti, and was therefore an inviolable symbol of the prosperity of his people and a token of royal power. As the guardian of the royal hearth, Tabiti therefore ensured the well-being of the tribe - an oath by the royal hearths was considered the most sacred and breaking it was believed to cause the king's illness and was punished by death. The "hestiai" of Tabiti were likely the flaming gold objects which fell from the sky in the Scythian genealogical myth and of which the king was the trustee while Tabiti herself in turn was the protector of the king and the royal hearth, thus creating a strong bond between Tabiti and the Scythian king, who might have been seen as an intermediary between the goddess and the people, and any offense to the royal "hestiai" was considered as affecting the whole tribe and had to be averted at any cost. Her characterisation as "the Queen of the Scythians" was thus possibly linked to the notion of the Khvarenah, the Iranian divine bliss, or even to that of the fire which protects the king, the "vahran".
The "hestiai" were part of the ceremony of the ritual sleep during which a substitute ritual king would ceremonially sleep in an open air field along with the gold objects for a single night, possibly as a symbolical ritual impregnation of the earth. This substitute king would receive as much land as he could ride around in one day: this land belonged to the real king and was given to the substitute king to complete his symbolic identification with the real king, following which he would be allowed to live for one year until he would be sacrificed when the time for the next ritual sleep festival would arrive.
Api.
Api ("Ἀπί"), equated by Herodotus with the Greek goddess of the Earth, Gaia.
Api was the consort of Papaios and a primordial goddess who gave birth to the first inhabitants of the world who remained aloof from worldly affairs and did not interfere with them after the creation of the world and the establishment of the proper order. Api's name has been connected with the Avestan word for water "api" and was equated by Herodotus with the Greek Earth goddess Gaia - reflecting her origins in the Iranian pantheon where the Earth as a life-giving principle is connected with the fertilising, nourishing and healing properties of water.
Papaios.
Papaios ("Παπαῖος"), equated by Herodotus with the Greek god Zeus.
"Scythian Heracles".
The "Scythian Heracles" who appears in Herodotus' second version and from the Tabula Albana's version of the genealogical myth is not the Greek hero Heracles, but a Scythian god, possibly the same one who appears in the other recorded variants of the myth under the name of Targitaos or Scythes as a son of Papaios, and was likely assimilated by the Pontic Greeks with the Greek Heracles.
The main feature of this deity which identifies him with Heracles is the cattle he drives, although unlike the Greek Heracles who drove the cattle of Geryon on foot, the "Scythian Heracles" drove a chariot pulled by mares. This cattle-driver aspect of Scythes/Targitaos was likely derived from the motif of cattle-theft of Iranian mythology which is also reflected in the legend of Mithra as a cattle-stealing god.
"Scythian Ares".
Scythian Ares (Greek: "Ἄρης"), equated by Herodotus with the Greek god Ares
Although Tabiti was apparently the most important deity in the Scythian pantheon, the worship accorded to the deity Herodotus refers to as "Ares" was unique. He notes that "it is not their custom [...] to make images, altars or temples to any except Ares, but to him it is their custom to make them". He describes the construction of the altar and the subsequent sacrifice as follows:
According to Tadeusz Sulimirski, this form of worship continued among the descendants of the Scythians, the Alans, through to the 4th century CE; this tradition may be reflected in Jordanes' assertion that Attila was able to assert his authority over the Scythians through his possession of a particular blade, referred to as the "Sword of Mars".
Goitosyros.
Goitosyros ("Γοιτόσῠρος") or Oitosyros ("Οἰτόσυρος"), might have been a solar deity, due to which Herodotus equated him with the Greek god Apollo. The name Goitosyros is derived from the Scythian terms ', meaning "herd" and "possessions", and ', meaning "strong" and "mighty".
Depictions of a solar god with a radiate head and riding a carriage pulled by two or four horses on numerous pieces of art found in Scythian burials from the 3rd century BCE and later might have been representations of Goitosyros.
Artimpasa.
Artimpasa ("Ἀρτίμπασα"), more commonly known as Argimpasa ("Ἀργίμπασα") due to a scribal corruption, was equated by Herodotus with the Greek goddess Aphrodite Urania. Artimpasa was an androgynous goddess of warfare, sovereignty, priestly force, fecundity, vegetation and fertility and was the Scythian variant of the Iranian goddess Arti, a patron of fertility and marriage and a guardian of laws. The first element of Artimpasa's name was derived from Arti.
Reflecting influence from Levantine cults in which the Great Goddess was often accompanied by a minor semi-bestial goddess, the Anguipede Goddess, who was also the Scythian foremother, was affiliated to Artimpasa. This affiliation was so close that the images of the two goddesses would almost merge, but nevertheless remained distinct from each other. This distinctiveness is more clear in how Artimpasa was assigned the role of the king's sexual partner (see below) and the divine power of the kings who granted royal power, but was not considered the foremother of the people, and in how neither the Bosporan kings of Sarmatian ancestry nor the Greco-Roman authors' records assigned Aphrodite or Artimpasa as the Scythians' ancestor.
There were outside influences on Artimpasa, such as from the cult of Astarte-Ishtar-Aphrodite during the long-period of Scythian presence in the Levant in the 7th century BCE, especially in the latter's form worshipped at Ascalon of an androgynous vegetation-fertility goddess, her ability to change men into women and women into men, and her affiliation with a semi-human goddess subordinate with her in the form of Atargatis for Astarte and the Anguipede Goddess for Artimpasa.
The assimilation of these traits thus meant that the Greeks on the northern shores of the Black Sea identified Artimpasa with their own goddess Aphrodite Urania and the Scythians themselves assimilated Aphrodite Urania with Artimpasa. Due to this association, multiple depictions of Greek-style and made Aphrodite and Eros have been found in the tombs of Scythian nobles.
The presence of similarities between Artimpasa and the Great Mother goddess Bendis of the Thracian neighbours of the Scythians, who like Artimpasa was a mistress of animals and a power-giver, however suggests that these aspects of Artimpasa were not completely borrowed from Levantine cults and had also an indigenously Scythian/Balkan element.
Other influences on Artimpasa include that of the fellow Iranian goddess Anahita, whose closeness to Ashi/Arti enabled the merging of her traits into Artimpasa. Anahita's triple name, Aredvi Sura Anahita, meaning "The Humid, Strong, and Immaculate" respectively represented the three functions of fecundity, sovereignty, and priestly force, which were also functions present in Artimpasa. Anahita's functions as an ancient fertility goddess influenced by the Assyro-Babylonian Ishtar-Astarte, her later orgiastic rites, and her roles as a warrior and victory-granting goddess. The cult of Artimpasa, which had been performed by Enarei, who were powerful priests from the most noble families, had transformed into a cult of the divine patron of the royal dynasty by the 4th century BCE, reflecting the absorption of Anahita's role as a divine patroness of the king and a giver of royal power by Artimpasa, as well as the influence on Artimpasa of the role of the Levantine Great Goddesses as grantors of divine power to the king. These warrior aspects of Artimpasa would later allow for her identification with Athena in the Bosporan Kingdom.
Artimpasa as a winged goddess.
Artimpasa was also a "potnia theron", as was depicted as such on a mirror from the Kelermes kurgan, whose circle was divided into eight equal segments portraying demons, animals, and semi-bestial men, and was dominated by the goddess, winged, and holding two panthers in her spread hands. This imagery might have been influenced directly and indirectly (via the intermediary of orientalizing Greek art from Ionia) by the Levantine depictions of Inanna-Ishtar, who was portrayed as winged as symbol of her being a celestial and warrior goddess, and was also represented as a "potnia theron" holding animals in both her hands or surrounded by animals, and whose warrior nature was shown in her representations as a Mistress of Animals holding weapons.
A Sarmatian phalera decorated with an image of a winged Aphrodite with her head decorated with leaves, and holding a small round object in one hand and a rosette in the other hand was found in the Yanchorak treasure from the 2nd to 1st centuries BCE. This phalera was part of a horse harness and the Sarmatians who copied a Greek representation of Aphrodite associated her image with their own goddess. These representations also characterise Artimpasa as a "potnia hippon" alongside her status as a "potnia theron".
A winged depiction of Artimpasa is a winged goddess flanked by deer from a plate found in the Alexandropol'skiy kurgan alongside a sceptre head shaped like the Anguipede Goddess affiliated to Artimpasa. A possibly winged representation of Artimpasa was on a damaged bronze cart beam decoration from Krasnoye Znamya. That this portrayal of the goddess showed her within a radiate circle, implying she was also a solar goddess. Artimpasa role as a potnia hippon and the nature of the horse as both solar and chthonic furthermore implied that Artimpasa, although a celestial goddess, was also a killer and earth deity.
Artimpasa as the seated goddess.
Another Scythian art motif depicting Artimpasa portrays her as a seated goddess who wears a calathus with a veil above it and holds a mirror while a young man wearing Scythian clothing and drinking from a rhyton. Although this composition has sometimes been identified as a representation of Tabiti, the mirror the goddess holds is more fitting of Artimpasa's role as a goddess of fertility and sexuality and a patroness of the Enarei soothsayers due to the mirror being a symbol of feminine principle, eroticism and fertility which played an important role in the wedding rites of Iranian peoples, as well as a magical object used for prophecy and shamanic rites (the Sarmatians buried their priestesses with mirrors). One pendant from the Kul-Oba kurgan depicts Artimpasa in the centre, with a spherical vessel to her right and an alter or incense burner to her left, representing the consecration by fire (which holds an important place in the marital rites of Iranian peoples) of the communion between the goddess and humanity.
A more complex form of the seated Artimpasa motif is found on a 4th century BCE headgear gold band from Sakhnova, where the seated Artimpasa holds a mirror and a round vessel, with a bearded Scythian with a gorytos hanging on his belt and holding a rhyton in one hand and a sceptre in the other hand kneels in front of her. To their right are a musician and two "cup-bearers", and to their left is a youth with a fan and two Scythians drinking from the same rhyton (interpreted as "sworn brothers"), and two sacrificers of a ram. This scene is a representation of a sacred feast where the kneeling man, a worshipper or young god, is uniting with the goddess by drinking a holy beverage. This feast is comparable to the orgiastic festival of Sacaia which was celebrated in Pontus in honour of Anahita and was defined as a "Scythian feast" by Hesychius.
These scenes have been interpreted as depicting the adoration or communion of Artimpasa and a god or a mortal, and more specifically as the granting of divine benediction to a king, or an investiture, or a sacred marriage. The rhyta and the spherical vessels like the one depicted in the Sakhnova band were used for drinking sacred beverages consumed in religious rituals. The spherical vessels specifically were widely used in the rituals of Iranian peoples, and large numbers of them have been found in Scythian sites, and their ornamentation typically consisting of vegetal and solar imagery as well as their depiction in Scythian art where they are held or being offered to a goddess associate them with Artimpasa.
A similar artistic motif is that of a horseman facing Artimpasa. One depiction of this scene is from a famous Saka carpet from one of the Pazyryk kurgans in Siberia representing the seated Artimpasa with her right hand raised to her head and her left hand holding a blossoming branch, with a horseman facing her. Another representation of this scene is found on a 1st century BCE-1st century CE relief from Chayka in which a horseman holding a bow approaches a standing woman who holds a round object (which might be a mirror, a spherical vessel or a fruit), with an altar between them.
These depictions represent the male figure, who is often a standing youth of smaller stature than the goddess, as subordinate to Artimpasa, who remains seated. This artistic composition reflects a divine marriage of the goddess with a younger god, similar to the union of Cybele and Attis or of Aphrodite and Adonis, or a deified mortal identified with a god or a hero, who has been tentatively proposed to be Scythian forefather Targitaus. These scenes represent this younger god receiving grace endowed by the goddess upon him after the communion. In some variants of this scene, the male partner of the goddess is bearded and is more imposing on horseback, which, if not simply a local artistic variation, reflected the increasing prominence of a warrior god in this ritual.
These scenes however had multiple interpretations, and the communion with the goddess might have also represented blessing of the worshipper with an promise of afterlife and future resurrection through communion with the goddess, as well as an endowment of the king with royal power, reflecting Artimpasa's role as a giver of power and victory, which also explains why all the variants of the scene of the seated goddess and a male partner were found in the tombs of Scythian nobility.
A representation of communion with Artimpasa as guaranteeing sovereignty in Scythian religion is the signet ring of the Scythian king Scyles whose bezel was decorated with the image of a woman seated on a throne and holding a mirror in her right hand and a sceptre in her left hand, with "Σκυλεω" engraved near the figure of the goddess, and on whose band was inscribed in Greek Κέλεοε Ἄργοταν πὰρ ὲναι ("Tell to be with Argotas!"). The image of the Artimpasa on the ring was therefore a representation of her as a granter of sovereignty which inherated from generation to generation of the Scythian royal dynasty as a token of royal power, and Argotas was probably a former Scythian king from whom his descendant Scyles inherited this ring. The ring did not feature any image of the male partner of the goddess because the kings were themselves considered to be these partners, with the Scythian royal investiture having been considered both a communion between man and the goddess as well as a marital union which elevated the king to the status of spouse of the goddess and granted him power through sexual intercourse with the goddess. This was also a reflection of Levantine influence on Artimpasa, since Mesopotamian equivalents of Aphrodite Urania were sometimes represented together with the king in scenes represented sacred marriages, and the stability of royal power in Paphos was believed to be derived from intimate relations between the Aphrodite, with whom the queen of Paphos was identified, and the king, who claimed descent from Aphrodite's lover Cinyras.
Another possible Siberian representation of Artimpasa can be found on two belt buckles depicting two dismounted horsemen, one of whom is holding the horses while the other lays in the lap of a goddess whose torso emerges from the earth and whose hair is interwoven with the branches of a tree above her head. This scene might depict the Scythian ritual sleep on the Earth and could be related to the relation between Artimpasa and the divine twins.
The Sindo-Maeotian seated goddess.
Depictions of the seated with a horseman facing her have also been found in the Kuban region inhabited by the Sindo-Maeotians:
A 4th century BCE rhyton from the Merdzhany kurgan was decorated with a representation of the seated goddess holding a spherical vessel, with a seven-branched leafless tree (a tree of life possibly characterising this scene as a marriage ceremony) on one side of her throne, and a pole with a horse skull (symbolising the importance of horses and horse sacrifice in this goddess's cult) on it on the other side, while mounted god with a rhyton approaches her - the scene represents this Sindo-Maeotian goddess and a local male deity in communion, possibly of marital nature. This scene is also parallel to the scenes of Artimpasa with a male partner, and the presence of the tree of life as well as the goddess's link to horses reflect her similarity with Artimpasa, and thus indicate close links between the Scythian and Sindo-Maeotian worship of the fertility and vegetation goddess.
A relief from the 4th century BCE Trekhbratniy kurgan depicted a small charioteer drawing the horses of a carriage with a naiskos-shaped coach in which is seated a woman who stretches her hand towards a young beardless horseman who has a gorytos hanging on his left hip while another gorytos hands from a pole near the naiskos. The gorytos hanging on the pole might be linked to the Massagetae custon described by Herodotus a man desiring to have sexual intercourse with a woman would hang his gorytos in front of her wagon before proceeding to the act; the hanging gorytos in the Trekhbratniy kurgan relief might thus have been a symbol of sexual union or marriage, and its location near the carriage as well as the handclasp of the woman and the horseman might therefore hint that the scene showed a sacred marriage ceremony. This scene represented the apotheosis of a deceased noblewoman who participated in the worship of the Sindo-Maeotian goddess before her death, with her receiving the status of the goddess depicted in similar scenes alongside the hero after her death. The scene might alternatively have represented the Sindo-Maeotian equivalent of Artimpasa with the hero.
The Thracian divine marriage.
A Thracian equivalent of Artimpasa might also appear in the series of horse bridle plaques from Letnitsa. One of the plaques depicts a seated male figure (an ancestral hero and likely Thracian equivalent of the "Scythian Heracles") with a female figure (the Thracian Great Goddess) straddling him from above, both of them explicitly engaging in sexual intercourse, and symbolising the king's acquirement of royal power through intercourse with the Great Goddess similarly to the Scythian king's obtaining of royal power through his union with Artimpasa. Behind the Great Goddess is another woman, holding a vessel in one hand and in the other one a branch which obscures the view of the hero; this figure is an vegetation goddess with an ectatic aspect, which is symbolised by the vessel she holds, which contains a sacred beverage, and whose connection to the Great Goddess is analogous to that of the Anguipede Goddess with Artimpasa.
Another example of the Thracian beliefe in the rite of the sacred marriage with the goddess was in how the Odrysian king Cotys I believed that Athena accepted to be a substitute for the Great Goddess as his spouse.
Several Thracian stelae and votive plaques have also been discovered depicting a horseman facing a standing or seated Great Goddess while a tree with a coiling snake stands between them, attesting of the similarity of the Thracian and Scythian conceptions of the Great Goddess and the affiliation to her of a snake goddess who was considered the foremother of the people.
Artimpasa and the divine twins.
One gold plate which decorated a priestess's headdress which was discovered in the 4th-3rd century BCE Karagodeuashkh kurgan depicting a Sindo-Maeotian form of Artimpasa is divided into three registers corresponding to the division of the universe into three levels of Scythian cosmology:
The woman in the upper level of the plate was identified an Iranian deity representing khvarenah, that is divine bliss, and assimilated with Tyche, and the charioteer in the middle section has been identified with Goitosyros.
The three divisions of the of the Karagodeuashkh plate have also been interpreted as representing the same goddess respectively reigning the world from heaven, driving the sun-chariot in the middle, and accepting the veneration of humans and blessing them in the lower section. The identification of the goddess with the Scytho-Maeotian Aphrodite, that is Artimpasa, is supported by the use of motifs of griffins flanking a thymiaterion, ova, and female masks and bucrania - all symbols of Aphrodite Urania who was identified with Artimpasa - being respectively used as separations below the three sections of the plate. This identification was further supported by the cornucopia - which was a symbol of fertility and fortune identified with the Iranian khvarenah - held by the goddess in the first section; the affiliation of Artimpasa with the chariot-riding Iranian goddess Anahita; and the presence of gold pendants in the shape of doves and gorgoneia, both symbols of Aphrodite Urania, as decorations of the Karagodeuashkh plate and of the headgear which it was part of.
The third division's scene has been interpreted as depicting either the worship of the Scytho-Maeotian Astarte-Anahita (that is, Artimpasa) or the goddess granting power to the youth with the rhyton. Although the youth with the rhyton was visually similar to that of the male figure of the seated Artimpasa compositions, he differed from the latter in that both youths in the Karagodeuashh plate were represented as equals and seated on the same bench as the goddess, which signaled their divine nature - however the twin gods' smaller statures compared to the goddess, who dominated the scene, implied they were of an inferior rank to her in the mythical hierarchy and were in the rank of divine heroes. This scene therefore represented the Indo-European triad of the Great Goddess with the divine twins, itself related to the connection between the pre-Zoroastrian Anahita and the Nahaithya twins, ultimately derived from the Indo-European theme of the divine twins as the companions of the Mother Goddess who flanked her symbol of the Tree of Life. Thus, the scene on the Karagodeuashkh plate also represented a Scythian form of the cult of the divine twins.
The divine nature of all the other beings represented on the Karagodeuashkh plate implied that the two hooded figures in the background of the scene could not have been eunuch priests and therefore might have instead represented mythological attendants of Artimpasa of unclear significance in the scene.
The Karagodeuashkh plate thus depicted a communion of Artimpasa with a pair of heroes which therefore represented concepts of eternal life and resurrection and divine legitimation of royal power.
Thagimasidas.
Thagimasidas ("Θαγιμασάδας") was a god worshipped only the tribe of the Royal Scythians. Herodotus identified him with the Greek god Poseidon, which was likely not because of Poseidon's aspect as a sea god, but rather because both Thagimasadas and Poseidon were horse-tamer deities.
Other deities.
The Anguipede Goddess.
The so-called "Anguipede Goddess" appears in all variations of the Scythian genealogical myth as the Scythian fore-mother who sires the ancestor and first king of the Scythians with Targitaos. Her traits, consistent across the multiple versions of the genealogical myth, include her being the daughter of either a river-god or of the Earth and dwelling in a cave, as well as her being half-woman and half-snake. Diodorus Siculus's description of this goddess in his retelling of the genealogical myth as an "anguipede earth-born maiden" implies that that she was a daughter of Api, likely through a river-god, and therefore was both chthonic and connected to water, but was however not identical with Api herself and instead belonged to a younger generation of deities of "lower status" who were more actively involved in human life. The role of the Anguipede Goddess role as the foremother of the Scythians had been very firmly established in Scythian religion before the contacts with Mediterannean religions which influenced the cult of Artimpasa to whom the Anguipede Goddess was affiliated
Due to the influence of Levantine religions on the religion of the Scythians during their presence in the Near East, the Anguipede goddess also bore a resemblance to the Levantine goddess Atargatis-Derceto in several aspects, including their monstrous bodies, fertility and vegetation symbolism, legends about their love affairs, and their respective affiliations and near-identification to Artimpasa and Aphrodite Urania. Although the Anguipede Goddess was very closely identified to Artimpasa to the point of bordering on identification, the two goddesses were nevertheless distinct. Another influence might have been the Greco-Colchian goddess Leucothea, whose mythology as a woman who was turned into a goddess after throwing herself into the sea due to a curse from Hera connects her to Deuceto-Atargatis, and whose sanctuary at Vani had columns crowned with female protomes emerging from acanthus leaves similar to those of the anguipede goddess.
Reflecting influence from Levantine cults in which the Great Goddess was often accompanied by a minor semi-bestial goddess, the Anguipede Goddess, who was also the Scythian foremother, was affiliated to Artimpasa. This affiliation was so close that the images of the two goddesses would almost merge, but nevertheless remained distinct from each other. This distinctiveness is more clear in how Artimpasa was assigned the role of the king's sexual partner and the divine power of the kings who granted royal power, but was not considered the foremother of the people, and in how neither the Bosporan kings of Sarmatian ancestry nor the Greco-Roman authors' records assigned Aphrodite or Artimpasa as the Scythians' ancestor.
Several representations are known of the "Anguipede Goddess", often crafted by Greek artisans for the Scythian market, most of them depicting her as a goddess with snake-shaped legs or tendrils as legs, and some depicting her as winged, with griffin heads growing below her waist or holding a severed head, with many of them having been found discovered in burials, thus assigning both a chthonic and vegetal symbolism to the goddess, which follows the motif of vegetal deities possessing chthonic features.
The shape of these representations is similar to that of the tree of life connecting the upper and lower spheres of the Universe as well as symbolising supreme life-giving power, and therefore merging with the image of the fertility goddess, and was additionally linked to the Iranian creation myth of the Simurgh bird resting on the Saena Tree.
The snakes and griffins as well as, and representations of the Anguipede Goddess alongside predatory feline animals also characterised her as a "potnia theron". The snakes also connected the Anguipede Goddess to the Greek Medusa, and Greek-manufactured representations of Medusa, especially in the form of pendants found in the tombs of Scythian nobles, were very popular in Scythia due to her association with the Anguipede Goddess. Posible depictions of the goddess as a potnia theron in the form of Medusa have also been found in Scythian art, with a damaged rhyton from the Kelermes kurgan depicting her as a winged running deity with small wings on non-serpentiform legs and flanked by griffins on both sides, and a gold plate from the Shakhan kurgan being decorated with the image of winged deity holding two animals.
The posture of the Anguipede goddess, where her hands and legs were spread wide, constituted a "birth-giving attitude", and therefore associated her with a life-giving principle. This complex imagery thus reflected the combination of human motherhood, vegetation and animal life within the Anguipede Goddess.
The chthonic nature of the Anguipede Goddess also explained why her depictions were placed in Scythian tombs, and her status as the fore-mother of the Scythians associated her with the cult of the ancestors - the Anguipede Goddess, being the controller of the life cycle, was also a granter of eternal life for the deceased.
The depictions of the Anguipede Goddess holding a severed head which represented the sacrificial offering of a man hanging on the tree of life, were another example of Levantine influence, since severed human heads appeared in Levantine goddess cults in which the life-granting goddesses demanded death and the death of partner whom she loved and killed was re-enacted. The Anguipede Goddess therefore also had a blood-thirsty aspect, and there is attestation of human sacrifices to local goddesses accompanied by the exposure of the victims' severed heads on the northern Black Sea coast; one such head placed on an altar close to a representation of a vegetation goddess was discovered in the Sarmatian town of Ilutarum. The Scythian practice of severing the heads of all enemies they killed in battle and bringing them to their kinds in exchange of war booty, the depictions of warriors near or holding decapitated heads in Scythian art, as well as the pendants shaped like satyr heads found in the same structures as the representations of the Anguipede Goddess and of Artimpasa might have been connected with this aspect of the Anguipede Goddess.
In addition to her connection with the Tree of Life, the Anguipede Goddess's image was used in shamanic rites due to her affiliation with Artimpasa, with one of the sceptres from the Alexandropol'skiy kurgan having been found decorated with a depiction of her, and the other sceptre heads being furnished with bells or decorated with schematic trees with birds sitting on them.
Moreover, depictions of the Anguipede Goddess on Scythian horse harness decorations imply that she was also a patroness of horses, which might be connected with the love affair between Targitaos and the goddess beginning after she had kept his mares in the genealogical myth.
The Anguipede Goddess outside of Scythia.
The Kuban Region.
Depictions of the snake-legged goddess were also found in the Sindo-Maeotian areas on the Asian side of the Bosporus, and her representations in her tendril-legged form became more predominant in the first centuries CE and appeared in Bosporan Greek cities, where they became a common design on sarcophagi, as well as in graves in Chersonesus.
Southern Crimea.
Herodotus' recounting of the Taurian Parthenos, the goddess to whom the Tauri sacrificed ship-wrecked men and Greeks captured in sea-raids and exposed their heads on a pole, might have been another form of the Anguipede Goddess worshipped by non-Scythians.
Thrace.
Thracian interpretations of the Scythian Anguipede Goddess appear in the Thracian Tomb of Sveshtari as caryatids with feminine bodies wearing calathi hats and chitons with pleats shaped like floral volutes which have an acanthus between them. Their disproportionally large raised hands, which either hold the volutes or are raised to appear as supporting the entablure, are similar to the goddess with her hads raised to her face depicted on a series of Thracian votive plaques. Above the caryatids, a wall painting depicts a goddess holding a crown and reaching out to an approaching horsemen. The overall scene represents a Thracian nobleman's posthumous heroisation and depicts the same elements of the Great Goddess-minor goddess complex found in the relation between Artimpasa and the Anguipede Goddess.
A Thracian equivalent of the Anguipede Goddess might also appear in the series of horse bridle plaques from Letnitsa. One of the plaques depicts a seated male figure (an ancestral hero and likely Thracian equivalent of the "Scythian Heracles") with a female figure (the Thracian Great Goddess) straddling him from above, both of them explicitly engaging in sexual intercourse, and symbolising the king's acquirement of royal power through intercourse with the Great Goddess similarly to the Scythian king's obtaining of royal power through his union with Artimpasa. Behind the Great Goddess is another woman, holding a vessel in one hand and in the other one a branch which obscures the view of the hero; this figure is an vegetation goddess with an ectatic aspect, which is symbolised by the vessel she holds, which contains a sacred beverage, and whose connection to the Great Goddess is analogous to that of the Anguipede Goddess with Artimpasa.
Several Thracian stelae and votive plaques have also been discovered depicting a horseman facing a standing or seated Great Goddess while a tree with a coiling snake stands between them, attesting of the similarity of the Thracian and Scythian conceptions of the Great Goddess and the affiliation to her of a snake goddess who was considered the foremother of the people.
The Goddess with Raised Hands.
Multiple headgear pendants from three kurgans respectively found in Mastyuginskiy, Tolstaya Mogila, and Lyubimovskiy have been discovered which represent a goddess with large hands raised in a praying gestures and sitting on the protomes of two lions in profile. The posture of this goddess depicts an imagery which originated in either Luristan or the Caucasus, and has been interpreted as an act of prayer towards a solar or celestian deity. The depiction of this goddess from the Tolstaya Mogila kurgan shows her half-nude, with uncovered breasts and wearing only a cross-belt above the skirt. The nudity of the Goddess with Raised Hands connect hers with the Anguipede Goddess, who is often depicted in topless dress, and with Artimpasa.
A later Bosporan goddess in the same praying gesture is depicted with leaf-shaped or branch-shaped hands. Like the earlier goddess with raised hands, this goddess sits on two lions or on a throne flanked by lions. The leaf-shaped hands of this goddess as well as the wild animals on her sides connect her with the tendril-legged form of the Anguipede Goddess, and therefore to Artimpasa.
The Divine Twins.
The mytheme of the Divine twins, which appears across several Indo-European religions in the form of the Ancient Greek Dioscuri, the Vedic Ashvins and the twins from the Dacian tablets - these divine twins had earlier Indo-European mythology been horses before later evolving into horsemen such as the Ashvins and the English Hengist and Horsa, who had horse-names. In Indo-European mythology, the divine twins were companions of the Mother-Goddess who flanked her symbol of the Tree of Life, especially in depictions of them as two horses or horsemen who stand symmetrically near a goddess or a tree.
In pre-Zoroastrian Iranian religion, Nahaithya, the Iranian declension of the divine twins, were connected with Anahita and were her companions . The cult of the divine twins existed among the Scythians, with Lucian recording the veneration of two twin deities in a Scythian temple whom he identified with the Greek Orestes and Pylades. Their duality represented the contrast of death against fertility and resurrection, and were related to royalty and warrior society, which thus made them companions of Artimpasa, as depicted in the Karagodeuashkh plate.
Depictions of the divine twins among Scythian peoples included some Sarmatian royal brands depicting the theme of the two horsemen standing symmetrically near a tree, a small figure from a Scythian burial at Krasny Mayak depicting two men embracing one another, as well as two Greek-made bronze figurines from Scythian Neapolis depicting the Greek Dioscuri who were identified by the Scythians with the divine twins, together with a terracotta sculpture in the shape of a goddess's head were discovered in an ash altar near a wall of a temple where was worshipped a fertility goddess to whom was associated images of rams.
The divine twins' position in Scythian religion was inferior to that of the gods, likely belonging to the rank of heroes, and might possibly have been the same as the two brothers and first Scythian kings born of Targitaos and the Anguipede Goddess in the genealogical myth. The Scythian divine twins, who were most likely the origin of the twin heroes who appear in the Ossetian Nart saga, are another reflection of the Indo-European mytheme of the divine twins as the progenitors of royal dynasties, also found in the Roman myth of Romulus and Remus, the English Hengist and Horsa, and the Greek Dioscuri as the originators of the dual-monarchy of Sparta.
Svalius.
In the 19th century, Russian folklorist Alexander Afanasyev and French philologist Frédéric-Guillaume Bergmann () mentioned a Scythian deity of the Sun by the name of "Svalius".
The Scythian Genealogical Myth.
Five variants of the Scythian genealogical myth have been retold by Greco-Roman authors:
The "Heracles" of Herodotus' second version and from the Tabula Albana's version of the genealogical myth is not the Greek hero Heracles, but a Scythian god, possibly the same one appears in the other recorded variants of the myth under the name of Targitaos as a son of Papaios, and was likely assimilated by the Greeks from the northern shores of the Black Sea with the Greek Heracles. The mother's traits are consistent across the multiple versions of the genealogical myth and include her being the daughter of either a river-god or of the Earth and dwelling in a cave, as well as her being half-woman and half-snake
The genealogical myth thus ascribes the origin of the Scythians to the Sky Father Papaios, either directly or through his son, and to the anguipede goddess, who was either affiliated to or identical with Artimpasa.
The first version of the genealogical myth recounted by Herodotus also explains the division of Scythia into three kingdoms of which the king of the Royal Scythians was the High King, which is a structure also recorded in Herodotus' account of the Scythian campaign of Darius I, where Idanthyrsus was the Scythian high king while Scopasis and Taxacis were sub-kings.
The Enarei.
The "Enarei" were a privileged caste of hereditary androgynous priests and shamanistic soothsayers who performed Artimpasa's cult and played an important political role in Scythian society as they were believed to have received the gift of prophesy directly from the goddess Artimpasa. The Enarei belonged to the most powerful Scythian nobility who wore women's clothing and performed women's jobs. a custom which Herodotus understands as being reflected in the title "ena-rei", glossing this as "ἀνδρό-γυνοι" or "man-women".
The nature of the Enarei was that of a shamanistic were affiliated to an orgiastic cult of Artimpasa their androgyny, which according to shamanic traditions were considered transformed shamans who changed their sex, signaled them as being the most powerful shamans, due to which they inpired fear and were thus accordingly given special respect in Scythian society. The Scythians themselves attributed the androgyny of the Enarei to a curse of a "female disease" causing impotency given as punishment to the perpetrators of Scythian sack of the sanctuary of Astarte in Ascalon and their descendants.
The method employed by the "Enarei" differed from that practised by traditional Scythian diviners: whereas the latter used a bundle of willow rods, the "Enarei" used strips cut from the bark of the linden tree (genus "tilia") to tell the future.
Animal sacrifice.
The mode of Scythian animal sacrifice was, in the opinion of Herodotus, relatively simple. Sacrificial animals included various kinds of livestock, though the most prestigious offering was considered to be the horse. The pig, on the other hand, was never offered in sacrifice, and apparently the Scythians were loath to keep swine within their lands. Herodotus describes the Scythian manner of sacrifice as follows: