Scythian genealogical myth

The Scythian genealogical myth was an epic cycle of the Scythian religion detailing the origin of the Scythians. This myth held an important position in the worldview of Scythian society, and was popular among both the Scythians of the northern Pontic region and the Greeks who had colonised the northern shores of the Pontus Euxinus.

Narrative

A depiction of the Snake-Legged Goddess on a horse plate from Tsymbalova mohyla

Five variants of the Scythian genealogical myth have been retold by Greco-Roman authors, which all traced the origin of the Scythians to the god Dargatavah and to the Scythian Snake-Legged Goddess:

1. Hērodotos of Halikarnāssos's recorded two variants of the myth, and according to his first version, the first man born in hitherto desert Scythia was named Targitaos and was the son of "Zeus" and a daughter of the river Borysthenēs. Targitaos in turn had three sons, who each ruled a different part of the kingdom, named:
   • Lipoxais (Ancient Greek: Λιποξαις, romanized: Lipoxais; Latin: Lipoxais)
   • Arpoxais (Ancient Greek: Ἀρποξαις, romanized: Arpoxais; Latin: Arpoxais)
   • Kolaxais (Ancient Greek: Κολαξαις, romanized: Kolaxais; Latin: Colaxais)

   One day four gold objects - a plough, a yoke, a battle-axe, a drinking cup - fell from the sky, and each brother in turn tried to pick the gold, but when Lipoxais and Arpoxais tried, it burst in flames, while the flames were extinguished when Kolaxais tried. Kolaxais thus became the guardian of this sacred gold (the hestiai of Tapatī́), and the other brothers decided that he should become the high king and king of the Royal Scythians while they would rule different branches of the Scythians.

2. According to the second version of the myth recorded by Hērodotos, Hēraklēs arrived in deserted Scythia with Gēruōn's cattle. After his mares disappeared during his sleep, he searched for them until he arrived at a land called Υλαια (Hulaia; Latin: Hylaea), that is the Woodland, and in a cave found a half-maiden, half-viper being who later revealed to him that she was the mistress of this country, and that she had kept Hēraklēs's horses, which she agreed to return only if he had sexual intercourse with her. She returned his freedom to Hēraklēs after three sons were born of their union:
   • Agathyrsos (Ancient Greek: Αγαθυρσος, romanized: Agathursos; Latin: Agathyrsus)
   • Gelōnos (Ancient Greek: Γελωνος, romanized: Gelōnos; Latin: Gelonus)
   • Skythēs (Ancient Greek: Σκυθης}, romanized: Skuthēs; Latin: Scythes)

   Before Hēraklēs left Scythia, the serpent maiden asked him what should be done once the boys had reached adulthood, and he gave her his bow and his girdle and told her that they should be each tasked with stringing the bow and putting on the girdle in the correct way, with whoever succeeded being the one who would rule his mother's land while those who would fail the test would be banished. When the time for the test had arrived, only the youngest of the sons, Skythēs, was able to correctly complete it, and he thus became the ancestor of the Scythians and their first king, with all subsequent Scythian kings claiming descent from him. Agathyrsos and Gelōnos, who were exiled, became the ancestors of the Agathyrsoi and Gelōnoi.

3. A third variant of the myth, recorded by Gaius Valerius Flaccus, described the Scythians as descendants of Colaxes (Latin: Colaxes), who was himself a son of the god Iūpiter with a half-serpent nymph named Hora.
4. The fourth variant of the myth, recorded by Diodōros of Sicily, calls Skythēs the first Scythian and the first king, and describes him as a son of "Zeus" and an earth-born viper-limbed maiden.
5. The fifth version of the myth, recorded in the Tabula Albana, recorded that after Hēraklēs had defeated the river-god Araxēs, he fathered two sons with his daughter Ekhidna, who were named Agathyrsos and Skythēs, who became the ancestors of the Scythians.

Interpretation

"Hēraklēs"

The "Hēraklēs" of Hērodotos's second version and from the Tabula Albana's version of the genealogical myth is not the Greek hero Hēraklēs, but the Scythian god Dargatavah, who appears in the other recorded variants of the genealogical myth under the name of Targitaos or Skythēs as a son of "Zeus" (that is, the Scythian Sky Father Papaios), and was likely assimilated by the Greeks from the northern shores of the Black Sea with the Greek Hēraklēs. 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 reference to "Hēraklēs" driving the cattle of Gēryōn also reflects the motif of the cattle-stealing god widely present among Indo-Iranian peoples, and the reference to him stealing Gēryōn's cattle after defeating him in Hērodotos's second version of the genealogical myth and of his victory against the river-god Araxēs in the Tabula Albana's version were Hellenised versions of an original Scythian myth depicting the typical mythological theme of the fight of the mythical ancestor-hero, that is of Dargatavah, against the chthonic forces, through which he slays the incarnations of the primordial chaos to create the Cosmic order. A Scythian depiction of the combat against this chthonic personification of chaos might have been present on one of the bone plaques decorating a comb from the Haymanova Mohyla, which was decorated with the scene of two Scythians fighting a monster with the front-legs of a lion, a scaly body, and a fish- or dragon-like split tail, with the monster's appearance connecting it to the element of water, and therefore to the chthonic realm; one of the Scythians in the scene is depicted as dying in the monster's leonine paws while the second man kills it with a spear.

The myth of "Aphroditē Apatouros"

The Scythian genealogical myth has been tentatively connected to the legend of Αφροδιτη Απατουρος (Aphroditē Apatouros) and the Giants as recorded by Strabōn, according to which the goddess Aphroditē Apatouros had been attacked by Giants and called on Hēraklēs for help. After concealing Hēraklēs, the goddess, under guise of introducing the Giants one by one, treacherously handed them to Hēraklēs, who killed them. According to this hypothesis, Aphroditē Apatouros was the same goddess as the Snake-Legged Goddess of the Scythian genealogical myth, and her reward to "Hēraklēs" for defeating the Giants was her love.

Lipoxais, Arpoxais, and Kolaxais

The names of Dargatavah's sons in the first version of the genealogical myth - Lipoxais, Arpoxais, and Kolaxais - end with the suffix "-xais," which is a Hellenisation of the Old Iranian term xšaya meaning ruler:

• Lipoxais, from Scythian *Lipoxšaya, from an earlier form *Dipoxšaya, means "king of radiance," in the sense of "king of the sun."

The first element, *dipa-, is derived from the Indo-European root dyew-, meaning "to be bright" a well as "sky" and "heaven," and can also give the name the meaning of "king of heaven," thus possibly linking Lipoxšaya to sun-deities or to gods of the heavens such as द्यौष्पितृ (Dyauṣpitṛ) and Iūpiter.

• Arpoxais, from Scythian *Arbuxšaya, means "king of the airspace."

The element *arbu- might have been a cognate of the Sanskrit term ऋभु (Ṛbhú), which is the name of a group of Indo-Aryan deities of the airspace.

• Kolaxais, from Scythian *Kolaxšaya, means "blacksmith king," in the sense of "ruling king of the lower world."

Each of the sons of Dargatavah were forebearers of tribes constituting the Scythian people:

• Lipoxšaya was the ancestor of the Aukhatai;
• Arbuxšaya was the ancestor of the Katiaroi and the Traspies;
• Kolaxšaya was the ancestor of the Paralatai, also known as the Royal Scythians.

Progenitors of the social classes

The three sons of Dargatavah represented the division of Scythian society into a system of tripartite classes which existed among all the Indo-European peoples, and is well-attested among the Indo-Iranian peoples, such as the वर्ण (varṇa) system which divided the societies of the Indo-Aryans into the clerical class of the ब्राह्मण (brāhmaṇa), the military aristocracy of the क्षत्रिय (kṣatriya) to which belonged the warriors and kings, and the wealth-producing ordinary community members of the वैश्य (vaiśya).

The name Paralatai was a Greek reflection of the Scythian name Paralatā, which was a cognate of the Avestan title 𐬞𐬀𐬭𐬀𐬜𐬁𐬙𐬀 (Paraδāta), which means "placed at the front" or "placed in the lead," and was a title held by Scythian kings.

In Gaius Valerius Flaccus's narrative, Auchus, that is Lipoxšaya, was born with white hair and wore a band which passed around his head three times and whose ends hanged backwards, with the colour white in Indo-Iranian tradition being that of priesthood, and the headband of Auchus being part of a priest's regalia which was depicted in the art of the various ancient Iranian peoples. These thus signalled Lipoxšaya as the progenitor of Aukhatai, that is the priestly component of Scythian society's tripartite class system.

Arbuxšaya, meanwhile, was the progenitor of the the Katiaroi and Traspies, who formed the third section of the Scythian class system, that of the ordinary populace consisting of farmers and horse-breeders. This finds a parallen in the Zoroastrian tradition, where Haošiiaŋha's brother Vaēgerēδ was the ancestor of farmers.

The three sons of Dargatavah were thus ancestors of the various social classes of Scythian society who also represented the three levels of the Cosmos: the upper celestial realm, the middle sphere of the airspace, and the lower terrestrial world, with the central son representing the airspace linking the two others, which also parallels the roles of the Sky Father Papaios, the Earth-and-Water Mother Api, and their child, Dargatavah, that is the airspace.

The hestiai and kingship

The four golden objects which fell from the sky also represented the various Scythian classes, with the plough used by farmers to till the fields and the yoke associated with cattle-breeding, representing the lowest class of the Katiaroi and Traspies; the battle-axe reoresenting the warrior class; and the cup, used during religious rituals for offering libations, representing the priestly class. The golden objects, that is the hestiai of Tapatī́, as attested by their fiery nature, were the fires of the three classes of Scythian society, which had an equivalent in later Sasanid Persia, where the three sacred Great Fires of Zoroastrianism were considered as each being sacred to one social class, with the triunity of both the Scythian hestiai and the Sasanian Great Fires representing the concept of fire, represented in the Scythian religion by Tapatī́, being the primeval and all-encompassing element permeating the world and being present throughout it.

The myth of the golden objects which fell from the sky was also present among the Saka of Central Asia, and therefore must have been an ancient Iranian tradition. A similar myth was present among the more southern Iranian peoples in the form of the god Ahura Mazdā offering 𐬫𐬌𐬨𐬀 (Yima) a 𐬯𐬎𐬡𐬭𐬁 (suβrā, either a pick or a shepherd's flute) and an 𐬀𐬱𐬙𐬭𐬁 (aštrā, a cattle goad), both made of gold, which Yima used on the earth to increase the size of its part which was inhabitable.

The parallels between the Zoroastrian and Scythian myths imply that the narrative of the ancestor of the Paralatā, Kolaxšaya, succeeding in acquiring the gold objects which had fallen from the sky was also an explanation of the supremacy of the tribe descended from him, that is the Royal Scythians, over the other Scythian tribes, and of the Scythian kings, who bore the title of Paralatā.

Zoroastrian parallels

The name Paralatai was a Greek reflection of the Scythian name Paralatā, which was a cognate of the Avestan title 𐬞𐬀𐬭𐬀𐬜𐬁𐬙𐬀 (Paraδāta), which means "placed at the front" or "placed in the lead," and was assigned in Zoroastrian literature to the first king, 𐬵𐬀𐬊𐬱𐬌𐬌𐬀𐬢𐬵𐬀 (Haošiiaŋha), and to his descendants. Zoroastrian mythology, Haošiiaŋha was the ancestor of the warrior class, that is of the military aristocracy of which the kings were members. According to the version of the genealogical myth recorded by Gaius Valerius Flaccus, Kolaxšaya and his warriors decorated their shields with "fired divided into three parts," flashing lightning, and pictures of red wings, with the colour red being characteristic of the warrior class in Indo-Iranian tradition.

Parallels with the Šāhnāme

The Scythian genealogical myth exhibits clear textual and narrative parallels with the Persian story of Haošiiaŋha's descendant 𐬚𐬭𐬀𐬉𐬙𐬀𐬊𐬥𐬀 (Θraētaona), and the latter's three sons - 𐬯𐬀𐬌𐬭𐬌𐬨𐬀 (Saⁱrima), 𐬙𐬏𐬌𐬭𐬌𐬌𐬀 (Tūⁱriia), and 𐬀𐬌𐬭𐬌𐬌𐬀 (Aⁱriia) - from the شاهنامه (Šāhnāme), thus ascribing the origin of the Scythians to the Scythian Sky Father Papaios, either directly or through his son, and to the Snake-Legged Goddess affiliated to Artimpasa, and represented the threefold division of the universe into the Heavens, the Earth, and the Underworld, as well as the division of Scythian society into the warrior, priest, and agriculturalist classes.

Another story from the Šāhnāme with which the Scythian genealogical myth exhibits textual and narrative parallels is that of Aⁱriia's descendant, 𐬭𐬀𐬊𐬙𐬀𐬯𐬙𐬀𐬑𐬨𐬀 (Raotas-taxma), from the Šāhnāme, who went looking for his lost horses, and married the queen تَهمينه (Tahmīna) who had stolen his horses and had a son with her. The parallels between this Persian myth and the second version of the Scythian genealogical myth recorded by Hērodotos thus attest that the latter myth was of a typically Iranic origin.

The first version of the genealogical myth recounted by Hērodotos 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 Hērodotos's account of the Scythian campaign of the Persian king Dārayavaʰuš I, where Idanthyrsos was the Scythian high king while Skōpasis and Taxakis were sub-kings.

Agathyrsos, Gelōnos, Skythēs

The sons of Dargatavah according to the second version of the genealogical myth were each also ancestors of tribes belonging to the Scythian cultures:

• Agathyrsos was the ancestor of the Agathyrsoi
• Gelōnos was the ancestor of the Gelōnoi
• Skythēs was the ancestor of the Scythians proper

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