THIS IS MY SEVENTY-FIFTH MONTHLY TEACHING LETTER AND CONTINUES MY SEVENTH YEAR OF PUBLICATION. With this lesson, we are going to continue to show more evidence concerning Herodotus’ report as regards to the burial of the Scythians and their kings. The idea is to show the account by Herodotus pertaining to this and compare it to the report of the archaeologists. Not only that, but to compare this new evidence against what was offered in the last lesson. The following three articles are from the book The World Of The Past, edited by Jacquetta Hawkes (a set of two volumes) under chapter 5, “Europe”, pages 454-456:
HERODOTUS: THE BURIAL OF SCYTHIAN KINGS
“THE Scythians formed the main clan of an enormously widespread group of nomads, whose territories may at times have stretched as far east as the Yenisei. Although there was no political unity among them, these nomadic tribes shared much in common in their way of life and in their art. The Scyths proper occupied the more westerly part of the range.
By the seventh century B.C. they were established in southern Russia, the Kuban and the Crimea, and in time they pushed further into eastern Europe – into Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Prussia. At various points, and particularly along the Black Sea, they came into contact with the Greek colonists. Nomadic chiefs employed Greek craftsmen to work for them, and some Scythic art shows a blending of Hellenic with Persian and other oriental elements.