The deadly accuracy of Scythian archers inspired awe in antiquity. (Terror was enhanced because they poisoned their arrows.) Modern parallels suggest that a Scythian archer could shoot about 15-20 arrows a minute, probably averaging a distance of about 500-600 feet and achieving accuracy at about 200 feet. There was an ancient trick, requiring honed skills, to shooting a great many arrows per minute, recently rediscovered by modern archers. Instead of pulling each arrow from the quiver, one holds several arrows in the hand drawing the bow. A striking image on a Greek perfume jar depicts an Amazon doing exactly that. Kneeling and twisting backward, she shoots one arrow while holding two more at the ready (Fig. 13.1). Some archery experts note that her bow appears to be shown in a braced position, with little grip setback, whereas the string is stretched in the drawn position, perhaps indicating that the artist knew about the Scythians’ speed archery technique but was not drawing from life. On the other hand, instinctive expert archers use no fixed anchor point and may not draw the string back fully (see chapter 5).3
In the hands of expert archers, Scythian bows were capable of shooting arrows extraordinary distances. A fourth-century BC inscription at Olbia (northern Black Sea) honors an archer for shooting an arrow nearly 1,700 feet (521.6 m). This may seem incredible, but a “flight archery” re-
FiG. 13.1. Amazon archer using speed-shooting technique. Black-figure alabastron (perfume jar), Emporion Painter, ca. 500-480 BC, inv. B-5218, State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. Photo by Vladimir Terebenin, Leonard Kheifets, Yuri Molodkovets. Photograph © The State Hermitage Museum.
Cord set in 2010 was just under 1,600 feet, achieved by a 14-year-old boy using a recurve bow of modern materials. In a comparable “primitive flight” record in 1995, an archer using a composite bow of natural materials (horn, sinew, and wood) with a linen string achieved a distance of about 1,800 feet. Flight archery does not depend solely on muscular
Strength, so some female archers in antiquity could shoot arrows very long distances. Modern art historians have described an Amazon archer on a vase painting (by Nikosthenes, 550-510 BC) as collapsing in death, or taking “negligent aim” at the heavens. She stands bending backward and aims at the sky. But in fact she is assuming the correct position for shooting a long-distance arrow. The two mounted onlookers, a Greek and a Scythian, suggest a contest scene (rather than a bird hunt).4
According to ancient lore from Pontus recounted by Herodotus, archery was introduced to the steppe nomads by the mythic first king of Scythia, Scythes, a son of Heracles. Arrows are an extremely ancient prehistoric technology but about twenty-eight hundred years ago an ingenious type of bow appeared on the steppes: this historic invention was responsible for the Scythians’ vaunted reputation as archers. Scythian recurve bows of composite materials differed from the large, straight bows made from a single piece of wood used by Greeks and other ancient cultures. When strung (with horsehair or sinew), the recurve bow’s tips curl away from the archer, like the classic Cupid’s bow. “Most bows are made of flexible branches” in a continuous arc, wrote Am-mianus Marcellinus, “but Scythian bows have curved ends.” The form was likened to the Greek letter sigma (X). The recurve bow was so characteristic of the nomads around the Black Sea that the Greeks liked to compare its coastline to the shape of a Scythian bow (with the Crimea as the belly of the bow and the coast of Turkey as the string).5
The recurve composite bow was smaller and stored much more energy under compression, giving Scythian arrows more force, accuracy, distance, and velocity. The highly skilled, laborious bow-making process involved fitting pieces of horn (ibex, goat, ram) wrapped with horsehair, birch bark, or sinew (deer, elk, ox) and glue (animal or fish) around a wood core. Seasoning at each stage meant that the process took several years. The result was the archer’s most precious possession, perhaps even more prized than his or her horse (see below). The Scythian composite bow was compact and light, ideal for use on horseback by both men and women, and it was well suited for the deadly backward Parthian shot. Judging from ancient artistic depictions (and remnants in graves) the bow was about thirty inches long, and it was held out from the chest (breasts were no hindrance; see chapter 5). Ancient
Writers noted that Saka-Scythian “women along with the men shoot backward as they pretend to flee.”6
It is very difficult to string a powerful recurve composite bow unless one knows how; it requires a special technique more than brute force. There are two ancient Greek allusions to this special knowledge. According to the Scythian origin myth, above, Heracles demonstrated the knack of stringing his bow and buckling his belt to the Viper-Woman of Scythia with whom he had three sons, and he set these feats as a test to determine which son should rule. Only Scythes was able to accomplish the tasks. Parallel tales appear in the Central Asian epics, such as Forty Maidens (Chapter 24), in a Persian tale recounted by Herodotus, and in Homer’s Odyssey. Many failed to string the special bow of the skilled archer Odysseus. Only he knew the trick. This passage has been taken as evidence that in Homer’s time (ca. 700 BC) the Greeks were just becoming familiar with the nomads’ recurve bows.7
Homer says that Odysseus strung his bow while seated. A Scythian bow was usually strung in a sitting or kneeling position with the belly of the bow held firmly under one’s knee. The method is illustrated in Scythian artifacts. A well-known example is the golden beaker from Kul Oba Kurgan (Kerch, fourth century BC) depicting a Scythian archer, in trousers, pointed cap, and boots, stringing a recurve bow braced under his outstretched leg (while his companions nurse their injuries from failing to string the bow).8
Some exceptionally detailed silver coins from Soloi, Cilicia (southern Anatolia, issued 480-386 BC), depict a kneeling Amazon who has just finished stringing her bow and is adjusting the top hook, to make sure the string and limbs are properly aligned (Fig. 13.2). The city of Soloi also issued coins showing the head of an Amazon. (Who was this woman warrior commemorated on the coins of Soloi.? Her identity is revealed in chapter 16.) Another significant image painted on a sixth-century BC wine pitcher shows an Amazon dressed in trousers with a quiver and a dagger in a sheath. She is standing on one leg, stringing her Scythian bow by bracing it under her other bent knee (Fig. 13.3; compare fig. 25.3, Mulan stringing her bow). Modern experts point out that this “step through” method might work, but only if she braces the bent leg on a rock (possibly she has braced her foot on her helmet on
FiG. 13.2. Amazon stringing her bow. Silver coins minted in Soloi, Cilicia, fifth century BC. Top: courtesy of Michel Prieur, Www. cgb. fr. Bottom: private collection; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Henry Lillie Pierce Fund, 041144, photograph © 2014 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
The ground). Her bow is correctly placed the same position used by the seated Scythian warrior on the beaker, mentioned above. This Greek artist apparently had heard how the task of stringing a recurve bow was done but failed to understand the body mechanics.9
In Greek vase paintings, small recurve bows and sizable quivers were standard issue for Scythian and Amazon archers (with a few exceptions). In two vase paintings (Oltos, 525-500 BC) depicting the abduction of the Amazon Antiope by Theseus, for example, she is holding a Scythian bow. Two more Oltos vases show the Amazon Lykopis (“Wolf Eyes”) with a Scythian bow and the Amazon Andromache shooting an arrow. Several Amazon archers appear in a violent battle scene by Euph-ronios; one of them, labeled Teisipyle, is taking careful aim with her Scythian bow, which she holds well away from her chest. Numerous vase paintings show Amazons with recurve bows visible in their quivers or hanging from their forearms; others are testing, aiming, and shooting their bows. Steppe nomads (and modern mounted archers) used
FiG. 13.3. Amazon stringing her bow under her knee (at left) as her companion (right) holds two spears and shield. Attic Greek black-figure olpe (pitcher), sixth/fifth century BC, Smithsonian Natural History Museum, Department of Anthropology catalog no. A378476-0.
The “Mongolian” thumb draw release, and this ethnographic detail is depicted in some Greek vase paintings.10
Scythian archers used a combination bow case and quiver called a gorytos (possibly a Scythian loanword) that hung from a shoulder belt at the archer’s left hip (right hip if a sword was worn too; figs. 8.1, 8.2, 12.1, 13.2, 18.3). This case, nearly two feet long, was fashioned of leather, often reinforced with gorytos covers, thick gold plates decorated with scales, spirals, griffins, stags, rams, boars, and horses in Scythian animal style. The gorytos had two compartments: one held the bow and the other was a pocket for arrows that could be closed with a flap. The unique design meant that as many as a hundred arrows of different sizes, shapes, and materials were at hand for any type of hunting or battle situation. A great many golden gorytos covers with stunning reliefs have been recovered from Scythian burials. In some instances, such as Arzhan 2, the leather parts of the quiver-bow case were also preserved. The gorytos with Scythian-style designs appears on many ancient
Coins and in Greek paintings featuring Scythians and Amazons; it is also illustrated in Scythian reliefs. On a fifth-century BC vase, for example, griffins decorate an Amazon’s quiver.11
Arrowheads, sometimes vast stores of them, are found in most male burials, in about one-third of women’s burials, and also in children’s graves (Chapter 4). Arrowheads of different shapes and materials (bone, wood, iron, and bronze with two or three flanges) had differing piercing powers and were used for different types of hunting and battle situations. The elegantly aerodynamic trilobate arrowheads, used for warfare and found in great quantities across the steppes, display superb craftsmanship. Arrow shafts, approximately twenty inches long, were made of reed or wood (willow, birch, poplar) and fletched with feathers. Wood is perishable, but many shafts have been preserved in dry or frozen burial conditions. In Pazyryk kurgans, large caches of wooden shafts were painted with red and black wavy lines and zigzags, possibly to mimic the patterns on steppe vipers, whose venom was used to make arrow poison.12
Every nomad boy and girl, man and woman, owned a bow and arrows. Very few bows have been recovered from steppe burials that contain a great many arrowheads, quivers, and other weapons. Bows were made of perishable organic materials. But there is another reason for their rarity in graves. Each composite bow was the result of years of fine workmanship and extremely valuable to the tribe. (Unlike horses, which were sacrificed at funerals, fine bows were hard to replace.) Bows were apparently passed down over generations of Scythians. Some votive or toy miniature bows and broken parts of Scythian bows have been recovered. For example, handgrips and recurve bow ends were excavated from kurgans at Kul Oba (Kerch) and Voronezh (near the Don). Parts of a recurve bow and a gorytos, containing many red-and-black-painted wooden arrow shafts and three-flanged arrowheads with gold and silver inlays of animals and spirals, were in the grave of the Scythian couple at Arzhan 2, burial 5 (Tuva; above and chapter 4). The museum at Urumchi (northwest China) has a collection of composite Scythian-style and longer Xiongnu bows and at least one gorytos, preserved in nomad burials of the fifth to third centuries BC in the arid deserts along the Silk Route.13
Dramatic evidence of archery warfare includes bronze arrowheads still embedded in the bones of women interred with their weapons
On the steppes. The young Amazon buried with her weapons at Tyras, on the northern Black Sea coast, and the warrior woman in Kurgan 7 at Chertomlyk are just two examples (chapter 4).14
World History
