Besides Thracians, Greeks encountered many other tattooed people among their neighbors around the Black Sea and in Pontus, major Amazon strongholds. Numerous authors reported tattooing among Scythians. Hippocrates, for example, remarked that the Scythian nomads “branded” figures on their shoulders, arms, chests, and thighs to “instill strength and courage,” suggesting a magical function of tattoos. Herodotus wrote that the Thracians thought plain skin signaled a lack of identity. Elaborate tattoos were considered beauty marks of nobility for both men and women in Thrace; even ordinary folk had a few small tattoos. Some four hundred years after Herodotus, the Greek orator Dio Chrysostom remarked that the women of Thrace were still covering themselves with tattoos as marks of high social standing. Herodotus also described the tattoos of the Iranian-s peaking Scythian-Thracian people called the Agathyrsi. According to a story he heard in Pontus, the Agathyrsi claimed descent from a Scythian woman and Heracles. The Agathyrsi were one of the tribes that had repelled Darius I of Persia (sixth century BC). Later (fourth century BC) they would migrate north to the Sarmatian steppes. Agathyrsi women especially favored tattoos, noted Herodotus. The higher their status, the larger, more richly detailed and colorful were their skin designs. Ammianus Marcellinus (fourth century AD) reported that Agathyrsi tattoos were checkered designs in blue-black ink.11
When the Greek general and historian Xenophon led his army across Pontus (ca. 400 BC), the land of the Amazons, he observed that the skin of the men and women and children of the Mossynoeci tribe was covered with colorful tattoos of flowers. Pomponius Mela also reported that these people completely marked their entire bodies with tattoos. The Sarmatians, strongly associated with Amazons, received their first tattoos as children, according to Sextus Empiricus and Pliny; Pliny also reported that among Sarmatians, Dacians, and Britons, the women “wrote on their own bodies.”12
Clearchus of Soli explicitly stated that Scythian women—the historical counterparts of Amazons—taught the art of tattooing to Thracian women who lived on the northwestern frontiers of Scythia. A Greek philosopher who traveled widely and wrote extensively about Thrace and Scythia (ca. 320 BC), Clearchus reported that Scythian women “used to decorate the Thracian women all over their bodies, using the tongues of their belt buckles (or pins of brooches) as needles.” After several generations, Thracian women began to add their own embellishments and other designs to the Scythian motifs. Ancient accounts of tattooing by the Thracians, Scythians, Sarmatians, Agathyrsi, Mossy-noecians of Pontus, Illyrians, Dacians, Geloni, and Iaopodes are compelling evidence that many of the women known as Amazons also practiced tattooing.13
Because the Greeks thought of tattoos as marks of degradation instead of signs of nobility, courage, and beauty, they sought to explain why women would choose to endure pain to decorate their bodies with indelible designs. Clearchus implied that tattoos were initially inflicted violently by Scythian women and then later embraced by Thracian women, who cleverly transformed “shameful” tattoos into lovely body ornaments. Scythians did invade parts of Thrace, intermarried with Thracians, and influenced Thracian culture. Forcible tattooing of captives is certainly attested in ancient and modern times. But sharing tattoo motifs and techniques among cultures is also well known.14 What was the historical context of Clearchus’s report? Did some Scythian women once tattoo captive Thracian women? Or did they simply teach their Thracian neighbors how to tattoo?15
Other literary evidence for tattooing customs among steppe cultures comes from sources far removed from Greece. The confederation of nomads of far eastern Scythia (Inner Asia) were known to the Chinese as Xiongnu. Several ancient Chinese sources described tattoos as adornment among the “barbarian” nomads of the north and west. For example, the Liji (“Record of Rites”) of the Warring States period and early Han Dynasty (ca. 475-87 BC) said that these “wild” tribes ate meat and wore animal skins, and some tattooed their foreheads. The Zhan Guo Ce (“Intrigues of the Warring States,” third to first centuries BC) says that the western nomads engraved their left shoulders with tattoos. The Nan Shih (“History of the Southern Dynasties,” ca. AD 630) tells of the “Land of the Tattooed” where “uncivilized” people marked themselves with stripes and spots like wild beasts; Siberian peoples of “giant” stature wore tattoos signifying courage and marital status. Many artistic representations in archaeological sites of the Shang to Han dynasties (1500 BC-AD 220) confirm that people living north and west of China practiced tattooing.16
A Han history (Shiji, “Records of the Historian” by Sima Qian, ca. 147-85 BC) recounts the emperor’s negotiations with the powerful Xiongnu tribes who exerted constant pressure on China’s western frontier. The nomads held the upper hand in the fifth to third centuries BC, receiving precious gifts and Han princesses as wives to seal treaties (see Chapter 25). The nomad leaders demanded that the Chinese envoys be tattooed (me [mo] ch’ing, “tattoo in black ink”) before they could meet the Shan-yu (“Greatest,” chieftain). The Chinese, like the Greeks, generally considered tattooing a form of punishment. However, as in ancient Greece, lines were blurred between shameful, heroic, and beautiful tattoos for the Chinese, especially those dealing with the powerful warlike nomads of the west. Some Chinese envoys, such as Wang Wu, a northerner familiar with Xiongnu customs, had no qualms in complying with the nomads’ conditions.17
World History
