Scythians

Seleucus inherited a rather large chunk of land, extending from Anatolia in the west to the borders of India in the east. You could say he hit the “lottery” but at the same time he inherited much more than he bargained, more so for his future inheritors of this vast domain. One of the biggest problems in controlling such a vast amount of land is the issue of holding onto it. In other words, the land is too big to use for it is too big to lose. One has to consider, especially those in the Seleucid administration, that there are going to be language barriers, but even more important than language barriers, are the cultural barriers. Because of these cultural barriers, it was easier to allow the locals to govern. In this way, the Seleucids could control their eastern provinces more effectively. However, even this is a façade. While the Seleucids allowed the locals of their eastern provinces to govern, it also created a friction between the two cultures. In other words and as you shall read, the Seleucids began to ignore their supposed subjects of the east. Ignoring the various peoples on the Iranian Plateau and areas further to the east under Seleucid control caused many of them, including Greco-Macedonians, to question the intent of their masters further west. In doing so, many would secede in the east. This secession from the Seleucids enticed certain nomadic tribes, such as the Aparni (Parthians), to invade, conquer, confiscate and colonize the weakest breakaway provinces. The Seleucid regime’s uncertainty allowed a small tribe from the north to invade a breakaway province considered Seleucid territory that, in turn, would go on to nearly re-conquer everything Alexander the Great had subdued almost a century earlier.

"This is the first systematic study of the cults of the Bosporan Kingdom, which existed in South Russia in the first centuries AD. The research is based on a variety of sources: archaeological evidence and inscriptions, largely unknown to the non-Russian readers, as well as historical and literary texts.
The religion of the Bosporus is viewed in this monograph as a blend of Greek and indigenous Iranian traditions. Its first part is dedicated to the cult of Celestial Aphrodite. The second part examines the controversial cult of the Most High God and its alledged Jewish affinities.
The book, illustrated with thirty figures, is an important contribution to the understanding of the religious life in Greek colonies, and the history of Eastern Mediterranean in Late Antiquity."

""Die Publikation zu den Drei-Brüder-Kurganen untersucht drei Grabhügel, die in spätklassischfrühhellenistischer Zeit auf der Krim, ganz im Osten der Kertscher Halbinsel, errichtet wurden und deren Fundgebiet in der Antike zum Territorium des Bosporanischen Reiches gehörte. Die drei Grabhügel wurden vom Kertscher Museum in den 1960er Jahren im Rahmen archäologischer Notgrabungen untersucht. Auf der Basis einer vollständigen Vorlage aller in den Kurganen angetroffenen Funde und Befunde werden ihre
Charakteristika vergleichend mit bosporanischen sowie ausgewählten weiteren nordpontischen Nekropolenkontexten der räumlich benachbarten Griechenstädte und des skythischen Gebietes analysiert.""

"An iron battle-axe was accidentally discovered in an unknown locality in the south-eastern part of the Lublin Region. Morphologically, it refers to Scythian weapons of this kind dated to the Early Iron Age. The specimen is similar to items of group II, type 2, variant 1 in A.I. Meljukova’s classification, dated to the 6th century B.C. It has analogies dated to the 2nd half of the 7th century – the 6th century B.C. in materials related to the Scythian culture from the Caucasus, in a forest-steppe group on the Sula river in the middle Dnieper basin, in the Transylvanian group and among materials connected with the Scythian expansion in the territory of western groups of the Lusatian culture. However, it has no typological analogue in the weaponry of the Vekerzug culture in the Great Hungarian Plain, despite the abundance of battle-axes in this area. The described artefact is the third battle-axe from south-eastern Poland that may be linked with Scythian influences from the Carpathian Basin and Western Ukrainian forest-steppe zone which reached the area of the eastern groups of the Lusatian culture in the Early Iron Age."

The monograph is devoted to research of ethnic history of the Western Kuban in the early iron age. The main sources are the archeological materials - funerary monuments from the first half of the first Millennium B.C. On the basis of a detailed analysis of the funeral rite and material culture of the ancient population of the region and comparison of the received results with the data of ancient written sources, reconstructed ethnic processes taking place in the West in the Kuban region VIII - V centuries BC.

Archeological evidence proving Herodotus’ (IV, 28) testimony about Scythians’ winter crusades to Sind lands were found in historical Syndico territory. These are caparison details and “Olvia-typ” mirrors, typical for material culture of the Dneprovskaya forest-steppe Scythians of H1 V B.C.