Christopher I. Beckwith - The Scythian Empire: Central Eurasia and the Birth of the Classical Age from Persia to China

THE SCYTHIAN EMPIRE

OTHER PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS BOOKS BY CHRISTOPHER I. BECKWITH

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The Scythian Empire

CENTRAL EURASIA AND THE BIRTH OF THE CLASSICAL AGE FROM PERSIA TO CHINA

CHRISTOPHER I. BECKWITH

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

PRINCETON & OXFORD

Copyright 2023 by Princeton University Press

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Beckwith, Christopher I., 1945 author.

Title: The Scythian empire : Central Eurasia and the birth of the classical age from Persia to China / Christopher I. Beckwith.

Description: Princeton : Princeton University Press, [2022] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2022006736 (print) | LCCN 2022006737 (ebook) | ISBN 9780691240534 (hardback) | ISBN 9780691240541 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: ScythiansHistory. | NomadsAsia, CentralHistory. | Civilization, Ancient. | Asia, CentralCivilization. | BISAC: HISTORY / Ancient / General | HISTORY / Russia & the Former Soviet Union

Classification: LCC DK34.S4 B43 2022 (print) | LCC DK34.S4 (ebook) | DDC 939/.51dc23/eng/20220601

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022006736

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022006737

Editorial: Rob Tempio and Chloe Coy

Production Editorial: Mark Bellis

Jacket Design: Katie Osborne

Production: Erin Suydam

Publicity: Alyssa Sanford and Carmen Jimenez

Jacket Credit: isolated vector illustration. Running Scythian warrior with bow and arrow. Ancient Greek decor. Black and white silhouette by Olena / Adobe Stock

1. vii
2. ix
3. xi
4. xv
5. xix
6. xxiii
7. xxvii
8. xxix

1. .Western Steppe Scythian stringing the Cimmerian bow (Kul-Oba bowl)
2. .Western Steppe Scythian scene showing Cimmerian bow and gorytos (Kul-Oba bowl)
3. .Mede in bashlyq headgear with akinakes short sword, holding barsom (Oxus Treasure)
4. .Scythian sagaris battle-axe, detail (Greek vase)
5. .Scythian archer (Greek vase)
6. .Sak Tigrakhaud Scythians bearing tribute of footies and candys (Persepolis)
7. .Scytho-Medes and Persians in court outfits and weapons (Persepolis)
8. .Late Achaemenid man in Mede riding dress (Alexander Sarcophagus)
9. .Neo-Assyrian period Median tribute bearer to Sargon II (Dur-arruken)
10. .Neo-Assyrian period Assyrian archers of Tiglath Pileser III (Kalhu)
11. .Medes in candys with weapons and Persians in Elamite outfit (Persepolis)
12. .Achaemenid period Magi in candys and bashlyq holding barsoms (Dascylium)
13. .Early Han Dynasty period mounted archer in footies and bashlyq (tomb figurine)
14. .Darius III wearing Late Achaemenid royal bashlyq (Alexander Mosaic)
15. .The Persian Empires throne-bearers in their national costumes (Naq-i Rustam) (after Walser 1966)290

1. . Scytho-Mede-Persian Imperial Feudal Hierarchy
2. . From Heavenly God to the Scythian Kings in Scythia
3. . Lineage and Ethnolinguistic Identity from Achaemenes to Xerxes
4. . Monotheism versus Polytheism: People and Events
5. . Dialects of Standard English, Random Lexical Sample
6. . Russian, Japanese, English Lexical Data
7. . Germanic Lexical Data: German, Icelandic, English
8. . Related Languages, or Dialects? Avestan, Median, and Persian Cognates
9. . Scythian and Imperial Scythian Dialects
10. . Glossary for Old Persian Examples 1 and 2
11. . Classical West Scythian
12. . Classical East Scythian

This book is about the earliest historical Central Eurasian steppe people, the Scythians, including their Scythian-speaking relatives the Cimmerians, both in Central Eurasia and among the ancient Persians and others in the West as well as among the Chinese and others in the East.

The Scythian Empire covered a vast territory and the ruling Scythians interacted with subject peoples in much the same way in each place, so the Scythian heritage lived on in regions far from each other which long remained out of direct contact with the rest of the world. It is thus perhaps no ones fault that the connections among them have been so completely overlooked. I have aimed to rectify the situation and show what the Scythians accomplished. While working on the book I discovered many other notable, even exciting, things that have also been widely missed. Sometimes previous writers already touched on them, but their findings have been lost in a sea of scholarship from one or another perspective, while other things seem not to have been noticed at all by anyone before.

Partly because of the vicissitudes of history, in which earlier periods are less well supported by good data than more recent periods, shifts in scholarly interests have occurred over time and space. Work on the Scythians, the Medes, and the first (Achaemenid) Persian Empire, as well as the first (Chin) Chinese Empire, among other related topics, is thus extremely spotty. The Scythians are today almost exclusively the province of archaeology and art, along with some historical anthropology and sociology. Much of the writing on them is quite negative in tone. The Scythians are roundly condemned, often in terms that are unacceptable today for a living people, and the idea that the Scythians actually established anything resembling an empire is beyond imagining for most writers. Many have argued that the (Scytho-)Mede Empire is a fiction. The Chin Empire remains one of the least studied and least understood topics in Chinese history. And the Achaemenid Persian Empire is a major topic for several fields, but much of what has been written even recently about its foundations is based more on traditional beliefs than on good data and analysis.

In addition, the topics and associated data that archaeologists, historians, Iranicists, and Sinologists think are important have received quite a lot of attention, while those that they consider unimportant have languished, or they have been completely ignored, so that these topics are not much more advanced than they were half a century or more ago. This is especially true of almost anything related to the languages. Although there are linguists and other scholars who specialize in Iranic languages, linguistics as a whole is little known (and mostly avoided) by historians today. However, a great deal is actually known, or knowable, about the Scythian language, so we have more good hard data for Scythian history than it seems anyone ever suspectedmore than enough to show that they founded the first true empire, and the biggest one for over a millennium, which stayed united for as long as most of the later and better known steppe empires.