You mentioned the hermitage there, what is that when we say hermitage?

Transcription

1 (Music prelude.) Scythians built no infrastructure except tombs and they believed in the after-life, so they placed lots of objects for the afterlife in those graves. And so it is from the excavation of graves that we have a real direct insight into what the Scythians look like. That was Sinden Simpson describing the British museum s new exhibition on the Scythians. You are listening to the History Extra podcast from BBC History Magazine, with the UK s best selling history magazine available in print and several digital formats all over the world. Find out more at historyextra.com/subscribe or look out for us in your digital newsstand or app. Hello! Welcome to the History Extra podcast. I am Rob Attar, the editor at BBC History Magazine. This autumn s headline exhibition at the British Museum in London is Scythians, Warriors of Ancient Siberia, which explores the story of nomadic people who dominated the steppe between the black sea and China in the first millennium BC. The exhibition is filled with incredible artifacts, many of which came to light through relatively recent archeological discoveries. A world history editor Matt Elton paid a visit to the museum a little while back where he met with exhibition curators, Sinden Simpson and Curley Lighten to discuss the world of the Scythians and some of the fascinating objects that are on show in the exhibition. My name is Sinden Simpson. I am the British Museum curator for this BP exhibition, Scythians - Warriors of Ancient Siberia. The Scythians were nomadic people, spoke Iranian languages, judging by the personal names recorded by other historians. They lived between the 9 th century BC and the 2 nd century BC and seemed to have originated in Southern Siberia. They developed horse riding and the soft saddle and very powerful forms of weapons like Scythian bow. That combination of horse power and archery gave them the edge, cutting edge over the people around them. So they spread very rapidly westwards into the North Caucasus and the Northern black sea. In fact in late periods, the black sea even got called the Scythian sea. So it was in the black sea area that Herodotus writing in 5 th century BC encountered the Scythians, and he devoted a whole book of his equivalent to the history of the world to the Scythians. They are also described by Assyrian kings who fought them in 670 BC. They are also described and illustrated by acuminate Persians in Iran. So it sounds as if it is true to say that we know more about them from the writings of other people, then we do from themselves. The Scythian actually left no written records of their own, so we have to rely on their contemporaries and the enemies if you like for accounts about them, but the great thing about archeology is that we have lots of objects that they left. Well you might say where would you find these object? Well! Scythians built no infrastructure except for tombs and they believed in the afterlife, so they placed lots of objects for the after-life in those graves. And so it is from the excavation of graves that we have a real direct insight into what the Scythians look like, literally the body art, the earliest tattoos that we have from the ancient world. The clothing that is exceptionally preserved in frozen tomb conditions, weapons, the food, the drink and everything that they valued and how important is the landscaping which they lived and how well these things have been preserved. While the best preserved evidence comes from a small region in Siberia in the Altai Mountains where the winters get very harsh and the ground freezes during winter. Of course, it defrosts in the summer, but the area covered by the tombs never warms up sufficiently in the summer for the ground ever to defrost. So those particular graves become trapped in ice and so when excavated have exceptional preservation, really amazing preservation of furs and pelts and even sheepskins. So if we look at some of the objects that you have got here in this new exhibition, then what this by now, so this is called belt buckle and it is arguably the most famous Scythian gold object to survive. It was found in Southern Siberia during the reign of Peter the Great, in the early 18 th

2 century. It shows a dead man with his head caressed in the lap of a goddess, who wears a real Scythian tall wig headdress; need to see the top of it almost intertwining with a tree behind her. The dead man s cleaver is hanging behind him and there is servant or friend holding by the reins two saddled horses. So this gold object in a sense captures the essence of Scythian art, the love of gold, the scaling up of the personal adornments to show status, weaponry and rituals. It is so well preserved; it is so beautiful as a masterpiece. Scythians really were master craftsmen at working gold. That is something that interests me a lot, actually it is there we get a sense of them as warriors, but also as craftsman, which I didn t necessarily expect these things to be so beautifully produced. We like Herodotus and the Syrian and Persian commentators are products of urban civilization and therefore deep down all of us under-estimate the power of nomads and their ability to produce beautiful things. I mean how central was the figure of the horse to this culture? Horse power is everything, it gave them ability. It gave them speed. It gave them the ability to move herds over much larger distances than they could before. So that really gave the Scythians the ability to control the vast grasslands, the corridor of power if you like that connection of Northern China and the black sea. Are there other objects that we can look at to get a sense of their culture, more generally? Absolutely! So what we have here is a unique moment, this is the first time that these gold objects have been shown side by side with the first Russian artist s response to them. So this is an 18 th century drawing showing the object below at one to one scale. It is extraordinary because these objects have been in the collections of first succumbs camera and then the hermitage since the 18 th century, but they have never been shown together until now. You mentioned the hermitage there, what is that when we say hermitage? The State Hermitage Museum is the great flankship of Russian culture in a sense. It is a major lender to this exhibition, so we have over 200 objects here in London. It is really a unique opportunity to come and see these treasures. So what we hear are something quite different from what we are looking at here. So in these cases we have got examples of perfectly preserved men and women s clothing. This is preserved as I said because of frozen tomb conditions that they were found in. This hue is really extraordinary, it is the most exceptional peace of footwear that we have from antiquity and you can see it is decorated all over, not just on the uppers but even on the sole, which is embroidered with pierogies and crystals. So in a sense, this is an illustration of what happens when you live in a society without fixed furniture. Imagine yourself sitting cross-legged on the ground and you felt rug or woolen rug and everyone can see that the soles of the shoes are as decorated as the rest of your costume. So these soles are decorated because they would be on display. Absolutely, yes in a sense unlike some modern societies where showing the sole of your foot is a sign of disrespect, I think it is quite the opposite here. So what we have got here is some kind of headdress, is that right? Yes, the headdress worn by chieftain. It shows signs of damage and antiquity. His head has the telltale signs of unmistakable violence. He was killed probably from behind with a pointed battle axe and there are traces of damage even on his headdress that he wore. It is carved from woods and leather, it is a three-dimensional headdress, that is extraordinary thing. Do we know how other cultures regarded the Scythians when they met them in battle? Herodotus describes a failed campaign by the Persian King Darius, who basically went looking for them in the northern black sea in order to beat them up, but according to Herodotus, he didn t really manage to

3 find them at all because the Scythian sent their women and children deeper into the steppe on wagons along with their herds and basically brings around them with their horses. We talked about this; I mean how important was wine to the Scythians? While everyone likes to eat, most people like to drink and in the case of the black sea area what the Scythians like to drink was imported Greek wine and so we have evidence of Humphrey buried in large numbers in the high stage of tombs, even Athenian drinking cups, pottery and silver. So we got some quite graphic evidence here of some of the things they ate and drunk. They ate meaty stews and searching by the finds in tombs they valued the fat tail sheep and particularly the segment of the bottom of the vertebra. So this section of backbone was placed as a meaty offering on a table, sometimes even with a knife used to serve it. So fat tail sheep were highly valued muttons, therefore it was widely consumed probably along with horse meat and other types of meat. There are metal cauldrons found in some tombs. In this particular exhibition, we are really fortunate as well in being able to exhibit some lumps of cheese, I mean they passed their best by date, but still it is quite remarkable to see lumps of cheese in an exhibition that is basically archeological. Do we have any object in this exhibition that show how they lived in the land and the land around them? We do, yes! So what is now beside me is actually a sheepskin rug. This looks like a thin shaped of a sheep just yesterday, but actually is over 2000 years old. And why I think this is important to show is the case usually this is discarded in antiquity or even when archeologists are opening up the team and things like this are found in rare instances where preservation is amazing just like Pazaric in a high Alpine Mountain. Hmm. Are they any objects here that you are particularly keen on or favorite of yours, I suppose? This object was actually found on a horse in one of the burial teams at Pazaric and it is a horse head gear and it was put on the horse especially for the burial and the horse was slaughtered for the burial because the Scythian believed in the after-life and they took all their earthly possession. The horse being at the center of their life, so that is why it was important to be buried with their horse as well. So this head dress would have been put on the horse and as you can see it depicts a round heads and on top of that an eagle or some kind of bird and it would have been to transform the horse into some mythical beast, which would then transport the dead into the after-life and stay with them as this fantastic beast there. It s amazing, what s it made of did you say? It is made of leather and pelt. So again this is another example of the amazing preservation that we have yielded from the Pazaric team. How central are animals to the mythology of these people? So what we can take from their religion and mythology is any three of the objects that we have found. They do have a very strong visual language, which is called Scythian animal style art and it does depict many mythical beasts with combined features of herbivores, dears, horses, elks, and also birds. We have also got talking about animals what seems to be a swan just behind you.

4 Yes, this is a swan. Swans did migrate to Siberia and again this is another example of the amazing preservation. It looks like it was made just yesterday and is very modern and stylistic in style I think and this would have been put on top of a pole of a wagon and this would have been for decoration, so the wings would have been flapping in the wind while they were riding across the Siberian planes. Of course, the other aspect of their lifestyle was in fact they were warriors, and we have got here a shield! Is that right? Yep, this is a shield and it still has some of the colouring on it, so the red pigmentation. These shields are made of wooden sticks and although you think that maybe this won t protect you from an oncoming sword or bow and arrow, their design is actually quite clever. The arrow would get caught in between the sticks and make it easy for Scythian to just break off the shaft and then let the arrow head full. So actually they were quite useful in that sense and they did protect you and they were made small because the Scythian was usually on a horseback, so these were the fact to have been on obtrusive. So can we charge changes or developments in their civilization across the vast time period in which they lived? They were constantly developing their horse equipment to make it better and easier for them to ride and over time they became skilled horsemen. This really revolutionized warfare because the cavalry became the driving force behind the Scythians military might and it meant that they had to step up on their sedentary neighbors because they were the first people to be able to charge at the enemies at speeds of 30 to 40 miles per hour. One example of how they revolutionized horse riding was actually the fact that they invented the first saddle, which spread like wild fire throughout their sedentary neighbors to the south and has also lasted the test of time, that we still have similar looking things today. I have no idea that they invented this! It is amazing. Yeah! And so this dates from the 7 th century BC, is that right? Yes, the saddle dates from 7 th century BC, which was when the Scythians started to really dominate the whole Eurasian steppe. So this is very different. So these were found in again another Pazaric grave and they are actually nail clipping for the deceased and there is this famous quote by Herodotus that says that the Scythians don t wash with water, they actually have a sauna bath, vapour tent. But actually the Scythians did look after themselves and did groom because in the burials, these were put next to the deceased for grooming reasons, but also it says this underlying thing by archeologist think that the Scythians didn t want anybody else to have their DNA, so it was really important that any personal belongings, anything personal to them like the hair, nail clipping should be kept with the body. How vast an area did these people cover? So the acuminate Persian empires that to be the biggest empire during that time, but actually the Scythians controlled a stretch of land that originated in Southern Siberia and then they moved all the way to the black sea region and also Eastward to the Northern Edge of China and this stretch of land

5 actually doubled the Persian empires land. So they controlled a really vast strip of land and also was very connected. What are the things that really surprised you the most working on this exhibition? There were not uncivilized, they had a very rich culture and they were incredibly skilled craftsmen and many people think that these people weren t like that, they were! And I think when you come into this exhibition space, and you put into the context of their stories through their eyes, you actually see that these people had a complex society. So we are now in fact in this exhibition talking about slightly different people, is that right? Yeah, that is right. So we are now talking about another nomadic civilization that we don t actually know that much about. It is no discovery, however, we are only just now finding out things about these people. So we know they were called the Pazaric culture and they were found in a region called Ograssi, a site called Ograssi. Where about is that? It is close to the Chinese border in the Altai region and these are the faces of the Scythian successors. They are wearing these clay masks because these cultures wanted to preserve that. They wanted to live forever and this culture has put clay masks over the faces of the dead and has painted them to represent what they looked like and there is this fantastic design all over the face. And we think these represent the actual tattoos of the people under the mask. The Scythians were covered in tattoos, however, they didn t put them on their face. So again this is some difference and similarities in these nomadic cultures, they both have tattoos, but this culture had them on their faces and the Scythians didn t. And what s great about the man found at this burial is that one of the curators from the State Hermitage Museum came over with a US Beastet, instead I have got some CT scans of this man, but I can t. So scientists at the British Museum managed to unlock this file and on it was an amazing CT scan of the face of the man under the mask and we can t take the mask off because it is glued to the face, but it has revealed that the man has been trepanned, so he has had a hole cut into the side of his head and brain matter taken out. The Scythians were doing this to preserve the dead, so they would stuff the head then with dry matter like straw, but also you can see a nasty scar running down the side of his face, which has been stitched up from probably the thread and there is no obvious reason as to what this is for except mutilation to make this man in his life look fearsome. So you seem more scary at the warriors, is that right? Yes exactly, so he seemed more scary as the warrior. That is extraordinary, so we know that the tattoos were different between these two people that they worn on their faces. Do we know anything about what they represented in either case or what they were made from? Yeah, so for the Scythians, we know that they probably represented stages in their life because we know they would have sleeves at their arm and down their leg and they weren t done in Mongo. They were done at that time so to create a story. We think that possibly it was a story of that Scythian s life. (Music interlude )

6 That was correlated; I am Sinden Simpson talking to Mart Elton. Scythian Warriors of Ancient Siberia is running in the British Museum until the 14 th of January I am pleased to note that there is an entry charge for those who aren t members or under 16. You can find out more details at British Museum.org where you can also see many of the objects that were discussed here. Another place to find out more about the Scythians is issue 6 of BBC World History, which contains a piece by Sinden Simpson you heard from before highlighting some of the most interesting artifacts that the people produced. You can get hold of BBC World History through these agents or directly from us in the history special edition section by subscriptions.com. And now it is time for this week history news with our acting digital editor, Elena Effons. The remains of a Transatlantic passenger liner, which was sunk during the Second World War may have been located on the Atlantic seabed. The Athenia was the first British ship to be sunk during the conflict torpedoed by a German submarine hours after British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain announced the country was at war with Germany. The attack on the liner, which was bound for Montreal Canada, occurred about 200 nautical miles of the Northwest Coast of Ireland and killed 117 people. Shipwreck hunter David Mearns believes that sonar data shows the Athenia to be lying 200 meters down from the seabed of Ireland and told the BBC the dimensions of the target much exactly what would be expected of 160 meter long 13,510 tonne passenger liner. While Mearns writes in his book The Ship Wreck Hunter that in absence of a photograph, he can t be absolutely sure, he states I can say in my expert opinion that there is a very, very high probability that that is the Athenia, everything fits. Mearns first encounter search for the remains following a commission from the BBC to explore the possibility of a live broadcast from a wreck site. The idea has since been dropped. The Mearns expressed hope that there may be an expedition to the site in the future. Meanwhile, a team of archeologists surveying the site of an Iron Age broch in the Scottish Island, believe they may have uncovered evidence of a medieval north parliament meeting place. Stone-built roundhouse near the town of Thurso on the north coast of Mainland Scotland has been uncovered as part of the case Caithness Broch Project. While the name of the Broch is thought to come from the north word thing meaning parliament. The team also explained it contains faint features that may indicate activity associated with parliament meetings. The next step would be to uncover what life beneath the ground of things with small scale excavation taking place later this month in which the public can take part. Now before we go, here s a reminder that our history weekend at Winchester begins tomorrow Friday, the 6 th of October. If you had not had a chance to purchase a ticket, but would still like to attend, then please do come along as you will be able to buy a ticket as today stocks haven t sold out from us at the event. Find out more details about this and our weekend at York next month at historyweekend.com. Okay, well that s about all for today, but please do listen in on Monday when we will be talking about a Munich conference with Robert Harris. (Music interlude ) Thanks for listening to this History Extra podcast, which was produced by Jack Fletcher. Do let us know what you think about this episode by ing podcast@historyextra.com and we might read out your messages in future editions. Alternatively, why not keep in touch via twitter or Facebook where you will find us at historyextra. For more great history content, don t forget to visit our website historyextra.com which is full of history articles, quizzes, image galleries and more. Plus it is where you can download hundreds of previous episodes of podcasts.