Suchergebnisse

The purpose of the article is to reconstruct the child's place in the social universe of the Scythians. The basis for the study was a child burial from the Tovsta Mohyla mound as one of the few not robbed burials of steppe Scythia of the 4 th century BC. Meanwhile, the burial is regarded as a text (in the semiotic sense). The method developed by the author for reconstructing the semantics of images on the costume elements of the buried led to the conclusion that they reflect a complex of ideas about dominion over the midzone of the mythological universe. The article rebuilds the semiotic status of things that accompanied the buried which allowed us to conclude that the child in the Scythian society inherited the place in the social space belonging to his kin. The child's burial from the Tovsta Mohyla mound belonged to the Scythian "priest-king". The buried has not yet passed the initiation so the grave lacks things that are peculiar only to the male or female inventory. Prospect of further research is connected with the methodology development for reconstructing the semantics of the Scythian burial as a single complex.

This paper aims at the reconstruction of the Scythians' ideas of the classification of animals which embodied the structure of the mythological Universe. The research is based on the analysis of the decoration of the Ilyichevo quiver as a unique artefact featuring the scene of torturing by predators of three biological genera: a bird, an animal, and a reptile. The study of the sources supplying information on the ancient Iranians' zoological classifications and the analysis of a zoological, anatomical, subject, and material codes for reconstruction allow the author to reveal the background of the Scythian classification of the mythological animal world. The latter comprised: the habitat corresponding to the specific zone of the mythological Universe; the way of movement; and the characteristic of nutrition. This paper offers a reconstruction of the semiotic status of the quiver/gorytos against the background of the analysis of the Scythian art and written sources. The conclusion is that the Scythians got notions of funerary feast as the embodiment of the cosmic body divided into three parts; the paper clarifies the already existing ideas about the semantics of the zoomorphic images in the Scythian art.