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Like the Scythians whom Herodotus describes in book four of his History (Saka is an Iranian word equivalent to the Greek Scythes, and many scholars refer to them together as Saka-Scythian), Sakas were Iranian-speaking horse nomads who deployed chariots in battle, sacrificed horses, and buried their dead in barrows or mound tombs called kurgans.
The Scythians (/ ˈ s ɪ θ i ə n / or / ˈ s ɪ ð i ə n /) or Scyths (/ ˈ s ɪ θ /, but note Scytho-(/ ˈ s aɪ θ oʊ /) in composition) and sometimes also referred to as the Pontic Scythians, [7] [8] were an ancient Eastern Iranian equestrian nomadic people who had migrated during the 9th to 8th centuries BC from Central Asia to the ...
In the 2nd century BC, many Sakas were driven by the Yuezhi from the steppe into Sogdia and Bactria and then to the northwest of the Indian subcontinent, where they were known as the Indo-Scythians. [20] [21] [22] Other Sakas invaded the Parthian Empire, eventually settling in Sistan, while others may have migrated to the Dian Kingdom in Yunnan ...
The name "Scandza" can be found in earlier Greek geographers such as Pliny the Elder and Ptolemy, and Jordanes explicitly mentions having used such sources. This raises the possibility that Jordanes used a name from his reading of Roman and Greek authors, in order to add detail to an older idea of a northern origin for the Scythians.
This image was created as a poetic opposite of the Laestrygonians and Aethiopians who, in ancient Greek mythology, lived in a permanently sunlit land on the eastern borders of the world. [301] [302] Due to this location, the Ancient Greek name of the Cimmerians was identified with the word for mist, kemmeros (κεμμερος). [302]
The Scythian genealogical myth was an epic cycle of the Scythian religion detailing the origin of the Scythians.This myth held an important position in the worldview of Scythian society, and was popular among both the Scythians of the northern Pontic region and the Greeks who had colonised the northern shores of the Pontus Euxinus.
The direct successors of the Indo-Greeks in the northwest, the Indo-Scythians and Indo-Parthians continued displaying their kings within a legend in Greek, and on the obverse Greek deities. [ 57 ] To the south, the Western Kshatrapas (1st-4th century) represented their kings in profile with circular legends in corrupted Greek.
The Massagetae rose to power in the 8th to 7th centuries BCE, when they migrated from the east into Central Asia, [2] from where they expelled the Scythians, another nomadic Iranian tribe to whom they were closely related. After this, they came to occupy large areas of the region, including the Caspian Steppe where they supplanted the Scythians ...