The Historians' History of the World 02 [Israel, India, Persia, Phoenicia, Minor Nations of Western Asia]

The ceremony does not terminate here. They select such of the deceased king’s attendants, in the following year, as have been most about his person; these are all native Scythians, for in Scythia there are no purchased slaves, the king selecting such to attend him as he thinks proper: fifty of these they strangle, with an equal number of his best horses. They open and cleanse the bodies of them all, which, having filled with straw, they sew up again: then upon two pieces of wood they place a third, of a semicircular form, with its concave side uppermost, a second is disposed in like manner, then the third, and so on, till a sufficient number have been erected. Upon these semicircular pieces of wood they place the horses, after passing large poles through them, from the feet to the neck. One part of the structure, formed as we have described, supports the shoulders of the horse, the other his hinder parts, whilst the legs are left to project upwards. The horses are then bridled, and the reins fastened to the legs; upon each of these they afterwards place one of the youths who have been strangled, in the following manner: a pole is passed through each, quite to the neck, through the back, the extremity of which is fixed to the piece of timber with which the horse has been spitted; having done this with each, they so leave them.

The above are the ceremonies observed in the interment of their kings: as to the people in general, when any one dies, the neighbours place the body on a carriage, and carry it about to the different acquaintance of the deceased; these prepare some entertainment for those who accompany the corpse, placing the same before the body, as before the rest. Private persons, after being thus carried about for the space of forty days, are then buried. They who have been engaged in the performance of these rites, afterwards use the following mode of purgation: after thoroughly washing the head, and then drying it, they do thus with regard to the body; they place in the ground three stakes, inclining towards each other; round these they bind fleeces of wool as thickly as possible, and finally, into the space betwixt the stakes they throw red-hot stones.

They have among them a species of hemp resembling flax, except that it is both thicker and larger; it is indeed superior to flax, whether it is cultivated or grows spontaneously. Of this the Thracians make themselves garments, which so nearly resemble those of flax as to require a skilful eye to distinguish them: they who had never seen this hemp, would conclude these vests to be made of flax.

The Scythians take the seed of this hemp, and placing it beneath the woollen fleeces which we have before described, they throw it upon the red-hot stones, when immediately a perfumed vapour ascends stronger than from any Grecian stove. This, to the Scythians, is in the place of a bath, and it excites from them cries of exultation. It is to be observed, that they never bathe themselves: the Scythian women bruise under a stone, some wood of the cypress, cedar, and frankincense; upon this they pour a quantity of water, till it becomes of a certain consistency, with which they anoint the body and the face; this at the time imparts an agreeable odour, and when removed on the following day, gives the skin a soft and beautiful appearance.

The Scythians have not only a great abhorrence of all foreign customs, but each province seems unalterably tenacious of its own.d

THE CIMMERIANS

The Cimmerians belong partly to legend, partly to history. We know even less of them than of the Scythians. The name Cimmerians appears in the Odyssey—the fable describes them as dwelling beyond the ocean-stream, immersed in darkness and unblest by the rays of Helios. Of this people as existent we can render no account, for they had passed away, or lost their identity and become subject, previous to the commencement of trustworthy authorities; but they seem to have been the chief occupants of the Tauric Chersonesus (Crimea) and of the territory between that peninsula and the river Tyras (Dniester), at the time when the Greeks first commenced their permanent settlements on those coasts in the seventh century B.C. The numerous localities which bore their name, even in the time of Herodotus, after they had ceased to exist as a nation—as well as the tombs of the Cimmerian kings then shown near the Tyras—sufficiently attest this fact; and there is reason to believe that they were (like their conquerors and successors the Scythians) a nomadic people, mare-milkers, moving about with their tents and herds, suitably to the nature of those unbroken steppes which their territory presented, and which offered little except herbage in profusion. Strabo tells us (on what authority we do not know) that they, as well as the Treres and other Thracians, had desolated Asia Minor more than once before the time of Ardys, and even earlier than Homer.c Historical knowledge of the Cimmerians may be briefly summed up:

About 660 B.C. the Assyrian empire was mightier than ever. A brother of the king ruled in Babylon; the host of petty princes in Egypt were tributary; Syria, Mesopotamia, the eastern mountain lands, and even the frontiers of Armenia and Asia Minor had been directly incorporated with the empire. There seemed to be no reason to fear a dangerous uprising anywhere. A few decades later the proud structure had disappeared from the earth. Though the conquered nations had contributed in part to its fall, both the first impulse and the decisive blows were given from without by a great migration of nations. We find the evident effects of them everywhere; but their course in detail is almost completely veiled in darkness.