Scythian genealogical myth

The mother's traits are consistent across the multiple versions of the genealogical myth and include her being the daughter of either a river-god or of the Earth and dwelling in a cave, as well as her being half-woman and half-snake.[15]

Her role in the genealogical myth is not unlike those of sirens and similar non-human beings in Greek mythology, who existed as transgressive women living outside of society and refusing to submit to the yoke of marriage, but instead chose her partners and forced them to join her. Nevertheless, unlike the creatures of Greek myth, the Scythian serpent-maiden did not kill Hēraklēs, who tries to win his freedom from her.[16]

The identification of the father of the Snake-Legged Goddess with the river-god Araxes corresponds to the non-mythological origin of the Scythians as recorded by Herodotus of Halicarnassus, according to which the Scythians initially lived along the Araxes river until the Massagetae expelled them from their homeland, after which they crossed the Araxes river and migrated westwards.[17]

The Scythian genealogical myth was a continuation[18] of the legend of Aphroditē Apatouros (Αφροδιτη Απατουρος) and the Giants as recorded by Strabo, according to which the goddess Aphroditē Apatouros had been attacked by Giants and called on Hēraklēs for help. After concealing Hēraklēs, the goddess, under guise of introducing the Giants one by one, treacherously handed them to Hēraklēs, who killed them. According to this hypothesis, Aphroditē Apatouros was the same goddess as the Snake-Legged Goddess of the Scythian genealogical myth, while "Hēraklēs" was in fact Targī̆tavah, and her reward to him for defeating the Giants was her love.[19]

The Greek poet Hesiod might have mentioned this legend in the Theogony, where he assimilated the Snake-Legged Goddess to the monstrous figure of Echidna from Greek mythology. In Hesiod's narrative, "Echidna" was a serpent-nymph living in a cave far from any inhabited lands, and the god Targī̆tavah, assimilated to Hēraklēs, killed two of her children, namely the Hydra of Lerna and the lion of Nemea. Thus, in this story, "Hēraklēs" functioned as a destroyer of evils and a patron of human dwellings located in place where destruction had previously prevailed.[20]

The "Hēraklēs" of Herodotus of Halicarnassus's second version and from the Tabula Albana's version of the genealogical myth is not the Greek hero Hēraklēs, but the Scythian god Targī̆tavah, who appears in the other recorded variants of the genealogical myth under the name of Targitaos or Skythēs as a son of "Zeus" (that is, the Scythian Sky Father Papaios), and was likely assimilated by the Greeks from the northern shores of the Black Sea with the Greek Hēraklēs[1] because of his important role in the foundational myths of the Greek colonists throughout the Mediterranean basin.[21]

The arrival of "Hēraklēs" in the deserted Scythia corresponds to the mythical motif of the conquest of the empty land by the brave invader, while the stealing of his mares by the serpent maiden corresponds to the cattle-raid motif of Indo-Iranic mythology.[22]

The reference to "Hēraklēs" driving the cattle of Geryon also reflects the motif of the cattle-stealing god widely present among Indo-Iranic peoples,[1][23] and the reference to him stealing Geryon's cattle after defeating him in Herodotus of Halicarnassus's second version of the genealogical myth and of his victory against the river-god Araxēs in the Tabula Albana's version were Hellenised versions of an original Scythian myth depicting the typical mythological theme of the fight of the mythical ancestor-hero, that is of Targī̆tavah, against the chthonic forces, through which he slays the incarnations of the primordial chaos to create the Cosmic order.[1]

The Hellenised myth of "Hēraklēs" staying in Scythia might have been recorded in the Orpheōs Argonautika, which mentions a bull-riding cattle-thief Titan, who might have been Hēraklēs, created the Cimmerian Bosporus by cutting a passage from the Maeotian swamp.[24]

The original deserted state of the land of Scythia when Targī̆tavah first arrived there in the myth followed the motif of the primordial state of the land, which was devastated and barren before the first king finally ended this state of chaos by establishing the tilling of the land and the practice of agriculture.[25]

The names of Targī̆tavah's sons in the first version of the genealogical myth – Lipoxais, Arpoxais, and Kolaxais – end with the suffix "-xais," which is a Hellenisation of the Old Iranian term xšaya meaning ruler:[26][27][28][29]

• Lipoxais, from Scythian *Lipoxšaya, from an earlier form *Δipoxšaya, means "king of radiance," in the sense of "king of the sun."[30]

The first element, *δipa-, is derived from the Indo-European root dyew-, meaning "to be bright" a well as "sky" and "heaven," and can also give the name the meaning of "king of heaven."[30]

• Arpoxais, from Scythian *Arbuxšaya, means "king of the airspace."[31]

The element *arbu- might have been a cognate of the Sanskrit term Ṛbhú (ऋभु), which is the name of a group of Indic deities of the airspace.[31]

• Kolaxais, from Scythian *Kolaxšaya, means "axe-wielding king" and "sceptre-wielding king," as well as "blacksmith king" in the sense of "ruling king of the lower world."[32]

The names of the three sons of Targī̆tavah therefore corresponded to the threelayers of the cosmos:[33]

• Lipoxšaya was the "King of Radiance," and therefore of the Heavens;
• Arbuxšaya was the King of the Airspace, and therefore of lightning;
• Kolaxšaya was the Axe/Sceptre-wielding King and the Blacksmith king, and therefore of the Lower World, as well as of lightning.

Each of the sons of Targī̆tavah were forebearers of social classes constituting the Scythian people:[34][6][35][36]

• Lipoxšaya was the ancestor of the Aukhatai (Ancient Greek: Αυχαται, romanized: Aukhatai; Latin: Auchatae);
  • The original Scythian form of the Hellenised name Aukhatai might have been *Vahuta, meaning "the blessed ones" or "the holy ones."[37]
• Arbuxšaya was the ancestor of the Katiaroi (Ancient Greek: Κατιαροι, romanized: Katiaroi; Latin: Catiari) and the Traspies (Ancient Greek: Τρασπιες, romanized: Traspies; Latin: Traspies);
  • The original Scythian form of Traspies might have been derived from Trāspā, meaning "three horses."[31]
  • The original Scythian form of the Hellenised name Katiaroi might have been *Gaucahrya, meaning "possessors of cattle pastures";[37]
• Kolaxšaya was the ancestor of the Paralatai (Ancient Greek: Παραλαται, romanized: Paralatai; Latin: Paralatae), also known as the Royal Scythians, who were the warrior-aristocracy of the Scythians.
  • The name Paralatai was a Greek reflection of the Scythian name Paralāta, which was a title held by the Scythian warrior-aristocracy to which the kings belonged, with the kings being members of the Paralāta, although not all the Paralāta were kings. The name Paralāta was a cognate of the Avestan title Paraδāta (𐬞𐬀𐬭𐬀𐬜𐬁𐬙𐬀), which means "first created."[1][38][39][29]

The three sons of Targī̆tavah represented the division of Scythian society into a system of tripartite classes which existed among all the Indo-European peoples, and is well-attested among the Indo-Iranic peoples, such as the pištra three-fold class system of Zoroastrianism, as well as the varṇa system of the Indic peoples which divided the societies of the Indic peoples into the clerical class of the brāhmaṇa, the military aristocracy of the kṣatriya to which belonged the warriors and kings, and the wealth-producing ordinary community members of the vaiśya.[1][40]

These three classes, in turn, each corresponded to the typically Indo-Iranic tripartite structure of the universe of Scythian cosmology,[41] which is also present in the Vedic and Avestan traditions, and according to which the universe was composed of the heavens, the airspace, and the earth.[42]

The three sons of Targī̆tavah were thus ancestors of the various social classes of Scythian society who also represented the three levels of the Cosmos: the upper celestial realm, the middle sphere of the airspace, and the lower terrestrial world, with the central son representing the airspace linking the two others, which also parallels the roles of the Sky Father Papaios, the Earth-and-Water Mother Api, and their child, Targī̆tavah, that is the airspace.[1]

The Scythian genealogical myth thus assigned to the Scythian kings a divine ancestry through descent from Kolaxšaya, as attested when the Scythian king Idanthyrsus claimed Papaios as his ancestor.[43] The name Paralatai was a Greek reflection of the Scythian name Paralāta, which was a title held by Scythian kings, and was also a cognate of the Avestan title Paraδāta (𐬞𐬀𐬭𐬀𐬜𐬁𐬙𐬀), which means "first created."[1][39][29]

According to the version of the genealogical myth recorded by Gaius Valerius Flaccus, Kolaxšaya and his warriors decorated their shields with "fires divided into three parts," flashing lightning, and pictures of red wings, with the colour red being characteristic of the warrior class in Indo-Iranic tradition.[1]

In Gaius Valerius Flaccus's narrative, Auchus, that is Lipoxšaya, was born with white hair and wore a band which passed around his head three times and whose ends hanged backwards, with the colour white in Indo-Iranic tradition being that of priesthood, and the headband of Auchus being part of a priest's regalia which was depicted in the art of the various ancient Iranian peoples. These thus signalled Lipoxšaya as the progenitor of Aukhatai, that is the priestly component of Scythian society's tripartite class system.[1]

Arbuxšaya, meanwhile, was the progenitor of the Katiaroi and Traspies, who formed the third section of the Scythian class system, that of the ordinary populace consisting of farmers and horse-breeders.[1]

The sub-division of the farmer class into two groups, namely the Katiaroi connected to cattle the Traspies connected to horses, fits an Indo-Iranic motif of which the other iterations include the Zoroastrian Gə̄uš Uruuan (whose name means "the soul of the cow") and Druuāspā (whose name means "(the deity) with healthy horses"), as well as the Vedic Aśvins and their sons in later Hindu tradition, Nakula and Sahadeva.[44] The name of the Traspies, likely derived from Scythian Trāspā, meaning "three horses," is also semantically connected to that of the Aśvins.[45]

The three golden objects which fell from the sky also represented the various Scythian classes:[1][46][47]

• the battle-axe represents the warrior-aristocracy;
  • the battle-axe also functioned as a royal sceptre or staff[48]
• the cup, used during religious rituals for offering libations and to prepare haoma, representing the priestly class;
• the plough used by farmers to till the fields and the yoke associated with cattle-breeding represented the lowest class of the Katiaroi and Traspies.

The golden objects, that is the hestiai of Tāpayantī, as attested by their fiery nature, were the fires of the three classes of Scythian society, with the triunity of the Scythian hestiai representing the concept of fire, represented by the goddess Tāpayantī, being the primeval and all-encompassing element permeating the world and being present throughout it.[1][49]

Although each of the three gold objects each corresponded to one of the three layers of the Scythian tripartite class structure, the fact that they all came into the possession of Kolaxšaya and his descendants meant that they had no connections to his elder brothers who also corresponded to two of the three Scythian social classes.[50]

The plough-and-yoke and the cup, although representing the farmer and priestly functions, were instead symbols of royal power used in the coronation rites of the Scythian king, which themselves found a parallel in the rājasūya consecration ceremony of Indic kings.[51] The acquisition of the objects by Kolaxšaya represented the Scythian royal coronation ritual, according to which the world order was disturbed by the death of the previous king and was restored through the coronation of the new king.[52]

The falling of the three objects from the sky and Kolaxšaya coming to possessing them was also a myth of the transfer of power from the older generation of gods to the newer one, similar to power leaving Ouranos in ancient Greek religion and Varuṇa in ancient Vedic religion to pass on to the newer generations.[53]

The ownership of the three golden objects which fell from the sky, which constituted the hestiai of Tāpayantī, by Kolaxšaya and his descendants constituted a heaven-given manifestation of divine origin of the royal power of the Scythian kings, and of the kings' proximity to Tāpayantī.[7] The Scythian goddess Tāpayantī was herself linked to the fārnā,[54] and the ownership of her hestiai thus provided to Kolaxšaya the fārnā (Avestan: 𐬓𐬀𐬭𐬆𐬥𐬀𐬵, romanized: xᵛarᵊnah), that is the royal splendour, which among Iranic peoples was believed to transform the king into a sacred figure and a kind of deity who was sometimes believed to be the brother of the Sun and the Moon. Among the Scythic peoples, this notion of the association of the Sun with kingship was attested by the Massagetaean practice of sacrificing horses to the Sun-god.[55]

The importance of the fārnā among the many Scythic peoples is attested by the fact that it is the most widespread element among recorded Scytho-Sarmatian names in the Pontic Steppe region.[56][54]

The hestiai of Tāpayantī were thus the physical manifestations of the fārnā and were guarded by the kings, with this association being evident in how the golden objects burnt the brothers who were unworthy of kingship, but did not harm the legitimate king, Kolaxšaya. Like the typically Iranic conceptions of the fārnā attested in the Zoroastrian and Persian myths, the Scythian fārnā was of heavenly origin, and represented an emanation of the sacred fire, and therefore could be itself depicted as objects made of or decorated with gold. It was the fārnā who chose the king, legitimised him, and guaranteed his power, while the king himself was seen as being unable of being burnt like fire.[57]

The Scythian concept of the fārnā was thus tripartite, with all of its three components belonging together to the king, although they could leave the king if he became unworthy. The three components of the fārnā also represented an emanation of the celestial fire and each corresponded to one of the three social classes of Scythian society, and were worshipped in religious rites.[58]

At the same time, the Scythian physical form of the royal fārnā consisted of three objects which each represented one of the three social classes of Scythian society, with the king himself thus encompassing and transcending these classes.[59][47]

The narrative of the ancestor of the Paralāta, Kolaxšaya, succeeding in acquiring the gold objects, that is the hestiai of Tāpayantī, which had fallen from the sky was also an explanation of the supremacy of the tribe descended from him, that is the Royal Scythians, over the other Scythian tribes, and of the Scythian kings, who bore the title of Paralāta.[1] The ownership of the hestiai of Tāpayantī thus gave to Kolaxšaya the right to rule, and they also represented the king's role whereby, as the ruler of all society, he also represented all the social classes, being this the chief warrior, the chief priest, and the chief farmer, with all three social roles united within him.[46]

This conceptualisation of the king originating from the warrior-aristocracy but at the same time encompassing the three social functions and representing all the classes by being himself the incarnation of society was one of the fundamental concepts of Indo-Iranic ideology. This practise was also present among the Indic peoples, where the king originated from the kṣatriya warrior aristocracy, and was proclaimed to be a member of the brāhmaṇa priestly caste and symbolically married the brāhmaṇa, and then did the same with the vaiśya producer caste. Other Indic coronation rites also included the symbolic birth of the king from the brāhmaṇa and vaiśya castes, thus becoming a member of all three castes at the same time. Although information about coronation rites among the Iranic peoples is meagre, this appears to have been the case among them too.[59]

Thus, the passage of the Scythian genealogical myth regarding the three brothers explained how the three sons of Targī̆tavah represented the three social classes, with the youngest of the sons, Kolaxšaya, who was the warrior, also united within himself the function of all three classes.[60] It also explained the dominant role of the warrior-aristocratic class over the other classes.[61]

The version of the Scythian genealogical myth retold by Diodorus of Sicily also made the sons of Skythes the progenitors of the social classes:[62]

• the Paloi corresponded to the warrior class of the Paralāta,
• the Napoi corresponded to the rest of the Katiaroi and Traspies.

Pliny the Elder recorded a Scythian myth, according to which a struggle between the Paloi and the Napoi resulted in the destruction of the latter by the former, representing the establishment of the supremacy of the warrior class over the producer class. Only the warrior and producer classes are mentioned in this myth because the priestly class was completely subordinate to the warrior aristocracy.[63]

The Scythian genealogical myth originated among the royalty, and was used by the Scythian kings to establish the divine origin of their kingship and their right to rule by virtue of being the descendants of Kolaxšaya. By asserting the supremacy of the youngest brother over the elder ones, the genealogical myth also assigned such a preeminence to the Scythians, who claimed to be the "youngest of all peoples."[64][65]

The genealogical myth also ascribed to the Scythians' political and social institutions an antiquity dating back to the mythical era of the ancestors, which in the Scythian worldview was seen as ensuring the "correctness" of these institutions, which in turn guaranteed the stability and prosperity of Scythian society.[43]

In the genealogical myth, the unity incarnated by Targī̆tavah also underwent fragmentation on the levels of kinship due to Targī̆tavah having three sons, class due to the three objects representing three social classes and their respective functions, as well as ethnicity and territory in the form of the multiple peoples descended from the sons of Targī̆tavah. This fragmentation was finally stopped with the establishment of kingship by Kolaxšaya when he gained possession of the gold objects which formed the totality fo kingship, and his brothers proved themselves to be unworthy of possessing them and therefore became subortinate to him and the peoples descended from them became subordinate to the descendants of Kolaxšaya.[39][66]

Kolaxšaya thus encompassed and reintegrated the fragmented elements of the primordial totality within himself by becoming king. In consequence, the following Scythian kings kept the gold objects as the symbol and legitimising source of their power and position which they renewed each year through religious rituals.[39][67]

The division of the Scythian kingdom between the three sons of Kolaxšaya transposed the Scythian three-fold cosmological structure and social structure composed of three classes onto the institution of Scythian kingship, and therefore also explained the division of Scythia into three kingdoms of which the king of the Royal Scythians was the High King. Thus, Scythia was ruled by three kings, of whom one was the supreme king who guarded the hestiai of Tāpayantī. This threefold kingship is a structure recorded in historical times in Herodotus's account of the Scythian campaign of the Persian king Darius I, when the Scythians were ruled by the three kings, namely Idanthyrsus, Skōpasis, and Taxakis, with Idanthyrsus being the Scythian high king while Skōpasis and Taxakis were sub-kings.[68][2]

The Scythian genealogical myth thus ascribed the origin of the Scythians to the Scythian Sky Father Papaios, either directly or through his son Targī̆tavah, and to the Snake-Legged Goddess affiliated to Artimpasa,[69] and also represented the threefold division of the universe into the Heavens, the Earth, and the Underworld, as well as the division of Scythian society into the warrior, priest, and agriculturalist classes.[26]

The sons of Targī̆tavah according to the second version of the genealogical myth were each also ancestors of tribes belonging to the Scythian cultures:[70][36]

• Agathyrsos was the ancestor of the Agathyrsoi,
• Gelōnos was the ancestor of the Gelōnoi,
• Skythēs was the ancestor of the Scythians proper, who were named after him.

The each of the sons of Targī̆tavah in the second version of the genealogical respectively corresponded to the sons from the first version, with Agathyrsos corresponding to Lipoxšaya, Gelōnos corresponding to Arbuxšaya, and Skythēs corresponding to Kolaxšaya.[11]

Due to the identification of Skythēs with Kolaxšaya, the Scythians were also considered to be "Kolaxšaya-ians," which is reflected in how the Greeks called Scythian horses as hippos Kolaxaios (ιππος Κολαξαιος), meaning "horses of Kolaxšaya."[36]

The tasks which the sons of Targī̆tavah had to perform as trial in this second version of the genealogical myth consisted of stringing a bow, and strapping a tight belt to which was attached a cup.

• The bow was a military tool, with a similar set of tools being attributes of the Indic kṣatriya, and it corresponded to the battle-axe which formed part of the hestiai of the first version of the genealogical myth. This bow was therefore used to find out which brother was the warrior and would therefore be the ancestor of the warrior class.[71]
• The belt with the cup attached to it was a sacerdotal tool, with the belt being associated to priests in Indo-Iranic tradition: adherents of Zoroastrianism had to start wearing the kustīg from a young age, attesting of the initiatic role of the belt; and the belt was also used in the initiation rites of the Indic brāhmaṇa priestly caste; therefore, the belt with a cup attacked to it represented the Scythian king's role as a priest.[72] Thus, after having proven that he was a warrior, Skythēs also obtained the cup and therefore earned the right to perform priestly functions.[73]

The trial of the sons of Targī̆tavah was a warrior's trial as well as a priest's trial through which Skythēs, as the king, united the social classes composing Scythian society within himself.[74] Thus, Skythēs was the first king and the progenitors of the Scythian kings.[36]

The possession of the bow of Targī̆tavah in the second version of the Scythian genealogical myth thus corresponded to the possession of the hestiai in the first version, and the function of both was to test the candidate for kingship, with these objects collectively symbolising power and the king's acquisition of them meaning that he passed the rest to become the ruler. The acquisition of the hestiai and the bow of Targī̆tavah therefore was part of the king's initiation ritual.[52]

The belt with a cup attached to it was also a symbol of royal power in multiple Iranic traditions,[75] and the cup itself was used in coronation rites among the many Indo-Iranic peoples, including the Scythians.[51] Golden cups were also placed in the burials of deceased kings.[76]

The cup and the arrows were elements of the Scythian coronation rituals, but they were also symbols of unity among the Scythians, as were the axe and spear,[51] hence why whenever the Scythians concluded a treaty of friendship, they poured wine in a cup and lowered a sword, arrows, an axe, and a spear into it.[76]

Similarly, in the story of the cauldron of Ariantas, each arrowhead represented a Scythian warrior individually, and the copper vessel standing at the Holy Ways which made from all of the arrowheads functioned as the ritual unification of the Scythians.[77]

The arrows and the cup were thus symbols of royal power used in the coronation rites of the Scythian king, which themselves found a parallel in the rājasūya consecration ceremony of Indic kings.[51] The acquisition of these objects by Kolaxšaya represented the Scythian royal coronation ritual, according to which the world order was disturbed by the death of the previous king and was restored through the coronation of the new king.[52]

The second version of the Scythian genealogical myth also explained the origin of the name of the Scythians as being derived from that of Skythēs (Skuδa in Proto-Scythian; Skula in Scythian), whose name meant "archer," and after whom the Scythians were called Skuδatā (Skulatā in Proto-Scythian), meaning "archers."[78]

The second version of the genealogical myth was one that had been Hellenised, which was not an uncommon practice of ancient Greeks done with the aim of including Barbarian peoples into the orbit of their own civilisation. Greek colonists who settled in remote peripheral regions often connected these new areas to their own myths, deities, and heroes by identifying Greek heroes with the local peoples' mythological forefathers. [18]

In Greek mythology, Hēraklēs had killed the giant Geryon and seized his cows, after which he sailed from Geryon's home island of Erytheia to Tartessos in Iberia, from where he passed by the city of Abdera and reached Liguria, and then going south to Italy and sailing to Sicily: on the way, he founded several cities and settlements which the Greeks supposedly later "regained." The population of new territories with characters from Greek mythology and history was thus done to justify their acquisition, and therefore the Greeks turned Hēraklēs into a founder of various nations, dynasties, and cities throughout the Ecumene from Iberia to India, and several epic Hērakleidēs were composed and enjoyed popularity within ancient Greek society.[79]

The Hellenisation of the Scythian genealogical myth was, consequently, carried out probably by the Pontic Olbians to further their own interests among the Scythians. Therefore, the Iranic cosmological features such as the union of heaven and earth and the birth of the primordial unity represented by Targī̆tavah were ignored, and humanity as well as divisions in terms of gender, geography, status, and ethnicity had already come into existence.[80][81][65][82]

In this version of the myth, the snake legs of the mother goddess and her dwelling place within the earth mark her as a native of Scythia. The ambiguous features of the mother goddess, such as her being both human and animal, high-ranking and base, monstrous and seductive, at the same time, corresponded to Greek perceptions of Scythian natives. Therefore, although she ruled over the land, her kingdom was empty, cold, uninhabited, and without any signs of civilisation.[83][84]

Meanwhile, it was Hēraklēs, a Greek, who incarnated the power of alterity and the alterity of power, arrived into Scythia from abroad to change the situation: in this Hellenised version of the myth, it was through union with Hēraklēs that the pre-civilised Scythia could be transformed into a world more familiar to the Greeks by the introduction of the institution of kingship.[83][84]

Before Hēraklēs left Scythia, the mother goddess asked him whether she should settle them in her own land or send them to Hēraklēs once they have grown up, which was a way for her to ask whether the sons were to be Scythians (if they were to live with their mother) or Greeks (if they were to live with their father). Hēraklēs's response was to give them his bow, belt, and cup, which were instruments of culture, and declared that whoever among them would be able to string the bow and gird himself with the belt would become king.[85][84]

However, Hēraklēs did not claim any of the children and instead instructed that the son who passed his test and therefore was the most like Hēraklēs himself would inherit Scythia, while the other less able brothers who were therefore less like Hēraklēs would be exiled to the north, in the direction opposite to Hēraklēs's destination in Greece.[86][84]

Therefore, the addition of Hēraklēs in the second version of the genealogical myth ascribed to the Snake-Legged Goddess's sons a partial Greek ancestry, with the most youngest son proving himself to be the most worthy due to him being more Greek than his brothers through his physical prowess inherited from his father; as well as him obtaining the bow, belt and cup, which were tools of Greek culture; moreover, his inheritance of Scythia meant that he was the brother who lived the closest to the Greeks; and finally by establising a "more virile" culture than his brothers, whose descendants, the promiscuous and luxury-loving Agathyrsi and the sedentary and farmer Gelonians, led lives which the Greeks perceived as being less masculine and therefore derived from their Asian mother.[86][84]

This Hellenised version of the Scythian genealogical myth therefore presented Skythēs as being a largely but not completely Greek figure, and, in consequence, made his Scythian descendants a people of largely Greek origin. His bow, belt, and horses which he obtained from Hēraklēs were construed in this myth as gifts thanks to which Scythian warriors obtained their offensive, defensive, and mobile capabilities, while the traits which the Greeks perceived negatively among the Scythians, Agathyrsi, and Gelonians were ascribed to their pimordial mother.[81][82]

The goal of this Hellenised Scythian genealogical myth was to impose a superiority of the Greeks over the Scythians as well as to establish a dependency of the Scythians on the Greeks regarding their "civilising" arts, and finally to portray the Scythians proper, who were more Hellenised, as being superior to their more northern and non-Hellenised neighbours such as the Agathyrsi and the Gelonians.[87][88]

To propagate this more Hellenised version of the genealogical myth which turned the Scythians into a people of partly Greek origin, and to compete with the first version of the myth, the Greek artisans on the northern shores of the Black Sea produced artistic depictions of this story to distribute as trade goods to the Scythians.[81][88]

The ritual sleep was a ceremony conducted at the Holy Ways, where the great bronze cauldron representing the centre of the world was located.[2] During this ceremony, a substitute ritual king would ceremonially sleep in an open air field along with the gold hestiai for a single night, possibly as a symbolical ritual impregnation of the earth. This substitute king would receive as much land as he could ride around in one day: this land belonged to the real king and was given to the substitute king to complete his symbolic identification with the real king, following which he would be allowed to live for one year until he would be sacrificed when the time for the next ritual sleep festival would arrive[15] and a successor of the ritual king was chosen. This ceremony also represented the death and rebirth of the Scythian king.[2]

This festival corresponded to the rājasūya royal consecration ceremony of the Indic peoples, where the borders of the king's realm were determined by the territory around which his horse walked.[89]

During the ritual sleep ceremony, the king of the Royal Scythians performed the duties of a priest, thus acting as a priest-king.[2]

The ceremony of the ritual sleep was the main event of the Scythian calendar, during which the Scythian kings would worship the gold hestiai with rich sacrifices. The ceremony might have been held at the moment of the Scythian calendar corresponding to the fall of the gold objects from the heavens.[90]

A Scythian depiction of the combat of Targī̆tavah against the chthonic personification of chaos might have been present on one of the bone plaques decorating a comb from the Haymanova Mohyla, which was decorated with the scene of two Scythians fighting a monster with the front-legs of a lion, a scaly body, and a fish- or dragon-like split tail, with the monster's appearance connecting it to the element of water, and therefore to the chthonic realm; one of the Scythians in the scene is depicted as dying in the monster's leonine paws while the second man kills it with a spear.[1]

The narrative where the three sons of Targī̆tavah were tasked to string the bow of their father might have been represented on a silver cup from Voronezh whose surface is decorated with three scenes where Targī̆tavah explains his first son the task, then banishes his second son for failing the task, and finally gives the younger son a bow as reward for fulfilling the task.[92]

Unlike the Greek retelling of the myth, in which "Hēraklēs" returns to Greece and instructs the Snake-Legged Goddess to put their three sons through the trial of the bowstring, these scenes instead represent, in accordance with Scythian traditions of patrilineality, the divine paternal ancestor of the first king, that is Targī̆tavah himself, putting his sons through the trial.[92]

Another representation of the trial of the sons of Targī̆tavah might have decorated an electrum vessel from the Kul-Oba kurgan, where Targī̆tavah is represented wearing a Greek-type diadēma, and his two elder sons who had failed the task of the bowstring are depicted being healed while the third son is shown stringing the bow.[93]

In the Avesta, the three sons of Zaraϑuštra are assigned the roles of the progenitors of the three social classes, with the eldest son being the head priest, the second son being an agriculturist, and the third son being a warrior.[94]

In another passage of the Avesta where Zaraϑuštra appears in relation to the three social classes, Zaraϑuštra bestows upon Vištāspa the blessing that he would have ten sons, of whom three would be priests, three would be warriors, and three would be farmer-agriculturists, and one who would be like Vištāspa himself.[95]

The concept of the king encompassing and transcending the social classes is present in the Zoroastrian tradition, with the Vištāsp Yašt and the Āfrīn-i Payğāmbar Zarduxšt of the Avesta explicitly propounding this notion of kingship, which was reiterated by the 9th century AD Zoroastrian scholar Zādspram in his writings.[60]

The blessing bestowed by Zaraϑuštra to Vištāspa, according to which Vištāspa would have ten sons, of whom three would be priests, three would be warriors, three would be farmers, and the tenth would be like Vištāspa, was derived from the Iranic notion of the three sons as the progenitor of the three social classes, while the tenth son who was to be like Vištāspa represented the king within whom the functions of these three social classes were united.[60]

Paralleled the role of the belt with a cup attached to it in establishing Skythēs's role as the supreme priest, Zaraϑuštra was believed to have first established the practise wearing of the kustīg belt which adherents of Zoroastrianism had to start wearing from a young age.[96]

Hōšang (Haošiiaŋha) being tasked by his grandfather to defeat demons. Safavid-era illustration.

The name Paralatai was a Greek reflection of the Scythian name Paralāta, which was a cognate of the Avestan title Paraδāta (𐬞𐬀𐬭𐬀𐬜𐬁𐬙𐬀), which means "first created."[39][29] In the Avesta, Haošiiaŋha was the first king and the ancestor of the warrior class, that is of the military aristocracy of which the kings were members, and the title Paralāta was assigned in Zoroastrian literature to the first king, Haošiiaŋha, and to his descendants and successors, the Pishdadian dynasty.[1][94]

In Avestan mythology, Haošiiaŋha Paraδāta held the role of the warrior-king who fought against non-Iranic "barbarians" and had both human and demonic enemies, and also laid the foundations of royal power and of sovereignty.[97]

Haošiiaŋha's son Taxma Urupi, who also bore the title of Paraδāta, meanwhile corresponded to the priest-king, being opposed to the same enemies of Haošiiaŋha as well as to sorcerers, and he managed to use magic to turn Aŋra Mainiiu into his horse which he rode for thirty years. Taxma Urupi in Avestan mythology also curbed idolatry and promoted the worship of Ahura Mazdā, and was also credited with inventing writing, which were all attributes of a priest-king, thus making him the equivalent of Lipoxšaya.[97]

Taxma Urupi's successor to the kingship, Yima, meanwhile held the role of a "prosperous king," which corresponded to Arbuxšaya's role as the progenitor of the farmer class. Taxma Urupi's creation of the underground enclosure, the vara, connected him to the lower world, which also signalled his association with the role of the progenitor of the farmer class.[98] Yima's epithet of xšaēta (𐬑𐬱𐬀𐬉𐬙𐬀), meaning "brilliant" and "shining" was a sign of his proximity to the Sun and the Moon due to his possession of the xᵛarᵊnah in his capacity of being king.[55]

A myth similar to that of the golden objects falling from the sky was also present in the Avesta, where Ahura Mazdā offered to Yima a suβrā (either a pick or a shepherd's flute) and an aštrā (a cattle goad), both made of gold, which Yima used on the earth to increase the size of its part which was inhabitable.[12]

The role of Arbuxšaya as the progenitor of the farmer class finds another parallel in the Zoroastrian tradition, where Haošiiaŋha's brother Vaēgerēδ was the creator of agriculture and the ancestor of the farmer class.[1][98][99]

In the Hōm Yašt of the Avesta, the hero Θrita was the third mortal man to have prepared the sacred haoma drink. Θrita in turn had two sons, of whom Urvāxšaya was a religious mentor as well as a judge and a lawgiver, while Kərəsāspa was a famous heroic warrior who slew a horned dragon.[99]

Ahura Mazdā offered to Yima the suβrā and aštrā which Yima used on the earth to increase the inhabitable part of the Earth in the Vendīdād, and Yima used his xᵛarᵊnah to perform this task the Dēnkard, thus identifying the xᵛarᵊnah with the suβrā and aštrā. This story paralleled the acquisition of the hestiai of Tāpayantī by Kolaxšaya, who thus became the possessor of the fārnā and of its physical symbols.[57]

The xᵛarᵊnah was believed to follow the legitimate king and escape from usurpers, but it was also believed to leave the legitimate king and pass over to a better candidate should he become unjust and violate the laws. Thus, in the Avesta, when Yima started to believe lies, his xᵛarᵊnah left him three times in three parts: one part took on the form of the Vārᵊγna bird to pass onto the god Miϑra, one part passed onto the prince Θraētaona, who became king, and the third part passed onto Θrita's son, the hero Kərəsāspa, who became a dragon-slaying hero just as Θraētaona had previously been, as a result of which Yima lost the kingship and was succeeded by Θraētaona.[100][101]

The narrative of the xᵛarᵊnah leaving the legitimate king after corruption is present in the Dēnkard, where the king Kāy Us lost his xᵛarᵊnah after attempting to conquer the heavens.[102]

In the Greater Bundahišn, Nōtargā attempted to steal the xᵛarᵊnah of Frētōn by using witchcraft to place it inside a cow whose milk he gave to his three sons to drink. The xᵛarᵊnah rejected each of the sons, and instead passed into one of Nōtargā's daughters, who later gave birth to Kay Apīveh, who possessed the xᵛarᵊnah from birth and became the second Kayanian king and the true founder of the Kayanian dynasty, after which his xᵛarᵊnah passed on to his heirs. Although this myth is not directly connected to the Scythian genealogical myth, this narrative of the xᵛarᵊnah chosing its possessor is nevertheless similar to how the hestiai of Tāpayantī rejected Lipoxšaya and Arbuxšaya, and instead chose Kolaxšaya to become their possessor.[103]

Like among the Scythians, the xᵛarᵊnah in Zoroastrianism was also tripartite,[58] which is reflected in a myth recorded by Zādspram, according to which humans at the time of Hōšang (Haošiiaŋha) - although the Bundahišn sets the story during the time of Taxmurup (Taxma Urupi) - were able to travel from one region of the earth to another on the back of the gigantic bull Srisōk. However, the sacred fire on the back of Srisōk fell into the sea and separated into three Zoroastrian Sacred Fires which possessed the xᵛarᵊnah and were established at three sites. These Three Fires were:[104]

• Ādur Farnbāg, which was dedicated to the priestly class;
• Ādur Gušnasp, which was dedicated to the warrior class;
• Ādur Burzēn-Mihr, which was dedicated to the farmer class.

Unlike the Scythian fārnā, the three components of the xᵛarᵊnah of the Sasanian period were kept separately due to a later Zoroastrian eschatological notion recorded in the Dēnkard, according to which the union of the Fire of the Priests and the Fire of the Warriors was capable of destroying evil, preserve creation, and the renewal of existence. Therefore, since evil still existed in the world, the reunification had to happen in the end times.[58]

Although the Three Fires were located in physically separate spots, they were nevertheless all present within the same kingdom ruled by the same king, due to which the Sasanian kings possessed all three components of the xᵛarᵊnah.[105]

Yima teaches the crafts to humanity. Mediaeval-era illustration.

Although Yima is depicted in later Zoroastrian literature as possessing only two physical manifestations of the xᵛarᵊnah, the suβrā and aštrā, in the Bundahišn, he used three fires to perform all his tasks during his reign, with these fires corresponding to the royal xᵛarᵊnah[101] and to the three Scythian hestiai possessed by Kolaxšaya.[106] The reference to the "three fires" suggests that in the earlier variants of the myth, Yima was a perfect king who owned an object representing the priestly function in addition to the suβrā and aštrā, thus possessing the sacred objects which represented the three aspects of kingship and the three social classes, thus corresponding exactly to the three objects which were in the possession of Kolaxšaya in the Scythian genealogical myth.[107]

The discrepancy between Yima possessing three sacred objects in the earlier form of the myth and only two in the later variant is due to a later Zoroastrian development, recorded in the narrative from the Vendīdād, where Ahura Mazdā initially offered to Yima to study and preserve religion, which Yima refused. Ahura Mazdā then offered kingship of the whole world to Yima, and he accepted and therefore received the suβrā and aštrā, which are described in the text of the Vendīdād as the xšaϑra, meaning "royal powers," and which respectively represent the farmer and warrior functions. Since Yima refused to preserve religion, he did not possess the third physical manifestation of the xᵛarᵊnah representing the priestly class, which was to be owned by Zaraϑuštra,[106] hence why the objects possessed by Yima became reduced to two in later Zoroastrian myth.[107]

Therefore, Yima's kingship was incomplete, since he united within himself the warrior and farmer functions, but not the priestly one, hence why Yima is described in Zoroastrian literature as possessing the full royal xᵛarᵊnah but none of the religious xᵛarᵊnah, while Zaraϑuštra possessed the full religious xᵛarᵊnah but none of the royal xᵛarᵊnah.[106]

However, in some myths relating to Yima, he possessed a belt, which was a symbol of the priestly class, and Yima's belt was even said to be identical to the Zoroastrian religion in some texts, thus allowing him to use the belt to render Ahriman (the Avestan Aŋra Mainiiu) and his demons powerless. This paralleled the role of the belt with a cup attached to it in establishing Skythēs's role as the supreme priest.[96]

According to the Dēnkard, Yima's xᵛarᵊnah passed on to:[101]

• Frētōn (the Avestan Θraētaona), who received the farmers' part of the xᵛarᵊnah;
• Sāmān Karsāsp (the Avestan Kərəsāspa), who received the warriors' part of the xᵛarᵊnah;
• Ošnar, a sage who received the priests' part of the xᵛarᵊnah.

In the Yašt 19 of the Avesta, Ahura Mazdā told Zaraϑuštra that whoever would be able to capture the xᵛarᵊnah that once belonged to Yima, which was hidden in the Voᵘrukaša ocean, would obtain three boons, consisting of the boon of the priests, the boon of well-being and wealth, and the boon of victory with which he would be able to destroy all enemies. These three parts were reunited in the xᵛarᵊnah of the kings of the Kayanian dynasty.[101]

In both the Dēnkard's and the Yašt 19's narratives, the three parts of Yima's xᵛarᵊnah are listed in the same order as the sons of Targī̆tavah, with the first part corresponding to the priests, the second part to the farmers, and the third part to the warriors.[101]

In the Zoroastrian eschatological text, the Ayādgār-ī Jāmāspīg, the hero Ferēdūn had three sons, who each represented the social classes, were also the ancestors of the three major populations of the known world:[108]

• the eldest, Salm, was the ancestor of the producer class, and became the ruler of Rome;
• the second, Tōz, was the ancestor of the warrior-aristocracy, and became the ruler of Turkestan and the desert;
• the third, Ēriz, was the ancestor of the priesthood, and became the ruler of Iran and India.

This variant of the myth had, however, undergone some modifications proper to Zoroastrianism, so that the dominant class descended from the youngest son of Ferēdūn was that of the priests rather than the warrior aristocracy. Some aspects of the original version of the myth were nevertheless still present, so that Ferēdūn still gave to Ēriz the xᵛarᵊnah, which was normally an attribute of the kings and of the warrior aristocracy; and the power of Ēriz it itself described in the Ayādgār-ī Jāmāspīg as consisting of xvatāyīh u pātexšāhīh, that is of royalty and rulership. In the Dēnkard, Ēriz instead received from his father the vāxš (𐬬𐬁𐬑𐬱‎), that is speech, due to the replacement of the original royal attributes of Ēriz by priestly ones.[108]

The roles of the sons of Ferēdūn as the ancestors of three peoples parallel the second version of the Scythian genealogical myth recorded by Herodotus of Halicarnassus, where the sons of "Hēraklēs" each became the ancestors of a Scythic tribe.[108]

In the 5th century AD, the Sasanid wuzurg framadār Mihr-Narseh had his three sons appointed to important positions at the head of the three estates of Persian society:[109]

• the eldest son was named the hērbadān hērbad, which was the second highest position within the clerical hierarchy;
• the second son was appointed as the vāstryōšān-sālār, that is the head of the agriculturists, who was also the minister in charge of taxation and finance;
• the third son became the artēštārān-sālār, that is the head of the warriors, and the grand marshal.

The order of the respective professions of the sons of Mihr-Narseh corresponded to the functions of the sons of both Zaraϑuštra and Targī̆tavah, and Mihr-Narseh might have intentionally chosen this order of professions to emulate Zoroaster himself or one of the ancient pious kings of Zoroastrian mythology.[109]

Mihr-Narseh also built four fire temples near his home town, with one being for himself and corresponding to the king's personal fire, which was also the prime fire of the empire, and the other three corresponding to each of his sons and which also corresponded to the three Great Fires of the Sasanid Empire.[109]

The myth of an ancient and pious king whose three sons were the progenitors of the three social classes appears to have existed among the Persians up till the Sasanian period in the 5th century AD.[109]

The Achaemenid kings would wear the peasant clothes of their empire's founder, Cyrus II, and eat a peasant's meal before being consecrated by the priests, being a ritual whereby the king, who originated among the warrior-aristocracy, also became a member of the producer class. This suggests that the Indo-Iranic concept of the king originating among the warrior-aristocracy and then ritually becoming a member of the priestly and farmer classes, thus encompassing the three social functions and representing all the classes by being himself the incarnation of society.[110]

In a prayer from Persepolis, the Achaemenid king Darius I asked Ahura Mazda to protect his kingdom from ills relating to the three social functions, and consisting of hostile armies (representing the warrior function), bad harvests (representing the producer function), and lies (representing the religious aspect). The king thus protected his realm from these three evils because he was himself held to be the good warrior, the protector of the land and of the peasants, and the just king, which were often mentioned virtues in Achaemenid royal inscriptions.[111]

The Achaemenid king Xerxes I performed a sacrifice to the Sun-god on the shores of the Hellespont where, after having poured a libation, he threw in the sea a cup representing the priestly class, the golden crater which might have represented the farmer class, and an akīnakēs which represented the warrior class. Alternatively, the cup and the crater might both have represented the priestly class while the akīnakēs still represented the warrior classes, which parallels the second version of the Scythian genealogical myth whereby only the priests and the warriors were represented by objects.[112]

The last Achaemenid king, Darius III, wore a ceremonial dress which was decorated with gold and precious stones, and whose colours were white for the priestly class, purple for the warrior class (the gold and the precious stones also represented this class), and dark blue or green for the farmer class. The colour schema of this ceremonial dress represented the unification of the three social classes within the figure of the king.[113]

The golden objects of the Scythian genealogical myth, that is the hestiai of Tāpayantī, as attested by their fiery nature, were the fires of the three classes of Scythian society, which had an equivalent in later Sasanid Persia, where the Three Sacred Great Fires of Zoroastrianism were considered as each being sacred to one social class, with the triunity of both the Scythian hestiai and the Sasanian Great Fires representing the concept of fire, represented in the Scythian religion by Tāpayantī, being the primeval and all-encompassing element permeating the world and being present throughout it.[1][49]

During the Sasanid period, the mythical sēnmurw, a composite creature whose anatomy consists of parts of a bird, a dog, and a fish, had been used as a symbol of royalty because the constituent parts of its body meant that it united within itself the three social classes which correspond to the three - celestial, earthly, chthonic - layers of the world in Iranic cosmology, similarly to how the Iranic kings encompassed within themselves and represented these three classes.[102]

The notion of the farnah transforming the king into a divine figure and a type of deity who was sometimes seen as the brother of the Sun and the Moon was also present among the pre-Islamic Persians. Instances of this concept include Herodotus's claim that Darius I was chosen to be king when his horse was the first to neigh at sunrise, and the Kārnāmag-ī Ardašīr-ī Pābagān's record that Pābag's first dream, in which the Sun shining from the head of Sāsān and illuminating the whole world, was a sign that Ardašīr I would become king. Various Persian kings also held solar titles, and, like the Massagetae, the Persians also sacrificed horses to the Sun-god, with such sacrifices having been performed monthly at the tomb of Cyrus II, signalling that he had been assimilated to the Sun.[114]

During the Sasanian Empire, those who obtained audiences with the king had to cover their mouths with a white cloth called a padām (𐮎𐮃𐮀𐮋‎), which was also worn by Zoroastrian priests, in both cases with the aim of preventing the human breath from polluting the sacred fire, which in the temples were the physical fires burning in them, and for the king was his farnah. The king's farnah (called xwarrah was thus assimilated with the burning fire.[115]

According to the Kārnāmag-ī Ardašīr-ī Pābagān, in Pābag's third dream, he saw the Three Sacred Fires, that is Ādur Farnbāg, Ādur Gušnasp, and Ādur Burzēn-Mihr, burning inside the house of Sāsān and illuminating the whole world, which was a sign that a descendant of Sāsān would acquire kingship. This dream also represented the king as the ruler of the three social classes, due to which their corresponding Three Fires which constituted the xwarrah in Middle Persian) belonged to him. The xwarrah among Persians thus was also tripartite.[116]

The text of the Kārnāmag-ī Ardašīr-ī Pābagān presented Ardašīr I as being the legitimate king through his possession of the Three Sacred Fires, and Ardašīr I he had a fourth sacred fire, called the Warahrān Fire, consecrated during his coronation. This was a royal fire which represented the reign of Ardašīr I and was extinguished at his death, after which a new royal fire was consecrated by each Sasanian king. This royal fire represented the unity of the royal xwarrah and the union of the three social classes within the king.[117]

This concept was later recorded by Zādspram, according to whom Warahrān Fire was the abode of the royal xwarrah. This view is also present in Bundahišn, according to which the Three Sacred Fires represented the one body of the Warahrān Fire and were contained in it. The Warahrān Fire thus encompassed the Three Fires of the three social classes and was the incarnation of the royal xwarrah, while the Three Fires were the incarnations of its constituent parts.[117]

In a legend recorded by al-Bīrūnī, the Sasanian king Peroz I went to perform devotions in one of the most important Fire Temples, named Ādur-Xwarrah, where he embraced with his arms the fire of the temple in the same way that friends did when greeting each other, and the fire reached his beard but did not burn him. According to this legend, the king not burnt because he was himself as an emanation of the sacred fire.[115]

The Derafš-e Kāvīān on the coin (right) of the Frataraka Bagadates I of Persis during the Seleucid period

The Persian imperial banner, known in Modern Persian as the Derafš-e Kāvīān (درفش کاویانی, meaning "standard of the kings"), had been used from Achaemenid times till the end of the Sasanian empire as the physical representation of the kings' xwarrah. The identification of the Derafš-e Kāvīān with the xwarrah is confirmed in the Vendīdād, where the xᵛarᵊnah/farnah was identified with the gods' standard borne by Vərᵊϑraγna. The Persians believed that the Derafš-e Kāvīān initially belonged to Θraētaona/Ferēdūn, who bore it during his struggle against Dahāg, and that Ferēdūn emerged victorious thanks to the banner, after which it was inherited successively by his descendants, the Persian kings, who believed that it would ensure their victory in war.[118]

The murder of Īraj by his elder brothers Salm and Tur. Mediaeval-era illustration.

The legend of the three sons of was also preserved in the Šāhnāme, although its social aspect is less obvious, but not fully lost either.[108] The Scythian genealogical myth's narrative of Kolaxšaya dividing his kingdom among his three sons, who in turn became the ancestors of the different Scythic tribes exhibits clear textual and narrative parallels in the Persian Šāhnāme, with the story of the descendant of Hōšang (Haošiiaŋha), Ferēdūn, and the latter's three sons – Salm, Tūr, and Īraj – from the Šāhnāme.[119][120]

The narrative of the murder of Kolaxšaya by his elder brothers fits the common motif of the competition between three brothers in which the youngest is victorious and is then murdered by his elder brothers.[10] This motif is also present in the Šāhnāme, where Ferēdūn tested his three sons, with the youngest, Īraj winning the test, after which Ferēdūn partitioned his kingdom among his sons and giving the best part to Īraj, who was then murdered by his jealous elder brothers.[121]

Tahmīna visiting Rostam in his sleep. Safavid era illustration.

Another story from the Šāhnāme with which the Scythian genealogical myth exhibits textual and narrative parallels is that of Īraj's descendant, Rostam, who went looking for his horses which he had lost during his sleep. When looking for his, Rostam arrived at the palace of the king of Samangan, and in the night he was visited by the king's daughter, Tahmīna, who had stolen his horses, and who asked him in marriage. Rostam accepted Tahmīna's proposal and had a son with her, but Rostam had to leave Tahmīna after the marriage ceremony, although before departing he gave her a jewel from his bow as a symbol of future child. The parallels between this Persian myth and the second version of the Scythian genealogical myth recorded by Herodotus of Halicarnassus thus attest that the latter myth was of a typically Iranic origin.[1][122]

In the Šāhnāme, the Sasanian king Ardašīr I's farr (فر), that is his farnah/xᵛarᵊnah, transformed itself into a sēnmurw, whose composite nature consisting of parts of a bird, a dog, and a fish, meant that it united within itself the three social classes which correspond to the three - celestial, earthly, chthonic - layers of the world in Iranic cosmology, similarly to how the Iranic kings encompassed within themselves and represented these three classes..[102]

According to Jordanes, the Hunnish king Attila from the Migration Period claimed to have obtained the sacred Scythian sword which had fallen from the sky that he called the "Sword of Mars," and which he believed made him powerful in war and made of him the "prince of the entire world." This was a later continuation of the Scythian tradition of the golden objects which had fallen from the heavens.[123]

In Ossetian folklore, the ancestor of the Ossetian people, Os-Bæǧatyr (Ос-Бæгъатыр), had three sons, respectively named Sidæmon (Сидæмон), Kusæg (Кусæг), and Æǧwyz (Æгъуыз), who each founded a clan. Each of the clans possessed certain attributes, and each of their ancestors among the three sons of Os-Bæǧatyr received a object made of gold corresponding to these atributes:[124]

• Sidæmon received a golden cloth, and his descendants were numerous in number;
• Æǧwyz received a sword, and his descendants were valorous warriors;
• Kusæg received a ball, and his descendants were renowned.

The myth of the sons of Os-Bæǧatyr therefore corresponded to the first variant of the Scythian genealogical myth, with the three sons who founded the three social classes and functions each receiving sacred objects made of gold which represented these functions. Unlike in the Scythian myth, however, each brother became the possessor of one of the three objects, reflecting the more egalitarian social norms of the Sarmatian ancestors of the Ossetians.[124]

The Scythian religion's three-fold division of the universe into three levels and society into three classes is present in the Ossetian Narty kadǵytæ, where the three clans of the Nartæ lived in three different neighbourhoods or villages of the same mountain:[125]

• the Æxsærtæggatæ (Ӕхсӕртӕггатӕ) clan represented the warrior class and lived on the higher level of the mountain;
• the Alægatæ (Алӕгатӕ) clan represented the priestly class and lived on the middle level of the mountain;
• the Borætæ (Борӕтӕ) clan represented the farmer class and lived on the lower level of the mountain.

The different clans corresponded the different social classes, and the levels were they respectively lived represented their respective classes' position within the three-fold class structure of the Scytho-Sarmatian peoples. The location of the Æxsærtæggatæ at the highest level of the mountain was thus a representation of the dominance of the warrior aristocracy over the priestly and farmer classes.[125]

A similar narrative to the myth of the struggle between the Paloi and the Napoi is present in the Narty kadǵytæ, where the clan of the Æxsærtæggatæ, who possess manhood and strength and therefore correspond to the Paralāta-Paloi, exterminate the clan Borætæ, who were wealthy and therefore corresponded to the Katiaroi and Traspies.[126] Only the warrior and producer classes are mentioned in this myth because the priestly class was completely subordinate to the warrior aristocracy.[63]

In the Narty kadǵytæ, the hero Batyraʒ was born from the union of the hero Xæmyts and an unnamed nymph who was the daughter of the river-god Donbettyr, similarly to how the ancestor of the Scythians was born from the union of Targī̆tavah and the Snake-Legged Goddess in the Scythian genealogical myth.[127]

Batyraʒ later had to go through three trials which represented the three social functions to prove himself as the best among the Nartæ: he had to prove himself as a heroic warrior in the first trial; conduct himself decently at feasts held during festivals in the second trial; and conducting himself nobly towards women. As reward for succeeding in his trial, Batyraʒ received three ancestral treasures, which corresponded to the narrative of Kolaxšaya successfully passing the test to obtain the three golden objects in the first version of the Scythian genealogical myth, but also to the second version of the genealogical myth where Skythēs had to go through two different trials which each corresponded to one social function. Batyraʒ thus corresponded to the Iranic concept of the ideal king whose rule is guaranteed by his possession of the physical representations of the three social classes and who embodies their three domains of activity; however, since kingship had ceased to exist among Ossetians, Batyraʒ therefore became the best among the Nartæ instead of the king.[124]

The meaning of the name of Lipoxšaya as possibly meaning "king of heaven" connected him to sun-deities or to gods of the heavens such as Dyauṣpitṛ and Iūpiter.[30]

The name of Arbuxšaya was formed following the same structure as the Sanskrit theonym Ṛbhukṣan (ऋभुक्षन्), who was the leader of Ṛbhú and formed a triad with the other two members of the Ṛbhú. Likewise, Arbuxšaya formed a triad with the Katiaroi and the Traspies, with the name of the Traspies, which was semantically connected to the name of one the Ṛbhu, Vibhu, whose name meant "mighty" and "prosperous."[31]

The name of the father of the Ṛbhu, Sudhanvan, meant "having a good bow," which made him an equivalent of Targī̆tavah, the possession of whose bow was necessary for his sons to obtain royal power.[31]

Pṛthu chasing the Earth, who has taken the form of a cow. 18th century illustration.

The narrative of the Kolaxšaya successfully passing the tests to become king in both versions of the genealogical myth also found a parallel in the Indic myth of the king Pṛthu as retold by Megasthenes, who identified him with the Greek god Dionysos and the Greek hero Hēraklēs.[128] According to Megasthenes's narrative, when "Dionysos" first arrived in India, he found that there was no agriculture, with the people living in a state of savagery, the land remaining uncultivated and not bearing any fruits.[25] "Dionysos" (that is, Pṛthu) then taught Indians to use weapons; and, after finding the land to be uncultivated and barren, he introduced the use of the plough and gave people the seeds of plants, and also taught them how to harvest and store food and grow grapes.[128]

In the original Indic myth, Pṛthu was first consecrated king and the son of the tyrant Veṇā, under whom the land was wild and uncultivated, similarly to how Scythia was initially an uncultivated desert land when Targī̆tavah first arrived there. Before the first king, Pṛthu, was initiated into kingship, all the plants would wither and the people died from hunger. Pṛthu then milked various forms of agricultural knowledge from the Earth, who had taken the form of a cow, and then he first started the practice of tilling the land using a plough and sought to preserve all the food. Thus, thanks to Pṛthu, the Earth began to bear fruit, cows began to produce milk, there was food, and he was responsible for the beginning of settled life and the foundation of cities, trade, cattle-breeding, the tilling of the land, and for the establishment of truth and lies, that is of laws and justice.[129]

The closest Indic parallel to the acquisition of power by Kolaxšaya through his mastery of the various objects was the rājasūya ceremony through which the king was consecrated.[128] The rājasūya itself was initially a yearly ceremony through which the depleted forces of fertility in the world were restored before they would become depleted again by the end of each following year.[129]

During the rājasūya, the king performed the prayujāṃ haviṃṣi, that is the "harnessing of offerings into the yoke," through which he "harnessed" the year, itself divided into 12 months each represented by an offering, into the yoke to used to till the land so as to usher in the rainy season. During the ceremony, the king was identified with the king of the gods, Indra, whose main role was to provide rain,[130] and Indra was considered to be the one who was directing the plough in the field during the ceremony.[129] Thus, the Indic king was identified with Indra during this sacrifice which ended the year and acquired the thirteenth month, that is the New Year.[130] The use of the plough and yoke harnessed to bulls to till the land during the rājasūya, that is for the first time each year and to survey the land, was itself part of the functions of Indo-Iranic kings.[130]

During the rājasūya ceremony, the Indic king was also identified with the god who protected the law, Varuṇa. This thus represented the king's position as the chief judge of his realm, which made him the embodiment of law and righteousness, and therefore his role as the embodiment of the priestly functions.[130]

Indra wielding the vajra.

The king was also offered a bow with three arrows during the rājasūya, which represented his masculine royal power and his conenction with his heirs.[131]

The cup attached to the belt in the second version of the genealogical myth was also connected to the Indic coronation ritual whereby soma and holy waters used to anoint the king were prepared in similar vessels which were given to the king.[75]

The plough-and-yoke was necessary for the consecration of kings and was a symbol of royal power, with the first tilling by the king and the symbolic delimitation of boundaries being associated to the use of bulls. The bowl and the arrows were also required for the coronation rite.[131]

The plough-and-yoke, vessel and bow therefore signalled the king as representing the functions of all social classes within himself during the rājasūya ceremony. These objects held the same function in the Scythian genealogical myth[51]

The axe of Kolaxšaya meanwhile semantically corresponded to the percussive instruments wielded by Indra, who was also the god of thunder and rain, such as his ghanaḥ (mace) and vajra (thunderbolt).[132]

The royal wielder of the mace was also connected to the Ṛbhu gods of the airspace, with Indra's vajra being named Ṛbhukṣa after Ṛbhukṣan, who was the leader of the Ṛbhu. The Ṛbhu were also blacksmith gods who created the two horses of Indra; the Ṛbhu also accompanied Indra, and rode on the same chariot as him; Ṛbhukṣan also served Indra and both Indra and Ṛbhukṣan offered sacrifices together, even going so far as to merge together.[132]

This association to the Ṛbhu connected Indra to blacksmithing, with the blacksmith in ancient mythologies being a sacred figure who was a thunderer and a divine creator who was linked to ploughing and the liberation of the waters.[132]

The myth of the king Italus recorded by Aristotle was similar to that of Kolaxšaya in that it was a myth about the deeds of the first king, Italus, who taught the people to cultivate the land.[76]

A genealogical legend similar to the Scythian genealogical myth existed in ancient Celtic mythology. This myth was later Hellenised by the ancient Greeks living on the southern coasts of Gaul and recorded by various classical authors.[133][17]

The Graeco-Roman author Diodorus of Sicily recorded one such version of this Celtic genealogical myth:[134]

The country of Keltikē was ruled by a renowned king whose daughter was unusually tall and was more beautiful than all other maidens, due to which she considered every man who asked her hand in marriage as unworthy of her and rejected them. "Hēraklēs," during his struggle against "Geryon," visited Keltikē and founded the city of Alesia there. The king's daugher was impressed by his physical excellence and had a son with him named Galatēs, who was more righteous and powerful than all the youths of his tribe. When Galatēs had reached adulthood, he became king and a great warrior, and he conquered much of the areas surrounding his tribe's territory. Due to the bravery of Galatēs, he called his subjects Galatai (that is, Gauls) after himself, and they in turn gave their name to Galatia (that is Gaul).

The Greek author Parthenius of Nicaea recorded another version of this Celtic genealogical myth:[135]

When "Hēraklēs" was bringing the cattle of "Geryon" from Erytheia, he passed through the lands of the Celts and reached the court of the king Bretannos, who had a daughter named Keltinē. Keltinē fell in love with "Hēraklēs" and hid his cattle and refused to return them unless he had sexual intercourse with her. "Hēraklēs" accepted, and from their union was born Keltos, from whom were descended the Celts.

A third version of the Celtic genealogical myth was recorded in the Etymologicum Magnum:[135]

The daughter of the king Bretanos, Keltō, had fallen in love with "Hēraklēs" and asked him to have sexual intercourse with her. When this was accomplished, he left her a bow, and told her that if a son was born of their union, then he would become king if he could pull the bow. The son of "Hēraklēs" and Keltō was Keltos, from whom descended the Celts.

The combination of the three versions provides a common narrative:[136]

In Keltikē, that is the Celtic country, the king Bretan(n)os had a daughter named Keltinē or Keltō, who fell in love with "Hēraklēs" who was driving the cattle of Geryon from Iberia to Tiryns. Keltinē/Keltō stole the cattle of "Hēraklēs" to force him to have sexual intercourse with her, and from their union was born a son named Galatēs or Keltos to whom the mother gave a bow left by "Hēraklēs." Galatēs/Keltos became king after pulling the bow of "Hēraklēs," and the Celts were descended from him.

This legend was very similar to the Scythian genealogical myth, with common elements including "Hēraklēs" driving the cattle of Geryon from Iberia to Greece, and then meeting with a local woman who abducted his horses, having sexual intercourse with the woman, and the birth from this union of a son who founded a nation and became king by pulling his father's bow.[137]

The acquisition of the golden objects by Kolaxšaya in the first version of the Scythian genealogical myth, especially, has an exact parallel in the inheritance of the bow of "Hēraklēs" by Galatēs/Keltos in the Celtic genealogical myth, with the latter corresponding to the Celtic inheritance law whereby, when heritage was partitioned between brothers, the youngest would receive the estate, all buildings, 8 acres of land, an axe, a cauldron, and a coulter.[24]

There were nevertheless also some differences between the Scythian and Celtic genealogical myths:[138]

• the consort of "Hēraklēs" was the Snake-Legged Goddess in the Scythian myth, while she was a beautiful princess in the Celtic myth;
• the horses of the chariot of "Hēraklēs" were stolen in the Scythian myth, while the cattle of Geryon that "Hēraklēs" was driving were stolen in the Celtic myth;
• three sons were born from the union of "Hēraklēs" and the local woman in the Scythian myth, while only one son was born in the Celtic myth.

Despite their similarities, the exact relationship between the Scythian and Celtic genealogical myths is still unclear.[139]

The king Svafrlami receives the sword Tyrfing from the Dwarves. Illustration of the Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks.

The motif of the weapon given to the mortals was present in mediaeval Germanic myth, with the transmission of a sword being connected to a prophecy in both the Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks and the Visio Domini Karoli Regis Francorvm; due to the production techniques and the use of steel, which was a scarce material, swords were seen as symbols of status in mediaeval Germanic societies.[123]

These swords were also seen as magical objects with their own names and personalities, with their power being considered to be of otherworldly origin that was either supernatural or chthonic, and in the myths they were often manufactured by Dwarves. The fate of these swords' owners was linked to them in mysterious and deadly ways, and whoever obtained them also gained the virtues of their previous owners.[123]

Like the Scythian blacksmith-king Kolaxšaya, it was Kyi, who was one of three brothers and a blacksmith, who founded the city of Kyiv in Slavic mythology.[140]

The Scythian genealogical myth was borrowed by certain Turkic peoples who had assimilated the Saka peoples of Central Asia. Such a borrowed version is present in the Uyghur version of the Oghuz Name, according to which the ancestor of the Oghuz Turks, Oghuz Qaghan, had two wives.[141]

The first wife of Oghuz Qaghan came down to the earth from the sky in a ray of blue light, and with her he had three sons, named:[141]

• Kün (meaning "Sun"),
• Ay (meaning "Moon"),
• Yultuz (meaning "Star").

Oghuz Qaghan's second wife was first found inside a tree in the middle of a lake, and with her he had three sons, named:[141]

• Kök (meaning "Sky"),
• Tagh (meaning "Mountain"),
• Dëngiz (meaning "Sea").

Oghuz Qaghan's sons from his first wife became the ancestors of the qaɣans, while his sons from his second wife became the subjects of the qaghans. This myth is based on the opposition of the celestial and earthly binary whereby the woman from heaven became the ancestress of the rulers and the woman from the earth became the ancestress of the subjects.[141]

Although the celestial characters of the sons of the celestial wife of Oghuz Qaghan correspond to the celestial nature of their mother, the sons of Oghuz Qaghan's earthly wife do not all have earthly characters, and instead represent the three layers of the universe, with Kök (Sky) standing for the celestial realm, Tagh (Mountain) for the earthly realm, and Dëngiz for the marine and chthonic realm.[141]

The narrative of the three brothers representing the three layers of the universe who were born from the earthly maiden did not represent the traditional Turkic cosmology, but instead corresponded to the Iranic one due to having been borrowed from the Saka peoples of Central Asia. Since early Turkic societies were different from Iranic ones, the myth's meaning relating to the origin of social functions was therefore not retained when it was borrowed, due to which the difference between the three brothers did not play any important role in the Turkic legend and even contradicted the myth itself.[141]