Targitaos

Targī̆tavah-Skuδa was born from the union of the Sky Father Papaios and the Earth-and-Water Mother Api. Targī̆tavah-Skuδa was very closely associated with Papaios or confused with him in Scythian mythology, and he was sometimes replaced by Papaios in some versions of the Scythian genealogical myth, thus attributing the ancestry of the Scythians alternatively to Targī̆tavah-Skuδa or to Papaios directly.[9]

According to the various versions of the Scythian genealogical myth, Targī̆tavah fathered the ancestors of the Scythians with the Snake-Legged Goddess.[10]

Targī̆tavah-Skuδa was likely assimilated by the Greeks from the northern shores of the Black Sea with their hero Hēraklēs, and the main feature of this deity identifying him with Hēraklēs was the cattle he drives in the Scythian genealogical myth, although unlike the Greek Hēraklēs who drove the cattle of Gēryōn on foot, the Scythian “Hēraklēs” drove a chariot pulled by mares. This cattle-driver aspect of Targī̆tavah-Skuδa was likely derived from the motif of cattle-theft of Iranian mythology which is also reflected in the legend of Miϑra as a cattle-stealing god. Due to this, the Greek author Hērodotos of Halikarnāssos also identified Targī̆tavah with Hēraklēs in his writings.[10]

Targī̆tavah is the same figure who appears in Scythian art as the masculine figure facing Artimpasa in her depictions as a seated goddess. These scenes depicted the marriage of Targī̆tavah with Artimpasa, but also represented the granting of a promise of afterlife and future resurrection to Targī̆tavah, and, by extension, collectively to his descendants, the Scythians.[10]

Targī̆tavah's role in these scenes also consisted of representing a deified mortal who was identified with him, the Scythian king, who thus was given apotheōsis by identifying him with his divine ancestor. Thus, the scene of the masculine figure facing the seated Artimpasa represented both the goddess's granting of royal power to the king, but also, through the identification with Targī̆tavah, the father of the first Scythian king, the giving of supreme legitimacy to the authority of the royal descendants of Artimpasa in her role as the divine spouse of the Scythian kings.[10]

A representation of Targī̆tavah as investing a king is a scene from a silver rhyton discovered in the Karagodeuashkh Kurgan, depicting two bearded adult mounted horsemen. One of the horsemen holds a rhyton in his right hand and a sceptre in his left hand, while the other horseman has the right hand raised in a gesture of salutation. This scene represented the investiture of a king by a god, and has its parallels in the Iranian world in the Sasanid reliefs of Naqš-e Rostam and Bay-Šāpūr depicting the investitures of Ardašīr I and of Warahrān I by Ahura Mazdā. Although the identity of the figure holding the rhyton has been suggested to be Papaios, it most likely represented Targī̆tavah. In the scene on the rhyton, Targī̆tavah, in his role as the first king and divine ancestor of the Scythians acts as a custodian of the power and the victories of his descendants, and the rhyton he holds represents a communion between the king and the god, paralleling the communion with Artimpasa in the scenes with the seated goddess. The topmost and bottommost parts of the rhyton are decorated with floral patterns, representing the connection between Targī̆tavah and Artimpasa.[9]

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