Ritva Kurittu Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Thank you, Damian. As usual you have just
> delivered a wealth of information!
>
> One thing bothers me, though. Even considering
> that the tales from Picts (and Scots) originating
> to Scythia were tall ones, I still wonder why
> choose Scythia and not some other location? Is it
> due to most of the "European" peoples having
> belonged to that part one time or another?

This is a good point. I'm also a bit stumped as to what a plausible answer might be

Having said that, it seems to me that how you choose to interpret this traditional association of the Picts with the Scythians depends to a significant extent on whether you assume that this was an association that the Picts made themselves (ie. about themselves) or whether this alleged Scythian genealogy revealed more about how others perceived the Picts. After all, the earliest reference to this apparent association with Scythia is recorded by Bede, and it's well established that Bede wasn't writing straightforward history, but was actively involved in creating a sense of identity as 'the English' for the various peoples who made up the population of Anglo-Saxon England (bear in mind too the religious underpinning of much of his writing; after all, Bede was writing an Ecclesiastical History). Given their location in the northern reaches of Scotland, and the general animosity that existed between the Picts and the Anglo-Saxons (Gildas, writing in the 6th century CE, described the Picts and Scots as "two exceedingly savage overseas nations"**), perhaps the idea of ascribing Scythian origins to the Picts was a way of reflecting this perceived 'difference' in genealogical terms? If so, then it's possible this association originated with Bede and not with the Picts themselves.

One thing I'm not sure about is the extent to which Bede might have been influenced by Herodotus (assuming that's even plausible!), the significance of which should become apparent below.

While I've been cobbling this response together, I've come across various references to Scythians in a couple of unexpected sources, which I think go some way towards supporting what I've written above, but also provide a whole different perspective for thinking about the reasons why the Scythians have featured in a whole variety of different (and mutually conflicting) quasi-historical narratives. Rather than trying to precise the various examples I'll just quote a number of examples verbatim below, and will leave it to you to slot together the various bits and pieces

If nothing else, what should become apparent from the various extracts is that the Scythians have occupied a strange place of prominence in various pseudo-historical genealogies that have been proposed over the last couple of millennia or so!



**Gildas went on to describe those "foul hordes of Scots and Picts, like dark throngs of worms who wriggle out of narrow fissures in the rock when the sun is high and the weather grows warm ... in perfect accord in their greed for bloodshed"!!

***********

From The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe by Patrick J. Geary (2002, Princeton University Press):

"[...] The legends of ethnogenesis, or people formation, which he [ie. Herodotus] tells, are essentially of two sorts. One is the account of the origins of the royal or leading family, usually told in terms of a mythical genealogy that establishes the enduring character of that family and its right to authority over the people. In his detailed discussion of the Scyths, he provides two alternative genealogical accounts of this, the most recent of peoples. The first, which he says is how the Scyths themselves describe their origin, states that they descended from the three sons of Targitaos: Lipoxais, Arpoxais, and Colaxais. The Auchates Scyths descend from the first; the Catiares and Traspies from the second, and the Paralatae from the third. Following this indigenous myth, he reports an account told by Pontic Greeks that attached the origins of the Scythian kings to the Greek hero Hercules. Herodotus himself favors neither of the origin myths. He prefers to avoid the question altogether, arguing that the Scyths arrived in the Pontic region having been chased from their homeland in Asia by the Massagetae [...].

"Herodotus's panoramic description of peoples became the basis for all subsequent European ethnology. His categories, his attempts to classify, his stereotypes are still with us [...]" (pp. 44, 46).

***********

From Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, Scholarship by Bruce Lincoln (1999, University of Chicago Press):

"[...] [The Scythians] occupied a crucial position in the geographic imaginary of antiquity from Herodotus down through Aristotle, who constituted Greece as the ideal center mediating between barbarians of the north (Scythians) and those of the south (Libyans and/or Egyptians). Any latter-day champion of the north might thus be drawn to the Scythians. In the sixth century, Cassiodorus and Jordanes had already connected them to the Goths and Germans, and Snorri [Sturluson] took the names 'Scythia' and 'Sweden' to be cognate and claimed that people referred to the latter as 'home of men', while the former was 'home of the gods'.

"Although [Marcus Zuerius] Boxhorn [1612-53] never published his propsed book, 'The Scythian Origins of the Peoples and Languages of Europe', he disseminated his views in lectures, discussions, and other writings, particularly a lengthy pamphlet of 1647. Thereafter, well into the eighteenth century the 'Scythian thesis' was the standard form in which claims of northern origins and privilege were encoded [...]" (p. 81).

***********

And how's this for a rather unexpected source!

From The Lost Tribes of Israel: The History of a Myth by Tudor Parfitt (2003, Phoenix):

"[...] In Ezekiel 38 we are told that the Lord will bring Gog and Magog with his horsemen and horses out of the north along with Persia, Ethiopia and Libya. The prophecy is taken up in Revelation 2 where we learn that at the End of Days Satan will be released from his prison and will set out to deceive the nations and gather Gog and Magog to do battle against the saints. Many groups in the medieval period were identified with the hordes of Gog and Magog: the Goths, Tartars and Scythians among others. But the identification of the Lost Tribes with the allies of Satan - Gog and Magog - was particularly popular [...]" (p. 15).

**********

"In early Christian times the three sons of Noah had been considered the founders of the three main groupings of humankind, along with their languages. Within a few centuries peoples such as the Scythians were also connected to the biblical genealogies of race and language. But by the time of the Renaissance historical etymology had started to play a role [...]" (p. 21).

**********

"[...] In the History of Ireland Geoffrey Keating (c. 1570-1644) recounted how Milesius, the founder of the Irish race, son of Breogan, traced his descent through a genealogy that included twenty-two Celtic names and thirteen Hebrew ones going back to Japheth and Adam. According to him the Irish were a tribe of Israel that had reached Scythia where their king, Fenius Farsaigh, had founded a great academy for the study of the languages of the world. From Scythia the tribe had crossed Europe into Spain and from there had gone on to Ireland. By the nineteenth century, with the development of British-Israel theory, Ireland came to have a significant role. According to some, the royal house of Ireland could be traced back to King David. one British-Israel writer opined, 'There is evidence that the tribe of Dan fled by the sea from their captors and colonised Ulster in Ireland, and Denmark ...'

"The theories connecting Gaelic with Hebrew, and the Celts with the Jews were parodied by James Joyce in Ulysses, 'The presence of guttural sounds, diacritic aspirations, epenthetic and servile letters in both languages: their antiquity, both having been taught on the plain of Shinar 242 years after the deluge in the seminary instituted by Fenius Farsaigh, descendant of Noah, progenitor of Israel, and ascendant of Hebrew and Heremon, progenitors of Ireland ...' Elsewhere in this discourse rebellious Ireland is seen as the offspring of Ephraim who rebelled against Moses [...]" (pp. 49-50).

**********

"[...] British Israelites usually nominate as the true 'father of the rediscovery of Israel', the 'Christian phrenologist' 'Professor' John Wilson, the son of a Kilmarnock weaver. Wilson travelled throughout Ireland imparting the news (which can hardly have gone down well) that England was the lost Israel. He struck an immediate chord with his writing: in 1840 he published Our Israelitish Origin, which was the first coherent expression of Anglo-Israelism and went through five editions by 1876. In 1840 he also published Lectures on Ancient Israel and the Origin of the Modern Nations of Europe, which was to achieve a third edition by 1844. He adopted the idea that the European 'race', in particular the Anglo-Saxons, were descended from certain Scythian tribes, and these Scythian tribes (as many had previously stated from the Middle Ages on) were in turn descended from the ten Lost Tribes of Israel. Wilson's arguments were more or less refuted and the idea failed to gain anything like mass popular support, although he managed to maintain himself financially on the lecture circult [...]. Nonetheless his views did garner some followers, including C. Piazzi Smyth, the Astronomer Royal for Scotland, who believed that the Pyramids were expressions of divine Christian guidance containing within them spiritual and mathematical knowledge: indeed he argued that the passages within the Great Pyramid represented symbolically the progress of the whole of human civilisation. Piazzi Smyth among other things deduced from the measurements of the Pyramids of Egypt that the English were descended from the Ten Tribes and went on to publish his theory in Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid (London, 1864) [...]" (p. 54).

**********

"[...] Quite apart from the work of the Spanish historians there had been the fierce debate in the 1640s between the intellectual heavyweight Hugo Grotius [...] and Johannes de Laet, a historian and director of the Dutch West India Company [...]. Grotius thought that [American] Indians north of the isthmus of Panama were originally Norwegians, those of Yucatan, Ethiopian Christians and those more 'refined minds' in Peru undoubtedly descendants from the Chinese [...] De Laet's view was that the Indians were of Tartar or Scythian stock [...]" (p. 85).

**********

"[...] A.R. Lovett wrote of the Brahmins [of India] in his History of the London Missionary Society 1795-1895, 'Each is an infalliable pope in his own sphere. The Brahman is the exclusive and Pharisaic Jew of India'.

"Explanations of the origin of the Brahmins often followed this path. According to some, high-caste Hindus were actually Scythians and as such probable descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel [...]" (p. 135).



Damian



_______________

My dear sir, in this world it is not so easy to settle these plain things. I have ever found your plain things the knottiest of all.

- Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

________

'I am beginning to believe that nothing is quite so uncertain as facts.

- Edward S. Curtis

________

'We are coming now rather into the region of guesswork', said Dr Mortimer.
'Say, rather, into the region where we balance probabilities and choose the most likely. It is the scientific use of the imagination, but we have always some material basis on which to start our speculation', [replied Holmes].

- The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle

________

'It never does to be too sure, you know, in these matters. Coincidence killed the professor.'

- "Novel of the Black Seal" by Arthur Machen



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/20/2006 07:05PM by Damian Walter.