The museum boasts the most archaic specimens of Scythian culture and art. These are sixth-century B.C. finds, yielded by the Kostromskaya, Kelermes and Ulsky Barrows in the Kuban area and by the Litoi Barrow in the Dnieper valley.
Among the later rich burials of the Dnieper valley, the Solokha and Chertomlyk Barrows, discovered near Nikopol, are best known. Buried under a mound eighteen metres high at Solokha were a king, his armour-bearer, an attendant and a groom, and five horses. The grave goods found here give an idea of a king’s personal battle array: a sword in a scabbard, and a bronze helmet of Greek workmanship. The gold-plate covering of the scabbard and sword-hilt is adorned with animal figures, and the silver-gilt one of the gorytus (combined bow-case and quiver) is embossed with representations of warriors in battle and scenes of animal combat. An object that gained world-wide fame is a gold haircomb with a sculptured group of Scythian warriors engaged in battle. Justly prized for its exceptionally high artistic merits, the comb is also of great historic value, since it accurately depicts the men themselves, the clothes they wore and the weapons they fought with. Another find from the Solokha Barrow is a set of gold and silver utensils, including silver vessels of Greek workmanship, a wine bowl, and a ladle with a strainer.
The Chertomlyk Barrow, whose mound measured some 20 metres high and 50 metres in diameter, had been looted, but even what remained was truly magnificent. Buried here was a king, his queen, his two armour-bearers, several grooms, and eleven horses. The royal burial has yielded weapons and gold plaques with a variety of designs, but our main interest is in the casing of the king’s gorytus — a massive gold plate depicting episodes from the Greek myth of Achilles — and in the gold cover of his scabbard with the scene of battle between Greek and Persian warriors. The queen’s burial contained a large number of gold ornaments: plaques forming part of a headdress, pendants, a torque with the terminals shaped as lion figures, bracelets, finger-rings, and a string of beads.
An admirable work of art is a silver amphora embossed with a design of flowers, leaves, palmettes, figures of birds, and gryphons tearing stags, and with a magnificent frieze of men and horses in relief. A large shallow silver bowl and ladle were found next to the amphora. The tomb of one of the royal armour-bearers also yielded valuable articles. The caches were found to contain fragments of decayed woollen textiles, numerous gold costume plaques, and more gold plaques from women’s headdresses. Equally rich are the horse trappings, which include some 250 gold, silver and bronze bridle sets with bits, cheekpieces and ornamental plaques, as well as gold plates from saddle mountings, and finials from chariot poles.
An important part of the Scythian section is comprised of beautiful specimens executed in the animal style. Viewed as a whole, they illustrate the development of this style all the way from the earlier realistic efforts to later works rendered in a simplified, stylized manner. The earliest specimens include two gold shield ornaments: the stag from the Kostromskaya Barrow, and the panther, from the Kelermes Barrow; characteristic of later periods are the plaques and cheekpieces decorated with distorted, strongly ornamentalized animal figures, which come from the Elizavetinskaya Barrows.
Judged by their expressiveness and their high standard of craftsmanship, the Hermitage Scythian artefacts, taken as a whole, remain unmatched. It is perfectly safe to say that there is no research on the Scythians that does not quote the Hermitage material. The Museum’s collections will long continue to serve as an inexhaustible source of information for students of archaeology, history and art.
In addition to the collections of artefacts from the treasure-rich barrows of the Scythian steppes, the section also contains numerous finds from the Nemirov, Grigorovka and other fortified sites of Podolia, as well as those from barrows on the Middle Dnieper and Middle Dniester, which tell of the occupations and mode of life of the agricultural tribes who inhabited the Scythian wooded steppes.
The collections presenting the culture of the South Russian grasslands and the Crimea during the period after the passing of the Scythians and down to the Middle Ages are housed in the Sarmatian section (the name “Sarmatian” in this case being somewhat conventional).
Outstanding among the large body of Sarmatian material proper is the set of finds from the Khokhlach Barrow, known as the Novocherkassk Treasure and dating from the first century A.D. This barrow rose over the burial of a high-born woman, and though the tomb had been looted, what remained was enough to become one of the Museum’s greatest collections of jewellery. A unique specimen is a gold diadem with pendants, adorned with colourful garnet and glass insets and, in the centre, a woman’s head carved in quartz. The diadem is crested with a frieze of stag and goat figures and two trees. This item is typically “barbarian” in style, combining as it does elements of Greek and Sarmatian art; it is thought to have been fashioned by Bosporian jewellers for a Sarmatian patron.
Excavations of 1952 at the great Kalinovka cemetery on the left bank of the Volga uncovered 159 Sarmatian burials. Typical of the articles found in the men’s graves were weapons, such as swords, spears, and quivers with arrows; of those in the women’s graves — wire temple rings, glass beads, bronze bracelets, bone haircombs, bronze mirrors, stone mortars used in the preparation of rouge powder, bone needle-holders, iron scissors, and spindle weights. Needless to say, all of the burials yielded pottery vessels, whose handles are often shaped as figures of animals which supposedly possessed some magical power. One burial contained a wooden coffin with the skeleton of a woman in a ceremonial dress adorned with gold plaques, gold earrings, a massive torque, spiral wire bracelets with terminals in the form of stylized animal figures, and silver and gold vessels.
The same section contains articles from the excavated settlements of the wooded steppe tribes whose economy was based on farming and stock-breeding and who were the bearers of a culture known by the name of Cherniakhovo, a village in the Kiev region where the first find was made. Material yielded by the Lepesovka site in the Khmelnitsky region is considered to be of particular interest. The settlement had been destroyed by fire and many articles had been damaged, but they still permit a fairly complete reconstruction of the inhabitants’ way of life. Locally made weavers’ and blacksmiths’ tools, pottery and ornaments were found here together with imported utensils.
During the fourth century both the Sarmatian and Cherniakhovo cultures fell under the attacks of the Huns at the start of the Migrations Period. The specific features of contemporary (fourth and fifth century) culture can best be seen in the collections of Bosporan antiquities obtained mostly from burials excavated in Gospitalnaya (Hospital) Street in the town of Kerch. Members of the nobility were buried in family tombs and common people in ordinary graves. Finds include a gold wreath, a gold torque with terminals in the shape of dragons, richly ornamented weapons and horse-gear. Characteristic of the jewellers’ work from this period were a predilection for rich colours and a general tendency to achieve strong decorative effects. This gave rise to a lavish use of semiprecious stones, and such techniques as filigree work and grain decoration; sometimes cloisons were soldered onto the surface and filled in with almandine and red glass. These techniques were also employed in ornamenting weapons and horses’ harness. The manufacture of such articles was apparently centred on the Bosporus, although they were also widely spread all over the steppeland area, the Northern Caucasus, the Urals, the Kama valley, and southeastern Europe.