Pictorial art was something alien to the ancestors of the Scythians – their culture as that of all other Iranian and Indoaryan peoples – was non-iconic at their earlier stages. Attempts to visualize Scythian mythological images date to the Scythian penetration of the Near East, and are the result of the socio-political development of Scythian society. This emergent Scythian art made broad use of motifs borrowed from ancient Oriental art; initially attempts were made to use anthropomorphic and zoomorphic imagery to convey the spirit of Scythian mythology. The former, however, failed to convey new ideas and soon disappeared from Scythian art, while the latter proved its worthiness and eventually produced the specific Scythian animal style. This style is interpreted as a symbolic sign system describing the Universe by means of a zoological code which had been widely used by archaic societies. This interpretation finds further evidence in the set of images, the postures of animals and the structure of multiple compositions.
The animal style prevailed in Scythia up to the fourth century В. С At a certain stage widely scattered in Scythia were Greek items with zoomorphic motifs, and in the 4th century Greek artists began to produce multiple anthropomorphic compositions after Scythian myths or depicting Scythian rites. This encouraged antropomorphic themes in Scythian art, and Scythian craftsmen began depicting gods as human beings, though very primitively or as mechanic copies of Hellenic compositions. Greek plots were also understood by Scythians through their own mythology and used to embellish many Scythian items.
The merger of Scythian mythological concepts and Hellenic artistic tradition produced a specific Graeco-Scythian art. One of its finest specimens, the golden pectoral from the Tolstaya Mogila burial mound, forms the subject of Chapter IV, «Graeco-Scythian Cosmogram». Because of its utmost complexity and the coexistence of anthropomorphic and zoomorphic characters it is a good test to any theory of interpretation dealing with the semantics of various sign systems used by the Scythians.
АСГЭ – Археологический сборник Государственного Эрмитажа (Ленинград)
ВДИ – Вестник древней истории (Москва)
ГМИНВ – Государственный музей искусств народов Востока
ЖМНП – Журнал Министерства народного просвещения (Санкт-Петербург)
ИА АН СССР – Институт археологии Академии наук СССР
ИАК – Известия Археологической комиссии (Санкт-Петербург)
Из. ЮОНИИ – Юго-Осетинский научно-исследовательский институт
ИИМК – Институт истории материальной культуры
КСИА – Краткие сообщения Института археологии (Москва)
КСИИМК – Краткие сообщения Института истории материальной культуры (Москва, Ленинград)
MAP – Материалы по археологии России (Санкт-Петербург)
МАЭ – Музей антропологии и этнографии
МИА – Материалы и исследования по археологии СССР (Москва, Ленинград)
МКАЭН – Международный конгресс антропологических и этнографических наук (Москва)
НАА – Народы Азии и Африки (Москва)
OAK – Отчеты Археологической комиссии (Санкт-Петербург)
ОИПК – Отдел истории первобытной культуры Государственного Эрмитажа
РФИ – Ранние формы искусства
СА – Советская археология (Москва, Ленинград)
САИ – Свод археологических источников (Москва) Сб. МАЭ – Сборник Музея антропологии и этнографии (Ленинград)
ССЗС – Скифо-сибирский звериный стиль в искусстве народов Евразии СЭ – Советская этнография (Москва)
ТЗС – Труды по знаковым системам (Ученые записки Тартуского государственного университета, Тарту)
ТОАМГЭ – Труды отдела античного мира Государственного Эрмитажа (Ленинград)
Тр. ХАЭЭ – Труды Хорезмской археолого-этнографической экспедиции (Москва)
JA – Journal Asiatique (Paris)
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