TREASURES  of  LOST  RACES  continued

Scythians—Men of Cruelty and Wealth

THE  SCYTHIANS  WERE  PART  OF  THE  10  TRIBES  OF  THE  HOUSE  OF  ISRAEL,  TAKEN  CAPTIVE  FROM  745 TO 718  B.C,  BY  THE  ASSYRIANS  -  Keith Hunt

Say the words "Africa" and "wealth" and one immediately thinks of South African gold mines, the fabulous treasures of the Queen of Sheba, or the riches of Emperor Haile Selassi. When wealth is spoken of in connection with Russia, the treasures of the Imperial Russian household come to mind. While still a small boy, I used to listen to stories about the Russian crown prince Peter going to the Netherlands to study shipbuilding. In later years I interviewed one of the escaped palace guards of Tsar Nicolas on the Dutch island of Terschelling and listened to his recollections of the Russian revolution of 1917 and the plundering hordes of revolutionaries who stole or smashed the imperial treasures displayed throughout the palaces. But destructive as they were, the mobs that ransacked the buildings and massacred the family of the tsar could not erase the indelible marks that history had made upon the country. Those marks were there to stay, left there to be rediscovered—first by the grave robbers of the eighteenth century, and later by scientists in search of history.

Some of the republics belonging to the USSR have a vicious past, and the Ukraine is among them. It was to this area that the nomadic tribes from the region of the Altay Mountains on the border of China migrated in the eighth century. Known under the collective name of the Scythians, these thundering, beastly warriors soon established for themselves a notoriety that has echoed throughout the centuries. Their reputation for cruelty far surpassed that of any other race, but tangible evidence even of their existence remained elusive for many centuries. Only the descriptions of them left us by the fifth-century Greek writer Herodotus of Halicarnassus, the ''father of history," kept the memory of their exploits alive—for the horror story given by Herodotus when he describes the Scythians is a nightmare come to life.

In his fourth book of history, produced as a result of his visit to Olbia, a Greek city founded around 645 B.C. at the confluence of the Bug and Ingul rivers, Herodotus describes the Scythians as fierce warriors who beheaded their enemies, sometimes making coats, capes and cushions out of their skins. They were men who rarely bathed, who drank the blood of those they conquered, and who often saved the top part of their victims' skulls to be used as drinking vessels after covering the outside with cowhide and gilding the interior with gold. Their frenzied behavior when going into battle has become legendary, as has their liking for strong, undiluted wine and the smoking of hashish .

Nevertheless, they were stunning military strategists and exquisite craftsmen. Although religious in their own way, they did not settle anywhere long enough to erect temples to their gods. They were always on the move, wedded to the steppes. Commented Herodotus: "Having neither cities nor forts, and carrying their dwellings wherever they go; accustomed, moreover, one and all, to shoot from horseback; and living not by crops but from their cattle, their wagons the only houses they possess, how can they fail of being unconquerable and unassailable?"

All we really knew of them we gleaned from his-references, and from the fact that Scythian power and brutality remained intact until the fourth century B.C., when they had to give way to the Sarmatian invaders and were eventually destroyed/as a powerful force sometime during the second century A.D. It was as if an impenetrable pall of silence had been cast over the Scythians; as if history had conspired to suppress them forever because of their insane cruelty. Only the Greek historian had been allowed to tamper with history's judgment.

The spell was finally broken when a Siberian gold-mine owner sent a gift to Peter the Great, tsar of all the Russian, in 1715. The surprise gift, consisting of twenty pieces of exquisite gold art, greatly aroused the curiosity of Tsar Peter. When shortly thereafter news of other discoveries reached him, he realized the importance of these historical artworks and ordered all looting and grave robbing stopped and all the known gravesites protected. For many

[The influence of Greek craftsmen can be found in virtually every piece of Scythian art. This segment of a gold breastplate depicts men sewing the skin of a lamb or sheep to form a tunic.

(Museum of Historical Treasures, Kiev, USSR)]

of them the protective measures had come too late; and, in fact, his order had little or no effect, since grave robbing did continue, even picking up in intensity after the death of the tsar in 1725.

As a result of the work of the grave robbers and scientific persistence, Herodotus' account has been amply supported by the additional knowledge that has come our way through the methodical opening of the Scythian kurgans, or funeral barrows, which rise like hills from the Russian steppes. Some of them are more than one hundred yards across at the base and measure nearly sixty feet high—and all to protect the bones, relics and personal belongings of the Scythian chieftains or kings. 

(THE SAME BURIAL PRACTICE WAS DONE BY THE VIKINGS - DANES - WHO WERE OF THE TRIBE OF DAN. THE LATEST  BBC  DOCUMENTARY  ON THE  VIKINGS  IS UP TO THE MINUTE KNOWLEDGE OF THIS TRIBE OF ISRAEL. HENCE SOME OF THE TRIBES OF THE HOUSE OF ISRAEL HAD THE SAME WILD BARBARISM AND BURIAL TRADITIONS  -  Keith Hunt)

Russia's museums can now boast of a near-unbelievable collection of gold artifacts, a dazzling array of exquisitely formed creations that betray the Scythians' sensitivity for detail and love of animals and reveal the importance gold had in their brutal society. When Herodotus wrote that the Scythians were "immensely rich," he unknowingly penned the understatement of the century.

How rich this Scythian treasure really was can be judged by looking at some of their ornaments now proudly displayed in museums such as the State Hermitage Museum in Leningrad and the Museum of Historical Treasures in Kiev. During excavations in Kostromskaya Stanitsa, a gold stag plaque, probably the central ornament from a shield, dating back to the sixth century B.C. was found. The plate depicts a stag in reclining position with its head arched. Other stags almost as beautiful as the one displayed in Leningrad have been found in Hungary and the Crimea. Other solid-gold ornaments uncovered include a gold comb with a molded group of highly realistic figures showing a battle between Scythians. Because the horseman on the comb is wearing a Greek helmet, the opinion has been offered that the artist probably was a Greek in service of the Scythians. The influence of the Greeks on Scythian art is also embodied in another fine piece of gold art on display today in the Museum of Historical Treasures in Kiev. It is the central part of a breastplate, depicting two Scythians sewing an animal skin to make a tunic or jacket. Also displayed is the end piece of a collar made of twisted metal; known as a torque, showing the delicately modeled figure of a bareback horseman. The Scythians were famous for their torques, and many of them have been recovered from kurgans throughout former Scythian territory.

One of the Scythian burial mounds at Kostromskaya in the Caucasus surrendered this beautifully handcrafted plaque of a stag in reclining position. The stag was a favorite animal among the peoples of the steppes, and many plaques like this one have been found throughout the area occupied by the Scythians. This one dates back to approximately 700 B.C. and is in the collection of the State Hermitage Museum in Leningrad, USSR.

The vast collections of solid-gold Scythian art pieces now held by major Russian museums and by private art collectors are worth literally hundreds of millions of dollars for their gold value alone, not to mention their value as pieces of art; but the question of how so brutal and barbarous a nation as the Scythians could show so much artistic feeling has thus far remained unanswered. Perhaps these barbarous men, who as maniacal nomads ruled the steppes and the mountains, had a gentler side to their nature which they dared entrust only to the enduring beauty of gold.

……….

WHEN  YOU  UNDERSTAND  THESE  PEOPLE,  LIKE  THE  VIKINGS,  WERE  PART  OF  THE  ISRAEL  TEN  TRIBE  NATIONS,  THEN  YOU  CAN  UNDERSTAND  THE  "OTHER  SIDE"  OF  THEIR  NATURE.  LIKE  THE  CELTS  [ALSO  ISRAELITES]  WHO  ALSO  WERE  VERY  WARLIKE [THE  CELTS  OF  BRITAIN  DEFEATING  THE  ROMAN  ARMIES  MANY  MANY  TIMES,  WITH  LEADERS  LIKE  CARADOC  AND  BOADICEA  IN  THE  FIRST  CENTURY  A.D.]  AND  THE  SCOTS  AND  PICTS  IN  SCOTLAND,  WHOM  THE  ROMAN  ARMIES  NEVER  DID  MASTER,  WITH  GENERAL  ADRIAN  OF  ROME  HAVING  TO  BUILD  THE  FAMOUS  "ADRIAN'S  WALL"  ACROSS  ENGLAND  TO  KEEP  THE  SCOTS  FROM  COMING  DOWN  AND  DRIVING  THE  ROMANS  BACK  TO  EUROPE.  SO  IT  ALL  FITS…..ISRAEL  TRIBES  OF  THE  10  TRIBE  HOUSE  OF  ISRAEL  COMING  ON  THE  WORLD  SCENE  AROUND  AND  AFTER  700  B.C.  WITH  A  HUGE  WARLIKE  NATURE,  YET  MASTERS  OF  BEAUTY,  HORSEMANSHIP,  AND  CHARIOT  MAKERS [IN  BRITAIN]  AND  YES  INFLUENCED  BY  OTHER  PAGAN  NATIONS  AS  THEY  MOVED  THROUGH  FROM  ASSYRIA  TO  THE  BLACK  SEA  TO  LANDS  OF  EUROPE.

Keith Hunt

TO  BE  CONTINUED