If you want to learn more about the Scythians, or find out where this information comes from, here are some great sources to explore.

Bibliography

A huge thank you to Stanford historian and folklorist Adrienne Mayor, author of ‘The Amazons: Live and legends of warrior women across the ancient world.’ I cannot recommend her book enough to people interested in either the Amazons, or the Scythians who inspired their legend. Much of the information covered here was compiled by her in her book.

  • Mayor, Adrienne. The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women across the Ancient World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016.

  • Rolle, Renate. The World of the Scythians. London: B.T. Batsford, 1989.

  • Barry, Cunliffe. Scythians: Nomad Warriors of the Steppe. Oxford, UK: OXFORD UNIV PRESS, 2021.

  • Raevskii, D. S. "Scythian Religion." In Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd ed., edited by Lindsay Jones, 8205-8208. Vol. 12. Detroit, MI: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005. Gale In Context: U.S. History (accessed August 9, 2022). https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX3424502783/UHIC?u=oregon_oweb&sid=bookmark-UHIC&xid=d559ec3d.

  • Parzinger, Hermann. “Burial Mounds of Scythian Elites in the Eurasian Steppe: New Discoveries.” Journal of the British Academy 5 (2017). https://doi.org/10.5871/jba/005.331.

  • British Museum. “Introducing the Scythians - British Museum Blog.” British Museum Blog - Explore stories from the Museum, February 22, 2022. https://blog.britishmuseum.org/introducing-the-scythians/#:~:text=The%20Scythians%20(pronounced%20'SIH-,to%20the%20northern%20Black%20Sea.

  • Herodotus. “Ancient History Sourcebook: Herodotus: Queen Tomyris of the Massagetai and the Defeat of the Persians under Cyrus.” Internet History Sourcebooks, August 1998. https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/ancient/tomyris.asp.

  • Ventresca Miller, Alicia R., James Johnson, Sergey Makhortykh, Claudia Gerling, Ludmilla Litvinova, Svetlana Andrukh, Gennady Toschev, et al. “Re-Evaluating Scythian Lifeways: Isotopic Analysis of Diet and Mobility in Iron Age Ukraine.” PLOS ONE 16, no. 3 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245996.

  • Sims, Martha C., and Martine Stephens. “Ritual.” Essay. In Living Folklore: An Introduction to the Study of People and Their Traditions, 2nd ed., 98-104. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 2011.

  • Armbruster, Barbara. “Gold Technology of the Ancient Scythians – Gold from the Kurgan Arzhan 2, Tuva.” ArchéoSciences, no. 33 (2009): 187–93. https://doi.org/10.4000/archeosciences.2193.