Scythian Tattooing
Tattooing was an extremely important part of Scythian culture. Whereas the ancient Greeks saw tattoos as marks of shame or barbarism, the Scythians believed the opposite. The Scythians, and their neighbors the Thracians, viewed tattoos as an important and common part of everyday life. According to Sextus Empiricus and Pliny, the Sarmatians (a later Scythian tribe during the time of Rome) would receive their first tattoos as children. The Agathyrsi, a Scythian-Thracian tribe saw tattoos as a status symbol, particularly among women, and the higher your status, the bigger, more colorful and detailed the tattoos that one had. In Thracian culture, nearly everyone, including commoners, had at least a few tattoos, and similarly to the Agathyrsi, viewed tattoos as an important status symbol. Clearchus of Soli stated that Scythian women were the ones who would teach the art of tattooing to Thracian women. The historian Clearchus stated that Scythian women “used to decorate the Thracian women all over their bodies, using tongues of their belt buckles (or pins of brooches) as needles.” After pricking the skin with needles in the desired design, the wounds would be rubbed with black soot or the desired colored pigment.
The use of infrared light on the mummified bodies of Scythians revealed to us what these tattoos looked like, in amazing detail. The Scythians are also believed to be the first to ever use stencils for tattooing, as one man was buried with a cutout leather stencil of a ram. Many of the tattoos were carefully placed on spots where the muscle would give the tattoo a rippling effect when moving.
Tattooing being a part of everyday life illustrates its importance in Scythian folklore. The particular techniques were not only passed down and taught person to person within Scythian society, but was also shared with those from other cultures who were interested in learning this form of artistic expression (2). The tattoos expressed important parts of Scythian society and culture (2). It illustrated the world around them and their mythology, the stories that were orally passed down for generations from parent to child and friend to friend. Tattoos would have been an important cultural connection to one another in Scythian society for this reason.
A drawing of the tattoos found on a mummified body of a Scythian recovered from a Kurgan.
(All but labelled 2) Mayor, Adrienne. The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women across the Ancient World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016.
(2) 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.