Information Related to "The Mysterious Scythians Burst Into History"
| Audio/Video |
|
Chapter 4 : |
Burst Into History
"Behold, the eyes of the Lord God are
on the sinful kingdom, and I will destroy it from the face of the earth; yet I will
not utterly destroy the house of Jacob, says the Lord" (Amos 9:8).
When
the northern kingdom of Israel suffered destruction at the hands of the Assyrians,
its people found themselves forced into exile. Yet God had promised they would survive
to become some of the world's major powers in the last days.
Where did they go from there? How can we find them?
Tracing the ancestry of ancient peoples is an extremely difficult task. Archaeologists,
historians and distinguished professors in famous universities often differ on the
interpretation of artifacts and historical documents.
This is because full knowledge of any ancient people's origins is almost always clouded
by the mists of time. This is especially true when written records have vanished,
been destroyed or never existed. Therefore, to deter-mine what happened to the ancient
Israelites, we must carefully compare the available historical and archaeological
evidence to the history and prophecies in the Bible.
Archaeologists and historical researchers have accumulated a substantial base of
information we can fit together as pieces of the historical puzzle. The more pieces
on the table, the easier it is to accurately connect the information. By assembling
enough parts we can obtain a reasonably good picture of the past.
(back to top)
Key historical clues
Historians accept that most of the ancestors of today's Western democracies once
lived as nomadic tribes roaming the vast grassland plains of antiquity known as the
Eurasian steppes.
One particular group of these migratory peoples, identified as Scythians by the Greeks,
suddenly appeared on the Eurasian steppes about the same time the 10 tribes of Israel
disappeared from history. Is there a connection? Here are some of the more pertinent
facts and discoveries concerning the two peoples.
The vast Eurasian steppes stretch some 4,350 miles from the base of the Carpathian
Mountains in Europe to Mongolia in eastern Asia. They formed a single geographic
unit of natural grassland that every spring were transformed into spectacular seas
of wildflowers stretching as far as the eye could see.
This vast plain was perfectly suited to a ranching and grain-raising economy.
Archaeologists have discovered ample evidence to prove that, in antiquity, nomadic
tribes regularly traversed it while following grazing herds and flocks in great cyclical
routes during the spring, summer and fall.
However, climatic changes about 2,000 years ago turned large sections of the central-Asian
steppes into a desert waste. It became so dry that it could no longer support the
earlier pastoral way of life practiced from 2,700 to 2,100 years ago (Tamara Talbot
Rice, The Scythians, 1961, p. 33).
(back to top)
The Scythians' sudden
appearance
Some modern scholars suggest three theories to explain the sudden and mysterious
appearance of the Scythians in the steppe region adjacent to the Black Sea. Some
believe they migrated there from the north, others from the east. A third opinion
suggests the migrations came from the south.
Although the geographic origins of the Scythian people are hotly debated, evidence
for the time of their first appearance in history is not. They suddenly appeared
at the same time and near the same area of the Israelites' disappearance.
The Encyclopaedia Britannica says: "The Scythians were a people who during the
8th-7th centuries BC moved from Central Asia to southern Russia" (15th edition,
Vol. 16, macropaedia, "Scythians," p. 438). The Encyclopedia Americana
explains that the Scythians first occupied the territory around the Black Sea around
700 B.C. and that, from their first beginnings, they presented a "cohesive political
entity" (Vol. 24, 2000 edition, "Scythians," p. 471).
Historian Tamara Talbot Rice confirms that "the Scythians did not become a recognizable
national entity much before the eighth century B.C. ... By the seventh century B.C.
they had established themselves firmly in southern Russia ... And analogous tribes,
possibly even related clans, though politically entirely distinct and independent,
were also centred on the Altai (where the eastern border of Russia meets the western
border of Mongolia and China) ...
"Assyrian documents place their appearance there (between the Black Sea and
the Caspian Sea) in the time of King Sargon (722-705 B.C.), a date which closely
corresponds with that of the establishment of the first group of Scythians in southern
Russia" (Rice, pp. 19-20, 44). This date also corresponds with the disappearance
of the captives from Israel's northern kingdom.
During the late eighth century B.C., records from the Caucasian kingdom of Urartu,
which controlled the northern reaches of the Euphrates River, also noted the appearance
of a group called Cimmerians.
The book From the Lands of the Scythians explains: "... Two groups, Cimmerians
and Scythians, seem to be referred to in Urartean and Assyrian texts, but it is not
always clear whether the terms indicate two distinct peoples or simply mounted nomads
... Beginning in the second half of the eighth century B.C., Assyrian sources refer
to nomads identified as the Cimmerians; other Assyrian sources say these people were
present in the land of the Mannai (or Mannea, south of Lake Urmia) and in Cappadocia
for a hundred years (that is, about 750 to 650 B.C.), and record their advances into
Asia Minor and Egypt.
"The Assyrians used Cimmerians in their army as mercenaries; a legal document
of 679 B.C. refers to an Assyrian 'commander of the Cimmerian regiment'; but in other
Assyrian documents they are called 'the seed of runaways who know neither
vows to the gods nor oaths'" (Boris Piotrovsky, 1975, pp. 15, 18).
Historian Samuel Lysons spoke of "the Cimmerians seeming to be the same people
as the Gauls or Celts under a different name" (John Henry and James Parker,
Our British Ancestors: Who and What Were They?, 1865, pp. 23, 27).
Anne Kristensen, a respected Danish linguistic scholar, recently reached the conclusion
that the Cimmerians (who later became known as the Celts) can positively be identified
as the deported Israelites. In the beginning of her research Dr. Kristensen was skeptical
and subscribed to the traditional theory that the Cimmerians were "Aryan"
tribes the Scythians had chased out of the north, as Herodotus had theorized.
But, as she dug more and more into the Assyrian sources, she found the Cimmerians
first appeared in history in 714 B.C. in the region of Iran south of Armenia where
the kings of Assyria had settled many of the deported Israelites. She came to the
conclusion that the Gimira, or Cimmerians, represented at least a part of the lost
10 tribes of Israel.
Dr. Kristensen writes: "There is scarcely reason, any longer, to doubt the exciting
and verily astonishing assertion propounded by the students of the Ten Tribes that
the Israelites deported from Bit Humria, of the House of 'Omri, are identical with
the Gimirraja of the Assyrian sources. Everything indicates that Israelite deportees
did not vanish from the picture but that, abroad, under new conditions, they continued
to leave their mark on history" (Who Were the Cimmerians, and Where Did They
Come From?: Sargon II, the Cimmerians, and Rusa I, translated from the Danish by
Jørgen Læssøe, The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters,
No. 57, 1988, pp. 126-127).
It is also worth noting that Assyrian crown prince Sennacherib wrote a secret intelligence
report that archaeologists found during the excavation of the royal archives at Nineveh.
Sennacherib's report passed on news from his spies that Cimmerian nomads had invaded
Urartu and had defeated their forces. On the strength of that report the Assyrians
made preparations to invade their northern rival, Urartu, which they successfully
accomplished in 714 B.C.
(back to top)
A Scythian tribal alliance
emerges
But in the end it was the Scythians who profited most from the conflicts that weakened
Urartu. By 700 B.C. the Scythians had gained control over the territory of the old
Urartean kingdom. There they formed a tribal alliance the Greeks called the Scythian
Kingdom.
Using the central Kreuzberg Pass (also known as the Caucasus Gate), the Scythians
mastered crossing the steep Caucasus Mountains. The pass was passable most of the
year; it was relatively ice-free even though its elevation is higher than many passes
in the Alps.
The Scythians had a remarkable ability to move large armies back and forth through
the pass. In antiquity it was even known as the "Scythian route."
Before their exile the 10 Israelite tribes of the north would have been fully aware
of the kingdom of Urartu and its strategic location. Why? Because in the first half
of the eighth century B.C. the northern kingdom of Israel, before its captivity,
was heavily invested in export-import trade, and Urartu was a key to that trade.
Urartu had made an alliance with the small states of northern Syria that bordered
on the territory of Israel during the reign of Jeroboam II.
Many of those Aramaeans had been allied with King Pekah during his invasion of Judah
around 735 B.C. During that time the Urarteans had gained the strategic domination
of the Euphrates down to its western bend, allowing them to control the main trade
route to the Mediterranean from the southern Caucasus. Archaeological excavations
in Urartu have uncovered artifacts from Egypt, Assyria and Persia as well as from
the Mediterranean region.
(back to top)
Scythian origins
The term Scythic, wrote historian George Rawlinson, was originally more the designation
of a way of life than a reference to blood relationships. He explained that the term
was "applied by the Greeks and Romans to Indo-European and Turanian races indifferently,"
providing that their habits and customs conformed to the nomadic way of life (George
Rawlinson, Seven Great Monarchies, Vol. 3, 1884, p. 11).
Today, however, historians use the term Scythian mostly in reference to the Saka,
or Sacae, Scyths. These people became the leading tribes of the Scythian culture.
They inspired its dynamic way of life and its political, artistic, economic and social
leadership. From the seventh century B.C. forward, it was the Saka, or Sacae, tribes
that defined what it meant to be Scythian from the Black Sea all the way to the mountains
of Mongolia.
Before the early 20th century, European and American historians assumed the Scythians
were of the Mongol people from Asia. Modern anthropological research, however, has
shown this idea to be false. Most scholars are convinced that no ethnic links exist
between the Saka Scythians and the Mongols or the Slavic peoples.
However, this doesn't mean the scattered former tribes on the Eurasian steppes-the
peoples the Greeks first labeled Scythians before the eighth century B.C.-all suddenly
disappeared. Rather, the Saka Scyths simply began to dominate the steppe region from
700 to 500 B.C. During that time the Saka Scyths-accompanied by a smaller mixture
of other tribes of Middle Eastern origin such as displaced Medes, Elamites and Assyrians-became
the predominant peoples on the Eurasian plains.
In fact, until sometime in the fifth or fourth century B.C. the predominant inhabitants
of even western Siberia were "a fair-haired people of European origin, and ...
it was after that date that an influx of Mongoloids resulted in a very mixed type
of population" (Rice, p. 77). Close examination of 20th-century archaeological
discoveries plainly and consistently portray the Saka Scythians as physically like
the present-day people of Europe.
(back to top)
Links to biblical prophecy
Let's compare what we have learned to the promises God made to the exiled Israelites.
Addressing them as the "house of Isaac" (Amos 7:16), He promised that during
their captivity they would not be destroyed as a people (Amos 9:8,14; compare Hosea 11:9; 14:4-7). Instead He promised to greatly multiply them after their exile (Hosea 1:10) and show them loving-kindness and mercy because of His covenant.
The Scriptures plainly tell us that the Israelites, after the Assyrians forcibly
deported them from their homeland, relocated "in Halah, on the Habor, the river
of Gozan (in northern Assyria), and in the cities of the Medes" (2Kings 18:11).
This is not far from the region of Urartu, between the Black and Caspian seas, where
the Scythians had established a temporary kingdom.
Through Hosea God had foretold that the Israelites would become "wanderers among
the nations" (Hosea 9:17). This explains why the exiled Israelites seem to have
vanished as a people. They didn't really vanish; they simply reappeared in history
under new names-as a vagabond people, separated into independent clans, wandering
over the Eurasian plains.
Obviously no one could any longer identify them as citizens of their former Middle
Eastern kingdom. So they acquired a new identity. Only their old subtribal, or clan,
names remained mostly the same. Those names have proven to be important in preserving
their identity as the lost 10 tribes of Israel. (Be sure to read "Linguistic
Links: What's in a Name?," page 30.)
(back to top)
The Sythian-Celtic connection
At the same general time the Scythians burst on the scene around the Black Sea, another
civilization was emerging to the west in Europe. In his book The Ancient World of
the Celts historian Peter Ellis notes: "At the start of the first millennium
BC, a civilisation which had developed from its Indo-European roots around the headwaters
of the Rhine, the Rhône and the Danube suddenly erupted in all directions through
Europe. Their advanced use of metalwork, particularly their iron weapons, made them
a powerful and irresistible force. Greek merchants, first encountering them in the
sixth century BC, called them Keltoi and Galatai ... Today we generally identify
them as Celts" (1999, p. 9.).
Considerable evidence connects the Celts of Europe with the Cimmerians who fled from
the Near East to Asia Minor at the time the armies of Babylon were conquering the
Assyrian Empire. From Asia Minor the Cimmerians migrated by way of the Danube River
into Europe, where they became known as the Celts. Many historians have concluded
that the Celts and Scythians have a common background.
The Greeks and Romans called all people beyond the northern boundaries of the old
Roman Republic and the Greek city-states barbarians. They used the term to describe
foreigners who dared challenge their political and cultural leadership, regardless
of how educated or technologically advanced they might have been. These people represented
many extended-family clans known by a variety of names. Among them, no doubt, were
clans of unrelated ethnic origin that had fled from eastern territories of the old
Assyrian Empire at about the same time.
But the more significant fact is that many, if not most, of these so-called barbarian
tribes were racially and culturally related. For that reason we should expect that
the language of these related tribes could be traced to a common parent language-and
that is exactly what we find.
(back to top)
The language link
Languages are identified by families. The language family common to the Northwestern
European people falls within what is classified as the Germanic branch of Indo-European
languages. The history of the Indo-European language family provides us with excellent
clues to the relationships between the barbarian tribes that engendered the Northwestern
European democracies.
When we look at the nations of Europe we see delineated nation-state boundaries with
distinctly different languages such as English, French, Danish and Swedish as well
as localized dialects (such as High and Low German). However, in the days of these
so-called barbarians such obvious distinctions did not exist. The people settling
Northwestern Europe at that time spoke mainly different dialects of the same parent
language.
English is part of the Indo-European family of languages that is usually broadly
labeled as Teutonic or Germanic. But such labeling does not imply that the modern
German language (German) is the parent language or that the German people came from
the same ethnic stock as the Scythians. To the contrary, modern German is only one
branch of the original parent language. The same is true of the English, Danish,
Dutch and Scandinavian languages. All are branches of one original language.
As Cambridge University professor H. Munro Chadwick explains: "Down to the fifth
century the German, English and Scandinavian languages differed but slightly from
one another ... In the fifth and following centuries differentiation took place very
quickly within the north-western group. English developed in general on lines about
midway between German and Scandinavian, but with many special features of its own.
Frisian (Dutch) seems to have differed little from English for a long time ... The
differentiation of the languages was obviously governed by their geographical position"
(The Nationalities of Europe and the Growth of National Ideologies, 1966, p. 145).
If we go back 500 years from the point when the Teutonic languages began to differentiate,
we discover that great swaths of northern, western and eastern Europeans spoke similar
dialects of a common Indo-European language. When scholars try to pin a label on
a particular European barbarian tribe as being Germanic or Celtic or Scythian, they
often find themselves in a quandary: Distinctions are often unclear and can easily
become arbitrary.
The ancient Romans rarely bothered to learn barbarian languages, preferring to use
interpreters. They couldn't tell the difference between the language spoken in Gaul
and that spoken on the other side of the Rhine. So Latin writers habitually began
to label barbarian tribes east of the Rhine as the "Germani," lumping them
into one group.
Some modern archaeologists, however, describe the dominant people of Northern Europe
during the period ca. 500 B.C. as broadly divided between Celts and Scytho-Teutons.
Even this distinction was more geographic and cultural than ethnic.
The farther back in history we go the less distinction we find between the Celtic
and Teutonic peoples who settled Western and Northwestern Europe.
Professor Chadwick writes: "In any discussion as to the origin of the Teutonic
(or Germanic) languages it must of course be borne in mind that these languages are
merely a branch of the Indo-European languages ... and consequently that their original
home-as distinct from the area in which they acquired their special characteristics-was
that of the whole Indo-European family. The same remark applies to the Celtic languages
... No one doubts that these languages, or rather the parent language from which
they are derived, were once limited to a much smaller area than that of their present
distribution" (Chadwick, p. 157).
These people burst into view along the edge of the old Assyrian Empire in the last
half of the eighth century B.C.-at the same time and in the same area where the lost
10 tribes of Israel disappeared. Until about the fourth century A.D. their dialects
of a common language remained similar enough for them to easily communicate with
each other.
Scythians and Celts are closely related by language. But were the Celts a distinct
people unrelated to the Scythians? Or are there indications of a strong relationship
between them?
(back to top)
Scythian-Celtic interaction
Historians and archaeologists report that during the second half of the first millennium
B.C. the area of Europe north of the Mediterranean world shared two related cultures.
From the British Isles to the headwaters of the Danube to the eastern fringe of the
Alps existed what historians label as the Hallstatt Celtic culture and, later, the
La Tène Celtic culture.
But further east, occupying a vast area of Eastern Europe, was the strong horse-centered
traditional Scythic culture based on a way of life suited to grasslands rather than
mountains and forests. Each of these provided ideas and inspiration for the other.
According to the archaeological evidence, the two groups freely intermarried.
The separate Celtic and Scythian cultures interacted with each other much like modern
Britain and America. Each was adapted to the geography of its own region. But the
people themselves interacted as if they shared an ancestry.
Archaeologists have uncovered some remarkable sites of Celtic and Scythian cultures
that demonstrate how closely the two peoples worked with each other (see "The
Geography of Celtic-Scythian Commerce," page 27).
The distinction between Scythian and Celtic cultures is probably best explained by
two factors. First, the geography supporting each culture was generally different.
But, equally important, 10 Israelite tribes were exiled from the Middle East. Each
of these had its own culture within the larger culture of Israel's northern kingdom.
Also, each tribe was further subdivided into clans (1Samuel 10:19; compare Exodus 6:14-25, NIV).
Therefore, one would expect these exiled Israelite tribes to continue exhibiting
some cultural differences in the lands of their exile. Such distinctions would also
explain the clans and subclans existing among the Scythians and Celts.
Israeli Talmudic scholar Yair Davidy, in his book The Tribes: The Israelite Origins
of Western Peoples, presents convincing evidence that the displaced Israelites retained
their subtribal clan names during and after their captivity.
"Proofs adduced," he writes, "are derived from Biblical, Talmudic,
Historical, Archaeological, and Linguistic sources as well as Folklore, Mythology,
National Symbols, and National Characteristics" (1993, p. xiv). As a resident
of Jerusalem, Mr. Davidy had access to the historical and biblical sources on the
shelves of Jerusalem's National Library.
Tribal and subtribal names, he points out, are a key to tracing the Israelites' wanderings.
In his introduction he summarizes his conclusion: "'The Tribes' produces evidence
that most of the ancient Israelites assimilated to foreign cultures and forgot their
origins. In the course of time they reached the British Isles and north-west Europe
whence related nations (such as the U.S.A.) were founded" (ibid.).
For thorough coverage of this aspect of Israel's migratory history we refer you directly
to his books The Tribes: The Israelite Origins of Western Peoples (1993) and Lost
Israelite Identity (1996).
Between 200 B.C. and A.D. 500 enemy tribes and drastic climatic changes drove the
Scythian clans from the Eurasian steppes to the northern and western regions of Europe.
For another 1,000 years the former Scythians were alternately allies and enemies
in feudal Europe under a variety of clan names. This lasted until modern nations
as we know them began to take shape in Europe.
In the next chapter we pick up the amazing story of the scattered descendants of
ancient Israel rising to the international prominence that God had long ago promised
to the offspring of Joseph.
(back to top)
(Contents Page)
© 2001-2008
United Church of God, an International Association
Related Information on Our Site:
Sidebar: Celts and Scythians Linked by Archaeological Discoveries
Sidebar: The Geography of Celtic-Scythian Commerce
Sidebar: Linguistic Links: What's in a Name?
Sidebar: Prophecies of Israel's Resettlement in Northwestern Europe
Sidebar: The Label Celt and Celtic Secrecy
Table of Contents that includes "The Mysterious Scythians Burst Into History"
Scythians: