Archaelogist to speak on exhibit of Scythian gold from Ukraine (10/24/99)

Archaelogist to speak on exhibit of Scythian gold from Ukraine

by Marta Baczynsky

NEW YORK - Scythians, the ancient nomadic people that lived on the northern shores of the Black Sea from the seventh to about the second centuries B.C. and their remarkable artistry with gold will be discussed by Dr. Lada Onyshkevych in a lecture/slide presentation at The Ukrainian Museum.

The event is scheduled to be held on two days: Friday, November 5, at 6:30 p.m. in the English language and Sunday, November 7, in the Ukrainian language. The museum is located at 203 Second Ave., New York. Admission is by donation; refreshments will be served following the lecture.

This lecture will be the final one in the series "Recent Archaeological Discoveries: Treasures of Ukraine's Ancient Past," organized by the museum. Young Ukrainian American archaeologists and scholars were invited to speak to museum audiences about the activities and new developments on such important archaeological sites in Ukraine as Kamianets-Podilskyi and Khersones on the Crimean peninsula, as well as about the very timely and exciting topic - Scythian gold.

Dr. Onyshkevych is an archaeologist, with a Ph.D. in art and archaeology of the Mediterranean World, currently engaged as an exhibition project assistant at The Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore. Her lecture at The Ukrainian Museum is given in conjunction with the opening of the largest and most complete exhibition of Scythian artifacts assembled from museums of Ukraine to be shown in the United States. It is organized by The Walters Art Gallery and the San Antonio Museum of Art in Texas.

The exhibition will open in San Antonio on November 7, and will run through January 30, 2000. Other venues are: The Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore, on March 5-May 28, 2000, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (July 2-September 24, 2000), and The Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York City, October 29, 2000-January 21, 2001. It is scheduled to travel to the Grand Palais in Paris, following its U.S. tour. An exhibition catalogue has already been published, to which Dr. Onyshkevych has contributed the opening essay, "Scythia and the Scythians."

Titled "Gold of the Nomads: Scythian Treasures from Ancient Ukraine," the exhibition will present 171 works of art, mostly gold, although there are objects of silver, bronze and ceramic. The objects are headdresses, bow and arrow covers, vessels, helmets, bracelets, earrings, diadems and others. They date from the 7th through the 2nd centuries B.C. - the majority between the 5th and 4th centuries B.C.

It will be the first complete exhibition sent to the United States by Ukraine since the country regained its independence in 1991. Many of the objects on exhibit have never been seen here before, some being excavated since 1975, others as recently as a year ago. Lenders of these artifacts are museums in Ukraine such as the Museum of Historical Treasures of Ukraine, the National Museum of the History of Ukraine, the Institute of Archaeology of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and the State Historical Archaeological Preserve, Pereiaslav-Khmelnytskyi.

In her lecture Dr. Onyshkevych will include some behind-the-scenes information on the process of organizing this exhibition, and will provide background data on the culture, lifestyle, belief, history and artistic expertise of the Scythians.

Dr. Onyshkevych explained that much of the information on the Scythians comes to us from ancient literary sources like the Greek historian Herodotus, who thoroughly covered the northern Black Sea region in his histories, as well as from archaeological evidence. The Scythians were a nomadic people who migrated from Central Asia to the lands north of the Black Sea, approximately around the 8th century BC. They were known as fierce warriors and astute businessmen. They controlled the grain trade, slated for the cities in Greece, between the local agriculture concerns and the Greek colonists who settled on the shores of the Black Sea.

The enormous profit in this venture allowed the Scythians to commission or buy extraordinary objects made from gold from Greek artisans, which they lavishly bestowed on the dead of their elite, burying them in huge burial mounds called "kurhany." Dr. Onyshkevych pointed out that during the height of trade with Greece, around the 5th and 4th centuries B.C., there were thousands of Scythian kurhany in Ukraine. Some of the most notable are named Tovsta Mohyla and Babyna Mohyla in the Dnipropetrovska Oblast, and Ohuz Kurhan and Bratoliubivskyi Kurhan in the Kherson Oblast. Many of the burial chambers that contained wealthy Scythian deceased yielded not only the precious metal jewelry and other artifacts, but also an enormous amount of information about the life and times of these ancient people.

The Ukrainian Museum's lecture program is supported in part by a grant from the New York Council on the Humanities.

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