Scythians rule in New York (10/22/00)

Scythians rule in New York

by Helen Smindak

NEW YORK - A hoard of spectacular gold and silver treasures and other artifacts excavated by Ukrainian archaeologists from the tombs of the Scythian warrior-nomads who once held sway over the steppes north of the Black Sea has been put on display at the Brooklyn Museum of Art.

The first such exhibition to come to the United States since Ukraine achieved independence, the collection "Gold of the Nomads: Scythian Treasures from Ancient Ukraine" is distinguished by the richness and variety of its unique works of art as well as the support of First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, its honorary chairman. Unveiled for the press and museum members on October 12, the exhibit was opened to the public the following day.

The exhibition spotlights over 170 rare objects discovered in 62 mammoth burial mounds, or kurhans, in Ukraine, and includes exceptional finds that have come to light during the past decade. The artifacts are on loan from four museums in Ukraine: the National Museum of the History of Ukraine, the Museum of Historical Treasures and the Institute of Archaeology of the Academy of Sciences in Kyiv, as well as the State Historical Archaeological Preserve in Pereiaslav-Khmelnytskyi.

During the same week, the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened an exhibition of Scythian and Sarmatian artifacts that focuses on 26 gold-plated wood sculptures of deer with curling antlers, discovered in a Sarmatian kurhan near the village of Fillipovka in southern Russia. Called "The Golden Deer of Eurasia: Scythian and Sarmatian Treasures from the Russian Steppes," the show is supplemented by related Scythian, Sarmatian and Siberian objects from the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg and the Archaeological Museum of the city of Ufa. It includes a number of gold objects of Ukrainian origin, loaned to the Met by the Hermitage Museum.

Hermitage objects whose provenance is Ukrainian include a gold comb from 530-490 B.C., five-by-four inches in size and topped by a miniature battle scene, originally found in the Solokha kurhan in Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. Another Ukrainian object loaned to the Met by the Hermitage is a golden vessel discovered in 1830 in the Kul' Oba kurhan near the Crimean city of Kerch.

In a review published in The New York Times on October 13, writer Holland Cotter calls the overlap of shows "a scheduling fluke." He believes the two shows possess contrasting attractions of their own and together offer a substantial archaeological update on the last big Scythian showcase here. However, he appears to favor the Met show, describing it as "bigger, more complicated and more adventurous."

Mr. Cotter says the Brooklyn exhibit is "more neatly packaged ... cleanly installed, and cast as a kind of walk-through historical narrative." He defines it as a traveling survey-style "collections" show that gives United States audiences a first glimpse of rare objects drawn from museums in Ukraine, where Scythian nomads put down roots in the first millennium B.C.

Mr. Cotter's commentary was printed in the story "Golden Mysteries From the Cowboys of the Steppes" on the front page of the Times' Weekend section, together with an eye-catching half-page photo of a golden stag from the Metropolitan Museum and a smaller photo of a hunt scene plaque from the Brooklyn Museum.

Some observers in the Ukrainian community question the scheduling of the Met exhibit as well as its emphasis on Russia, pointing out that wall maps that accompany the show bear no identification for Ukraine, although most of the kurhan sites marked on the maps are located on Ukrainian territory. There is speculation also that the Metropolitan may have opened its show two days before the Brooklyn exhibition in order to retain its reputation as a Scythian standard-bearer, established 25 years ago with the exhibition "From the Lands of the Scythians."

According to a spokesperson at the Brooklyn Museum's public information office, the Brooklyn exhibition was in preparation for over three years. "We heard of the Met's exhibit only six months ago, " he said.

An associate in the Metropolitan Museum's press office readily offered information about Ukrainian objects in the Metropolitan exhibition, but was unable to give an immediate answer to the question of when preparations for the exhibit had begun. She called later with the information that the Metropolitan "has been working on the exhibition for the past five years."

"A fantastic adventure story"

Dr. Ellen Reeder, deputy art director of the Brooklyn Museum, who curated the "Gold of the Nomads" exhibition along with Dr. Gerry Scott III, curator of ancient art at the San Antonio Museum of Art, sees the Brooklyn exhibit as "a fantastic adventure story." She feels this assemblage of "the finest Scythian objects in Ukrainian museums" tells the story of a nomadic people who acquired extraordinary wealth in the fourth century B.C. by providing grain to Greek markets.

Fascinated by Scythian art and culture, Dr. Reeder has traveled to Ukraine many times since 1996 to visit kurhan sites, confer with museum officials and gather information for the exhibition catalogue "Scythian Gold," which she wrote and edited. Her most recent visit was made to shoot footage for the video accompanying the exhibit.

"When you consider that we began to organize this exhibition in 1996, just a few years after Ukraine gained its independence in 1991, it's absolutely remarkable that we have this wonderful cultural exchange," Dr. Reeder exulted. "Ukrainian curators gave us full rein in our selection of pieces, from museum holdings to recently excavated finds - I truly appreciate their generosity and help," she added.

The landmark exhibit, featuring many objects which have never been seen outside Ukraine, includes virtually unknown masterpieces, including a bell-shaped gold helmet with a finial, excavated in 1988, which bears scenes in relief of Scythian combat; leopards, eagles and feline animals captured in dynamic motion and tall grass swaying, echoing life on the steppes. Among the artifacts are a foot-high object, unearthed in 1990, covered with intricately intertwined animal combat scenes, that may have served as a finial, and a series of gold openwork plaques from a bow-and-arrow case, excavated in 1991, that depict winged dragons crafted in a blend of animal and Near Eastern styles.

A lustrous 23-carat gold pectoral (a massive adornment worn on the chest) consisting of three crescent-like tiers connected by chainlets of little hollow pipes, discovered in the Tovsta Mohyla kurhan in the Dnipropetrovsk region in 1971, preserves a scene at daily life in Scythia. An extraordinary gold cup from the fifth century B.C., found in the Bratoliubivskyi kurhan in the Kherson region in 1990, is decorated with horses, conveying the Scythians' love for these animals.

Also on view: exquisite jewelry worn by the Scythians, decorative plaques for their clothing and shoes, and elaborate ornamentation for their horses, as well as bowls and drinking cups, all made of gold or silver; bronze swords, daggers, arrowheads, finials and cauldrons; vases, vessels and figurines of clay; and stone sculptures of granite or limestone carved in the shape of standing male figures.

Music that invokes the sounds of the steppes, merging the cries of animals, trilling flutes and the whistling of wind through tall grass, provides an ambient background for the show.

Migrating westward from the central Asian steppes in the seventh century B.C., possibly in search of better pastures and peoples to conquer, Scythian tribes roamed across the territory now known as modern-day Ukraine, their kingdom stretching from the Danube River in the west to the Don River in present-day southern Russia and south into the Crimea. Fierce warriors and horse-riding hunters and herdsmen who were skilled at breeding and training horses, the Scythians used state-of-the-art combat gear and clever military strategies that enabled them to dominate the region for almost four centuries. The Greek historian Herodotus, whose extensive travels in the fifth century B.C. included Scythia, describes the Scythians as revelers who relished fermented mare's milk, called kumys, and fearsome fighters given to such sadistic customs as making cloaks from their victims' scalps and using the skulls for drinking cups.

In the catalogue essay "Scythia and the Scythians," Lada Onyshkevych of the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore says that archeological evidence suggests that the Scythians may have mixed "to some degree" with the local populations.

Grain for Greek ornaments

Scythian rulers became prosperous by trading with Greek colonists who had settled along the Black Sea coast. Grain raised in the northern plains by agrarian Scythians or Scythian-ruled aboriginals, furs, amber, cattle and slaves were traded for Greek wine, olive oil, textiles and works of art. While many of the finest goods were crafted by Greek goldsmiths catering to Scythian tastes, ornamental objects were also made by their own metalworkers who apprenticed in Greek workshops.

The Scythians were eventually displaced by the Sarmatians, also a nomadic, horse-riding people, who took over the region from 2 B.C. to 4 A.D.

Ritual practices accompanied the burial of a royal or elite Scythian: the embalmed corpse was entombed with one of his concubines, his horses, select servants and prized possessions in a spacious pit that was topped by a vast mound of black earth whose diameter could be as great as 110 yards at the base and its height up to 65 feet. The higher the late king's standing in the hierarchy of Scythian rulers, the higher his mound. Relatives and close associates were buried in secondary burial chambers in the same kurhan.

Today more than 40,000 unexcavated kurhans, characterized by gently sloped sides, still remain in Ukraine, located primarily in the Dnipro River valley and along the tributary Sula and Poltava rivers.

Traveling with the exhibit is a "brain trust" of archaeological specialists from Ukraine, including Serhii Chaikovsky, director, National Museum of the History of Ukraine; Denys Kozak, director of the Institute of Archaeology of the Academy of Sciences, and his deputy director, Serhii Kryzhytsky; and researchers Svitlana Koretska and Olena Pidvysotska, who contributed essays to the exhibition catalogue.

Organized by the Walters Art Gallery and the San Antonio Museum of Art, "Gold of the Nomads: Scythian Treasures from Ancient Ukraine" has been exhibited in San Antonio, Los Angeles and Baltimore. It will be shown at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto from February 18 to April 29 and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, from May 27 to August 11, before going on to the Grand Palais in Paris next fall.

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"Gold of the Nomads: Scythian Treasures from Ancient Ukraine" is at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, 200 Eastern Parkway, (718) 638-5000, through January 21. Group tours or visits can be arranged through the Education Division (718) 638-5000, ext. 234. "The Golden Deer of Eurasia: Scythian and Sarmatian Treasures From the Russian Steppes" is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street, (212) 535-7710, through February 4.

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