Art of the Circassian Nart Saga by unknown artist
"We have a God that Herodotos equated with Ares. As with “Hercules” he does not offer an indigenous name directly, but unlike Targitaos we don’t have a clear possible name in his Histories.
What he does offer, however, is a detailed description on how his worship differs from that of other Scythian Gods: a complex wood temple with an iron sword — his symbol — as a centerpiece, as well as being the only Scythian God to have statues and icons representing him. Archaeological findings of deity figurines in kurgans render the latter aspect questionable, but we do know the described construction type and worship was performed by the Alans (Sulimirski 1985). It’s possible also that the Huns adopted this God from the Alans or may have blasphemed against him as means to demoralise them, given Attila’s “Sword of Mars” (Geary 1994). Strabo, Pliny the Elder, Claudius Ptolemy and Stephanus of Byzantium all describe the worship of “Ares” in the Scythian region.
This is in spite of him being in the third category of deities according to Herodotos. We can surmise then that the “Scythian Ares” was lower in the divine hierarchy but extremely important to warriors on at least a ritual context. Perhaps also he was considered more “approachable” to worshippers than more distant deities like Papaios and Api.
Without a name to peg this God to a putative Proto-Indo-European context, examining him is entirely reliant on the clues his worship provides. There appears to be no direct analogue in any other Indo-European culture, indicating that this deity was either an unique Scythian invention or a holdover lost in other descendant cultures. Given that a warrior caste is speculated to have existed for Proto-Indo-European culture, it makes sense that there was originally a God overseeing it, posteriorly lost as descendent cultures either saw fit to promote other Gods to a war God position or lost the need for one altogether."
-taken from Medium
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| Art of the Circassian Nart Saga by unknown artist. |
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