Scythian/Pazyryk Ukok warriors 500 BCE

December 12, 2022

Scythian/Pazyryk Ukok warriors 500 BCE

"On the man found close to the 'princess', the tattoos include the same fantastical creature, this time covering the right side of his body, across his right shoulder and stretching from his chest to his back. The patterns mirror the tattoos on a much more elaborately covered male body, dug from the ice in 1929, whose highly decorated torso is also reconstructed in our drawing here.

His chest, arms, part of the back and the lower leg are covered with tattoos. There is an argali - a mountain sheep - along with the same deer with griffon's vulture-like beak, with horns and the back of its head which has a griffon's heads and an onager drawn on it.

All animals are shown with the lower parts of their bodies turned inside out. There is also a winged snow leopard, a fish and fast-running argali.

'Compared to all tattoos found by archeologists around the world, those on the mummies of the Pazyryk people are the most complicated, and the most beautiful,' said Dr Polosmak. More ancient tattoos have been found, like the Ice Man found in the Alps - but he only had lines, not the perfect and highly artistic images one can see on the bodies of the Pazyryks.

'It is a phenomenal level of tattoo art. Incredible.'

To some, the clash depicted on the tattoes between vultures and hoofed animals corresponds to the conflict between two worlds: a predator from the lower, chthonian world against herbivorous animals that symbolise the middle world.

Dr Polosmak is intrigued at way so little has changed.

'We can say that most likely there was - and is - one place on the body for everyone to start putting the tattoos on, and it was a left shoulder. I can assume so because all the mummies we found with just one tattoo had it on their left shoulders.

'And nowadays this is the same place where people try to put the tattoos on, thousands of years on.

'I think its linked to the body composition... as the left shoulder is the place where it is noticeable most, where it looks the most beautiful. Nothing changes with years, the body stays the same, and the person making a tattoo now is getting closer to his ancestors than he or she may realise.

'I think we have not moved far from Pazyryks in how the tattoos are made. It is still about a craving to make yourself as beautiful as possible."

-taken from SiberianTimes

A reconstruction of the costumes of a man (Verkh-Kaldzhin burial mound 1) and a boy (Ak-Alakha 1 burial mound 2). Reconstruction by E.V. Shumakova (IAE SB RAS); drawing by D.V. Pozdnyakov (IAE SB RAS).

Wooden shield and iron ax hammer on a wooden handle. Ak-Alakha 1 burial mound 1.

An earring (wooden plate pasted with gold foil), cowrie shells, a necklace with animals, and a drawing by Cand.Sci D.V. Pozdnyakov based on the reconstruction of the felt helmet by E.V. Shumakova. Ak-Alakha 1 burial mound 1.