Burial Customs

Scythian burial customs varied across the northern Black Sea steppe and the wider Eurasian grasslands during the first millennium BCE. The Pontic Scythians of the northern Black Sea region and eastern Saka communities shared some broad features, including mound burials and offerings for the dead, but they belonged to distinct regional histories. The Pazyryk graves, for example, are Altai evidence, not a model for every Scythian funeral. Nor do these earlier graves establish one continuous burial tradition extending into the later Indo-Scythian kingdoms.

Accounts by Greek and Roman writers describe funeral rites, while excavated tombs reveal chambers, bodies, animals, and offerings. The most elaborate burials belonged to rulers and other wealthy people.

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Preparing the dead and mourning

Herodotus describes the preparation of a dead king: the body was opened, filled with aromatic materials, sewn closed and covered with wax. It was then carried through the ruler’s territory. He also describes ordinary funerals in which the deceased was taken among friends over many days, with food offered during the visits. Mourning thus brought a household into contact with a wider community.

The funeral of a king was described on a larger scale. The body was carried through the king’s territory, and people encountered on the route expressed grief through acts of self-injury, including cutting an earlobe or piercing a hand with an arrow.

Chambers, coffins, and mounds

A kurgan is a burial mound built over a grave. In the Pontic steppe, graves could include wooden chambers or structures described as resembling log cabins, with felt on the floor and roofs made from layers of wood, bark, and moss. The dead might be placed in a coffin made from a hollowed tree trunk. Other tombs used underground chambers reinforced with stone, showing that construction varied by place and the resources available.

The royal tomb at Kul-Oba, near Kerch in eastern Crimea, illustrates one stone-built form. Constructed around 400 to 350 BCE, its nearly square chamber measured about 4.6 by 4.2 metres, and its stepped vault rose about 5.3 metres. The timber ceiling may have echoed the form of a felt tent and was decorated with gold plaques. Greek masons from nearby Panticapaeum may have helped build the tomb, a reminder that Pontic burial places could combine local practices with the skills of neighbouring Greek communities.

Earth, sod and sometimes stone covered the burial chamber to form a mound. Larger monuments required workers to gather material, build the chamber and raise the covering. Their visible scale marked a place in the landscape long after the funeral and displayed the resources available to an elite household.

Goods, animals, and social rank

Objects placed with the dead could include clothing, weapons, vessels, jewellery, food, and drink. Their range suggests that mourners equipped the deceased with possessions thought suitable for life after death. The amount and quality of these goods also displayed status: elite burials held more lavish objects and could include the dead person’s household attendants as well as horses.

At Kul-Oba, the principal man lay on a wooden couch wearing a pointed felt headdress and a gold neck ornament weighing 461 grams. Weapons and other precious objects were set apart nearby. A woman, possibly his wife or concubine, was placed in a cypress-wood and ivory sarcophagus. The tomb also contained a third person interpreted as an attendant, horse bones, cauldrons with lamb bones, and amphorae bearing traces of wine. Clothing, provisions and attendants brought aspects of an elite household into the burial chamber.

Archaeological patterns in less lavish graves also show differences in the objects selected. Some graves of men contained weapons such as swords, spears, bows, and arrow cases. Some graves of women contained beads, earrings, spindle whorls, and mirrors. Funeral-feast remains include animal bones, local vessels, and imported Greek wine containers.

Horses had a prominent place in some funerals. Accounts describe slaughtered horses placed in grave shafts, while royal burials could include horses and other members of the deceased’s entourage. A Greek account also reports a later rite for a dead king: a year after the funeral, people returned to increase the mound and placed 50 horses, each with a dead warrior, over it. Herodotus presents the rite as an exceptional royal commemoration.

Eastern Saka burials in the Altai

The Pazyryk burials provide a distinct eastern comparison. Located in the Altai Mountains, these Saka and related archaeological remains include wooden burial chambers covered by cairns of boulders and stones. The main Pazyryk barrows are dated to the fourth and third centuries BCE. Water that entered some chambers froze, and the ice preserved materials such as felt, textiles, wooden objects, and horse equipment that would usually decay.

At Ukok, within the Altai region, a woman’s burial dated to the fifth century BCE contained a coffin hollowed from a Siberian larch trunk and six sacrificed horses in elaborate harness. Her body had been carefully prepared with peat and bark and laid on its side. The clothing, headdress, and other objects in the chamber reveal the care taken in arranging the burial.

Other Pazyryk tombs contained more than one person and groups of horses. In barrow 5, despite earlier looting, excavators found the remains of a man and a woman, nine horses, and parts of a wagon. The accompanying carpets, felt goods, and horse trappings show how equipment and household objects could be included alongside human and animal burials. The exceptional survival of such organic materials is due in part to freezing.

Rites after burial

Some accounts describe cleansing after a funeral. They report that people washed their heads, while men used a small steam tent heated by hot stones. Cannabis was reportedly placed on the stones, and women used a scented paste made from plant materials. The cleansing followed the burial within the sequence described by the ancient writer.

Pazyryk barrow 2 contained a small wooden tent frame and copper vessels with stones bearing traces of burning. Published accounts identify cannabis seeds and also report coriander and sweet clover in associated plant material. Heating plants on stones could produce smoke within the small enclosure. The equipment is interpreted as ritual fumigation in this Altai burial setting.

For the wider setting, see Scythian daily life.