8 days of happiness

[essayel]

Yeah I forgot yesterday, but then yesterday was the type of day where I'd have put something like "I'm happy today because the dog wasn't sick on my shoes". yesterday was just - *snarl*.

But today - I saw this on vashtan's journal and it made me very happy because the song is called Atay, and my story about him [4th C BC Scythian warlord who told Phillip of Macedonia where to stick his phalanxes] is coming along fairly well, though I'm getting frustrated with things like not being able to find out the exact dimensions of the wagon they used to live in, and whether they had musical instruments and whether they WERE as tall as they appear to be from some of the pictorial evidence or is is just artistic exaggeration.

Still the video is fun, if 1500 years too late, and displays the level of ferocity I'm going to have to write a few times *practices grrrring*. It'll make a nice change from schmoop.

Comments

[wulfila.livejournal.com]

Your story sounds better and better - good luck with the research! :)

and whether they WERE as tall as they appear to be from some of the pictorial evidence or is is just artistic exaggeration.

According to the archeologist who did the guided tour through the Scythian exhibition in Hamburg, the human remains they found (both mummies and skeletons) prove they were, i.e., about as tall on average as modern day people, which would have been quite a bit taller than other populations in antiquity. He said it was a question of nutrition (nomad people would have had the chance to grow up with a diet particularly rich in protein which was not the case for farming-based societies of the same historical period). He claimed if a Scythian in modern-day clothes were standing among us, we probably wouldn't notice.
I do not know if the catalogue gave exact data for the human remains they had on display there (I can try to look it up, for the warrior mummy they showed was definitely from about the right time period for you, only from the wrong location, i.e., Siberia, not Ukraine).

No idea about the exact dimensions of the wagons (as far as I remember, there is an existing wagon you can see pictures of on the homepage of the Hermitage Museum, but I believe it is just a funeral wagon, not one for everyday use, and I have no idea if it is from the right time period and region for your tale).

[wulfila.livejournal.com]

P.S.: Here you are. (http://www.hermitagemuseum.org/html_En/03/hm3_2_7e.html)

As for the height, I must disappoint you, as the only measurements that I can find right now are for some of the burials of the Arzhan 2 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arzhan) kurgan (7th century BC); this book (http://www.amazon.de/Zeichen-goldenen-Greifen-Wilfried-Menghin/dp/3791338552/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1241541564&sr=8-1) (p. 86 ff.) gives the heights of two men as about 170 and 171 cm and that of two women as 161 and 162 cm. Apparently, no heights are given for the bodies of the 4th and 3rd century Pazyryk burials, but I do remember that the aforementioned archeologist claimed the woman whose closing we saw in the exhibition had been "almost 2 meters tall".

[essayel.livejournal.com]

My friend yakalskovich went to the same exhibition when it was in Munich. It sounds as though it was FANTASTIC.

Thanks so much for the links. I have bought what books I can afford, and a couple I couldn't really, but most of them seem very concerned with the decorative arts and everyday life is much less important. That funerary wagon you mention is almost exactly the same dimensions as the Victorian funeral bier in the museum where I work, so I'd think was built expressly for that single use. 40 days[approx] between death and burial is what Herodotus mentions which would be enough time to make the small wagon from scratch or cut a domestic one down to size.

You're perfectly right about the difference in heights between the peasant farmer population and the nomadic pastoralist/warrior elite. Sadly I can't remember the title of the book. I'll have to rake out my notes.

The pectoral on the front of the book is what got me into this. I saw those two men squabbling over making a sheepskin jacket and immediately had to account for them, why they were doing it and who they were. I've never been daft enough to start a project like this before. Really bad news for my bank account and bookshelves and sanity but occasionally one comes across a gem like this (http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d41/Essayel/Ataiascoin.jpg). It's very unlikely that that is an actual portrait but - well developed musculature, just got out of bed hair etc - it would be nice if it was.

[wulfila.livejournal.com]

The exhibition was fantastic indeed (I went there three times because I could not get enough) and gave me the idea for the story I am currently working on (not quite as serious and sophisticated a project as yours).

It's very unlikely that that is an actual portrait but - well developed musculature, just got out of bed hair etc - it would be nice if it was.

It would be nice indeed, and basing your hero's appearance on it will certainly not do any harm. At least, it looks very realistic for a picture on a coin (right down to the gorytos).

And I like your idea to account for the sheepskin squabblers - now I am even more curious than before in regard to your story. So, good luck with it!

[essayel.livejournal.com]

I'm hoping that, at some stage, that exhibition will come to the UK. In the meantime, books and the internet fill in quite a lot of gaps and, if necessary, I can always put a disclaimer at the beginning.

Now I just need to get the words on the page! Always the 2nd hardest thing to do [the hardest is editing them off again afterwards].

[vashtan.livejournal.com]

4th C BC Scythian warlord who told Phillip of Macedonia where to stick his phalanxes]

My team at work now knows for sure I'm a maniac. That was the giggle. Fabulous. Very funny, and I want to read the story, and YES ULYTAU FOR EVERYBODY!

[essayel.livejournal.com]

Ulytau are brilliant. I've been spreading the word about them.

Atay, Aday, Ataia, whoever, is barely known but as I have dug around I've found that he had tall tales attached to him - how he lassoed the King of Istria, for instance. So because it's nice to see a hero through someone else's eyes I've invented a somewhat baffled Greek metal worker who can interact with him [in all kinds of ways] for about 60 years. It'll be a LOT of writing though.

When I watched the video I actually squeaked with surprise because last year I wrote this:

The little horses broke into a scrabbling gallop and Anatolios clung on to the rider, wincing as his groin was driven against the wooden framework of the saddle. He frowned, puzzled, as the leader of the troop raised his bow over his head, string uppermost, and swept it from side to side. The bunched horsemen immediately began to spread out, the furthermost riding forward until their line arced across the plain like the horns of an ox.

It was nice to see it in action. I'll have to get that film.

[vashtan.livejournal.com]

Write it! It sounds fabulous! (And will make me want to write in the same geography... I'm so easily distracted...).

Oh my friendslist rocks. They write all those great, great things.

*Loves*

[essayel.livejournal.com]

My friends list seems, collectively, to be able to achieve just about anything. I feel privileged to have it.

[vashtan.livejournal.com]

We should have a flist appreciation day. :)

[britalone.livejournal.com]

Love the video, is a clip from a film? And the music is great. So you're writing about Scythia and Macedonia? Crumbs, I haven't encountered them since school way back when!!

[essayel.livejournal.com]

Not sure what the film is but I'd love to see it.

I made the classic mistake of falling in love with a pectoral torc (http://www.brama.com/news/press/thumbs/scythian_pectoral1.jpg) from a period of history about which I knew virtually nothing [other than what I'd learned in school] and deciding I had to tell a story about its manufacture.

So here (http://www.brama.com/news/press/thumbs/scythian_pectoral2.jpg) are my two main characters, arguing over how best to make a sheepskin coat - the one on the right even has a needle and thread in his hand. One is a soldier who became almost an emperor and the other is the metal worker who eventually made the torc.

Sadly most of the archaeological reports are in Ukrainian. :(

[britalone.livejournal.com]

Wow, that is indeed a thing of beauty. You picked out those two characters and made up a story about them? I'm chatting to a clever lady!
Do you think they saw the two dragons eating the horse? ;o) Or is that symbolic of one empire defeating another?
As you can see, I'm out of my depth here!

[essayel.livejournal.com]

Anyone can make up a story. It's when it comes to committing to writing them down that I have problems.

There are places in the desert where fossilised bones of dinosaurs, and their nests and eggs, can be found on the surface. The variety of dinosaur had a head with an eagle-like beak and it would be easy for people to see the skeletons and say "Oh wow, look, a HUGE four legged eagle!!" and since eagles have wings, bingo, that's a gryphon! Griffin, however you want to spell it. The Scythians seem to have loved them and put them on all kinds of things.