Bog Myrtle & Peat

The elk has a twist in his middle so that his head and shoulders are upright but his rump is upside down. It looks like he’s fallen and he’s trying to stand up – there’s a feeling of bambi on ice, but there’s also an extra dynamism and excitement to this twisting design which suggests that he’s doing it on purpose. Is he simply moving at speed and in the chaos of panic? Are we seeing him from multiple angles at once? This design is locked inside a rippling band of gold which can’t be more than four inches wide; it’s a tight constriction, and it’s hard to imagine how any more movement or energy could be crammed into such a tiny space. 

Many of the animals are turning like this in an exhibition of Scythian gold at the National Museum of Kazakhstan in Astana. Horses, stags, leopards and goats are twisted in the middle, and the outcome is always the same; an overwhelming stomach-punch of excitement and vigour. Some of these animals are more stylised than others – they have roundels or spirals to brighten and highlight certain joints and flowing-togethers of form. The most famous Scythian representations of antlers are more like a row of knitted loops which resemble the steam which trails behind an onrushing locomotive. They’re real, and yet fuzzy around the edges too.

There are some more fanciful creatures in the exhibition. There are shapeshifting birds and impish, ambiguous curls of arms and legs which merge and diverge in careful, well-planned symmetry. Most of these figures are solid gold, but many are wood carvings overlaid with gold leaf. One is an eerily inscrutable creature called “cat predator head” (мысық жыртқыш басы) – the gold has all but fallen off, and now the black heart of the object is revealed in wicked, leprous patches. It’s enough to give you a cold shiver.

Away from these elaborations, the thrust is only perfection; animals which have been beautifully observed and represented in rich and shimmering gold. Even where they’ve been twisted or stylised to fit a specific requirement, there’s care and attention in every muscle-bulge, widened eye and flaring tail.

I heard about the Scythians at school, but only as the obscure enemies of ancient Persia. The Greeks knew these nomadic people as hippemulgi, a derogatory term which meant “the horse-sucklers”. The Scythians were the ultimate horsemen – elite light cavalry who knew the value of dressing to impress. This golden elk was originally designed to ornament the hilt of a sword, but many of the objects in Astana were originally used to decorate riding tack. The Romans deployed Scythian auxiliaries wherever the fighting was hottest and hardest, but I always found it difficult to imagine their lives on the ancient Eurasian steppe which runs all the way from Mongolia to Hungary. In fact, the word Scythian is an unhelpfully clumsy term which covers a vast geography and time period, obscuring a wealth of fascinating detail and nuance. 

Most of the gold in Astana is from the Saka people – the local branch of the wider Scythian tradition from around 400BC. These artefacts mean a tremendous amount to the people of Kazakhstan because they represent a bright, exciting rebuttal of the Soviet credo that life in Central Asia only began when Russia arrived. Even thirty years after the collapse of the USSR, people in Kazakhstan are busily engaged in making a nation for themselves. The impulse towards patriotism is noisy and nervous and sometimes feels more like a cult than the slightly embarrassed self-assurance we take for granted in the west. But in the hour I stood in this exhibition and looked at these artefacts, a trickle of people came to have their photographs taken – not just at the feet of the iconic “Golden Man” (which is something like the Kazakh equivalent of the Sutton Hoo findings), but also in and around the golden animals which are displayed in rows and columns of well-lit cases. 

Fathers had come to be photographed with their kids alongside these objects; small groups of young men took selfies with the elk and the lions as a backdrop. Almost all of these people were men because this is manly history; it reeks of hunting and fighting and the agonised triumph of blood. It’s a matter of pride to modern Kazakhs that their ancestors were feared – Scythians are an exemplar in a russo-asian world which still takes strength and resilience seriously. We giggle at Putin when he’s photographed riding topless on horseback, but our laughter has an edge of nerviness about it. Expressions of hyper-masculinity make us feel uncomfortable in the west – we sometimes laugh because we’re frightened.

These artefacts are for all Kazakh people, but men don’t usually volunteer to engage with the nerdiness of archaeology unless it touches a deeper pattern of self-awareness. This is a history of power “for the lads”, and if these objects have lost their original animistic symbolism under the broadest umbrella of ancient Tengrism, they’re still richly available for reinterpretation. In fact, recent research suggests that the famous “Golden Man” might actually have been a woman – that possibility is not being ignored or overlooked by Kazakh men. Hard men love hard women; there are rich female narratives here, it simply happens to be guys who crowd around them.

I love this elk because he’s a window into a world of nature, spirituality and imagination, but I have no personal connection to the craftsmen who made this wonderful, energetic ornament. It may even have been made in Greece, but the Kazakhs seem to regard these connections to Scythian culture as a crucial expression of place and heredity – a tradition of toughness and masculinity which belongs to them as part of a wider confederation of Turkic cultures. I found excitement and immediacy in the flex and twist of the elk’s legs, but there’s also new life and fresh meaning to be discovered in these figures – a fully enabled natural world with claws and teeth and a desire to use them.