3D reconstruction of Salt Man 4's clothing

Stumbled across this on Google recently:  Salt Man 4 (405-380 BCE): computer reconstruction of clothes and accessories.  This reconstruction by Aleksei Moskvin provides a much clearer view of many details that might be difficult to interpret for those of us who can only look at the mummy through the odd online photograph.  Of note:

-  The mummy wears a round cloak similar to those sported by Cappadocians in the Persepolis reliefs, but it's made of animal fur and is fastened with cords at the neck instead of a fibula.

-  The tunic is woven in a single cross-shaped piece, including the sleeves, then stitched along the undersides of the sleeves and down the sides of the body.  Its neckline is straight, not round, and is quite wide.  Its body is also wide and not flared.

-  The trousers have a lot of extra fabric between the legs.  This makes a lot of sense if you keep in mind that they were developed for riding horses; this cut would ensure that no seams are strained and busted when sitting astride the horse.

-  The sash appears to have weights sewn into the ends.  Other details throws all my old ideas about how the sash was constructed into doubt.

-  The mummy had a pair of small clay pots tied to the belt by cords looped tightly below the rims of the pots' openings.

-  A knife in a curved sheath was also tied to the belt, which I had not noticed before, but I'm pleased to see that it's more-or-less in keeping with the way I wore my knife at Marathon 2015 and Plataea.

Dye-fading tests by Elysse Meredith

I stumbled across this article just this morning:  The Great 2020 Dyeing Fade Test.  It consists of comparisons of lightfastness between different dyes on linen, wool and silk, with illustrations of what the dyed fabrics look like after different periods of sun exposure.  By the end of the year, the wools were reduced to drab pastels.  Interestingly, the linens all became different hues of off-white - except for linen dyed with indigo, which faded somewhat but was still a nice old denim color by the end.

While I don't expect anyone to take up this suggestion, it would be interesting to see a member of Xerxes' army at Plataia next year wearing clothes dingy, sunbleached and patched after a hard year of campaigning.

Product review: Two possible belt straps

For almost eight years now, I've been pondering how best to replace the veg-tan weapon belts I wore at Marathon 2011 and 2015.  Given my suspicions that the Achaemenids tanned leather with fat or oil, as did Eastern Mediterranean peoples before them, I decided last year that my best option would be a strap of buff leather.  This is made from cowhide (perhaps originally water buffalo or European bison hide, thus the name) which is tanned primarily with fish oil in a process similar to German buckskin and American chamois.

An important note:  Like "chamois" leather (named for a species of wild European goat but in the U.S. actually made from domesticated sheep), "buff" leather can be a very misleading term.  Most items sold as being made from "genuine buff leather" appear to have their top grain intact or are finished such that you can't tell.  It makes one wonder what sellers think "buff" means.  When I refer to buff leather, what I mean is cowhide tanned with fish oil in a process that gives it a suede surface and a creamy yellow color (also called buff).  This kind is rare and hard to obtain nowadays.  Most of it in the States goes to the reenactment market, where it's used to make early modern military accoutrements like sword belts.

I've found one person in the U.S. willing to sell unstitched buff by the piece:  Roy Najecki of Najecki Reproductions.  You can read up on ordering it at his Cartridge Pouch/Box Shoulder Carriage page.  Be forewarned that it's not always easy to catch Mr. Najecki on the phone or by e-mail and delivery may take a while, so if you decide to use a buff strap for your belt, order it well ahead of when you need it.

It looks good, and it's heavy and firm yet flexible.  So why wouldn't you decide to use it?  Well, in the description above, you'll hopefully notice something that I overlooked:  Modern buff leather is tanned not only with oil but also sulfur.  This may have something to do with the fact that it smells like burned rubber, and it smells strong.  When I first received my strap last fall, I didn't even want to be in the same room with it.  I've been storing it in the garage ever since then in hopes that the smell would fade.  It has, but it's still very noticeable.  Several folks offered suggestions to ameliorate it, such as washing with saddle soap, and I experimented with small bits cut from one end, but nothing appeared to work.  I'm still on the fence about wearing it in public unless it's become tamer by the next big event.

It's also not cheap, although because belts are so narrow, the $35 per square foot sticker shock isn't as bad as it sounds unless your belt is going to be enormous.  My 1.5x42-inch strap came to $15.31.  The next item I'm reviewing here isn't all that much cheaper.

Chrome-tanned leather such as this Realeather suede belt strap can make a fair substitute for fat-cured leather in appearance and texture.  What more is there to add?  Well, it doesn't smell, and its texture probably won't be be negatively affected by rain to the extent that a natural tannage would be.  The color is a bit darker as you can see, though not as yellowish as lightly-smoked braintan, but the main flaw with this strap is that it's about half the thickness of the buff.  Will it support the weight of a fully-loaded bowcase without sagging a lot or ripping?  I can't confidently state that it will, unless your bow and its case are a lot smaller and lighter than the ones I use (and the Grozer Old Scythian is already one of the smallest I've seen for sale in its price range).

So there you have it.  While either of these will probably look more correct than a veg-tan belt, both have their own major caveats.  The search for a perfect solution continues.

Iranian trousers overview at Book and Sword

Sean Manning yesterday published a look at period trousers geared especially for reenactors who plan to attend Plataea 2021.  It's as comprehensive an article as I've seen and includes details on Chehrabad Salt Man 4's pants, which date to the Achaemenid period and a mere 75-100 years after Plataea.  Sean's recommendations on how you'll want to construct your trousers are bit more specific than mine have been to date.

Cast belt concho

Another item I cast this spring was a concho for a weapon belt.  I've done a number of posts on this subject and I won't go into the background yet again, so here goes.

As with most of my bronzes, I modeled it in Victory Brown.  I formed the cone by rolling out a sheet of wax to roughly 1/10 to 1/12 inch/2-2.5mm thick, cutting a circle, removing a small pie wedge from it, and bringing the cut edges together.  I cut the scalloped edge with an X-Acto and formed the rims around the petals by rolling ultra-thin wax "noodles" and pressing them into place, separating the petals by dragging the tip of a hobby awl between them.

On the back, I attached six wax gates of around 1/8 inch/3mm near the edge and two of perhaps 1/16 inch/1.6mm a bit in from the edge to serve as the rivets (as no rivets are visible on the original's face, I assume they were cast in place on the back, since adding them and then grinding them smooth on the front might undo the peening).  These all branched out from a central main gate of about 1/3 inch/8-9mm.  There were no gates or vents on the model's face.

The back bar was cast straight as a section of one of the thicker gates, with room on either end so angle grinder could cut through without touching either the bar or the concho itself.  Since I had doubts about whether it would cast, I didn't poke holes all the way through for the rivets before casting, but instead just made small pits to serve as guides for the drill press (which has an annoying tendency to slip a bit to one side when first entering).  I then drilled fully through the pits after de-gating, and formed the kink through repeated bending with needlenose pliers and annealing.

BCCC lab tech Nick investment-cast the model using a centrifugal casting machine.  This technique, also called spincasting, allows for very fine and detailed models which are almost guaranteed to cast whole, unlike gravity casting, as the centrifugal force throws the molten metal into every nook and cranny.  It also obviates the need for venting, since the weight of the molten metal being sent into the mold forces the air out the same way, through the pouring gates.

One drawback is that the investment, which as I understand it is basically plaster of paris with some sort of strengthening agent, traps a lot more small bubbles than ceramic slurry does.  Where these bubbles are in contact with the wax, they form little warts all over the model, making finishing more tedious.  You can see one large bubble on the bottom center there, and close examination will reveal the remnants of a number of smaller ones.

On the plus side, the investment is much easier to remove than ceramic shell.  Most of it crumbles away with a dunk in water, that which is left can be softened if necessary with a baking soda solution, mostly scrubbed away, and any remaining traces scraped off with metal tools or buffed off with a wire Dremel brush.

The rims around the petals are almost certainly too prominent.  Going by the OIP drawing, I interpreted them as sort of a gently rounded lip, but because I didn't spend enough time smoothing the noodles down, they instead look high and sharply differentiated from the petals' faces, with crevices that I couldn't successfully polish.  As a result, there's still a significant amount of brown as-cast finish there, giving the face a slightly antiqued appearance.  The dip around the middle cone is probably too deep as well.

Dry-fitting the back bar was the most tedious part of the process, since the rivets were crooked where the met the concho's back, and I still failed to get it perfect.  Once the fit was sufficient, peening the bar into place only took a couple minutes.  I did so with the face resting on a thick carpet on top of concrete, so as not to damage it.

As you can see, after being bent, the back bar sticks out considerably more than the original.  I should have made it only a little bit longer than its desired final length.

As I mentioned before, I think this is a low-strain application, and the thin bar and small rivets will be good enough.  Should they break, a replacement can be silver-soldered on.

If possible, I intend to make a whole new belt with a strap of buff cowhide in place of my old belt's veg-tan.  I will probably still use latigo lace for the time being, however, since it doesn't stretch like fat-cured leather, which is likely to become an issue when supporting the fully-loaded gorytos.

Cast arm fibula

Three years ago, I fabricated an arm fibula out of brass rod.  I was never satisfied with the lack of depth afforded by filing the details into stock that was narrow to begin with, so I've always wanted to replace it with one that was properly cast.

Last semester I took foundry at BCCC again and took the opportunity to make a few more reenactment items.  This one, which I finished up just last week, is wax-cast (as the originals probably were) and based on an example found at the Harvard Art Museum.

Although this is a huge step up from the brass one, I still made a couple of mistakes and compromises.   First, I had been meaning to replicate one from Deve Hüyük, and ran a simple Google search for this purpose, but didn't read the article carefully enough.  This example is of unknown provenance, although the article does point out that it's similar to two Deve Hüyük examples.   All three are of unusually large size, each around 4 inches/10cm long, with "bead and reel" decoration, flared at the base, and having fingers filed in after forging.

I cast it as a blind vent on a larger assembly.  The hand was cast as a bulb.  Unfortunately, I didn't account for shrinkage, resulting in a mushy hole where the wrist should've been, and the bulb fell off during de-gating.  I forged the bulb out into a flared catchplate roughly 1mm thick (finding out, along the way, that the Everdur silicon bronze Bucks uses actually hot-forges nicely).  Luckily, crack lab technician Ray was able to weld the catchplate back on, but the result is a much thinner "wrist" than the original has (it's still thick enough, though).

You'll also note that the proportions are slightly off.  This probably had to do with my inability to sculpt the wax for the beads and reels thin enough, and of course I bent the elbow a little too sharply.  The rough patch on the elbow is a remnant of the chill ball, and I may grind it smoother later on.  The original might have been cast straight and then bent, but I don't think this is the case, since it's slightly thicker where it's bent than immediately above or below.

The other problem that occurred with casting was that the slurry, which is quite thick, apparently failed to flow between most of the very thin wax noodles which formed the reels on my wax positive.  The first pair of reels just below the elbow cast fine. The second cast part of the way.  The rest cast as single thick reels with only a short groove in one or two places around.  This was sufficient as a starting place for me to file the grooves in, but it means that the grooves are sharp and the sides a bit square, unlike the nicely rounded cross section on the original.

The fingers were filed before bending the catchplate over.  It proved too difficult to get the bend in the catchplate to align with the pin, but as you can see, this was a problem with the original as well, so it's perfectly accurate.

I made the hole for the pin with a drill press, unfortunately a bit off-center.  The pin itself is simply a piece of springy 3/32-inch steel welding rod hard-soldered into place.  The original used bronze, but the bronze welding rod at Bucks was too thin and I imagined that brass would contrast unpleasantly with the orangeish Everdur.  In any case iron was also commonly used for arm fibula pins.

Making Scythian boots, part III

The leg lining, attached with a double running stitch.  Tests show that the lining will stiffen the entire area that it's stitched into, so for flexibility and the option of tightening the boot around the ankle, the lining had to be cut off.  Extra rows of quilting within the lined area don't appear to be necessary, but could be added in the future even after the boot is constructed.

Putting stitch holes in the leather layers with just a hobby awl was much easier and faster than with the latigo sole.

Along complex curves or where clamping isn't possible, it's much easier to temporarily pin the leather pieces than to glue them, although this should be avoided when possible.

The foot is attached with two rows of double running stitches, then the leg is slid over the edge of a table to glue up the welt.

Laying the glued pieces out to dry.  Possibly just placing a large book, a plank or other heavy, flat object on the boot while it's still over the table would work best, but it's not that difficult to just arrange it so that the welt sits flush against the leg while drying.

Since the welt is likely to be a high-wear area, I attached it again with two rows of stitching.  The second edge had to be glued up by pinning at roughly two-inch intervals and squeezing glue between the pins (this photo is taken halfway through the process).

It's harder to stitch the second row because it's often hard to see the holes by looking down the boot leg.  As an alternative, one can poke the awl back into the holes and feel where it protrudes, then slide the needle down to where the awl is protruding through the leather.

The toughest part was trying to close the gap at the heel.  Because the welt is attached entirely on the outside, there's a hole where the back end of the sole, the back corners of the foot and the bottom of the welt come together.  I tried to ameliorate this by whipstitching the welt to the sole using the preexisting holes that attach the sole to the foot.  However, perhaps it would be better to put the welt between the sole and foot when they're first being stitched together, before the foot is turned rightside-out.

The finished first boot.  Although it looks okay at first glance, there are several things I don't like about it:

Firstly, the middle of the instep just before it meets the leg is too low and pinches the top of my foot painfully.  This may be the result of my tailoring in part II where I wanted to get rid of excess material around the arch.  I don't think that a softer leather would help, because the linen thread wouldn't stretch (something that must not have been apparent when the felt pattern was loosely basted together) and in any case this foot is already made from the relatively elastic part from the hide's belly.  Only a fuller cut would really help.  Possibly the curved stitch where the instep meets the leg should be cut higher.

Second, the toe is too low.  That angle in the profile is my toenail pressing against the inside.  Again, this may be because I cut away the "excess" length back in part II.  If so, it may indicate that the original Missouri River patterns were, as I first suspect, too small.  It's a very good thing that while I did mark the felt pattern with the revised lines, I didn't trim it, so it still has the pre-tailored shape.  I will have to go through the entire bootmaking process again without the extra trimming and see if I can confirm these suspicions.

Lastly, aesthetically, the brown color is too dark and the "natural" linen thread too light, making for a very odd look with the bright line cutting across the leg just above the ankle.  To achieve this kind of very dark brown, a hide would either have to be heavily dyed or smoked for an excessive amount of time.  I think that a more natural smoked color (buff, goldenrod or golden brown) would make these boots much more plausible for portraying a person of middling economic status.  Many buckskinners say that white leather was historically preferred for special occasions and that most leather would have been smoked - perhaps the Chärchän Man's white boots and red jacket were the equivalent of being buried in a formal suit today.  The fil au chinois "natural" is off-white, whereas unbleached linen and hemp are beige - however, I'm not sure where to find truly unbleached linen thread at this time.  Regular brown may be another acceptable option not because it's necessarily more correct but because it would stand out less.

In conclusion, while I have the basic steps down, it's clear that more experimentation is needed to turn out a pair of wearable boots.

Making Scythian boots, part II

The patterns are taped to the flesh side of the leather at multiple points and traced with a pen (I prefer a red rollerball pen of the kind used for proofreading).  The tape does cause slight degradation of the pattern each time it's used by pulling off some of the felt fibers, but unless you're making large numbers of boots all of the same size, this shouldn't be a problem.

I cut out both sets of uppers at once because I wanted to put the hide away and vacuum my floor, but this isn't necessarily the best order to do it in, for the following reason:

Once one vamp and its matching sole have been cut out, it's time for a final fitting.  Although felt is probably the best commonly-available material for simulating leather in test fittings, it's not perfect, and in particular it doesn't really simulate the thick leather of the sole.  When the sole approaches 1/4 inch (over 6mm) in thickness, the stitch holes are put in at an angle, emerging from the edge rather than the other side as with a thin felt sole.  Therefore when the finished shoe is turned rightside-out, the upper wraps around the sole and fits in a slightly different manner.  I soon discovered, by basting the upper and sole together, that I'd cut the felt patterns rather too long.  This is, of course, not as bad as if they'd been too short, but refitting is a pain.  I traced the excess while the shoe was still on my foot and took it apart to re-cut.

Everyone's feet are slightly different shapes.  Mine are narrow in the heel and wide across the ball.  A good fitting requires a rather odd shape.  I re-traced the altered upper onto the pattern so that the correction will be permanently incorporated into it.

Finally, it's time to sew up.  I'm using Crazy Crow's five-ply waxed linen cord in "natural," but waxed hemp would probably be more correct for Central Asia, and real sinew is ideal (.  White linen cord from a major craft chain like Michael's would probably be okay since no one will see it - it's certainly no less correct than the latigo, which will be visible.  Artificial sinew and other synthetic materials should be considered a last resort.

Speaking of latigo, it's a very tough material and difficult to pierce with the kind of awl I'm using here.  This is a hobby awl made for light applications.  I am informed by Nadeem Ahmad and Jax Reeder that an awl with a diamond cross section and mushroom handle will make putting holes in the sole much easier.

The finished foot.  Once stitching is completed, the toe is pushed inward and the entire shoe slowly inverted so that the stitching faces inward.  The insole will keep the stitching from touching your foot.  I re-cut the upper perhaps a bit too short, while the sole is still a bit too long and wide, making for an odd fit, but it doesn't yet appear so bad as to be unusable.  Luckily, a single cowhide split should yield enough material for a second pair if the first one doesn't work out.

Making Scythian boots, part I

Background and considerations
Central Asian peoples from at least around 1000 BCE through recent times frequently wore tall pull-on boots.  With modifications to height and toe shape, these were used by Arians, Drangians, Parthians, Black Sea Scythians, possibly Bactrians, and others at least as far east as the Altai.  Kuz'mina ascribes tall boots to the Bronze Age people of the Andronovo culture, widely believed to include the early Indo-Iranians, so it is possible that the ancestors of the Medes and Persians also wore them.

Artwork is scant on construction details, which, of course, probably varied a lot over such a wide expanse of space and time.  Black Sea Scythian boots on several artefacts from Kul Oba are shown with a strap that appears to gather the boot leg tight around the ankle.  The women's decorated boots from Pazyryk have wide bands of woolen braiding in the same location, but these don't appear to fasten or make the boot leg tighter and instead seem to be appliqued into place (strictly, the Kul Oba ankle straps aren't shown with any obvious method of fastening either).  Otherwise boots appear to have no fastening, like wellington or cowboy boots, which are a modern iteration of the same equestrian concept.  The Chärchän Man's surviving boot doesn't appear to have an ankle strap, but is seamed between the foot and leg.  On balance, I would call the evidence inconclusive.

Since I have thin heels and wide toes, my heels tend to lift out of any pull-on boots that are wide enough to fit my toes into.  I'm making some felt mock-ups and plan to tie straps around the ankles to see if they can be left as separate pieces or need to be partly stitched down.  On Medo-Persian low shoes, the strap has to be attached, since if it rides up even a little, it will be above the top edge of the shoe, and thus fail to serve its purpose of tightening the shoe around the ankle so it stays on the foot.  It doesn't seem to me that tall pull-on boots would have such a strict requirement.  On the other hand, as noted above, stitching the strap down all the way around would make it impossible to adjust, which could well result in a worst-of-both-worlds setup in which the strap impedes putting on and taking off the boot but isn't tight enough to provide good fit around the ankle.

Sergei Rudenko states that the Pazyryk women's boots are seamed at the back, which makes them sound similar to Plains moccasins.  Some Plains boot moccasin patterns may be ideal, but the ones most readily available to me are laced and in such case, I figure I might as well wing it when it comes to fitting the leg, since lace-up shafts won't fit in the same manner as pull-on ones.  The Pazyryk boot legs were open in back, but artwork seems to show that most Scythian boot legs were closed.

The commercial cowhide split I'm using is an inexpensive substitute for a fat-cured leather, but both it and the German-tanned buckskin I used for my gorytos are quite lightweight and floppy.  I expect that leather boots had linings to stiffen the legs and prevent too much sagging, and luckily, I have some lining leather on-hand.  A double layer of the outer material or a felt lining would also work.  Whatever the material, a few rows of stitching to add a little bit of quilting effect should increase stiffness, ensuring that the lining and upper behave as one piece of material.  For cold regions and seasons, a dense shearling hide might get by without an added liner or could even be the liner for a de-grained leather outer.

Soles might have been a single or double layer of soft leather, thick felt, or rawhide.  Rudenko describes one of the Pazyryk soles as "chamois" (which may mean chamois goat or just soft suede - I don't know what the original Russian word was) and another as having "a heel of thick (2mm.) rigid leather."  However, one look at the ornamented Pazyryk soles shows that they weren't made for a great deal of walking, and were likely intended just to show off while sitting or while riding side-saddle.

I'd prefer rawhide, but it works best with special processing such as de-stretching, and most of it on the market tends to be either very thin (goat hide, drumheads), too stiff (most bleached sides and boiled chew toys) or sold in costly whole sides (heavy cowhide, bison, etc.).  There are apparently rawhide soles commercially available, but I failed to find any before just ordering some latigo pieces.  Better luck next time!  Latigo is heavy wax-stuffed leather used for saddlery and other weather-resistant outdoor equipment, and the most common material for modern "hardsole" moccasins.  White latigo looks like bleached rawhide but is much more flexible.  Moccasin-makers around the Web have opined on the pros and cons of rawhide versus latigo with regards to durability, ease of sewing, comfort, traction and so on.  But either one should be acceptable for occasional reenactment use; rawhide simply has the edge as being more historical.  I wouldn't blame anyone for sticking with soft soles, though; they would be less protective, but far easier to stitch and more flexible if you prefer that.

Hemp and wool thread (used in Pazyryk felt stockings), sinew (used to attach the Pazyryk boot soles) and linen would all be appropriate stitching materials.  Artificial sinew and other synthetics would work as well.  For the final construction, I'm currently planning to use all waxed linen, since it's the only historical material I have on hand:  heavy cord for the soles, and light cord or multiple rows of thread to assemble the uppers.

Making the pattern

Assembled materials ready for measuring and cutting, including felt for the mock-up.  The spool of artificial sinew, next to the scissors, was my initial choice for assembly before I obtained some linen cord.

The first step is to find the correct size.  I normally wear a men's size 9 wide, so this is what I initially went for in measuring and cutting.  The Missouri River pattern is unfolded, laid out, and pieces of tracing paper are laid over the desired sections and weighted with various objects.  Trace with a pencil or ballpoint pen so the ink won't bleed through the tracing paper onto the original patterns.

In Plains moccasins, the topline is not a hole but just a T-shaped cut; the moccasin extends to the ankle and has a lace running through slits, and a tongue is sewn into the front.  Here, I'll be cutting away material from the topline to make that swooping seam seen in the Chärchän and Pazyryk boots.  No tongue is needed because the foot will be protected by the boot leg.

The paper copies of the original patterns are pinned to the felt, traced in ink and cut.  The felt pattern should become the permanent pattern cut for my own feet if everything goes well.

As recommended, I added a welt between the sole and upper for the first attempt, but have since decided that this made things needlessly complicated, especially since I'm going to be using insoles.  After cutting out a nicely rounded topline, I attempted to measure its perimeter with a tape measure and then cut a big rectangle for the leg.  Then I stitched it all up loosely with dental floss.

It turns out the size 9 fit FAR too small on me, being too short, too narrow, and too flat in the toe.  It may be partly that these moccasins are designed to be worn without socks or insoles, or they may just run smaller than they should, I don't know.  Add to that, a true fat-cured leather would stretch with wear.

After two more attempts, I now have a pattern that will accommodate my stocking foot and an orthotic insole comfortably, made by combining the back half of a size 10 with the front of a size 11.  In fact, it's a bit too wide now, though a good length.  I don't know if the welt running up the back was used in period, but it's one way to accomplish a flat seam without overlapping the edges and causing a raised edge that could chafe the achilles tendon.  Of course, the welt itself could prove irritating due to being an extra-thick, less flexible part, and any kind of raised seam would be.

The next step will be to cut all the stitches I've just done, do some slight final adjustments to the foot and sole pieces, and then start tracing onto leather.

Update: Cappadocian cloaks

Two years ago, I wrote that the Cappadocians wore square cloaks.  Experiments with unstitched fabric demonstrate that I'm an idiot.  Since only two corners are visible hanging in the front, and the lower hem appears to wrap straight around the body, the Cappadocian cloaks were apparently semicircular.

This will make cutting and (if necessary) finishing the edges a bit more complicated.  The semicircular version of the Roman paenula was similar, if longer - going by the Persepolis reliefs, the Cappadocian cloak was shorter than the knee-length tunic - so we should be safe using a paenula pattern.  Together with the arm fibula, this is what I intend to wear as rainwear to Marathon 2015.

Tiara felting instructional at A Magyar Jurta

Thanks Giannis Kadoglou for this link. Scythian-inspired Felt Hat It should be useable with the Persian tiara pattern.

Fabricating an arm brooch

Marathon 2015 is set for seven days in late October and early November, and Jevon Garrett informs me that rain is possible.

It's easy to pick gear for summer weather, not so much for rain and cold.  Among reenactors, it's popular to wear tightly-woven wool cloaks with natural lanolin.  I've said in the past that "Persians didn't wear cloaks as we know them," but more recently I've come across statements indicating that arm fibulae have been found in Iran proper.  This means that commoners may indeed have worn cloaks, as opposed to kandyes, which are believed to be status items.

These fibulae were almost certainly wax cast, but since I'm taking foundry for the first time this semester, I didn't want to test the professor's patience by asking to do too many personal projects.  Luckily, I could picture a method of creating one by hand which, while not strictly accurate, should be passable.

We start with two thicknesses of brass rod, 3/16 for the body and 1/16 for the pin.  The body piece started at three inches and ended up two and a quarter inches.

I don't trust myself to file the grooves straight to begin with, so instead I etched shallow channels to act as guides for the files.  Above, the rode is masked with permanent marker and covered with wax at the tips.

Some floss is lashed on with wax and the brass goes into a ferric chloride bath for about 40 minutes.

The string fell off, so I recovered the brass with rubber gloves and washed it in nail polish remover.  Here's the initial etch.

A combination of fine files deepen and round out the grooves.  I also ground the middle slightly thinner with the stone bit on the Dremel.

The brass rod is thin enough to be coiled by hand, but I didn't get it nice and even, and it hardened quickly.  That can be fixed.

A little jury-rigged way of holding the pieces while they're annealed with a butane torch.  Yes, the torch is on; it just doesn't burn brightly.  Those rippling air currents do show up on the backdrop though.

After annealing, it was easy to correct the coil of the pin.

Repeated annealing and hammering and the catchplate begins to assume its shape.

On the originals, the pin was often iron (usually corroded away) and emerged from a hole in the middle of one end.  I have no tool that would make drilling a hole in the middle feasible.  Instead the pin is soldered into a groove in the side.  This is also why it's brass instead of iron or steel.  This step and the next one should actually be done with two hands.

When the groove is deep and wide enough to accept the pin, you can begin adjusting how the pin will fit into the catchplate.  Enough of the catchplate needs to be folded over that a casual bump won't dislodge the pin.  I plied, hammered and re-annealed it for an hour, and it's still shallower than it should be, but also more curled.  This luckily gives it a bit of a snap without locking it into place irreversibly, but you can't count on that happening..

Widening the groove with a riffler.  I also wound up filing the pin slightly for a better fit.

Once the fit was flush, I dipped the base of the pin into flux and got help holding the pin in the groove with pliers while I applied torch and solder.

The finished product after burnishing.  At this point one could continue filing or etching individual fingers, which I may do in the future.

Leather and shoes, further updates

I've been in a lengthy and very informative discussion about leathers over at RAT, and it seems that grained leather may be on the table again.  This is not inconsistent, since what I've read from brain-tanners is only that it's not easy to get the same softness from a hide without scraping the grain off; they never said it was impossible.  Member Ivor (Crispianus) brought to my attention two things I found surprising:  a modern repro of an Iron Age shoe, tanned with fish oil with the outer grain intact, and a detail from a piece of Hellenistic statuary showing a pair of Iranian shoes from the side.

It is a scan from Skulpter des Hellenismus.  It shows that the ankle shoe in this period was made not from a one-piece upper (a la the Plains moccasins and Hedeby shoes I'd been using as a model), but from a separate vamp and quarter.  This allows the quarter to rise as high or low as you like, whereas a one-piece upper has to have extensions sewn on if more than a certain height is desired.

(It further means that the Minnetonka moccasin boots are less inaccurate than I thought, and with a little modification, are actually the only off-the-shelf shoes I've seen that are anything like acceptable.  I managed to pull the heels off mine recently, but since they only appear to be available in soft sole now, you could just glue or tunnel-stitch your own leather/rawhide soles without having to potentially rip the bottoms up.)

For comparison, I went searching for high-res pictures of the Alexander Sarcophagus, which is one of the best sources for Persian clothing at the transition of the Achaemenid and Hellenistic periods.  In the restored-color versions by Vinzenze Brinkmann and Ulrike Koch-Brinkmann, the straps appear to encircle the ankle like those on Median shoes on the reliefs at Persepolis, but without the "branches" going down the sides.  However, there is an extreme closeup over at Wikipedia which appears to show a faint vertical ridge on the central figure's shoe.

With regards to the Persepolis reliefs, Ivor pointed out that the vertical branches could easily be interpreted as strips of reinforcement running down the front edges of the quarter.  The ankle strap itself - as he demonstrated by sewing an example - was probably just stitched to the top edge of the quarter rather than running through slits (as per moccasins).

The later example above is slightly modified, with the lace running through a single pair of eyelets, essentially making it a very simple chukka.  In this configuration, the eyelets are under much more stress than in the first, since they are pulled forward to hold the top around the ankle, whereas when running the thong around the ankle (either through slits or sewing it on) doesn't pull the shoe leather, but merely squeezes it against the ankle, like a drawstring.  Therefore, the later configuration would do well to have a reinforced eyelet.

"Tracht der Achaimeniden" illustrations available online

Sean Manning of Book and Sword alerted me that Dr. Stefan Bittner has put the illustrations to his thesis online.  This is a great collection of line drawings copying and clarifying a wide variety of ancient illustrations of Achaemenid clothing and military equipment, very helpful if you find monochromatic rock carvings a little unclear.

Revised recommendations on leather goods

Based on my last post regarding the unlikelihood of vegetable-tanned leather in Achaemenid times, here is what I've come up with for leather goods:

Materials
Personally I would accept brain-tan or the nearest affordable equivalent as a substitute for other fat-cured leathers.  The nearest affordable equivalent may include chrome-tanned "buckskin" or glove-tanned if it's of similar physical properties, but, as always, check your group's authenticity standards before buying.  I advise against suede or roughout (which are harder to clean; additionally, I believe machine splits are a 19th-century development) and, obviously, anything with an overtly unnatural finish.

I consider rawhide a given for any period.  Also, if you already have pieces of kit in veg-tan that you've sunk a lot of money and work into, my feeling is keep them.  Again, ask your group's leaders.

Gorytoi
Archaeological finds have indicated that they were made of soft leather supported with a wood spine or frame.  So use fat-cured or equivalent.  I imagine the type seen at Persepolis and frequently on Greek pottery, with a straight bottom and curved upper edge - the standard for Persian soldiers in our period - had a curved wooden spine sewn into the upper edge.  This also means that the floppy-looking fringe seen hanging from gorytoi in Greek battle art may in fact be the same fitted cover seen at Persepolis; it is attached to the gorytos at the top edge, or just draped over it during battle.

Using soft leather also makes it unlikely that they were painted, unless the ancients had some method of painting dye directly onto the leather which I have been unable to discover (painting dye is a real technique but I'm told it's a modern one).  The crenellated borders shown in Greek art would probably have to be appliqued in a contrasting leather or fabric, which is done most easily before the main seam is closed.

Scabbards
Wood, or some other hard, solid block of material carved to shape (as in the ivory one from Takht-i Sangin).  The akinakes scabbard is attested as having been covered in embossed sheet metal.  Otherwise, plain wood will make a good surface for carving.  I could also imagine that a facing of glued fabric or parchment (thin rawhide) was used to add strength.  All these materials will accept paint better than cured/tanned leather, too.  Possibly, lighter sheaths (as for belt knives) were rawhide, maybe with a soft leather or fabric cover.

Shields
Shields of stick-and-hide construction, like the crescent ("taka") and pavise ("spara"), should almost certainly be rawhide, which resists puncture and cutting better than leather and which was used in the Dura-Europos shields that share the same construction method.  I have heard it suggested to paint a thin layer of wax on top of the finished shield to prevent water absorption.

Shoes
The Persepolis reliefs and Alexander Sarcophagus seem to disagree about the presence of separate soles on the ankle-strapped shoes.  It may be that both interpretations are correct:  Again, I am reminded of these shoes' resemblance to Plains moccasins, which were produced both with integral (soft) and separate soles.  Separate soles may have been soft leather or hard rawhide.  The lack of additional soles on the shoes at Persepolis may explain why it was desirable to have a band running under the middle of the shoe, for arch support.  In this use I'd be willing to accept veg-tanned leather for rawhide for expediency.

Ankle straps were fairly wide, and were likely soft leather thongs.  I believe the greater width compared to modern leather laces was necessary because the latter are made of a firmer material (albeit not "rawhide" as they are often labeled; real rawhide is too stiff for shoelaces).

Other
Herodotus mentions Persians as having leather clothing (I.72) and this is plausible if it is a very soft buckskin-like material, though I believe that the assertion that leather made up all or even the majority of their clothing in Cyrus' day is an exaggeration; they had, after all, been settled in old Elam for several centuries and raised plenty of sheep.  So I still recommend fabric first.  Bags and pockets may also be either fabric or soft leather.

In the absence of moldable leather, drink containers should either be soft (like wineskins) or ceramic.  Most of the clay canteens from Persepolis were flattened spheres with short necks, essentially like modern ones, even sometimes having cord ears (see OIP 69); those without ears could be carried in bags.  I'm open to the possibility of gourd or wooden canteens, but won't actually recommend them until seeing some evidence.

There is only one item which I haven't found a solution for yet:  the weapon belt.  Because it has to support the weight of a fully-loaded bowcase, it must be a firm material with little stretch, so fat-cured leather would seem a bad choice, but it also has to flex to be worn like a belt, so rawhide doesn't look like a great idea either.  In lieu of good evidence about what they were actually made of, I must continue to recommend veg-tan for this use alone.

Peoples of the empire: The Sogdians

Geographical definition
Sogdia or Sogdiana (O.P. Suguda, Av. Sughdha) was midway along the Zeravshan River, bordered on the northeast by the Massagetae, some ways to the west of Chorasmia and separated from Bactria in the south by the Oxus River.  In terms of modern geography, it roughly occupied the confluences of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

History
The Sogdians appear to have arrived in their historical homeland in the early Iron Age; Macaranda - better known as Samarkand, and the most important city in the area - is believed to have been founded between 650 and 550 (the site had been occupied earlier).  Unlike their immediate northerly neighbors, the Amyrgian Scythians and Massagetae, the Sogdians were settled farmers; they traded crops to the nomads in exchange for livestock.

Étienne de La Vaissière says that Cyrus conquered Sogdia around 540 and established Cyropolis, "the farthest extent of the Persian empire of the northeast."  In the Behistun inscription Darius mentions Sogdia among the lands he ruled, but no mention is made of it rebelling.

Herodotus lists the Sogdians with the Parthians, Chorasmians and Arians as the 16th tax district, assessed at 300 talents yearly.  At Persepolis, they are with and indistinguishable from the Chorasmians; the group brings an akinakes, hammers (I think), loop-shaped things and a horse.  In Darius' Susa palace inscription, he states that the lapis lazuli and carnelian used therein came from Sogdia.  The country did not, apparently, have its own satrap, but was governed from Bactria.

In 494 during the late stages of the Ionian Revolt, the Persians sacked the Apollonic oracle at Didyma in Ionia.  There are claims that the Branchidae (the line of priests who tended the oracle) had medized.  They are supposed to have either been deported to Sogdia at this time, or relocated there when Ionia was retaken by the Greeks (which would indicate their complicity in the temple's destruction) following the failure of Xerxes' invasion of mainland Greece.

In Herodotus VII the Sogdians serve in Xerxes' army as infantry under "Azanes son of Artaeus."  He does not mention which if any battles they participated in.

Events in Sogdia are poorly-known for the rest of the fifth century.  In Arrian's Anabasis III.8 Sogdians fight at Gaugamela under Bessus, who commanded the eastern cavalry.  The satrap of Bactria, the man whom Alexander held responsible for Darius III's death, fled to Sogdia in the face of Alexander's campaign of revenge in 329.  There, his courtiers Spitamenes and Datames surrendered him to Alexander's general Ptolemy after the Greek army managed to cross the Oxus.

In Sogdia, according to Quintus Curtius, Alexander encountered the town of the Branchidae, and had the entire population killed and their town destroyed for their ancestors' perfidy.  There seems to be doubt about the veracity of this event.  Alexander made Samarkand his regional base, and it was there in 328 that he killed Cleitus the Black.

The next significant incident that our ancient sources care to describe is the siege of the Sogdian Rock, a nearby fortress to which Bessus' companion Oxyartes of Bactria had sent his family in the spring of 327.  The Macedonians scaled the fortress' walls with tent pegs at night, and the amazed garrison surrendered peacefully.  It was here that Alexander met his first wife, Oxyartes' daughter Roxana.

The same year, Alexander appointed as the new satrap his general Philip.  According to Diodorus, he retained this position at the 323 Partition of Babylon.  The Historiarum Philippicarum libri XLIV, an imperial Roman document by the otherwise-unknown Marcus Junianius Justinus, lists a Scytheaus as the Sogdian satrap.  At the Partition of Triparadisus two years later, Sogdia and Bactria were both given to Stasanor of Soli, which is corroborated by both Diodorus and Arrian.

In 305, the region fell to Seleucus Nicator, and remained part of his empire until the Greco-Bactrians declared their independence in the mid-third century.  Traces of Hellenistic-period Greek architecture have been found at Samarkand.  Invasions of nomads caused the collapse of Greek rule in Bactria and Sogdia in the mid-second century.

Sogdia's fortunes fluctuated until the latter half of the first millennium AD, when land reclamation and growing populations made it a dominant civilization in Central Asia.  For a time, Sogdian was lingua franca on much of the Silk Road.

The country seems to have dwindled under the expansion of Turkic cultures from the east and Persian from the west.  Today, Sogdia survives as the province of Sughd in Tajikistan.  A descendant of its language is spoken there by the Yaghnobi, who may be considered modern-day Sogdians.

Language
Sogdian was an Eastern Iranian language, but its written corpus dates to the 1st millennium AD and as such its attested stage must have evolved considerably from the Achaemenid period.

Religion
According to de La Vaissière, the historical religion of Sogdia was "an unreformed version of Zoroastrianism, in which Ahuramazda would never achieve primacy... .  The chief god appears to have been Nana, inherited from Babylon" (I cannot tell whether this references the Sumero-Akkadian love goddess Nanaya, also called Nanâ, or the Akkadian moon god Sin aka Nanna).

However, these references seem to date to some time after the Achaemenid dynasty.  I would venture rather that in our period, religion in the Eastern Iranian cultural spheres was a mix of proto-Iranian polytheism and early Mazdaism.

Clothing
Sogdians are grouped with Chorasmians in Persian royal art and dress the same, in riding coats with bordered edges, loose trousers, low shoes and low-peaked tiaras.  The delegation at the apadana may be viewed here at the bottom left.  Interestingly, the hems of their trousers appear to be gathered, perhaps with drawstrings or blousing bands, and their shoes show no laces, unlike those of the Mede leading them.

Weapons
Herodotus holds that the Sogdians were equipped like the Bactrians, who had "reed bows" and short spears.  Given the region they occupied, I think it likely that they used the gorytos.  The Sogdian at Naqs-e Rostam wears an akinakes.

Peoples of the empire: The Scythians

Geographical definition and nomenclature
The term Scythian (O.P. Sakâ, also Gk. Sakai, Lat. Sacae) broadly glosses a number of ancient peoples who shared the culture of the Great Steppe such as it was in Classical antiquity and may have spoken closely-related languages.  They were spread over a very wide area:

• The Amyrgian Scythians or Sakâ haumavargâ ("haoma-drinking Scythians") lived in or about modern Uzbekistan. • The Orthocorybantians or Sakâ tigrakhaudâ ("pointed-hat Scythians") were north of Parthia in present Turkmenistan
• The Pausikoi or Apâ Sakâ ("water Scythians") appear to have been somewhat northeast of the Sakâ tigrakhaudâ.
• The Sakâ paradrayâ ("Scythians across the sea") lived north of the Black Sea in the modern Ukraine and part of Romania.  They were not part of the Persian empire.  These are the folk whom the Greeks referred to simply as Scythians (Skythoi), without qualification.

The Dahae (Dahâ) and Massagetae (*Mâh Sakâ?), who lived in what is now south-central Kazakhstan, are sometimes glossed as Scythian peoples, but for brevity's sake, I won't cover them here.  This history will attempt to treat the first four peoples.

Linguist Oswald Szemerényi regarded Skythoi and Sakâ as coming from different roots.  The former, he said, derived from an Indo-European root meaning "shoot" and reconstructed in the original Scythian as *Skuda, "archer" (to which he also related the name of Sogdia).  In the language of the Sakâ paradrayâ, this became *Skula, accounting for Herodotus' statement that the Royal Scythians (the chief tribe of the Sakâ paradrayâ) called themselves Skolotoi.  Szemerényi believed Sakâ came from an Iranian root meaning "roam," and was therefore an exonym given to them by the Persians.

History
There are two popular theories regarding Scythian origins:  One states that they branched off from the second-millennium BC Andronovo culture in the area of Central Asia northeast of modern Iran; the other has them develop from the Srubna culture, which occupied the land to the north of and between the Black and Caspian seas during the same period.

A competing - not so much theory as way of assessing the situation - states that the literate Greeks and Persians applied "Skythoi" and "Sakâ" so broadly to distinct Steppe peoples as to make trying to pin down a singular origin for them futile by nature.  It is true that Europeans would continue to apply the term "Scythian" to people who came out of the same regions as the Classical Scythians many centuries later, and such indiscriminate use may have already occurred in our period.

Archaeologically speaking, the Scythians we discuss belong to what is called the Scytho-Siberian culture, a very widespread set of material cultural practices (almost certainly shared by completely unrelated peoples) that include such things as a highly equestrian way of life, kurgan tombs, the B-shaped composite bow, the akinakes sword, styles of artwork and so on.

The Scythians along the Black Sea had as their immediate northerly neighbors farming people whom Herodotus lumps with the Scythians; these may be the Chernoles culture, a possibly proto-Slavic archaeological group who appear to have come under Scythian domination.  Herodotus devotes much of book IV to the customs of the Black Sea Scythians.  He says that they blinded those whom they took as slaves and forced them to churn butter.

The Royal Scythians seem to have enjoyed a period of power in West Asia.  Herodotus reports that their king Madyes son of Protothyes defeated Cyaxares in battle (probably in the mid-seventh century) and subjected the Medes for 28 years, plundering many other lands besides, until Cyaxares hosted some of their nobles, got them drunk and, well, things didn't turn out so well for them.  They also took part in the coalition that destroyed the Assyrian empire at the end of the century.

According to Herodotus, Darius the Great attempted to conquer the Black Sea Scythians, an event dated to around 512.  He crossed the Bosphorus with a pontoon bridge, turned east and found nothing.  The Scythians waged a scorched earth campaign, fleeing before his army, destroying pastures and attacking his supply lines.  Darius wrote to their king Idanthyrsus a challenge to either fight or submit; Idanthyrsus replied that, as his people were nomads, he had no reason to do either, and only if Darius could find and try to destroy their fathers' kurgans could he expect a pitched battle.  With his men exhausted from the endless pursuit, Darius stopped at the Volga River, built some frontier fortresses and then left unsatisfied.

He had long since pacified the Sakâ tigrakhaudâ, who were apparently already subjects at the time of his ascension.  In his Behistun inscription, he states that they revolted along with the other provinces, probably around 520-519.  They had two chiefs, one of whom was killed and the other, named Skunkha, captured; Darius then appointed a new chief.  The pointed-hat Scythians are illustrated at Persepolis bearing clothing and a horse.  They are among the few people other than the Persians, Elamites and Medes who are armed, and some writers believe this fact indicates a degree of privilege in the imperial system.  Herodotus states that they made up the 10th tax district, together with the Medes and Paricanians, paying 450 talents yearly.

The Pausikoi or Apâ Sakâ enter into Classical history very rarely, but are mentioned as part of the 11th tax district, together with the Caspians, Pantimathi and Daritae, paying 200 talents.  They are probably the same people who appear in Hellenistic history as the Apasiakai (Lat. Apasiacae).

Ctesias attributed the conquest of the Amyrgian Scythians to Cyrus.  He believed that the Amyrgians were named for their king Amorges.  Personally I think the Persian etymology of "haoma-drinking" is more likely, but I'm only an amateur.  Ctesias said that Cyrus captured Amorges, whose wife Sparethra waged war and captured several high-ranking Persians.  The prisoners were exchanged and the Amyrgians allied with the Persians, fighting alongside them in Lydia.  Iranologist Alireza Shahbazi regarded Ctesias' overall narrative as containing so many errors "that it borders on fiction."  The name Amorges is not an invention, but it was a Persian name, that of a son of Pissuthnes the satrap of Lydia.

Scythians fought in both the 490 and 480 Persian invasions of Greece.  At Marathon, they were posted in the center of the battle line next to the Persians, and were able to withstand the hoplite charge (which was weakest at the center on this occasion).  In Xerxes' invasion, the Amyrgians served under the king's half-brother Hystaspes.  They fought both on land and as marines, thus were presumably present at Artemision and Salamis, and some were retained by Mardonius to fight at Plataia.  Herodotus calls the Scythians the best cavalry in the Persian army at the last battle.

The Black Sea Scythians grew wealthier during the fifth century in large part due to the slave trade from Central Asia to Europe.  Around the turn of the fourth century, King Ateas ascended to the throne of the Royal Scythians.  During the first half of the century, he centralized royal authority all along the north coast of the Black Sea.  In the 340s, he had a snippy diplomatic relationship with Philip of Macedon, which resulted in a battle and Ateas' death at modern Dobruja in 339.


Eastern Scythians fought at the Battle of Gaugamela in 331 as part of Bessus' cavalry.  In the same year, Alexander's governor of Thrace or Pontus (sources differ on this), Zopyrion, invaded the kingdom of Scythia for want of something better to do, laid a failed siege to Olbia and was killed while retreating.  In 329, an army from Scythia invaded Alexander's empire from the north, but was defeated at the Battle of Jaxartes near modern Tashkent.

The post-Classical history of the Scythian peoples is too complex to cover here.  In east and west, Scythian peoples continued on their various ways, but mostly disappeared over the centuries.  In the third century BC Scythia collapsed under pressure from Thracians, Celts and Sarmatians.  Eastern Scythians settled in Drangiana, creating Sakastan (modern Sīstān) during the early Arsacid period, while others settled in India to create the Indo-Scythian kingdom - all for naught; both have long since disappeared into the native populations.

One last note:  The Scythians are often said to have been the inspiration for the Amazons in Greek mythology.  This is an oversimplification of things.  There is evidence that Amazons were established in Greek myth well before contact with the Scythians.  It is true both that many Scythian women have been found buried with weapons and the Greeks have spoken of Scythian female warriors, and that late Archaic and Classical art often shows Amazons in Asiatic clothing.  On the other hand, other Greek art shows the Amazons in Greek men's tunics.  Herodotus regarded the Amazons and Scythians as separate peoples and believed the Sauromatians were a tribe of mixed Scythian and Amazon ancestry.  Most likely, the Greeks during the Archaic concluded that the Amazons were a Steppe people, or used the Scythians as models for later portrayals of their Amazons, because few other peoples in the world had such numbers of female warriors.

Language
The Scythian language or languages are scarcely-attested from a handful of proper names of people and tribes and possibly a seventh-century inscription from Saqqez, Iran, recording what may be a reference to King Protothyes (as "Partitava"), a Scythian who married an Assyrian princess.  Most Western scholars regard Scythian as being Eastern Iranian, and part of a Scytho-Sarmatian group which gave rise to the language of the Alans and, in turn, modern Ossetian.  The better-attested Eastern Iranian languages of the later kingdoms of Khotan and Tumshuq in what is now western China are thought to be derived from Scythian as well, and are termed "Sakan."

Religion
Scythians were polytheists whom Herodotus says worshipped a seven-member pantheon:  Tabiti (whom he regards as the same as the Greek Hestia), Papaios (Zeus), Apia (Gaia), Goitosyros (Apollo), Argimpasa (Uranian Aphrodite), someone whom he calls Heracles, Agin (Ares) and, among the Royal Scythians, Thagimasadas (Poseidon).  The vagaries of interpretatio graeca must be kept in mind:  It's unlikely that these gods derive from the same sources as those whom Herodotus considers their Greek equivalents.

Tabiti, he says, was most important, but only Agin had temples (of a sort) dedicated to him:  In each district, bundles of sticks would be formed into a vast platform three eighths of a mile long and wide, with an akinakes in the middle representing the god himself; new wood was stacked on top as the older wood settled or broke down.

Animal sacrifices, mainly horses, were offered to various gods.  Animals were ritually strangled, the meat carved and boiled and part of it then cast on the ground (which reminds me somewhat of the Magian rite).  At the temples of Agin, a yearly sacrifice of sheep, goats, horses and enemy prisoners was performed.

The historian also states that a priestly caste of transvestites existed called the Enarei, blessed by Argimpasa to divine the future with strips of linden bark.  The name of the Sakâ haumavargâ suggests that they borrowed or retained the ancient Indo-Iranian practice of drinking haoma/soma at religious ceremonies.

Clothing
Most Scythians wore a variant of the cavalry costume, featuring loose-fitting trousers rather than Medo-Persian tights, and a coat held closed by a belt.  Most art (with the exception of the Naqš-e Rostam reliefs) shows the coat as overlapping somewhat in the front.  At Pazyryk in Siberia, a Scytho-Siberian jacket was found made out of felt rather than woven cloth, and other sites have yielded felt stockings.  An abundance of sheep and goat wool, and the relative simplicity of making and working with felt, may have increased its appeal to the Steppe nomads.  These nomads, Asiatic Scythians included, also obtained and traded silk on the Silk Road of which they were a part.

The Sakâ tigrakhaudâ wore tiaras with very tall tapering peaks, probably treated felt or leather, or having an internal reinforcement.  At Persepolis and Behistun, they otherwise wear Medo-Persian costume, but at Naqš-e Rostam the one present is shown in normal Scythian garb, albeit with a tall hat.  Other Scythians wore less spectacular styles of tiara, though they were still usually more pointed than those worn by other peoples.

In most art, Scythians wear low shoes (which I would guess to be similar to Medo-Persian ones), but some pieces from the Black Sea area show pull-on boots that come up to above the ankle.

Weapons
Use of the classic Central Asian recurved composite bow and the attendant gorytos is well-documented.  Arrowheads in the same trilobate style as the Persians and Greeks were used, as were leaf-shaped ones with extended sockets; these latter sometimes had a single recurved barb sticking off the socket.  Greek and Roman writers said that when going to war, Scythians dipped their arrows in a noxious substance composed of rotting viper corpses, blood and animal dung, the result of which was that even minor wounds would result in simultaneous poisoning and infection.

The Black Sea Scythians' iron swords could be larger than Achaemenid ones, some examples reaching up to two feet overall (almost as big as a Roman gladius) and often featuring loosely-curled antennae or horns on the pommel, though I confess I don't know the time period during which this sub-style evolved.  Otherwise, the small akinakes with the T-shaped pommel was common.  Swords and knives were still sometimes made of bronze.

Another distinctive Scythian weapon was the sagaris, a small-headed, tomahawk-like battleaxe.  The sagaris could be bronze or iron, and had a flared cutting edge, usually a long back spike and a thin straight handle.  Scythians also used spears and javelins which were much like those found elsewhere in the ancient world, with socketed, leaf-shaped iron points.

Scythian shields seem to have been commonly made of thin hide (I unfortunately have yet to find analyses of whether rawhide or tanned leather was used) densely woven through with sticks while wet; essentially like smaller versions of Achaemenid shields.  Various shapes were known from Pazyryk, and the famous Solokha comb shows one crescent and one which is a sideways rectangle.  The crescent seems to have been a very common shape from the Balkans through the Iranian plateau.

Body armor was usually made of scale.  Corslets were either of a simple tunic shape or modeled after the Greek tube-and-yoke thorax, and the Scytho-Siberians seem to have pioneered the use of scale neck guards.  Shields were also sometimes covered in scale.  In the fifth century, pointed leather caps covered with scale began to replace the earlier Kuban-type helmet, which was of solid bronze and fitted close to the head with a low browline (but no nasal guard).  Imported Greek helmets (in the Corinthian and derivative styles) also became popular at this time.

Peoples of the empire: The Phrygians

Geographical definition
The Phrygians were widespread through Anatolia, living in regions from the Hellespont to Cappadocia.  Phrygia proper lay in central Anatolia and centered around the Sakarya River, just west of Cappadocia, directly east of Lydia and considerably to the north of Lycia.  Their name for themselves is not known, nor is the name by which the Persians called them.

History
Herodotus believed (and some modern scholars agree) that the Phrygians were relatively recent immigrants to Anatolia descended from an offshoot of the Bryges, who lived in the Balkans.  He also further states that they were in turn ancestral to the Armenians, which is uncertain.  Greek mythology has the Phrygians fighting on the side of the Trojans during the Trojan War, and Gordium was the home of the legendary kings named Midas (of whom there were three).

The Phrygian kingdom in central Anatolia reached its peak in the eighth century BC.  Around 675 Gordium was sacked, an act the Greeks attributed to Cimmerian invaders.  The Cimmerians were driven out around 620 by the Lydians, who made Phrygia one of their provinces.  Gordium was built up with Lydian financing.  The accidental slayer of Croesus' son in Herodotus I.34-45 was Adrastus, a prince of Gordium.

As a Lydian province, Phrygia passed to Persia when the latter conquered Lydia some time after 547.  By the time of Herodotus, it was placed with the Hellespont, Paphlagonia, Syria, the Mariandynians and the Thracians of Asia in the third imperial tax district, whose yearly tribute totaled 360 talents.

The satrapy of Hellespontine Phrygia was split off around the turn of the fifth century.  Its capital was Dascylium.  Lendering notes that "[t]he architectural remains from this age are not very monumental" though a terrace wall in Dascylium shows similarity to walls at Pasargadae and Persepolis.

In the 480 invasion of Greece, Phrygians served together with the Armenians under Artochmes, one of Darius' sons-in-law.  We are not told what role they played in the fighting, but Herodotus says that some Phrygians were picked by Mardonius to remain in Greece after Xerxes left and it seems reasonable that they participated at Plataea if nowhere else.

Our history of Greater (interior) Phrygia is poor, due to its isolation from the Greek world and dearth of surviving domestic or Persian documents.  However it was still in the empire's hands by the time Alexander arrived in Gordium in 334.  In 333, he appointed the satrapy to his general Antigonus, founder of the Antigonid dynasty.

As a reward for his leadership of the surviving Persian army out of Greece, Artabazus (*Artavazdâ), Xerxes' first cousin and formerly commander of the Chorasmian and Parthian cavalry contingents, was given the satrapy of Hellespontine Phrygia in 477.  His descendants held this office until the invasion of Alexander the Great.

Artabazus' son Pharnabazus may or may not have been satrap.  His grandson Pharnaces was satrap by 430, when he tried to open talks with Sparta to involve himself in the political side of the Peloponnesian War, but this initiative went nowhere.  Pharnaces remained in office at least until 422 and possibly later.  His son Pharnabazus II succeeded him before the winter of 413-12, when he and his rival, Tissaphernes of Lydia, tried separately to ally themselves with Sparta against Athens.  Again, little was accomplished due to Athens' naval supremacy until Cyrus the Younger became involved, but this subject falls outside the scope of this article.

Pharnabazus was ruler when the survivors of the Ten Thousand passed through there in 400 on their way back to Greece, when Tissaphernes of Lydia redirected a campaign by Spartan king Thibron in 399 and by Agesilaus II in 396-95; Pharnabazus then campaigned in the Aegean with the Athenian admiral Conon during the Corinthian War.  As a result of his and the empire's gains in this conflict, he was assigned to reconquer Egypt, but failed to do so though he tried repeatedly.

In the meantime, his son Ariobarzanes (*Ariyabrdna) succeeded him as satrap.  He joined the Revolt of the Satraps in 366, receiving aid from Sparta when Caria and Lydia attacked him, and in recognition of his opposition to the great king, Athens made him an honorary citizen, but his son Mithradates betrayed him to the king in 363 or 362, leading to his crucifixion.

His brother Artabazus II succeeded him and likewise decided to rebel after the death of Artaxerxes II in 358, hiring Athenian mercenaries who defeated an imperial army sent against Artabazus in 355.  But Artaxerxes III was able to intimidate Athens into recalling its forces by threatening to send the Persian navy to support Athens' own rebellious territories in the Social War.  Artabazus was forced to flee to Macedon in 353.

Hellespontine Phrygia was given to Arsites, who led the satraps at the Battle of the Granicus in 334 and committed suicide after their defeat.  Alexander appointed his general Calas as the first Macedonian satrap.  Upon the partition of Babylon it was given to Alexander's bodyguard Leonnatus, while Greater Phrygia remained with Antigonus.

Although now part of the Hellenistic world, at least some Phrygians spoke their own language until the fifth century AD.  In the third century BC, Hellespontine Phrygia was invaded by a Celtic people whom the Greeks called Galatai, and with the spread of their language the region became known as Galatia.  Greater Phrygia also suffered from these invasions, which destroyed Gordium.  In 188 it came under rule of the Greek Attalid dynasty of western Anatolia, which Attalus III left in his will to the Roman republic.  As such, the name of Phrygia was retained for administrative purposes from 133 BC until the final end of Byzantium in AD 1453.

Language
The Phrygian language is scarcely attested from two bodies of inscriptions, one dating from the turn of the ninth century BC and after, the other from the turn of the first century AD.  It was an Indo-European language bearing some similarities to Greek and the two may form a subfamily.

The earlier group of inscriptions were written in a particular script derived from Phoenician which may or may not have come through Greek.  The latter were written in the Greek alphabet.

Religion
The Phrygians worshiped a wide variety of their own gods and Anatolian ones.  Their (apparent) supreme gods were Sabazios, the sky god and horseman whom the Greeks equated variously with Zeus or Dionysus, and the native Anatolian mother goddess Cybele (Phrygian Matar Kubileya), identified strongly with the Anatolian wilderness.  Like the Lycians, the Phrygians tended to carve shrines and idols directly into living rock.

Clothing
Phrygian clothing was similar to Medo-Persian, with snug-fitting (probably footed) trousers and long-sleeved tunics covered in bold patterns.  The Phrygian cap was similar to a tiara but lacked earflaps and had a tall, stiff peak curling forward (Phrygians also sometimes wore tiaras with earflaps).

Weapons
Herodotus' Phrygians are armed "like the Paphlagonians," with woven helmets, small shields, short spears, javelins and daggers (VII.72).  I suppose it is not impossible that the woven helmets were in fact tiaras or Phrygian caps, though it would be an unusual choice of words on Herodotus' part.  The small shields were, I suspect, most likely crescents, given that these were used both in West Asia and to the north in Thracia.