MOTIVES OF FISH AND DOLPHIN IN THE EASTERN EUROPEAN SCYTHIAN ANIMAL STYLE: TYPOLOGY, CHRONOLOGY, ORIGINS

Abstract

As the statistical analysis shows, the images of Fish and Dolphin constitute an extremely insignificant share of the general array of images of the Eastern European Scythian animal style. According to the author’s data for 2017, the total array of the original images of this local variant of the Scythian-Siberian animal style consisted of 2207 imageries, without taking into account copies and «mirror» images. Meanwhile there are only 27 original images of Fish and 4 original images of Dolphin, correspondingly only 1.23 and 0.18 % of this array. However, despite all the marginality of the Fish theme and especially of the Dolphin one, the presence of these motifs related to the water element is quite noticeable in the Scythian art. These are both real images (Fish, Dolphin) and syncretic images integrating fish motif (Horned fish, Hippocampus-horse, Griffin-hippocampus, «Cock-hippocampus»). Almost all of these images belong to the era of «Scythian classics» (V—IV centuries BC), especially to the IV century BC — that is, to the time of the most intense influence of Greek art on the Scythian animal style. All this corresponds to the conclusions of S. S. Bessonova and D. S. Raevsky concerning the important role of water element in Scythian religious and mythological ideas.