Semantics of the images of the “griffin-hippocampus” and “horned fish” in the Scythian animal style of the Eastern European zone

Abstract

The work deals with study of the Scythian animal style as an artistic phenomenon, which is one of the cardinal problems of Scythology, in particular the issue of the content of its artistic images. The semantics of the syncretic images of “griffin-hippocampus” and “horned fish” in the Scythian animal style of the Eastern European zone, covering the territories of the steppe, forest-steppe and North Caucasian local sub-variants of the Scythian animal style, is studied. The authors use the traditional iconographic method, formal-stylistic and structural-semiotic methods, as well as the methods of the general scientific hypothetical-deductive method with the general systemic-functional and synchronous-diachronic approaches to the consideration of historical facts. As a result of the study, a connection was established between four images with the ancient Greek mythical Typhon, two images with Dionysus and three images with Aegipanos (Pan). The next task is to study the semantics of the images of the bestiary of the Scythian animal style as the incarnations of mythological characters.