Skythian & Thracian Tattoos

Sep 12

6 min read

The Macedonian Empire, 336-323 B.C. Map showing Thrace north of Macedonia with the Skythians north of Thrace. Public Domain from the "Historical Atlas" by William R. Shepherd, New York, Henry Holt and Company, 1923.

Skythians and Thracians faced each other across the lower Danube. Their royal houses intermarried, the Thracians nearest the river fought Skythian-style as mounted archers, both peoples were prized as fighters, and both tattooed their bodies, the Thracians as a mark of rank. The Greek historian, Herodotos, writing in the mid-fifth century BC, says the Satrai (a Thracian people) were "very skilful in war" (7.111) and Thracian mercenaries were in demand across Greece.

Herodotos also recorded a custom that inverted Greek practice: "To be pricked with figures is accounted a mark of noble rank, and not to be so marked is a sign of low birth" (Histories 5.6).

Pictures of tattooed Thracians, painted by people who had seen Thracian women in Athens, survive on dozens of red-figure vases of about 480 to 430 BC.

Tattooed Thracians killing Orpheus - Allard Pierson, University of Amsterdam, APM 2581

A Greek myth tells the story of Orpheus, the Thracian singer who was torn to pieces by Thracian women in a Dionysiac frenzy. The motive for this varies across versions. Phanokles, in the third century BC, gives the reason as Orpheus's love for the youth Kalais and his contempt for women; the Thracian women killed him, threw head and lyre into the sea, and the Thracian men, when they learned of it, tattooed their wives as a punishment that has lasted ever since (Phanokles fr. 1 Powell), and Plutarch repeats that Thracians "to this day" tattoo their wives to avenge him (On the Delays of Divine Vengeance p.38).

A Tattoo

This tattoo is preserved on the mummified arm of a Skythian chieftain buried in the Altai mountains, roughly 3,000 km east of the Danube. It is the nearest surviving skin to Thrace. Klearchos of Soloi, a pupil of Aristotle, tells an origin story preserved in Athenaios. After the Skythians defeated the Thracians, Skythian women tattooed the captive Thracian women "all over their bodies, drawing figures on them with the tongues of their buckles"; the Thracian women, once free, covered the rest of their skin with designs so that the punishment marks became ornament and the disgrace was wiped out. (Athenaeus, Deipnosophists, 12.57) Pazyryk designs offer another possible guide to what Thracian tattoos may have looked like.

Mummified piece of skin, right arm of a Pazyryk chief, Altai, Pazyryk, kurgan N° 2, Russia. Beginning of the 5th -3rd century BC, 60 X 80 cm. Human skin, ink. Hermitage Museum, Saint-Petersburg. Photo Vladimir Terebenin, reproduced in the exhibition catalogue Tatoueurs, tatoués, Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, Actes Sud, 2014.

Drawings of the tattoos on the Pazyryk kurgan, after S. I. Rudenko, Frozen Tombs of Siberia (Berkeley, 1970)

These tattoo needles are from the right region, however much older than the time period of today's coin.

Bone needles from M. Gorgana near Pietrele, Romania, dated to 4500-4250 BC, with preserved mineral pigment residues - general view and detail (Photo: M. Tomuschat).

The Coin

This is a bronze coin of the Odrysian kingdom, the Thracian state that dominated the lands between the Aegean and the Danube from the fifth century BC. It was struck in the name of a king called Teres and is dated to about 351 to 342/1 BC.

Kings of Thrace, Odrysian. Teres II (or III). Æ 21 mm, 10.43 g, 12h. Circa 351 to 342/1 BC.

Obv: bipennis (double-headed axe) set so that its haft forms the letter tau; the remaining letters of the royal name in the genitive around it, the whole reading ΤΗΡΕΩ, "of Teres."

Rev: grapevine with five bunches of grapes, within a linear frame; [kantharos possibly in the right field].

Ref: Topalov 107; Topalov, Odrysian 28.7 (as Teres III); HGC 3.2, 1712.

What are the symbols?

The double axe was a house mark of the Odrysian royal line for at least three generations: Metokos, Amadokos II and Teres II. Teres II is the last king known to have used it.

The grapevine is not a Thracian royal emblem in origin. It is the civic type of Maroneia, the Greek wine-exporting city on the Aegean coast of Thrace, whose coins from the fifth century onward show a vine with grape bunches inside a linear square. Because the coins of Amadokos I, Amadokos II, Teres and Kotys I resemble Maroneia's so closely, some scholars hold that the city mint produced them for the kings. Ulrike Peter, whose 1997 corpus Die Münzen der thrakischen Dynasten is the standard catalogue of this coinage, proposed instead that they were struck at Pistiros, the Greek trading settlement in the Thracian interior.

Although they were an abundant coin, a study of finds from Greek Thrace and Macedonia finds only two Odrysian bronzes turned up in Maroneia itself and five at nearby Stryme, and the authors conclude that so few finds on the coast do not support the idea that Greek cities struck the kings' money (Gatzolis, Poulios and Terzopoulou 2007, pp. 177 to 182 and n. 24). The question is open.

Herodotos places an oracle of Dionysos on the highest mountains of the Satrai, the people he had just credited with working the gold and silver mines of Pangaion (Histories 7.111 to 112). Whether the kings who put a vine on their bronzes intended cult, or simply the trade badge of the richest coast they taxed, cannot be decided from the coins.

Who was Teres II?

By 357 BC the Odrysian kingdom was divided among three kings: Berisades west of the river Nestos, adjoining Macedon; Amadokos II in central Thrace; and Kersebleptes east of the river Hebros. In the summer of 357 Athens made a treaty with all three, preserved on stone (Tod no. 151 = Harding no. 64).

"The Greek cities in Thrace, paying to Berisades and Amadocus and Gersebleptes the traditional tribute and to the Athenians the syntaxis, shall be free and autonomous, being allies of the Athenians as they swore and of Berisades and Amadocus and Gersebleptes.
-Partial text of Tod no. 151

In 352/1 Philip II of Macedon campaigned in Thrace with Amadokos as an ally against Kersebleptes. Amadokos then disappears from the record and seems to have been replaced by Teres. In 346 Philip campaigned again against Kersebleptes, and Teres probably fought on Philip's side. (Demosthenes, Epistle 12.8 and 12.10) Between 342 and 340 Philip wore the two kings down over two years without a recorded battle. "Cersobleptes and his colleague Teres in central Thrace cordoned off on all sides by Philip and his coastal allies" (CAH VI, p. 773).

Philip defeated and deposed both kings in 341 BC and founded Philippopolis, the modern Plovdiv, and Beroe, the modern Stara Zagora, as garrison towns, and the former kingdom paid Macedon a tribute of one tenth of its produce. Nothing further is recorded of Teres II. Where he ruled from, how he died, and where he was buried are all unanswered questions. His coinage, which ends with Philip's conquest, is the most prominent evidence for his reign.

References

Archibald, Zofia H. "Thracians and Scythians." In The Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 6, The Fourth Century B.C., 2nd ed., edited by D. M. Lewis, John Boardman, Simon Hornblower, and M. Ostwald, 444–475. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Chiroșcă, Ana-Cătălina, and Olguța Anca Orzan. "The Evolution of Tattoos as Personal Brands." DermatoVenerologia (Bucharest) 68, no. 3 (2023): 39–45.
Ellis, J. R. "Macedon and North-West Greece" and "Macedonian Hegemony Created." In The Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 6, The Fourth Century B.C., 2nd ed., 723–790. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Gatzolis, Christos, Vasilis Poulios, and Domna Terzopoulou. "Coins of Thracian Kings and Rulers from Western Thrace, Eastern and Central Macedonia (5th–3rd c. BC)." In Thrace in the Graeco-Roman World: Proceedings of the 10th International Congress of Thracology, Komotini–Alexandroupolis, 18–23 October 2005, 176–183. Athens: National Hellenic Research Foundation, 2007.
Kyriakou, G., A. Kyriakou, and Th. Fotas. "Dermatostiksia (Tattooing): An Act of Stigmatization in Ancient Greek Culture." Actas Dermo-Sifiliográficas 112, no. 10 (2021): 907–909. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adengl.2021.09.004.
Peter, Ulrike. Die Münzen der thrakischen Dynasten (5.–3. Jahrhundert v. Chr.): Hintergründe ihrer Prägung. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1997.
A Companion to Ancient Thrace, First Edition. Edited by Julia Valeva, Emil Nankov, and Denver Graninger. Published 2015 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Rudenko, Sergei I. Frozen Tombs of Siberia: The Pazyryk Burials of Iron Age Horsemen. Translated by M. W. Thompson. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970.
Topalov, Stavri. The Odrysian Kingdom from the Late 5th to the Mid-4th C. B.C.: Contributions to the Study of Its Coinage and History. Sofia, 1994.
Tsiafakis, Despoina. "Thracian Tattoos." In Bodies in Transition: Dissolving the Boundaries of Embodied Knowledge, edited by Dietrich Boschung, Alan Shapiro, and Frank Wascheck, 89–118. Morphomata 23. Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink, 2015.