Snake-Legged Goddess
The Snake-Legged Goddess, also referred to as the Anguipede Goddess, was the ancestor-goddess of the Scythians according to the Scythian religion.
Name
The "Snake-Legged Goddess" or "Anguiped Goddess" is the modern-day name of this goddess, who is so called because several representations of her depict her as a goddess with snakes or tendrils as legs.History
Origin
The Snake-Legged Goddess and her role as the foremother of the Scythians had early origins and pre-dated the contacts of the Scythians with Mediterranean religions that influenced the cult of the Great Goddess Artimpasa to whom the Snake-Legged Goddess was affiliated. This goddess appears to have originated from an ancient Iranic tradition.The snakes which formed the limbs and grew out of the shoulders of Snake-Legged Goddess also linked her to the Zoroastrian chthonic monster Azhdaha, of whom a variant appears in later Persian literature as the villainous figure Zahhak, who had snakes growing from each shoulder.
West Asian influence
During the 7th century BCE, the Scythians expanded into West Asia, during which time the Scythian religion was influenced by the religions of the peoples of the Fertile Crescent. Consequently, the Snake-Legged Goddess was influenced by the Levantine goddess ʿAtarʿatah in several aspects, resulting in a strong resemblance between the two goddesses, such as their monstrous bodies, fertility and vegetation symbolism, legends about their love affairs, and their respective affiliations and near-identification to Artimpasa and Aphroditē Ourania.Another influence might have been the Graeco-Colchian goddess Leukothea, whose mythology as a woman who was turned into a goddess after throwing herself into the sea due to a curse from Hēra connects her to ʿAtarʿatah, and whose sanctuary at Vani had columns crowned with female Protome|s emerging from Acanthus | leaves similar to those of the Snake-Legged Goddess.
Greek contact
The Greek poet Hesiod might have mentioned the Snake-Legged Goddess in the Theogony|, where he assimilated her to the monstrous figure of Echidna from Greek mythology. In Hesiod's narrative, "Echidna" was a serpent-nymph living in a cave far from any inhabited lands, and the god Targī̆tavah, assimilated to Heracles, killed two of her children, namely the hydra of Lerna and the lion of Nemea. Thus, in this story, "Heracles" functioned as a destroyer of evils and a patron of human dwellings located in place where destruction had previously prevailed.The Snake-Legged Goddess is however most famously known from the various Graeco-Roman retellings of the Scythian genealogical myth, in which she unites with the god Targī̆tavah to become the mother of the first ancestors of the Scythians and their kings.
Cult
Functions
The Scythian Snake-Legged Goddess was a primordial ancestress of humanity who was associated to the life-giving principle but also possessed a chthonic nature, due to which her depictions were placed in Scythian tombs. The status of the Snake-Legged Goddess as the fore-mother of the Scythians associated her with the cult of the ancestors, and, being the controller of the life cycle, was also a granter of eternal life for the deceased.Some images of Snake-Legged Goddess were discovered in burials, thus assigning both a chthonic and vegetal symbolism to this goddess, which follows the motif of vegetal deities possessing chthonic features. The Snake-Legged Goddess was also a vegetation goddess of the Tree of Life, and as well as a Potnia Theron| as attested by the presence of felines near her in Scythian art and the Luristan bronzes.
The depictions of the Snake-Legged Goddess on Scythian horse harness decorations imply that she was also a patroness of horses, which might be connected with the love affair between Targī̆tavah and the goddess beginning after she had kept his mares in the genealogical myth.
Affiliation to Artimpasa
Reflecting influence from Levantine cults in which the Great Goddess was often accompanied by a minor semi-bestial goddess, the Snake-Legged Goddess, who was also the Scythian foremother, was affiliated to Artimpasa. The Snake-Legged Goddess was so closely affiliated to Artimpasa that it bordered on identification to the point where the images of the two goddesses would almost merge, but nevertheless remained distinct from each other.This distinctiveness is more clear in how Artimpasa was assigned the role of the king's sexual partner and the divine power of the kings who granted royal power, but was not considered the foremother of the people, and in how neither the Bosporan kings of Sarmatian ancestry nor the Graeco-Roman authors' records assigned Aphroditē or Artimpasa as the Scythians' ancestor.
Association to Targī̆tavah
The Snake-Legged Goddess might have been associated with Targī̆tavah in the latter's role as the father of her three sons and his tentatively suggested role of a snake-god identified by the Greeks of Pontic Olbia with Achilles Pontarkhēs.Sailors had to pass through this cult site of Targī̆tavah-Achilles at the island of Borysthenes to reach Cape Hippolaus, where was located a sacred grove to the Greek goddess Hecate, with whom the Greeks had assimilated the Scythian Snake-Legged Goddess.
Mythology
The Snake-Legged appears in all variations of the Scythian genealogical myth as the Scythian fore-mother who sires the ancestor and first king of the Scythians with Targī̆tavah.The Snake-Legged appears in all variations of the Scythian genealogical myth with consistent traits, including her being the daughter of either a river-god or of the Earth and dwelling in a cave, as well as her being half-woman and half-snake.
Diodorus of Sicily's description of this goddess in his retelling of the genealogical myth as an "anguiped earth-born maiden" implies that she was a daughter of Api, likely through a river-god, and therefore was both chthonic and connected to water, but was however not identical with Api herself and instead belonged to a younger generation of deities of "lower status" who were more actively involved in human life.
Iconography
The Goddess with Snake Legs
Several representations are known of the Snake-Legged Goddess, often crafted by Greek artisans for the Scythian market, most of them depicting her as a goddess with snake-shaped legs or tendrils as legs, and some depicting her as winged, with griffin heads growing below her waist or holding a severed head, with many of them having been found discovered in burials, thus assigning both a chthonic and vegetal symbolism to the goddess, which follows the motif of vegetal deities possessing chthonic features.The connection of the Snake-Legged Goddess to the life-giving principle is attested by her posture where her hands and legs were spread wide, which constituted a "birth-giving attitude". This complex imagery thus reflected the combination of human motherhood, vegetation and animal life within the Snake-Legged Goddess.
The snakes also connected the Snake-Legged Goddess to the Greek Medusa, and Greek-manufactured representations of Medousa, especially in the form of pendants found in the tombs of Scythian nobles, were very popular in Scythia due to her association with the Snake-Legged Goddess. Possible depictions of the goddess as a in the form of Medousa have also been found in Scythian art, with a damaged from the Kelermes kurgan depicting her as a winged running deity with small wings on non-serpentiform legs and flanked by griffins on both sides, and a gold plate from the Shakhan kurgan being decorated with the image of a winged deity holding two animals.
The Snake-Legged Goddess is represented with wings on pendants from the Bolshaya Bliznitza kurgan and the Ust-Labinskaya site, and a similar pendant was found in a vault from Hellenistic Chersonesus along with pendants representing severed heads. A fore-piece from a set of horse head plates from the Tsymbalova mohyla is decorated with an image of the Snake-Legged Goddess with snake-legs, below which are griffin heads and vegetal tendrils, as well as tendrils above the hat she wears; this fore-piece was accompanied with representing Medusa and Silenus| heads, as well as fish-shaped side pieces due to the possible influence of the Levantine aquatic goddess ʿAtarʿatah on the Snake-Legged Goddess.
Anguipede iconography forerunning that of the Snake-Legged Goddess appears to have originated in ancient Iranic traditions, with a goblet, dated to the early 1st millennium BCE, found in Luristan and being decorated with a two-headed figure with women's breasts, hands, and hips, and reptilian legs, holding gazelles in both of her hands. This imagery then appeared in northern Europe in the Bronze and Iron Ages, and was present in early La Tène art, after which they appeared in the art of late Bronze Age Germania and Scandinavia.
The Tendril-Legged Goddess
The imagery of the Tsymbalova fore-piece formed an intermediary with representations of the goddess depicted with tendrils as legs. Among these depictions are images found in burials of the goddess with tendril-legs, wearing a hat, and surrounded by vegetal ornamentation; these tendril-legged images of the goddess became more numerous during the first centuries CE, and became a common motif in the design of sarcophagi in the Bosporan kingdom. Among the Scythians, one of the vaults in Scythian Neapolis was decorated with images of small tendril-legged figures along with figures with radiate heads.From the imagery of the tendril-legged goddess arose a less human and more monstrous type of iconography, which is visible on the earrings from the Butor kurgan, a plate from the kurgan, a silver cup from Mariynskaya, and a silver vessel from a burial near Melitopol, the Melitopol kurgan.
The Goddess holding a Severed Head
The depictions of the Snake-Legged Goddess holding a severed head which represented the sacrificial offering of a man hanging on the Tree of Life, were another example of Levantine influence, since severed human heads appeared in Levantine goddess cults in which the life-granting goddess demanded death, and re-enacted the death of her partner, whom she loved, emasculated, and killed.The Snake-Legged Goddess therefore also had a blood-thirsty aspect, and there is attestation of human sacrifices to local goddesses accompanied by the exposure of the victims' severed heads on the northern Black Sea coast; one such head placed on an altar close to a representation of a vegetation goddess was discovered in the Sarmatian town of Ilutarum.
The Scythian practice of severing the heads of all enemies they killed in battle and bringing them to their kings in exchange of war booty, the depictions of warriors near or holding severed heads in Scythian art, as well as the pendants shaped like satyr heads found in the same structures as the representations of the Snake-Legged Goddess and of Artimpasa might have been connected with this aspect of the Snake-Legged Goddess.