#tomyris of the massagetae

[nanshe-of-nina]

Women’s History Meme || Kick-ass Women (6/10) ↬ Tomyris, Queen of the Massagetae (d. c. 520s BCE)

The nomadic Saka-Scythian groups of Central Asia were less familiar with wine, as we can gather from accounts about Queen Tomyris told by Herodotus, Strabo, and Justin. In the sixth century BC, King Cyrus of Persia invaded the land of the Massagetae, a confederation of Saka-Scythian nomads east of the Caspian Sea. Warlike horse people, like their neighbors the Issedonians, the Massagetae were distinguished by gender equality and the sexual freedom of their women. They sacrificed horses to the Sun. Armored in helmets and wide war belts of brass and gold, they fought with bows, lances, and battle-axes. The ruler of the Massagetae at this time was a powerful woman named Tomyris. Like other Scythian tribes, the Massagetae were milk drinkers unused to wine. This fact was exploited by Cyrus. Retreating aſter losing a battle with Tomyris (ca. 530 BC), he resorted to treachery. According to Herodotus’s account, he set out a fancy banquet with large quantities of wine under his Persian tents and withdrew. The pursuing nomads, led by Tomyris’ son, came upon the abandoned feast. They drank the wine and fell into a stupor. The Persians came back and slaughtered the Massagetae; they captured Tomyris’ son, who killed himself as soon as he regained his senses. Enraged, Tomyris sent a message castigating Cyrus. “Glutton for blood! Your weapon was red wine, which you Persians drink until you are so crazy that shameful words float on the liquor’s fumes. This was the poison you used to destroy my army and my son. Leave my land now, or I swear by the Sun I will give you more blood than you can drink.” The mayhem was horrendous in the next battle. Tomyris’ army destroyed the Persians and Cyrus was killed. According to the legend, Tomyris found the king’s corpse, hacked off his head, and plunged it into a wine jug filled with blood drained from Cyrus’ men, crying, “Drink your fill of blood!” — The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women across the Ancient World by Adrienne Mayor

[emizerri]

The Easwegian flag seen with Queen Tomyris of the Massagetae, an ancestral nation of the Ezaari

[iyelife]

#Cyrus attacked the Massagetae, but lost the first battle and her son was captured. The son then took his own life. Tomyris won the second battle, killed Cyrus, and then cut off his head. As revenge for her son's death, she made Cyrus's head drink human blood from a wine skin. Donald J. Trump 🪙 🇮🇱 🇵🇸

[elkordyadel32]

Queen Tomyris’ Decisive Battle Strategy (6th Century BCE) #viralshort #v...

Queen Tomyris of the Massagetae famously defeated the Persian king Cyrus the Great in battle. She used a clever tactic by feigning retreat, luring the Persians into a false sense of security. Once the Persians had settled into their camp, her forces launched a surprise attack, overwhelming them and killing Cyrus in the process.

Tactic: Feigned retreat followed by a surprise counterattack.

[anarchomikeism]

The death of Achaemenid Persian king Cyrus the Great at the hands of the Scythian Massagetae people and their queen Tomyris. There's your girlboss movie. Of course, they were Central Asian. Nobody in Hollywood will be able to link a narrative to that lot without totally fucking it up.

[valkyries-things]

TOMYRIS // QUEEN OF THE MASSAGETAE

“She reigned over the Massagetae, an Iranian Saka people of Central Asia. Tomyris led her armies to defend against an attack by Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenid Empire, and, according to Herodotus, defeated and killed him in 530 BC.”

[luimnigh]

If you're wondering what Sun Tzu is doing as Vampire, he's on Dracula's advisory cabinet, helping him run Vampyrsk, aka the Vampire Nation. Which is UN-recognised nation state built on land purchased from the Ukrainian and Belarussian governments, formerly known as the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.

Also on Dracula's council are Niccolo Machiavelli, Tomyris of the Massagetae, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, and Henry Kissinger.

The comic was published in November 2022, a year before the last guy kicked it.

So, in the Marvel Universe, Julius Caesar died in 46 B.C.

Any student of Roman history thinks I just made a typo, because Caesar died in 44 B.C. In our history.

On Earth-616, Julius Caesar died in the aftermath of the Battle of Thapsus, falling off a captured elephant he was riding and cracking his head open on a rock.

Thankfully, these events were being observed by time-travelling alien historian/Caesar fanboy, and his gaseous species can possess human bodies and repair them indefinitely. Now, Caesar was dead, no going back on that, but the body was alive.

So this alien impersonated Caesar for the last two years of his life, "died" on the Ides of March 44 B.C., had his body smuggled out of Rome by the Fantastic Four, and then went off to experience the rest of human history.

He's still alive. Owns his own company. Sometimes works as history teacher. Good for him.

[antiquityroadsshow]

Herodotus: I’ve got a story for ya

Me: oh yeah? Is it true?

Herodotus: No, but a queen cuts off a king’s head and there will be so many kooky dreams

Me: Well count me in, you funky little dude

[michael-svetbird]

: • 'INTERLUDIO XLII': . QUEEN TOMYRIS by Nikolai Ashtema [born 1942, Ukraine], a graphic artist and painter from Kazakhstan @nikolaiashtema [https://strategy2050.kz/en/news/50002] . 1. Tomyris, Queen of the Massagetae 2003 | 100x70 | Paper, pastels . 2. The Triumph of Tomyris 2021 | Oil on canvas . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomyris . By the kind courtesy & with permission of ©Nikolai Ashtema @nikolaiashtema . . #nikolaiashtema #kazakhartist #painter #kazakhstan #art #heritage #ancienthistory #womeninhistory #massagetae #sakas #scythians #queentomyris #tomyris #tomris #τόμυρις #томирис #warriorqueen #oiorpata #warrioress #femalewarrior #amazons #amazzoni #amazones #αμαζόνες #cyrus #antiquity #ancientcultures #mythologyart #mythology #historicalillustration https://www.instagram.com/p/CgjLScPor12/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[aboutanancientenquiry]

A Kazakhstani movie based on Herodotus’ narrative about Tomyris and the death of Cyrus the Great -its national and political implications and a Persianate point of view on it

“Tomiris is a 2019 Kazakhstani feature film directed by Akan Sataev, which tells the story of the queen of the Massagetae, Tomyris, and the Persian king, Cyrus the Great. The film co-stars Almira Tursyn, Aizhan Lighg, and Ghassan Massoud.

The film was commissioned by the Ministry of Culture and Sports of Kazakhstan. The idea to create a film about Tomyris was brought by Aliya Nazarbayeva, the youngest daughter of the first president of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev. She was later employed as a general producer of the film.

The premiere of the film took place in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan on September 25, 2019. The film received mixed reviews from critics and, as of July 2020, grossed $1.3 million against a production budget of $6.5 million.

Cast[edit]

Almira Tursyn – Tomiris

Aizhan Lighg – Sardana

Ghassan Massoud – Cyrus

Berik Aitzhanov – Kurtun

Adil Akhmetov – Argun

Zarina Yeva - Tana

Erkebulan Dayirov – Kharasp

Azamat Satibaldi – Kavaz

The film was ordered by the Ministry of Culture and Sports of Kazakhstan. The idea of a film about Tomyris was brought to creation by Aliya Nazarbayeva, the daughter of the first president of Kazakhstan.[8] Filming began in December 2017, and scenes were shot in different parts of Kazakhstan. The Massagetae heroes speak the ancient Turkic language, while the Persian heroes speak new Persian in the film, despite the fact that modern historians consider the Massagetae to have been a nomadic Iranian people.[9][10] The film's budget was 6,5 million USD.[7]

The plot of the film is built on the story of Herodotus, who called his version one of the many stories about the death of Cyrus the Great.[11] The filmmakers took into account many features of the culture and life of the Massagetae, in particular, their pointed hats and tribal meetings, at which the most important issues were resolved. However, the language spoken by the Saka nomads, which is an artificially created proto-Turkic language, is controversial. The clothes worn by the Massagetae in the film are also disputable, as they are probably too heavy for the Central Asian region. The vicinity of the Amu Darya River has a very hot climate, so the summer clothes were lighter and of a different style.[11]

Almira Tursyn, a psychologist, was chosen from 15 thousand people to play the role of Tomyris. She took professional lessons of horseriding and archery and learned to use swords and knives.[12]

Release and critical response[edit]

The film was theatrically released in Kazakhstan on October 1, 2019. The distribution rights of the film were sold to Blue Swan for Italy, SND Films for France, Art Mood for Spain, AT Entertainment for Japan, Gulf Film for the Middle East, Challan for South Korea, Paradise/MGN for CIS, Shaw for Singapore, Program 4 Media for Romania, Siyah Bayez Movies for Turkey, and Well Go USA for the United States.[13][14] Distribution in the United States and Canada was picked up by Amazon Prime Video.[15]

The film received mixed reviews, largely because Herodotus's version of events is not generally accepted by historians and researchers,[16] and unlike in the film, Massagetae are Scythian people speaking an Iranian language, while in the movie all characters are represented by modern Kazakh (featuring Mongolian physiognomy and speaking a Turkic language). Criticism came from both the Kazakh and Iranian public mainly for considering the film as a feminist approach to the history of both Muslim countries. The Iranian public also criticized the film for using Herodotus's description of King Cyrus's death.[16]

Some observers believe that the film was aimed to make Dariga Nazarbayeva's potential presidential bid in the future, the daughter of Kazakhstan's former leader Nursultan Nazarbayev, more acceptable among ordinary Kazakhstanis.[17]

The film won the Nouveau Genre Great Prize at France's 2020 L'Étrange Festival.[18]

As of July 2020, it had grossed $1.3 million against a production budget of $6.5 million.[19]

From the article of Wikipedia on the film Tomiris ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomiris_(film) )”

Ghassan Massoud as Cyrus the Great in the film Tomiris

“The Legend of Tomiris Rewrites History and Makes It More Kazakh 

By Javeed Ahwar - November 15, 2020

The Legend of Tomiris (2019) is a lame adaption of Herodotus’s account of Cyrus the Great’s encounter with a Steppe warrior Tomiris (See Rollinger 2012). There is no doubt that the film is a not a historically accurate adaptation, nor the intention of makers, I believe, have been making something based on historical facts. Tomiris (the film) is a prime example how arts become a tool for nationalist politics in today’s time. Regarding the ethnic origin of Scythians, there is almost a consensus among Turkologists and scholars of Central Asian studies about their Iranian ancestry. Distinguished Turkologist Svat Saucek defines Scythians as nomadic Iranians—the natives of Central Asian Steppes, who were driven out from this region by Kipchak Turks between the fourth and sixth centuries (2000, xii, 28). Furthermore, historian A.I. Melyukova writes, “From the end of the 7th century B.C. to the 4th century B.C. the Central- Eurasian steppes were inhabited by two large groups of kin Iranian-speaking tribes—the Scythians and Sarmatians” (2008, 97). Based on the existing scholarship, Massagetae, a sub-division of Scythians which Tomiris belonged to, were not a Turkic group, quite on the contrary, they were in war with the latter until they were fully replaced by them in the Steppes. The question rises if a moviemaker can go that far in manipulating historical facts and is it then fair to call it a historical drama. I leave it for the readers to decide.

Coming to the story of film, it is narrated by Al-Farabi, a universalist middle ages scholar of Iranian origin, who is introduced as “Al-Turki” and given a Kazakh phenotype in the film. Al-Farabi is shown sitting in a traditional office-like atmosphere in Damascus (Syria) while writing the story of Tomiris for the Arab world. The story starts with the birth of Tomiris and the maternal death of her mother, queen to the Massagetae tribe’s chief Spargap. Being the first child to her father, she gets treated as a prince and trained in hunting, sword fighting, archery and politics by her father. Spargap gets killed by his rival tribe leaders Kurtun and Kavaz, shown as loyal puppets to the neighboring Iranian Khwarazmians. Tomiris survives several assassination attempts and seeks asylum at Savromat tribe and marries with Argun, the prince of Saprap tribe. After avenging her father and brothers’ bloods, she unites the Steppe tribes in war against Khwarazmians, part of the Persian King’s domain. The interval scene begins with Tomiris receiving an invitation from Cyrus. Argun and his son Spargap decides to visit Babylon the quarter of Cyrus the Great. The conversation does not go well between the two. After rejecting Cyrus’s proposal to join Persia in their conquest of the Egypt, persuaded by his subject Gubar, Cyrus kills the entire delegates. Gubar, the messenger of Cyrus, brings their death bodies to Tomiris also proposing her to marry the king of kings. Tomiris, now a widow, not only rejects the marriage proposal of the Shahenshah, but also avenges the death of her son and husband killing the entire Persian delegates and declaring a war with Persia. Cyrus the Great putting his plan of conquering the Egypt on halt, wages a war with the Steppe tribes and gets killed at the hand of an ordinary warrior of Tomiris.

Why Tomiris? Aliya Nazarbayeva—daughter of Nursultan Nazarbayev, the ex-president of Kazakhstan and writer-actor Timur Zhaksylykov   have pinned down the story to cater to Kazakh youth who seek glory in the past. Tomiris (2019) not only makes a 700 B.C. historical figure speak Kazakh, it is supported by poor cast playing Persians and Khwarazmian. Neither the Kazakh nor the Persian dialogues are intelligible to present Kazakh and Persian speakers. Was it a deliberate move? It might be the case but saying “Bezugarid”— instead of “Bezugarid in the film” tells us the failure of writers and makers to integrate a Persian writer in the project and cast Persian speaking characters.

On the technical aspect of the film, starting with the cinematography, it is too monotonous to impress. It does not live up to the prestige of Tomiris and Cyrus the Great. In particular emperor Cyrus is portrayed as an understaffed king and with not much aura around him. Produced on a budget of USD 6.5 million, it is justifiable. Furthermore, Babylon looks not different from the depiction of Arabian lands in Hollywood movies. The tents and deserts where Tomiris and her tribe resides are shown in an egalitarian way all looking alike. The life conditions are shown very hard. I argue that Tomiris the film is an attempt by Kazakh artists to rewrite history in a problematic way. The film could be made about heroic deeds of nomadic tribes without making it ethnically Kazakh or Turk. Being a multi-ethnic and language country, Kazakhstan can claim heir to Scythians on territorial but not on an ethnolinguistic ground. What makes this film problematic is the makers attempt to give Scythians the Kazakh language, the Mongoloid facial features and calling Tomiris as “türk tarihinin ilk kadın hükümdarı”—the first female ruler in Turkish history.

The film is not supported by good casting including the leading character Tomiris played by Almyra Tursyn. Her performances in entirety and particularly in the emotional scenes fails to create an impact.  A Syrian actor Hassan Massoud fails to shine as the Cyrus the Great in the film. Leading characters like Tomiris, Argun, Spargap and Sardana remain superficial in their approach towards their characters. My best performed scene from this film is the labor scene when Spargap’s wife gives birth to Tomiris. She excels in that scene, the rest looks like a Turkish Soep opera with blunt expressions seen throughout. Considering this region’s multiethnic and multilinguistic and religious feature, I would like to see movies which moves beyond the chauvinistic, black and white, and fictitious treatment of history. Such a movie might please a historically uninformed Kazakh, but it definitely is not for a well-educated Kazakh or Central Asian.  

References cited:

Soucek, Svat. 2000. A History of Inner Asia. Cambridge: The Cambridge University Press.

Melyukova, A. I. 2008. “The Scythians and Sarmatians.” In The Cambridge History of EarlyInner Asia, edited by Denis Sinor, 97-118. Cambridge: The Cambridge University Press.

Rollinger, Robert. 2012. “Cyrus According to Herodotus” Encyclopedia Iranica, Vol. XII, Fasc. 3, pp. 260-262; available online at https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/herodotus-iv (accessed online at November 10 2020).

© Javeed Ahwar

JAVEED AHWAR

I am a persianate coming from Afghanistan. I completed my undergraduate studies at Kabul University in Law and Political Science in 2009. I obtained my first master degree from the OSCE Academy in Bishkek in Politics and Security in Central Asia in 2010. I obtained my second master degree [Advanced LLM in European and International Human Rights Law] from Leiden University/Netherlands in 2015. In 2018, I was able to acquire my third master degree/research master in Cultural Anthropology from Utrecht University in Netherlands in 2018. Since 2019, I am doing my PhD in Eurasian Studies, an inter-university PhD program between Humboldt University in Berlin and Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan.”

Source: https://www.javeedahwar.blog/2020/11/the-legend-of-tomiris-rewrites-history.html

[wolkoshka]

No, that is exactly what you're saying and are still continuing to say.

Its as though no one's visiting museums or paying attention to the details. A Chinese absolutely cannot play a Russian tsar, like what are you people on about??

This is what ancient Chinese people looked like, or something quite close to it with definitive facial features and bone structure (features they STILL possess)

And THIS,

is what the royal court of the Russian empire looked like. It's almost as if they WANTED to know WHO ruled the empire and WHAT they looked like, huh. This is how Russians look like now too, no matter the mixing of the people of former Soviet countries.

THIS is what Amir Timur looked like, features connoting the ones of the people of the steppes, a mixture of Scythian and Mongolian (and that's AFTER Genghis Khans onslaught) predominant features, and not like your average Indian with more rounder eyes and darker skintone. And that's how his son most likely looked like too, Babur, founder of the Mughal dynasty.

For example, the movie that came out two or so years ago of the Massagetae warrior queen, Tomyris, she fought off the Persians, but you didn't see an Iranian, Russian, or an Arab playing her, because that's the history of the Kazakhs and their history is interwoven with the rest of the Turkic peoples. And that's how it should be. That's respecting history and the people of the time and depicting it as close as possible to reality.

As for Cleopatra, no one is whitewashing anything. There's marbled statues and genealogy records that trace her ancestry AND what she looked like. Case in point, the famous,

It shouldn't kill someone to respect her legacy and do justice to her story.

It takes little to no research to depict a story, a DOCUMENTARY of all things, as close as possible to the reality of that time and age.

But Netflix chose to remove all historical context and instead decided to base it's documents off heresy and racist propaganda.

Cleopatra is not black, she is of Macedonian Greek origins, from the Ptolemaic dynasty, so Jada Smith can instead count the millions of dollars in her bank account to make her daughter feel “seen” and “inspired” because the erasure of the history of a people she couldn't give two shits about is not going to be the answer to blatant, racist, and absolutely incoherent depiction of a prominent historical character.

People forget that Africa is a continent just as Asia is a continent, and it’d be ridiculous for a Chinese to play a Russian tzar as it would be for an Indian to play a Turkic historical figure, no matter the history of conquests being shared.

Generalization of history is only going to cause more separation and animosity, and is definitively not the way to respect other peoples history and culture.

So jot this bullshit down.

[paganimagevault]

Queen Tomyris with the decapitated head of Cyrus II by Agimsaly Duzelkhanov

"The name Massagetae is the Latin form of the Ancient Greek name Massagetai (Μασσαγεται). The Iranologist Rüdiger Schmitt notes that although the original name of the Massagetae is unattested, it appears that the most plausible etymon is Iranian *Masyaka-tā. *Masyaka-tā is the plural form, containing the East Iranian suffix *-tā, which is reflected in Greek -tai. The singular form is *Masi̯a-ka- and is composed of Iranian *-ka- and *masi̯a-, meaning "fish," derived from Young Avestan masiia- (cognate with Vedic mátsya-). The name literally means "concerned with fish," or "fisherman." This corresponds with the remark by the ancient Greek historian Herodotus (1.216.3) that "they live on their livestock and fish." Schmitt notes that objections to this reasoning, based on the assumption that, instead of masi̯a-, a derivation from Iranian *kapa- "fish" (compare Ossetian кӕф (kæf)) would be expected, is "not decisive." Schmitt states that any other interpretations on the origin of the original Iranian name of the Massagetae are "linguistically unacceptable."

The Iranologist János Harmatta had however criticised the proposal of Massagetai's derivation from masyaka-ta, meaning "fish-eating (men)," as being semantically and phonologically unacceptable, and instead suggested that the name might be derived from an early Bactrian language name Maššagatā, from an earlier Mašyagatā related to the Young Avestan terms maṣ̌a-, maṣ̌iia-, maṣ̌iiāka-, meaning "men," with the ending of the name being derived from East Iranian suffix *-tā or from the collective formative syllable from which the suffix evolved. According to Harmatta's hypothesis, the Bactrian name Maššagatā would have corresponded to the name Dahā, meaning "men," used by the Massagetae for themselves.

The proposed etymologies for the Massagataean sub-tribe of the Apasiacae, whose name is not attested in ancient Iranian records, include *Āpasakā, meaning "Water-Sakas," and *Āpašyāka, meaning "rejoicing at water," which have so far not been conclusive."

-taken from wikipedia

[thejackmeister-mongolhistory]

TOMYRIS AND THE SCYTHIAN VICTORY OVER THE ACHAEMENID PERSIANS

For part of my series on nomad blacksmithing I had a brief look at the Scythians. Scythians graves are rather rich in wonderful bronze and gold working, indicating the access they had to it across their lands. Scythians in the western steppes (in today's Ukraine) employed Greek metalworkers who designed some of their most famous surviving treasures, which include wonderful depictions of Scythian clothing, armour and hair styles.

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/metpublications/from_the_lands_of_the_scythians_ancient_treasures_from_the_museums_of_the_ussr_3000_bc_100_bc_the_metropolitan_museum_of_art_bulletin_v_32_no_5_1973_1974

Of course, that was an excuse for me play around a bit, look at images of these surviving wares and have some fun depicting Tomyris of the Massagetae's great victory over Cyrus the Great. The large antlers/horn on the horse are known from Scythian graves, but probably weren't worn into battle; they seem to me a terribly awkward thing to have pointed back at the rider. But since I am making the thing I can allow myself some artistic license.

My latest video series discusses this matter of production, furnaces and other details around nomad blacksmithing:

Part 1: Overview

Part 2: from the Xiongnu to the Türks and Uyghurs

[elkordyadel32]

Queen Tomyris Warrior of the Massagetae !!!!!

https://youtu.be/rwP3nbl-8kA

[saturnian-dreams]

Our lady and avenger, saint Tomyris of the Massagetae

[hildegardavon]

Tomyris

Woodcut illustration (leaf [i]1r, f. lxxj) of the defeat of Cyrus II by Tomyris, Queen of the Massagetae, hand-colored in red, green, yellow and black, from an incunable German translation by Heinrich Steinhöwel of Giovanni Boccaccio's “De mulieribus claris”, printed by Johannes Zainer at Ulm, ca.1474 (cf. ISTC ib00720000). 

One of 76 woodcut illustrations (1 on leaf [e]8v dated 1473), each 80 x 110 mm., depicting scenes from the life of the women chronicled (for a full list of subjects, cf. W.L. Schreiber, Handbuch der Holz- und Metallschnitte des XV. Jahrhunderts (Nendeln: Kraus Reprints, 1969), no. 3506).