#master of beasts

Nonbinary Scythian deities

I have the images I’ve been looking for— both male versions of the Scythian snake-legged goddess, but these are both clearly male.

Like the ancient Scythian Enarei, trans priests involved in divination, the snake-legged Scythian deity’s gender is also ambiguous. I’ve been searching for nonbinary images of this deity, I finally found them!

To sum up: two tailed sirens evolved from the snake-legged Scythian goddess, which in turn has roots in ancient imagery of the Mistress and Master of Animals from the near east. Given that the Scythian snake-legged goddess has origins in both male and female imagery, I’m not surprised that the figure is shown as either male or female— or as both.

Let’s take a look at these enby deities.

First up is a bronze plaque from Olynthus, discovered in Greece, which I’ve discussed before. Since I was able to look at the book with the original photo (Robinson, David M., et al. Excavations at Olynthus. Part 10) It’s really clear to see: the deity is male, likely bearded. While the the chest area is damaged, his hair is short and jaw is fairly square.

(No, I haven’t been able to find a better pic of this. I’m guessing that it’s in the Archaeological Museum of Polygyros in Greece, which houses the finds from the excavation, but the museum’s catalog isn’t online.)

Scythian ancestral goddess, bearded. Gold diadem. From Kul Oba, Crimea 400-350 BCE. Hermitage Museum, St Petersberg.

I’m very excited about this image— because it’s one of the non binary / androgynous Scythian tendril figures I’ve been researching. While most of the Scythian snake-legged deities have breasts, and are so likely meant to represent women, this one is bearded. 

(Disclosure: while this object is supposed to be in the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, I can’t find it on their website.)

For reference, here's a drawing of the figure. Gold diadem from the Kul'-Oba tumulus: a fragment (drawing by Helena Sokolovskaya after Williams and Ogden 1994, fig. 85). Drawing from Ustinova.

I’m happy that the next one is photographed on an angle, so we can clearly see the figure has both breasts and a beard. Longer post here. Capital fragment, Salamis, Cyprus, 300-250 BC. Currently in the British Museum. 

Our final enby Scythian goddess is possibly from the 4th century BCE, and shows a handsome and well-preserved image of the gender fluid Scythian ancestral deity. They wears a calathus on his head, headgear normally worn by goddesses; they has a beard and wings; and their chiton covers feminine-looking breasts.

It’s interesting that it’s so hard to find photos of these images, while the female snake-legged Scythian goddesses are relatively easy to find. C’mon, no need to be shy! 

For comparison’s sake, here are some clearly male images of this deity:

Bearded deity, acroterium, found north of the Black Sea. 3rd century BCE. Marble. Inv. No. A.937. Image via Wikipedia.

Athenian column base. From the Mobius article.

I’ll end this with a favorite quote of mine from Ustinov on this topic: “The snake-limbed goddess was in the eyes of the Scythians a primordial being, the progenitor of the human race. Ambiguity of gender, probably expressing the deity's all-inclusiveness, was common to several divinities, who usually had a conventional gender, but deviated from it in cult, mythology and iconography.”

Sources

Plaque at Olynthus:

Robinson, David M., et al. Excavations at Olynthus. Part 10, Metal and Minor Miscellaneous Finds : An Original Contribution to Greek Life (with a New Up-to-Date Map of Olynthus). Johns Hopkins Press ; Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press, 1941. Pages 30-39.

Gold diadem:

Photo from: Williams, Dyfri, et al. Greek Gold : Jewelry of the Classical World. Abrams, 1994. Fig 85.

For this topic in general:

Ustinova, Yulia. "Snake-Limbed and Tendril-Limbed Goddesses in the Art and Mythology of the Mediterranean and Black Sea." Scythians and Greeks: Cultural Interaction in Scythia, Athens and the Early Roman Empire (Sixth Century B.C. - Fist Century A.D.). Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2005. Pages 76-78, “Tendril-Limbed Creatures and Androgyny.”

Möbius, Hans. “Eine Dreiseitige Basis in Athen.” Mitteilungen Des Deutschen ArchäOlogischen Instituts, Athenische Abteilung, 1926. Book online here.

Picture of the throne:

DERWAEL, Stéphanie. “Half-Human Half-Vegetal Hybrids in Eastern Mosaics.” Journal of Mosaic Research 16 89–110. 2023.

For disputes on dating the throne:

Drawcember Day 21/22- Master of Beasts (Jamie)

His backstory changed so much, so I only remember fragments from it, but basically there's an island that they found a golden mask on and it gives him the ability to speak to animals. He's really good with swords and so that's his main attack, rather than commanding animals to attack (besides they barely listen)

Also, when I was young and didn't know about the lgbtq+ community was, Jamie was a girl who presented as a guy and used he/him and went by 'jamie', but was still a girl (because young me was stupid) but now I'm confirming that Jamie is a transman.

Jamie is part of the Imaginaria Defence

Etruscan pendants, images of Potnia Theron / Scythian ancestral goddess / sirens and Scylla.

Photo in mid left hand side is the Scythian ancestral goddess; photo in the mid right hand side is a siren. The two images on the bottom are Scylla.

I attempted to research these images until I had no more questions about who the figure is supposed to represent. Instead, the more information I found, the more questions I had. To save my sanity, I decided to be content in not knowing, and enjoy these lovely, ancient, Scythian-inspired Etruscan gold jewellery as is. (For a closer look at the Etruscan ones, see this post.)

What I find fascinating about these pendants is how much they look like Starbuck’s siren: a woman, facing forward, grasping what look like her tails that are curving up towards her head.

What’s also interesting is that academics, researchers, and museums can’t seem to agree on what to label these.

In the Louvre in Paris, she’s called a Potnia Theron, despite not having any clear animals at her sides.

In the British Museum, London, she’s labeled a siren.

In a museum in Berlin, she’s simply called a goddess.

In an academic article that discusses this jewellery extensively, the author suggests she might be a siren, a vegetal goddess, or a potnia theron (lower case on purpose.)

I’m including two examples of Scylla, as they’re also gold jewellery, and show a likely connection between Etruscan snake-legged demons like Scylla and Typhon and the tendril-limbed Scythian ancestral goddess. (For reference: Sirens are bird-women in ancient art; Scylla has one or two fish tails. Usually.)

So, let’s just enjoy these different images that survived the centuries. Information is from the museums. 

Louvre: Pontius Theron, Cerveteri. Department of Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquities. Catalog number: Bj 954. Part of the Campana Collection.

Sirens? Etruscan. 650-600BCE 7thC BC (Domenici 1995, 28)(Domenici 1995, 28) Found: Italy: Lazio: Cerveteri: Caere. British Museum.

Staatliche Museen, Berlin: 4th quarter of the 7th century BCE (2nd half of the 7th century BC -> 7th century BC -> Pendant (?) made of two equal pressed halves soldered together, depicting a standing woman (presumably a goddess) holding a plant stem in each hand; above: two seated lions with ram heads facing each other on their necks. The piece shows close parallels in its decoration to jewelry from the Tomba Regolini-Galassi in Caere (Cerveteri).

Altes Museum, Berlin: Gold jewelrey, Mistress of the Animals, possible Macedonia or southern Russia. 4-5th century. Altes Museum, Berlin.

Jewellery, 7th century BC. Kamiros/Rhodes, Melos, Dodona. Gold, 600-600 BC. Various depictions of “Mistress of the Animals.” My photos.

Scythian ancestral goddess. Gold plaques from the burial mound in Kul-Oba, near Kerch, Crimea, Ukraine. Image from Wikipedia. 

Gold clasp consisting of two plaques, each embossed with a siren with four wings. Cultures/periods Etruscan Production date 490BC-470BC (early)5thC BC (Domenici 1995, 104)(Domenici 1995, 104

Excavated/Findspot: Chiusi Europe: Italy: Tuscany: Siena (province): Chiusi. British Museum.

Siren. Gold diadem, garnet, carnelian, sardonyx, 250-150 BCE, from Kerch / Ukraine. Staatliche Antikensammlungen, Munich. My photo.

Funeral wreath (Scylla and dolphins. Production 3rd century BCE. Museum fur Kunst & Gewerbe, Hamburg.

Two tailed Scylla, gold appliqué, Greek / South Italy, ca 300-275 BCE. At the Getty Villa Malibu.

4th century BCE., the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia.

From website info: Facing for a Horse's Frontlet 

Gold; stamped. H. 41.4 cm. Scythian culture. 4th century BCE.

Tsymbalka Barrow, Dnieper Area, Zaporozhye Region, formerly the Taurida Province. Russia (now Ukraine)

Source of Entry: Imperial Archaeological Commission, St Petersburg. 1868.

Images are screenshots from: Culican, William. “A Foreign Motif in Etruscan Jewellery.” Papers of the British School at Rome 39 (1971): 1–12. Web.

This research does confirm my theory: that ancient Scythian art inspired Etruscan art, giving us the two-tailed Scylla.

Update: I want to include this Hellenestic gold diadam here, from the British museum:

Gold diadam, Hellenistic. date 330BCE - 300BCE. Excavated/Findspot: Eretria (perhaps) Europe: Greece: Central Greece and Euboea: Évvoia (island): Eretria. I wrote about this more here.

What I’d love to find is a well researched, academic article titled “Bending the Icon: How the Near-East Potnia Theron’s Beasts Morphed into the Scythian Goddess's Snake Feet.” But that article hasn’t been written, and I don’t have access to library loans.

If you want to start a research deep dive of your own, here’s my main sources:

For a thorough analysis of these pendants, see: 

Culican, William. “A Foreign Motif in Etruscan Jewellery.” Papers of the British School at Rome 39 (1971): 1–12. Via Jstor.

For a thorough analysis of this image in Scythian art, see:

Ustinova, Yulia. "Snake-Limbed and Tendril-Limbed Goddesses in the Art and Mythology of the

Mediterranean and Black Sea." Scythians and Greeks: Cultural Interaction in Scythia, Athens and the Early Roman Empire (Sixth Century B.C. - Fist Century A.D.). Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2005. 

See also:

When I first started researching the origins of the twin-tailed siren, I would chase down any and all mentions that might give me a clue to her origins, which sometimes led me down some deep dives into dead ends. Especially since the twin-tailed siren, the image of a woman holding her tails up to her ears, has never had a proper name, I never knew exactly which books or articles might hold an important clue.

Eventually, I decided to start conserving my time, and only researching historical images I thought were obvious, direct ancestors of the twin-tailed siren. For example, I came across a few mentions of the Scythian ancestral goddess or the snake-legged Scythian goddess. 

I looked up the references, looked at images of her, and at the time, decided that although the images were very similar, this wasn’t actually the siren, OR significant enough to be related. Mistress and Master of Animal images are front-facing figures holding animals, and while the ones holding snakes look vaguely like the two tailed siren, I didn’t see the connection at first.

In retrospect, that was a mistake, and I could’ve saved myself a lot of time if I’d explored the connection between the Scythian ancestral goddess and the twin-tailed siren further.

(Especially as the Scythian images connect to art from ancient Iran and Mesopotamia, providing a fairly clear history of where the twin-tailed siren originated from. The twin-tailed siren was popularized on mainland Europe, so her move west makes geographical and cultural sense.)

One of several stumbling blocks I had was: some of the figures discussed with the Scythian ancestral goddess are male, and don’t seem like they have two tails. I’m going to go over several struggles I have with those images from Iran, such as the Luristan bronzes, and the Mistress and Master of Beasts images, and how they relate to the Scythian ones.

So we’re going to take a long look at both Luristan images and Scythian ones, focusing on male versions, or Master of Beast images. This is a line going back centuries: to ancient Assyria, Babylonia, and Persia (or southwestern Iran).

Let’s start by defining what “Master of Beasts” means, or Master of Animals. Keep in mind, Master of Animals doesn’t refer to a character from a specific cultural myth, but is a term used to describe a motif in ancient art. According to researchers reviewing the term in an article titled “The Master of Animals in Old World Iconography,” Master of Beasts is:

“an image that shows a central male figure (generally humanoid but at times winged or with animal parts) who stands upright and extends his arms out to either side of his body to hold animals/creatures.”

This is the definition that most academics agree on. A guy, facing us, holding animals in each of his hands. Of course, there’s discussion and debate around the name, and Chausidis’s magnificent research on images such as this prefers to use “idols with protomes.” And a “protome” is something that ends with an animal’s head. (This will be significant later.)

That’s the basic background. Now let’s take a look at the images of the Master of Beasts, and in particular, the motifs that are related to the Scythian ancestral goddess and later the twin-tailed siren.

Three stamps showing ancient depictions of the Master of Beasts motif, British Museum. (One, two, three)

Some very early versions of this motif are in the British Museum, and three versions show a front-facing figure holding his arms out to grasp what look like snakes. Made in 5000 BC - 4000 BC, these are some of the earliest examples of Master of Beasts images. 

A lovely version in gold, called the “Lord of Animals” by the British Museum, was made between 1850BC-1550BC in Crete or Aegina, Greece. While he’s holding two geese, a pair of snakes arches around him, giving us a visual link to the Master of Beasts images and the curling tails of the twin-tailed siren.

A number of fascinating images of the “Master of Beasts” motif are cataloged in “Luristan Standards” by Nikos Chausidis. This is an extremely in-depth look at the “Luristan Bronzes,” which are a collection of bronze weapons, ornaments, and figurines from 650-700 BCE found in that mountainous area. While Chausidis prefers the term “idols with protomes” to Master of Beasts or Master of Animals, these ancient images show another link to the sirens. Many of these images are men holding animal heads off to the side. If you look quickly, and given how symmetrical the images are, the animal’s necks could be mistaken for tails.

The Luristan bronzes are also the first real connection that the Master of Beasts have with the twin-tailed siren, as the oldest image of a twin-tailed siren is a Luristan bronze.

While I like to think that the Luristan figure is the great-grandmother of the siren of Starbucks fame, I know that’s probably not the case. There’s only two examples of twin-tailed mermaids from Luristan, and given the number of images of the Scythian ancestral goddess and Scylla with two tails, those are the likely source for the siren.

Next, I want to talk about the academic research that links Master of Beasts and the Scythian ancestral goddess. In a section called “Tendril-Limbed Creatures and Androgyny” in a book titled "Snake-Limbed and Tendril-Limbed Goddesses in the Art and Mythology of the Mediterranean and Black Sea,” several images of the Master of Beasts are discussed alongside the Scythian goddess.

I’ve already blogged about a few of these, like the figure on a capital in Salamais, Cyprus, Greece. The book does go into how the figure is either androgynous, or hermaphroditic, because the gender isn’t clear. This capital figure has both a beard and breasts.

There’s other examples that might be blurring gender lines. For example, a copy of a Roman throne from late 2nd BCE clearly has breasts, but is missing a head— making it hard to tell what gender the figure is.

From Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. There's several copies of this, like the one in the Acroplis Museum in Greece. https://www.theacropolismuseum.gr/en/throne

However, other versions of this are clearly male. A marble relief currently in Berlin has a bearded, winged figure whose legs end in curling vines.

The photo is from blogspot, Roman Scribbler, who says it’s from San Gregorio Magno on Monte Celio. The info is from Möbius, Hans: “Eine dreiseitige Basis in Athen,”AM 51, pp 117-124,

A shirtless, bearded, winged man holds two griffins by the horns, making him look like a possible Master of Beasts image. He’s from the 3rd century BCE, in the New Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg.

Bringing this blog back to images connected with the Scythian ancestral goddess, we need to look at a bronze relief from Olynthus. Unfortunately, I’ve only managed to find drawings of it, which show a grumpy, winged figure holding two felines. While there’s no beard, the wings and animals make her look similar to figure in Berlin. This image from Olynthus is discussed in other articles looking at Master of Beast images, Scythian goddess images, and other deities with “tendril limbs” or curling vines for legs, such as "A Herodotean Echo in Pompeian Art?'

Like Artemis as the Mistress of Beasts or Potnia Theron, the core meaning of these images is the idea of influencing nature, whether it’s men dominating it as the Master of Beasts, or as a fertility goddess, like the Scythian ancestral goddess. The Mistress of Animals seems to prefer cats over snakes, geese, or other wild animals.

The final image I want to look at is the Scythian ancestral goddess on a horse bridle, with snakes for legs. She’s from the 4th century BCE, found in the Dnieper area, Zaporozhye Region, and is currently in Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. The style of her dress is similar to other images of the Scythian ancestral goddess, and her legs end in snake’s heads.

Putting this image side my side with Master of Beasts images, I finally understood the connections-- both in the meaning of the images, as well as how they could have evolved. An image of a man holding snakes out as his side could, over time, become a woman with snakes for legs.

Sources.

Nikos Chausidis, Luristan standards - iconography, semiotics and purpose (English translation from Macedonian Igor Eftimovski). Skopje: Center for prehistoric research, 2022. 

That definition I used:

Counts, Derek B., and Bettina Arnold. The Master of Animals in Old World Iconography. Archaeolingua, 2010.

Ustinova, Yulia. "Snake-Limbed and Tendril-Limbed Goddesses in the Art and Mythology of the Mediterranean and Black Sea." Scythians and Greeks: Cultural Interaction in Scythia, Athens and the Early Roman Empire (Sixth Century B.C. - First Century A.D.). Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2005. 

Laws, Guitty Azatpay. "A Herodotean Echo in Pompeian Art?" American Journal of Archaeology 65, 1 (1961): 31-35.

DERWAEL, Stéphanie. “Half-Human Half-Vegetal Hybrids in Eastern Mosaics.” Journal of Mosaic Research 16 89–110. 2023.

Artemis as Mistress of Animals, Glyptotek in Copenhagen, Denmark.

This post is a landing page for my research about Artemis' connections to the snake-legged Scythian goddess.

The Mistress of Animals is associated with the Greek goddess of the hunt, Artemis. Artemis' and the Scythian goddess' imagery is interconnected in visual ways; Scythian goddess imagery was possibly connected to the cult of Artemis Orphia; and snake-legged goddesses decorate the Temple of Artemis Leukophryene at Magnesia. These gold depictions of Potnia Theron are pretty.

Artemis' depiction as Mistress of Animals is similar to some depictions of the Mistress and Master of Animals. like this one from the Alexandropol burial mound.

There's also some neat images of Artemis as Potnia Theron I don't want lost in my archive, like these two Etruscan ones; this ancient Cretan vase; and these images of Ephesian Artemis from the 2nd century CE.

As I wrote, the the oldest image of a twin-tailed siren is from western Iran, and is part of the “Luristan Bronzes,” a collection of bronze weapons, ornaments, and figurines found in that mountainous area. I want to take a look at these bronzes in more depth— and most images here come from the amazing monograph by Nikos Chausidis, “Luristan Standards." 

When you look at other Luristan bronzes, the mermaid isn’t unusual. The motif of “Master of Beasts” look quite similar to her, at least in terms of the legs: two legs bent unnaturally upwards, held apart by the figure. These appendages (it’s honestly hard to call them legs) end in dragon heads, and are obviously female. Our Luristan mermaid is figure 8. 

She’s also not the only twin-tailed mermaid.

D23, image 1: another Luristan twin-tailed mermaid. Most of these bronzes were made approximately 750-700 BC, making the Luristan mermaid and Master of Beasts imagery the likely inspiration for twin-tailed sirens. This style of figure, usually referred to as Master of Beasts, is incredibly common in Luristan bronzes.