The sheath was first described for international audience in the “Scythians and Greeks” book by E. Minns published in 1913. Below is a drawing of the same scene from that book:
The scabbard was recently exhibited in the Met Museum and here is how the Met Museum described it:
“In the main frieze is a battle between Greeks and barbarians; at the left end stand two griffins. The irregular field above the frieze shows deer being killed, one by a lion, the other by a griffin. The scabbard from which this gold decoration came would have been of another material, possibly bronze or iron. Such an elaborately embellished scabbard would have formed part of a ceremonial set of Scythian weapons typically including a sword, a bow, and a bow sheath. The Scythians were a nomadic people who lived in the Eurasian steppes during the first millennium B.C. Although the scabbard is of Scythian type, the decoration is Greek in style and undoubtedly of Greek workmanship. Similar sheet-metal goldwork from the royal cemetery at Vergina in northern Greece and from kurgans (burial mounds) of Scythian rulers in the North Pontic region (around the Black Sea) have been linked to the same workshop.”
You may want to learn about the presence of the Amazons in the territory of present-day Ukraine some 2500 years ago.
The “Cradle of Civilizations” book has a new suggestion about which battle is portrayed on the scabbard.
The “Royal Scythia, Greece, Kyiv Rus” book has information about the favourite weapon of the Amazons and major version of the Amazon movement origin.
