The gorytos (bow-and-arrow holder) discovered in one of Scythian Royal Kurgans in Ukraine puzzled the scholars who analyzed it. Because although it dates to the 4th century B.C., its overlay has representations of the key scenes of the Achilleid epic that would be written only in the 1st century A.D. Famous archaelogist Dr. Ellis Minns described the gorytos in his book “Scythians and Greeks” published in 1913. The first version of interpreting the scenes was as follows: “The subject of the reliefs is the whole life of Achilles, not merely his time at Scyros, and so does not go back to one great composition e.g. of Polygnotus, but consists in Hellenistic wise of scenes divided by adjacent figures being set back to back: reckoning from left to right we have, above, 1, 2, Phoenix teaching Achilles to shoot; 3 —8 Achilles (6) seizing arms from Odysseus (5), 3 being the Seyran queen with Neoptolemus, 7 a nurse and 8 Deidamia: the next scene is cut in two, 9 is Lycomedes (his right arm is clear upon the Iljintsy sheath) parting with Achilles (10) while the four women to the left below ought to be looking at them ; they are the queen between two daughters and a nurse marked off as a group indoors by dotted curtains ; in the following scene we have Agamemnon and Achilles now reconciled by Odysseus and Diomede; Achilles is putting on a greave before going out to avenge Patroclus ; the last figure is Thetis bearing away her son’s ashes.” But later in the book, Dr. Minns gives the second version:
“More recently Prof. C. Robert has, to some extent, restored the reputation of the artist by proposing a new interpretation of the subject. He suggests that it is the discovery of Achilles among the daughters of Lycomedes in Scyros, only that the scene has been snipped in half so that the figures of seated women ought to come on the right side of the girl rushing to the right. So we have Achilles, with his hair done like a woman’s, seizing a dagger and restrained by Diomede, while an elderly nurse holds back Deidamia. This latter, her secret discovered, is rushing towards her mother who sits between her other daughters attended by another maid-servant. Further to the right, we have Lycomedes in a chair and by him two other men of Scyros examining arms brought by Ulysses, who has disguised himself as a crutched pedlar. More arms are justifiably used to fill in vacant spaces. The corners of the design are taken up with a scene of teaching a boy to shoot, and with the nurse bearing away Neoptolemus. All this goes back, according to Robert, to a picture of Achilles in Scyros painted by Polygnotus.”
How can Achilles be linked to the territory of present-day Ukraine, check the ‘Royal Scythia, Greece, Kyiv Rus‘ book. It has many more descriptions of the famous Scythians artifacts discovered in Ukraine.
