Scythian religion

The Scythian religion refers to the mythology, ritual practices and beliefs of the Scythian cultures, a collection of closely related ancient Iranic peoples who inhabited Central Asia and the Pontic–Caspian steppe in Eastern Europe throughout Classical Antiquity, spoke the Scythian language (itself a member of the Eastern Iranic language family), and which included the Scythians proper, the Cimmerians, the Sarmatians, the Alans, the Sindi, the Massagetae and the Saka. The Scythian religion is assumed to have been related to the earlier Proto-Indo-Iranic religion as well as to contemporary Eastern Iranic and Ossetian traditions, and to have influenced later Slavic, Hungarian and Turkic mythologies. The Scythian religion was of Iranic origin, and was influenced by that of the populations whom the Scythians had conquered, such as the sedentary Thracian populations of the western Pontic steppe. Due to this, many of the Scythian male deities had equivalents in the pantheon of the Thracian peoples, including those living in Anatolia, and some of the names of these deities were of Thracian origin; the Scythian female deities, and especially their links with special cults and their rites and symbols, were also connected to Thracian and Anatolian culture. During the Scythians' stay in Western Asia, their religion had also been influenced by ancient Mesopotamian and Canaanite religions. The Scythian cosmology corresponded to the typically Indo-Iranic tripartite structure of the universe of Scythian cosmology, which is also present in the Vedic and Avestan traditions, and according to which the universe was composed of: a celestial realm; the airspace; and the earthly realm. According to Herodotus of Halicarnassus, the Scythians worshipped a pantheon of seven gods and goddesses (heptad), which he equates with Greek divinities of Classical Antiquity following the interpretatio graeca.