Northern origin of cataphracts?

[Andreas Johansson]

I was looking at Sean Manning's PhD thesis on the Achaemenid armed forces, and my attention was caught, magpie-like, by a passing comment without citation:

The cataphracts of Hellenistic times are thought to have come from the steppes north of the Syr Darya

This is not an idea I recall hearing before - I've rather seen their origin located further south, in Chorasmia, Parthia, or thereabouts. Anyone knows where it comes from, and if there's any evidence for it?

[Patrick Waterson]

I was looking at Sean Manning's PhD thesis on the Achaemenid armed forces, and my attention was caught, magpie-like, by a passing comment without citation:

The cataphracts of Hellenistic times are thought to have come from the steppes north of the Syr Darya

This is not an idea I recall hearing before - I've rather seen their origin located further south, in Chorasmia, Parthia, or thereabouts. Anyone knows where it comes from, and if there's any evidence for it?

No idea, but I can ask Sean on another forum (Lost Battles IO Group, where I know he is a member).

[Duncan Head]

A reference to Herodotos' story about the Massagetai?

[Andreas Johansson]

No idea, but I can ask Sean on another forum (Lost Battles IO Group, where I know he is a member).

Please do

A reference to Herodotos' story about the Massagetai?

Aren't the Massagetai supposed to have lived south of the Syr Darya / Jaxartes?

[Duncan Head]

A reference to Herodotos' story about the Massagetai?

Aren't the Massagetai supposed to have lived south of the Syr Darya / Jaxartes?

Herodotos is a bit vague ("east of the Caspian Sea") but I would have thought they were generally placed to the north of the river:

This sea called Caspian is hemmed in to the west by the Caucasus: towards the east and the sunrise there stretches from its shores a boundless plain as far as the eye can see. The greater part of this wide plain is the country of the Massagetae, against whom Cyrus was eager to lead his army.

The River Syr Darya (otherwise known as the River Tanais) flows into the Aral Sea from the Tian Shan Mountains (a western part of the Himalayan mountain chain). Its name in the Persian-dominated second half of the first millennium BC was Yakhsha Arta, which referenced its 'great pearly' waters and many large islands. The Greeks transcribed this as Axartes, or Yaxartes, or even Iaxartes/Jaxartes. Today the river flows through Kazakhstan, to the north of the border of Uzbekistan.

North and east of the river, the tribe of the Massagetae or Massagetai was one of many tribal groups in the region.

According to Herodotus's record, the Massagetae lived to the east of the Sea of Caspia, "a plain that stretches endlessly to the eye." (I, 204) The Sea of Caspia is the present day Caspian Sea, and so the land of the Massagetae must have been located on the great plain to the north of the Caspian and Aral Seas, i.e., the northern bank of the Syr Darya.

The Massagetae occupation of the northern bank of the Syr Darya was the result of the migration of nomadic tribes across the whole Eurasian Steppe before the end of the seventh century BCE.

[Andreas Johansson]

Not more generally than that e.g. this map from Wikipedia shows them in Transoxiana.

But of course, the idea of their more northerly location needn't be correct or universally adopted for it to explain Manning's statement.

(To go from "east of the Caspian" to "north of the Jaxartes" does seem like a significant leap - there's plenty of land that's east of the sea and south of the river - but by the same token it doesn't license us to assume the opposite either.)

[Patrick Waterson]

Sean has been asked; if and when he replies, we should have our answer.

[Tim]

I think that we may be assuming ancient writers understood far more about of foreign lands and their relative location than they actually did. I suspect that there is a fair bit of 'far away and vaguely over there' for places they had not been to and possibly even some for places they had been to as well...

For example Roman expeditions to Arabia Petra even as late as Trajan's time did not have much more than a rough idea where they were going and they had access to dozens of sources about the area. I suspect H is ok for places he has been but less so on central asia - even Alexander did not have a clue where he was in relation to the Pacific when he reached the eastern fringe of what had been the Median/Persian empire.

I don't have a problem with this identification quoted.

[Jim Webster]

I confess that when I read the subject line, the first thought was, "If I was going to protect my horse by wrapping it in felt/padded blankets, it would seem a far better idea in a northern, cooler climate, than a more southern warmer one." 

[Andreas Johansson]

I see Encyclopaedia Iranica has a brief discussion of the location of the Massagetai, prefering a more southern position:

MASSAGETAE (Gk. Massagétai), a mighty nomadic tribe reckoned to be Scythians already by Herodotus (1.201, 1.204.1; see also Stephanus Byzantius, s.v.), who settled somewhere in the wide lowlands to the east of the Caspian Sea and the southeast of the Aral Sea on the Ust-Urt Plateau and the Kyzylkum Desert, in particular probably between the Oxus (Āmū Daryā) and Jaxartes (Syr Daryā) rivers. But the exact localization of the Massagetae is rather problematic for a number of reasons: e.g., the information of the ancient authors mentioning them is not always precise enough; the last source cannot be ascertained in every particular case; Herodotus' report, our main source, seems to be based partly on Hecataeus of Miletus and partly on oral informants, and the whole is often mixed up. One main point in issue is the question what river is meant by the name Aráxēs, which is often given as the northern frontier of the Achaemenid Empire, beyond which the Massagetae lived: the Oxus (thus, e.g., Herrmann, 1914, p. 8; 1930, cols. 2125 f.), the Jaxartes, or even the Volga (but maybe also the Aras [see ARAXES]; see Herrmann, 1914, p. 18 n. 1); and this question is further complicated by the fact that the course of the Oxus in antiquity is not absolutely clear, since some sources speak of its flow into the Caspian Sea. Therefore scholars localize the Massagetae partly around the Oxus delta or the Jaxartes delta, partly between the Caspian Sea and the Aral Sea or even more to the north or northeast, but in any case without really conclusive arguments. Wherever they may have lived, obviously they had invaded that land from the east, since they are said to have besieged the Scythians, who then withdrew westwards (Herodotus 4.11.1).

(That a branch of the Oxus diverted to the Caspian via the the Uzboy channel in late medieval and 16C times seems clear - see e.g. this paper - but whether it may have done so in Cyrus' or Herodotus' day I don't know. That the whole river was ever diverted that way is apparently hydrologically impossible; part of it always flowed to(wards) the Aral in post-Ice Age times.)

To Jim's point, wherever cataphracts may have originated (and given the lacking precision of the term, that may not be a question with a well-defined answer), AFAIK the earliest evidence for horse armour we have is from the bronze age near east, which is pretty hot. Some LBA chariot horses had metal scale armour, which presumably gets even hotter than felt or padded blankets.

Anyway, eagerly looking forward to any reply Patrick gets from Mr Manning

[Patrick Waterson]

Anyway, eagerly looking forward to any reply Patrick gets from Mr Manning

As is Patrick.  So far no luck - I shall try again.