Scythian, or Scytho-Siberian, animal style of the 7th-early 3rd century BC (hereinafter referred to as SSZS), which, along with weapons and horse equipment, constitutes the "Scythian triad", is an artistic direction in ancient applied zoomorphic art, characterized by a stable set of animal characters displayed in strictly defined poses and compositions using special techniques. techniques for modeling parts 1. In fact, it is one of the" great styles " in the visual arts, commensurate with such trends as geometric, archaic or classical styles in ancient Greek art. This direction characterizes the Scythian-Siberian cultural and historical region ("Scythian-Siberian world"), defined by the presence of the" Scythian triad " and localized in a vast expanse of steppes (and partly forest-steppes) from the mouth of the Danube to Lake Baikal. The Scythian-Siberian world includes the Scythian archaeological culture of the steppe of the Northern Black Sea region and the Azov Sea, the Northern Caucasus and the forest-steppe from the Dnieper to the Don region, the "Sauromat" culture of the Lower Volga and Southern Urals, the cultures of the Sako-Massaget circle of Kazakhstan and Central Asia, the Tagar, Pazyryk, and Uyuk cultures of Southern Siberia and Central Asia.2The Scythian animal style has been studied for more than a century. The phenomenon of this artistic direction was revealed against the background of other trends in the animalistic art of antiquity in the works of E. H. Minns [Minns, 1913, p. 261-264] and B. V. Farmakovsky [Farmakovsky, 1914, p.29-37]. Then M. I. Rostovtsev [Rostovtsev, 1918; Rostovtzeff, 1922; Rostovtzeff, 1929], G. I. Borovka [Borovka, 1928], and K. Schefold [Schefold, 1938, p. 3-77] described the characteristic features of the Scythian animal style, analyzed the leading images and motifs of the SSZS, determined its approximate range, and tried to establish its chronology, origins and directions of development. GCC studies, which were actively dev ... Read more