This glossary explains recurring names and terms in the Scythian shelf without flattening distinct peoples, languages, periods, and source traditions into one modern label.
Peoples and Names
Scythians
A broad Greek and later classical name for steppe peoples north of the Black Sea and, by extension, related or analogized groups across Central Eurasia. Public pages should preserve the source's own wording and explain scope instead of treating every northern nomad as simply interchangeable.
Saka
An Iranian and imperial source label for Scythian-related peoples, especially in Persian and Central Asian contexts. In Strabo, the Saka belong to the eastern Scythian horizon beside Bactria, Sogdiana, the Iaxartes, and the Massagetae.
Sauromatae and Sarmatians
Names for peoples east and north of the Black Sea who overlap with, follow, or are compared to Scythians in Greek and Roman sources. Hippocrates and later Roman writers are especially important for this lane.
Taurians
A Black Sea people associated by Greek sources with Taurica and the cultic world around Iphigenia. Taurian pages belong in Scythian only when they illuminate the northern Black Sea and Scythian-adjacent source field.
Amazons
A female warrior people in Greek myth-history, often placed around Thermodon, Themiscyra, the Tanais, and the Black Sea-Caucasian horizon. On this shelf they matter because Herodotus, Diodorus, Apollonius, Euripides, and later geographical witnesses repeatedly use Amazon traditions to think through Scythian, Sauromatian, Taurian, and northern-frontier worlds.
Alans
An Iranian-speaking steppe people prominent in late antique sources. Ammianus and Jordanes help connect Alan and later steppe sword-cult witnesses to the older Scythian comparative frame, but each page must name its actual source and period.
Huns
A late antique steppe power that enters Ammianus Book 31 as the force beyond the Maeotic marshes whose pressure breaks the Gothic frontier. Priscus gives the closest surviving Greek account of Attila's court, where Hunnic power appears through envoys, tribute, royal protocol, captives, interpreters, and the diplomatic language of Scythia. In the Scythian shelf, Hunnic material belongs to the later steppe archive and should not be back-projected uncritically onto earlier Scythians.
Ephthalites or White Huns
A Hunnic people north of Persia in Procopius' Wars, distinguished by him from other Huns as settled, monarchic, lawful, and politically comparable to Romans and Persians. They matter for the Scythian shelf as a late antique Central Asian frontier witness, not as a simple continuation of Herodotus' royal Scythians.
Attila
The fifth-century king of the Huns and the central figure in Priscus' fragments. He matters here not only as a conqueror in later memory, but as the ruler around whom Priscus records treaty practice, tribute, Roman diplomacy, court rank, hostage politics, gift exchange, royal women, and subject peoples.
Goths
Germanic peoples central to Ammianus Book 31's Danubian crisis. They matter here because Ammianus narrates their movement through a Hunnic and Alan shock-front, not because they are Scythians.
Aorsi and Siraces
Sarmatian or Scythian peoples in Strabo's northern Caucasus and Maeotic geography. Strabo places them inland from the wagon-dwelling nomads and makes their cavalry strength, trade routes, and royal names part of the Caspian-Caucasian frontier.
Dahae
A nomadic people of the Caspian and Hyrcanian horizon. Strabo links the Parni and the rise of Arsaces to the Dahae, making them important for the passage from Scythian geography into Parthian power.
Massagetae
An eastern Scythian or Saka people in Greek and imperial geography. Herodotus associates them with Cyrus' death; Strabo places them in the broad eastern steppe world near the Saka, the Oxus, the Iaxartes, Bactria, and Sogdiana.
Sai
The Chinese transcription usually read beside Saka evidence in the Western Regions material. Han Shu uses Sai land and Sai movement to place the Central Asian steppe and oasis world in relation to Wusun, Yuezhi, Jibin, and the older western routes.
Hyperboreans
A mythic northern people associated in Greek sources with Apollo, sacred geography, long cycles of time, and a land beyond the north wind. Diodorus' Hyperborean passage belongs on the Scythian shelf because ancient authors often place far-northern sacred geography beside Scythian and Black Sea ethnography.
Xiongnu
A major steppe power in Chinese historical sources. Han Shu 96 treats the Western Regions partly through Xiongnu administration, taxation, alliance, and contest with Han power.
Maodun
The formative Xiongnu ruler in Shiji 110, remembered for seizing power through military discipline and building a stronger steppe confederation against Donghu, Yuezhi, and Han.
Heqin
The Han-Xiongnu marriage-alliance and treaty system used to manage frontier power after military crisis. In Shiji 110 it is both diplomacy and argument over hierarchy, gifts, tribute, and custom.
Wusun
A steppe and oasis-frontier people central to Han alliance policy in the Western Regions. Han Shu 96 preserves their marriage diplomacy, succession struggles, and position between Xiongnu, Han, and the western states.
Yuezhi
A people displaced westward in the Chinese historical tradition and linked with the Great Yuezhi beyond the Congling. In the Scythian shelf they belong beside Saka/Sai, Wusun, Kangju, and Bactrian-Iranian frontier evidence.
Kangju
A western polity in Han Shu 96, important for the Chinese side of the Central Asian source map and for comparison with Greek and Iranian evidence for steppe and transoxanian peoples.
Dawan
The Ferghana region in Han historical geography, famous for the heavenly horses and the Han campaigns that followed Zhang Qian's opening of the western road.
Sabiri
A Hunnic people prominent in Procopius' Caucasian and Lazic war narratives. Procopius' Sabiri matter because they appear both as military actors and as technical siege innovators in the late antique Caucasus-Black Sea frontier.
Utigurs and Cutrigurs
Hunnic peoples around the Maeotic and Pontic north in Procopius. Their paired rivalry in Wars Book 8 gives a sixth-century witness to steppe politics after Attila, where Roman diplomacy, gifts, raiding, and inter-tribal war intersect.
Sclaveni and Antae
Early Slavic peoples in Procopius' Gothic War narrative. They belong on the Scythian shelf only as late antique northern-frontier evidence: raids across the Ister, relations with Huns and Roman armies, and the imperial habit of reading the northern world through older geographic categories.
Ishpakai, Bartatua, and Madius
Scythian royal names in Assyrian evidence. They anchor the Near Eastern side of the shelf, where Scythians appear not as Greek ethnography but as military and diplomatic actors in Assyrian, Median, Cimmerian, and northern-frontier politics.
Umman-Manda
A Near Eastern label used in different contexts for northern or mountain peoples. In the Nabonidus material it belongs to the political language around Astyages, Cyrus, Media, and the collapse of older imperial formations.
Places
Western Regions
The Chinese historical name for the oasis and steppe frontier west of the Jade Gate and Yang Pass. Han Shu 96 makes it an administrative world of roads, city-states, garrisons, envoys, tribute, and imperial contest.
Scythia
The classical geographical and ethnographic field north of the Black Sea, sometimes stretched by authors toward the Caucasus, Central Asia, or the imagined far north. The shelf treats Scythia as a source-world, not a fixed modern border.
Maeotis
The Sea of Azov and its surrounding region. Many classical northern and Amazonian passages use Maeotic geography as a frontier marker.
Tanais
The Don River in classical geography, treated by Greek and Roman authors as a major boundary between Europe and Asia. Strabo uses the Tanais as the hinge from which Book 11 opens Asia's northern world.
Hyrcanian or Caspian Sea
The sea east of the Caucasus, called Hyrcanian and Caspian in Greek geography. Strabo uses it to join the Caucasian, Iranian, and Central Asian sections of Book 11: Albanians and Armenians to one side, Dahae and eastern Scythians to the other.
Borysthenes
The Dnieper River and its lower Black Sea region in Greek geography. Herodotus, Arrian, and later coastal witnesses use it as one of the great northern river markers of Scythian space.
Olbia
A Greek city on the northern Black Sea. Olbian inscriptions are central to the shelf because they preserve local dedicatory, civic, and religious evidence.
Island of Achilles or Leuce
An island in the Black Sea near the Ister mouths, associated in Arrian with Achilles' temple, offerings, birds tending the sanctuary, dreams, and nautical epiphany. It belongs to the Scythian shelf through northern Black Sea sacred geography rather than through ethnicity.
Hylaea
A sacred and geographical zone in the lower Dnieper/Black Sea source world, important in Herodotus and in the inscriptional material around the Mother of the Gods, Borysthenes, and Heracles.
Taurica
The Crimean peninsula in classical geography. It appears in Taurian ritual traditions, Black Sea navigation, and Roman geographical witnesses.
Scythian Neapolis
A late Scythian royal center in Crimea. Its inscriptions matter because they preserve Scythian royal, Greek civic, and cultic evidence in stone, including the house of Skilurus, Argotos, Ditagoia, Achilles, and other fragmentary witnesses.
Kalos Limen
A north Black Sea settlement and war-site in Chersonesite and Scythian conflict traditions. The inscriptional fragments around Kalos Limen are small, but they help turn literary Scythia into local civic memory.
Ritual and Source Terms
Akinakes
A short sword or dagger repeatedly associated with Scythian and Iranian contexts. In the shelf it appears in the sword-cult and oath-friendship lanes.
Achilles Pontarches
Achilles as lord or ruler of the Pontus in North Black Sea inscriptional religion. The title is central to the Olbian inscription pages and should remain an inscriptional cult term, not a generic Homeric label.
Ditagoia
A rare goddess named in the dedication by Senamotis, daughter of King Skilurus. The name matters because it brings the Scythian royal house, Bosporan marriage politics, and Greek inscriptional cult into the same small text.
Skilurus
A late Scythian king known from Greek and inscriptional traditions. On this shelf his name belongs especially to Scythian Neapolis, dynastic memory, and the Bosporan-linked dedication of his daughter Senamotis.
Skunkha
The pointed-capped Saka figure named and displayed in Achaemenid royal ideology. Darius' Skunkha evidence is one of the shelf's clearest imperial Persian witnesses to Saka identity, conquest language, and visual ordering of the steppe world.
Haoma
An Iranian ritual plant and drink with a long sacred history. The Scythian shelf uses haoma carefully, as an Iranian ritual and comparative term, not as a shortcut for every steppe intoxicant or every report of Scythian religious practice.
Xvarnah or Royal Glory
The Iranian glory of kingship and divine favor, especially important for reading the Zamyad Yasht. It gives the Iranian source lane a political theology of sovereignty beside Greek stories of Scythian kingship and Near Eastern royal evidence.
Good Works Translation
A new Tianmu translation from a source language, with source text and source colophon where required. Scythian Good Works Translations currently include Greek, Latin, and Greek inscriptional pages.
Priscus
A fifth-century Greek historian and diplomat whose surviving fragments preserve the most important first-person embassy narrative to Attila's court. In the Scythian shelf, Priscus is a late antique witness to how Roman, Hunnic, and Scythian political language met on the Danubian frontier.
Diodorus Siculus
A first-century BCE Greek universal historian whose Library of History preserves a compact Scythian, Amazon, and Hyperborean dossier in Book 2. Diodorus matters here because he gives Scythia a world-historical scale rather than treating it only as a borderland of Greek travel.
Procopius
A sixth-century Greek historian of Justinian's wars. His Scythian shelf value lies in the late antique frontier record: White Huns, Sabiri, Utigurs, Cutrigurs, Antae, Sclaveni, Massagetae, Alans, Lazica, Bosporus, Caucasus, Maeotis, Tanais, Phasis, and the Roman military world that linked them.
Archival Text
A public-domain English translation or historical text presented for access and context, not a new Tianmu translation. On the public Scythian shelf these sit beside Good Works Translations inside the relevant subject families, with the distinction carried by each page's metadata and colophon.
Source Family
The main organizing principle for this shelf. Greek and Roman literary witnesses, inscriptional witnesses, Iranian imperial inscriptions, Chinese historical sources, and Near Eastern cuneiform controls should not be collapsed into one flat folder merely because all can help the Scythian campaign.
Colophon
This glossary was compiled as a reader-facing support page for the Scythian shelf. It defines public-shelf terms and source distinctions rather than translating a primary text.
Compiled and formatted for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.
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