Feb 1, 2021
Attic ceramic kalathos (basket), decorated in the Late Geometric style. Artist unknown; ca. 750-700 BCE. Now in the Louvre. Photo credit: Marie-Lan Nguyen/Wikimedia Commons.
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Attic ceramic kalathos (basket), decorated in the Late Geometric style. Artist unknown; ca. 750-700 BCE. Now in the Louvre. Photo credit: Marie-Lan Nguyen/Wikimedia Commons.
They show a sitting goddess wearing a calathus with a veil over it, holding a mirror, and facing her a youth dressed in the Scythian manner, drinking from a rhyton...iconographically, these compositions recall rather numerous representations of a seated Aphrodite holding a mirror...
This image has been variously interpreted as an image of the goddess being worshipped by a youth who drinks the sacred beverage, an image of a king or hero being invested with divine power, or a sacred marriage.
Mirrors were associated with weddings and feminine sexuality in Iranian peoples, and were a symbol of Aphrodite. They were also buried with Scythian priestesses and used in prophecy and shamanic ceremonies.
A calathus, or polos, is a cylindrical headdress or crown, usually found in depictions of Cybele, Rhea, and Hera.
A rhyton is a drinking flagon.
The Scythians drank unmixed wine and fermented mare’s milk and used both opium and cannabis in their religious rituals; but it seems that the latter two were smoked rather than drunk, so my best guess is that the Scythian ritual *drink* was alcohol.