ISBN: | 978-5-5118-1570-1 |
High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Sagaris is the ancient Greek name for a shafted weapon used by the horse-riding ancient North-Iranian Saka and Scythian peoples of the great Eurasian steppe, also by the Western and Central Asian peoples: the Medes, Persians, Parthayans, Indo-Saka, Kushans, Tocharians. Mossynoeci, and others living within the milieu of Iranian peoples, and according to Aristarchus of Samothrace, by the legendary Amazons. The weapon was a kind of battle-axe, collected from Eurasian steppe archeological excavations and depicted on the Achaemenid cylinders and ancient Greek pottery and other surviving iconographic material as a long-shafted weapon with a metal head, with a either sharp(ax-like) or blunt (hammer-like) edge on one side and a sharp (straight or curving) `ice-pick`-like point on the other (shown here in the Greek pottery painting of a Scythian archer holding a sagaris). Possibly from this weapon arose an attribution of the invention of the battle-axe to the Amazons by medieval and Renaissance authors (e.g. Johannes Aventinus), and a (modern) association of the Amazons with the Labrys. A shorter form of sagaris, as shown held by Spalirises, was labelled klevets by Russian archaeologist and ancient military historian V.P.Nikonorov (The Armies of Bactria 700 BC-400 AD, Valerii.P.Nikonorov. Montvert Publications, 1997).