In the latter half of the fourth century BC, while Alexander the Great and his successors were reshaping the Greek-speaking world away to the south, on the northern bank of the great Dnipro River, a tribe of Scythian nomads gathered to bury their king. His subjects dug a chamber deep underground, where they laid the king. At his side they placed two pieces of gold war gear of exquisite Greek manufacture: a Scythian-style scabbard and a (a flat case which held both bow and arrows at the hip). Then the slaughter started. The king's concubine or queen, adorned in fine clothes and jewels, was strangled, along with three retainers, eleven horses, and two grooms. The king's cupbearer was also strangled, and his body laid out among more than a dozen amphorae of Greek wine, beside a magnificent silver Greek decanter. The tomb was then filled in amidst a great fit of mourning as mourners may have cut parts off
