Argippaioi

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The Argippaioi ( Ἀργιππαῖοι , Germanized Argippeans ) are an ancient Central Asian people who are known from Herodotus' Histories (4, 23).

Herodotus

The Scythian land ends “behind the river Tanais ” and a bare, treeless land that is inhabited by the Sauromats begins on a stretch of “fifteen day trips” . According to Herodotus, the Budinoi lived in the adjacent stretch of land, densely forested . Connected to this land, a desert spreads out and further north only hunter tribes lived. Herodotus descriptions of people still further north and "living at the foot of high mountains, who are said to be bald from birth, men and women [...]". He calls them Argippaioi. According to Herodotus, they lived “on good, rich soil on the trees” under which they lived and over whose branches they stretched felt in winter. They partly nourished themselves on the fruits of the trees - a kind of date , from whose contents they u. a. in combination with milk produced food. The livelihood was some sheep breeding and the gathering of forest fruits.

Herodotus: “Nobody harms them because they are considered holy. Nor do they have a military weapon; it is they who settle the neighbors' disputes and whoever escaped to them as a refugee does not harm anyone. ”They were respected by the Scythians . The Scythians traded regularly with them through interpreters - perhaps they were the middlemen for Siberian gold on the Ob and Altai . Their settlement areas lay at the foot of high mountains, under trees that were covered with felt in winter . Their heads, according to Herodotus, were bald for both men and women. Herodotus did not know their language.

Their neighbors were the Arimaspen , gold guarding griffins and the Issedonen . These Argippaioi came from the vast region that extends down to Borysthenes (trading post on the river of the same name ( Dnepr )) and even some trading centers on the Black Sea and includes Scythian settlement areas further west .

Phillips assumes that they are identical to the Arimphaei of Pliny ( Natural History 6, 34).

literature