All the language related stuff I have, including naming research, actual known vocabulary or names, and scholarly attempts at translation. Dating, translations, etc. are all estimates, and may change in the future. What I've got now is my best guesses as of early 2005.

To remember: whether the Sarmatians (and Scythians and related tribes) were pre-literate or not is still up for argument. It looks like the tamgas may be a symbolic written language, with each symbol having multiple meanings (rather like Chinese ideograms). There's also the puzzle of the silver bowl with what looks very much like Norse proto-runes (?!) which would seem to translate more as letters comprising words, rather than as ideograms.

Things to document here:

• a sort-of dictionary
• the tamgas
• the proto-runes (which look REALLY Norse) on the silver bowl
• the guy who claims to have translated the tamga writing
• some graphics of tamgas
• how it ties into my already-existing heraldry
• anything else...?

Dictionary

Consisting of scholar-guessed phonemes, historical personages, and words we're relatively sure of.

akinakes: (Persian) type of double-edged iron short sword, usually 18" to 24", with a ring or "horned" solar symbol at the top, often with leather "butterfly" harness for attaching to the right thigh. Obviously a back-up weapon to the bow, usually carried with a short, one-edged, hiltless dagger. Very common in gravegoods

Anacharsis: male Scythian sage who greatly impressed the Greeks. Apparently quite the pragmatist, and early advancer of the "softening" effects of civilization on men

Arktoi: (Greek) little bears; singular: arktos?

gorytos: (Greek) type of quiver, usually worn on the left hanging from the waist, which could hold even a strung composite bow, and held the arrows in a pocket at the front

Grivna: (Russian?) torque worn with the ends behind the neck

kibitkas: the half-covered horse-drawn wagons Scythians and Sarmatians used

kubok: ritual cup

shadrack: saddle blanket?

Tomyris: Sythian war queen/leader, slew Cyrus the Persian for killing her son