164 Silbury. 



the investigations made there during the Crimean campaign, and 

 gave an account of his researches to the Archaeological Institute in 

 1856 and 1857,' and subsequently more fully in his book on the 

 "Antiquities of Kertch and researches in the Cimmerian Bos- 

 phorus." That indefatigable explorer tells us that the character- 

 istic features around Kertch are the innumerable tumuli or 

 Kourgans that abound in that locality : " they resemble gigantic 

 cones, and are the sepulchres of the ancient world, the labour of 

 the construction of which must have been prodigious and the expen- 

 diture enormous." Now Herodotus (whose statements were con- 

 stantly verified by the discoveries made) relates that the Scythians 

 dwelt on the Eastern side of the Caspian sea, and migrating West- 

 ward, arrived in the neighbourhood of the Palus Mseotis, and that 

 they expelled the Cimmerians who held this and the surrounding 

 countries : ^ he farther tells us that the tombs were still to be seen 

 in his time of the heroic Cimmerian Kings, who rather than cede 

 their country to the invading Scythians preferred death from the 

 hands of one another ; ^ and again, speaking of the mode of regal 

 burial among the Scythians, he says, " this done," (i.e. the body 

 being deposited in a large four-cornered excavation in the earth) 

 " they all set about raising a great barrow, vying with one another, 

 and endeavouring to make it as large as possible." * Thus the 

 Scythians adopted this mode of perpetuating the memory of 

 their deceased princes. Moreover the Milesian Grreeks, a family of 

 the lonians, who displaced the Scythians about B.C. 600, and 

 planted colonies at Panticapaeum and other places, appear to have 



' Archaeological Joiurnal, xiv., 65 — 70 ; see also pp. 196 — 206. 



^ Herodotus, Melpomene, chapters i. — xi. 



*Ideni chap. xi. Rawlinson says that the Cimmerians, like the Mexican 

 Aztecs, whom they resembled in some degree, have been swept away by the 

 current of immigration, and except in the mounds which cover their land, and 

 in the pages of the historian or ethnologist, not a trace remains to tell of their 

 past existence. [Rawlinson's Herodotus, vol. iii., p. 205.] 



* Herodotus, Melpomene, cap. Ixxi. See Rawlinson's Herodotus, vol. iii. 

 pp_ 61 — 63, and with Herodotus's account of the burial of a Scythian King 

 about B.C. 500, compare M. Hue's descriptions of a royal interment of modern 

 days : the similarity of customs among these barbarians of such different ages 

 being somewhat remarkable. [Voyage dans la Tartaric, pp. 115 — 16.] 



