A New Find of a Long Scythian Sword with a Golden Hilt Lining

In 2019, a long iron sword with a golden hilt was found in a kurgan near the village of Vysochino, near the city of Azov. On the pommel of the sword hilt was a stylized image of a bird of prey. This type of sword was named the Solokha type, after the first find in the Solokha mound. The published find is confidently dated by the five amphorae found in the burial to the early 4th century BC. Swords with eagle-headed finials appear as early as the 6th century BC in the Central Asian region. Here they are made in a realistic manner. In the 5th–4th centuries BC, this type of products penetrated into European Scythia. At the same time, realism is lost, images of bird heads are schematized. The characteristic detail of the image of a large round eye is lost. The pommel turns into a claw-like one. The change of the semantic meaning of the finial: in the archaic period of the Scythian culture, which had a phallic expression to an ornithomorphic one, indicates a change in ideological ideas. New ideas were brought with them by a new wave of migrants from Central Asia at the turn of the 6th–5th centuries BC.