112 CHAPTER 1
of the goddess of victory Nike marrying the king. This scene is also depicted
on Parthian coins from the first century BC, which are closely related to the
Greco-Bactrian coins from the second century BC.439 Murals from Panjakent
(Sogd) from the fifth to the beginning of the sixth century show a goddess sit-
ting on a lion throne or a throne with a Simurgh. During the sixth century, a
four-handed goddess sitting on a dragon was depicted on top of them. A four-
handed goddess, holding the symbols of the Sun and the Moon and sitting on
a lion throne, can also be found on silver goblets made in Khwarezm. These
goblets also contain the image of Mithra, kneeling before the goddess. This is
a way of conveying that Mithra or the culture hero (for example, Rostam) and
thus also the symbolical image of the king, are being guarded by the goddess.440
According to V. Darkevich, between the sixth and the seventh centuries, a
“restoration of the archaic” occurred in Khwarezm and Sogd on a new basis.
At the head of the Khwarezmian pantheon came the Great Goddess (Anahita)
who had sovereignty. The Khwarezmian rulers who were the descendants of
Siyavush (the male companion of the goddess) embodied the god of death
and resurrection. In addition to ruling the Earth (the Middle World), the
Khwarezmian goddess also had power over the celestial bodies (the Sun and
the Moon) and “the realm of the dead”. The goddess could bestow victory and
was the patron of the cities of Khwarezm.441
The similarity between the Scythian and the Turkic pantheon is of inter-
est as well. According to Scythian beliefs, Hestia was the chief deity, but also
the Celestial Goddess with no Celestial God by her side, since he should
have been Uranus and not Papai-Zeus who could also be her son. The Turkic
goddess Umay is the female equivalent of Tengri, and is thus the Celestial
Goddess and his wife. Like the Maiden, she was the patron of warriors, together
with Tengri. But Umay was also the goddess of fertility and newborns; she
embodied the maternal principle and was later known as proto-Mother. The
439 Tolsov 1948b, 147.
440 Belenitskii and Marshak 1976, 76–82; the presence of the four-handed goddess on the
Khwarezmian goblets is sometimes interpreted as a manifestation of Indian influ-
ence. According to Darkevich 1976, 108, this image is part of the perception of the Great
Goddess, irrelevant of the influences it was subjected to. During the sixth and seventh
centuries, the goddess was widely depicted in Khwarezm, Sogd, Ustrushana and Eastern
Turkestan. In the opinion of the scholar, this iconography is related to the Iranian Anahita
who is also described as a thousand-armed goddess. In the case of the silver goblets,
V. Darkevich assumes that the Khwarezmian toreutics from the sixth to seventh century
were influenced by the image of Nana from the Kushan coins stemming from the second
to third century, “and were inspired by Kushan and “Kushan-Sassanid” models”.
441 Darkevich 1976, 109–112.