ous legends like “the unicorn, Prester John, and Atlantis.”^55 Black Sea histori-
an Charles King notes that, for “ancient writers, the label ‘Scythian’ was
primarily geographic. To be Scythian was to reside in a cold climate and
probably live [a] nomadic life.” This image of the Scythians, for which Her-
odotus is responsible, “became the one that most ancient geographers accepted
as a true depiction of all the barbarian[s] of the north.”^56 Their image as people
“roaming the seemingly endless spaces on the peripheries of the civilised
world” is key. The Scythian domain, large and vaguely defined, was also seen
as “a region which no foreigner was allowed to enter and no one was allowed to
leave.”^57 The Scythians themselves would later be identified with the ten tribes,
an identification that perhaps had its inception in Mu ̈nster’s cosmography.
Racist theories seeking to establish the supremacy of the Anglo-Saxons by
identifying them with the Scythians and the ten tribes also began here.
Restitutions
During the sixteenth century, millennial anxieties and apocalyptic expectations
in which the ten tribes, or “verities” of them, played a significant role and swept
the German-speaking world, particularly at the time of Martin Luther’s activ-
ities and the various religious movements that they stirred. One can hardly
follow the many inflections and variations that the rather simple biblical
story of disappearance and loss produced in such a short time. Following the
fall of Constantinople in 1453 into Turkish hands, the discovery of America,
and the widening schisms among Christians, there were plenty of reasons to
be deeply fearful of an approaching end of the world. Although he rejected
some of the popular legends about the ten tribes, Luther fanned the fire
with his writings on the Jews and his comparisons between the Turks and
Gog/Magog.^58
But far more important in Mu ̈nster’s world were the Swiss context and the
connection to John Calvin ( 1509 – 1564 ). Mu ̈nster, who came to be one of the
most famous Calvinist scientists, published his cosmography in 1544 in Basel,
his home since 1527. The city had separated from the Holy Roman Empire in
1501 to join the Swiss confederation and was an important center for Protestant
activity and home to many French Huguenots fleeing persecution in France. It
was there that Calvin published his seminalInstitutes of the Christian Religionin
1536. Calvin and Mu ̈nster knew each other well; the latter served as the
former’s Hebrew teacher for a while.^59 While one cannot catch Calvin and
Mu ̈nster red-handedly exchanging views about the ten tribes, Calvin’s ideas
about them reflect the changing approach to the issue of the big split in the