Bartatua and the alliance with Assyria
Išpakaia was succeeded by Bartatua, who might have been his son,[100] and with whom they had already
started negotiations immediately after Išpakaia's death[46] and they had been able to defeat Kashtariti in
the meantime in 674 BC, after which his coalition disintegrated.[100]
In 672 BC[19] Bartatua himself sought a rapprochement with the Assyrians and asked for the hand of
Esarhaddon's daughter Šērūʾa-ēṭirat in marriage, which is attested in Esarhaddon's questions to the
oracle of the Sun-god Šamaš. Whether this marriage did happen is not recorded in the Assyrian texts,
but the close alliance between the Scythians and Assyria under the reigns of Bartatua and his son and
successor Madyes suggests that the Assyrian priests did approve of this marriage between a daughter of
an Assyrian king and a nomadic lord, which had never happened before in Assyrian history; thus, the
Scythians were separated from the Medes and were brought into a marital alliance with Assyria, and
Šērūʾa-ēṭirat was likely the mother of Bartatua's son Madyes.[46][43][100][98][103][104][68]
Bartatua's marriage to Šērūʾa-ēṭirat required that he would pledge allegiance to Assyria as a vassal, and
in accordance to Assyrian law, the territories ruled by him would be his fief granted by the Assyrian king,
which made the Scythian presence in West Asia a nominal extension of the Neo-Assyrian Empire and
Bartatua himself an Assyrian viceroy. Under this arrangement, the power of the Scythians in West Asia
heavily depended on their cooperation with the Assyrian Empire; henceforth, the Scythians remained
allies of the Assyrian Empire,[42] with Bartatua helping the Assyrians by defeating the state of Mannai
and imposing Scythian hegemony over it.[105] Around this time, the Urartian king Rusa II might also have
enlisted Scythian troops to guard his western borderlands.[98]
The marital alliance between the Scythian king and the Assyrian ruling dynasty, as well as the proximity
of the Scythians with the Assyrian-influenced Mannai and Urartu, thus placed the Scythians under the
strong influence of Assyrian culture,[42] and contact with the civilisation of West Asia would have an
important influence on the formation of Scythian culture.[41] Among the concepts initially foreign to the
Scythians which they had adopted from the Mesopotamian and Transcaucasian peoples was that of the
divine origin of royal power, as well as the practice of performing human sacrifices during royal funerals,
and the Scythian kings henceforth imitated the style of rulership of the West Asian kings.[106][43]
West Asian influence on Scythians
The Scythians adopted many elements of the cultures of the populations of Urartu and Transcaucasia,
especially of more effective weapons: the akīnakēs sword and socketed bronze arrowheads with three
edges, which, although they are considered as typically "Scythian weapons," were in fact of
Transcaucasian origin and had been adopted by the Scythians during their stay in the Caucasus.[78][47]
The art typical of the Scythians proper originated between 650 and 600 BC for the needs of the Royal
Scythians at the time when they ruled over large swathes of West Asia, with the objects of the Ziwiye
hoard being the first example of this art. Later examples of this West Asian-influenced art from the 6th
century BC were found in western Ciscaucasia, as well as in the Melhuniv kurhan [uk] in what is
presently Ukraine and in the Witaszkowo kurgan [pl] in what is modern-day Poland. This art style was
initially restricted to the Scythian upper classes, and the Scythian lower classes in both West Asia and
the Pontic steppe had not yet adopted it, with the latter group's bone cheek-pieces and bronze buckles
being plain and without decorations, while the Pontic groups were still using Srubnaya- and Andronovo-
type geometric patterns.[107]