The Museum of Historical Jewelry: Scythians — Kyivan Rus’ — the 14th-20th centuries
There are few people in the courtyard of the Kyivan Cave Monastery on a weekday afternoon. The building of Ukraine’s Museum of Historical Jewelry is small and unprepossessing. There are only a few visitors inside. Right away, I inquire about the price of admission. A ticket costs 7 hryvnias for an adult and 3.50 for a child. (In Western Europe, the price of a ticket to any museum is 7-12 euros.) You have to pay twenty hryvnias to enter the Cave Monastery. So a family of three may not always have the desire or intention of paying more.
Museum curator Liudmyla Strokova says that on May 18, the museum’s open house day, when admission was free, people lined up from 9:00 in the morning until dusk. There were couples, families, schoolchildren, and college students. Schoolteachers and university professors often request permission to conduct history classes here.
She recalls that it was next to impossible to gain admission to this museum in Soviet times. You had to come early in the morning and buy a ticket for the next available tour, at 2:00 p.m., because earlier tickets might be sold out, and then wait for your turn. Only organized groups of visitors were admitted. You had to make friends with the museum employees to jump the line and bring in your relatives, guests, or acquaintances.
Today many foreigners visit the museum — academics, tourists, various delegations, as well as heads of state and government for whom a visit to the Cave Monastery is part of their official itinerary in Ukraine.
Almost all the items have been exhibited abroad — in France, Italy, Germany, Finland, Denmark, the US, Canada, Japan, etc. The collection of Scythian gold arouses the most interest. These exhibits can only be found in this museum and at the Russian Hermitage, where they have been stored since the Imperial Archeological Commission carried out excavations before 1917: the Russian Scythian collection in fact was founded on the basis of artifacts excavated in Ukraine and later augmented with archaeological findings in Russia.
The museum’s curators are now forging ties with their foreign counterparts. In many cases, it is foreigners themselves who make the initial contact. After viewing the collections, archeologists, historians, museum curators, and diplomats often suggest that they be exhibited in their countries’ celebrated museums, with the hosting country paying a fee. According to the curator, the current rule is that museums should generate income by themselves. But this income is only enough to resolve certain management problems, such as financing superficial repairs or procuring museum-related and technical equipment. The Museum of Historical Jewelry is a branch of the National Museum of Ukrainian History; together, they comprise Ukraine’s largest museum with more than 700,000 exhibits in its vaults. Consequently, these two institutions have to use these scant funds to solve all of their problems — after paying off their taxes.
Last year the Museum of Historical Jewelry marked its fortieth anniversary. Now it needs major renovations and perhaps an expansion. Showcases installed in 1969 and alarm systems must be updated. Without premises of its own, the museum rents a building from the Kyivan Cave Monastery Preserve (Lavra). It houses its exhibits and vaults in the 18th-century Kovnir Block. While there are about 50,000 items dating from the 15th century BC to the 20th century AD, only one-third of them are being exhibited in as few as nine rooms. Incidentally, foreign museums often exhibit an extremely precious article in a separate, spacious room, so that visitors can see it from all sides and read the detailed explanation.
After Leonid Kuchma last visited the museum together with President Lula da Silva of Brazil, he promised to help renovate the premises and update the exhibition in line with modern international standards. After all, the museum carries out a diplomatic mission. International exhibitions of Ukrainian jewelry are accompanied, if and when requested by visitors, by printed information about past and present-day Ukraine or museum-related videos.
Ukraine has made several documentaries on Scythian gold, one of them about the distinguished archeologist Borys Mozolevsky and his findings. This year the Mystetstvo (Art) Publishers began work on compiling and publishing a well designed and illustrated museum catalog in Ukrainian and English to be given as gifts to international delegations. Meanwhile, ordinary visitors have nothing but their own impressions because this modest album, published in honor of the museum’s fortieth anniversary, is already sold out. Chief Exhibit Curator Olena Pidvysotska says that the collection of Scythian gold is the most striking and largest of all the museum’s collections: 40,000 items are stored in the vaults, with only a third on display: men’s and women’s adornments, horse harnesses, and many religious, ritual, and everyday vessels made of gold, silver, copper, and bronze and inlaid with precious stones.
The filigree work of these artifacts is absolutely stunning. A typical design is the so-called animal ornament, i.e., cast, carved, and embossed images of deer, horses, goats, lions, panthers, and mythical griffins (lions with an eagle- like head). Also unique is the so- called single-grain technique: poppy seed-sized balls encrusted on the edges or central sections of the artifacts.
Haiman’s Cup depicts the Scythians themselves in all their emotions and movements. The helmet, which may have been used to hold the scalps of slain enemies, depicts Scythians as courageous, fearless, even aggressive conquerors. They obviously reveled in luxury: noble-born men had gold- and silver-encrusted sword hilts, bows, horse harnesses, etc. They wore clothing and headgear with gold plates sewn on. One particular item of clothing is embellished with about five hundred of them. Beverages and food were also served in gold- or silver-plated vessels. Also fascinating are horn-shaped sacred chalices. Before going to war, Scythian warriors would pour wine into them, add a few drops of their blood, and “drink to brotherhood.” From then on, they considered themselves “blood brothers” and could not leave each other in time of need.
So-called “horns” exist in many cultures, including Ukraine: the inhabitants of Transcarpathia and the Hutsul region still use them to serve wine to their guests on major holidays.
The star attraction is a gold pectoral weighing 1,150 grams, which is supposed to have belonged to a Scythian king. This metal artifact shows in minute detail preparations for New Year’s Day, which was celebrated by the Scythians in springtime. We clearly see the movement of each figure, the grazing cattle, and the blossoms of the flowers.
Women’s ornaments are even more exquisite: rings and medallions decorated with the heads of panthers, lions, and griffins; snake- shaped bracelets inlaid with tiny pearls; embossed gold plates sewn onto the attire and footwear of many Scythian women; heavy hryvnias (ornaments whose name derives from the Ukrainian word hryva — “mane, hair” — because they were worn on the neck, “under the hair”); a necklace apparently made of Egyptian glass; ornate perfume flasks: when a Scythian woman walked by, she would leave a trail of sweet scent; and, finally, intricately designed pendant earrings with a gemstone sometimes weighing more than ten grams.
Scythian gold jewelry is distinguished by its refined taste, rich coloration, and realism, for the master artisans who made them sought to express the surrounding world in the goldsmith’s art. Contemporary gold and silver jewelry is often imitative and devoid of originality and finesse, even though jewelers use state-of-the-art technologies and uphold age-old professional traditions. This is why fashionable women, the true appreciators of their forefathers’ mastery, must place special orders and insist on the recreation of a certain epoch.
Other halls display Kyivan Rus’-era valuables featuring pagan and Christian symbols and fine engravings of metal, especially imported silver, because the Kyivan Rus’ state had very few gold, silver, and bronze mines of its own.
You can see marvelous hryvnias — silver ingots that were in circulation in the so-called coin-free period, when there was no money as such. The adornments of noble Rus’ women during the period of Kyivan Rus’s prosperity — hryvnias, bracelets, diadems, medallions that also served as perfume flasks, earrings, and pendants — are strikingly rich and are characterized by the wide use of gems, enamel, and animal and plant patterns.
A special section displays treasures of the 14th-20th — centuries, which were produced in various jewelry centers, such as Kyiv, Chernihiv, Zhytomyr, and Pereyaslav. These are primarily liturgical items, including crosses, icon and gospel mounts, candleholders, priests’ attire, and metropolitans’ miters. One of the latter is made of gold and adorned with jewels and enamel-covered medallions depicting St. Anthony and St. Theodosius, the founders of the Kyivan Cave Monastery, against the background of the 18th-century Dormition Cathedral. The pearl- and turquoise-inlaid altar cross of St. Sophia’s Cathedral, widely regarded as a priceless artifact, was made by an unknown Kyivan master at the request of Petro Mohyla whose coat of arms is engraved on the reverse side.
The next hall features an entirely different epoch, with its particular tastes and requirements: a large collection of household items, such as silver, silver- and gold-plated and white-gold tea and coffee sets, trinkets, and women’s ornaments ranging from earrings, rings, and bracelets to vanity bags, binoculars, and fans. The realization dawns on me that we used to pray to God, bowing to gold- and silver- mounted icons, kissing jewelry — inlaid crosses at altars, and receiving communion from gold and silver chalices. We used to wine and dine Western European guests from silver dishes and goblets. Whenever we visited them, we would bring the works of Ukrainian jewelers as gifts.
The museum employees, all keen enthusiasts, describe their exhibits with the utmost love and inspiration. It is gratifying to know that they are continuing their research, finding new artifacts, and welcoming ordinary Ukrainians and distinguished foreign guests. They are always prepared to receive visitors from abroad, for there is a guide who can speak English and French. They are convinced that they are serving a noble cause by popularizing Ukraine here and abroad. It is not that easy to work without this inner conviction, for museum researchers earn 300-400 hryvnias a month and auxiliary personnel even less. Employees of museums with no national status eke out an even more miserable existence. Yet these individuals, whether they live in the village of Kyrylivka, the towns of Kolomyia and Chyhyryn, or in the city of Kyiv, are serving culture and historical truth. Today they are helping to introduce new trends in museumology and adopting a different approach to visitors. It is now becoming fashionable to spend the weekend in a well-known preserve or park or, while on vacation, to take tours of ancient manors in various localities and even rent them for a few days.
THE DAY’S REFERENCE
Scythians were nomadic tribes that inhabited the Northern Black Sea Coast from the 7th century BC until the 3rd century AD. They maintained contacts with more developed cultures, such as Greece, and traded with almost all the Old World countries.
They left behind an invaluable treasure known as Scythian gold. Gold and silver ornaments, horse harnesses, and vessels were often found during excavations of burial mounds, i.e., family sepulchers of noble Scythians, where men were often buried together with their children, wives, slaves, as well as valuables and weapons.
In order to learn where the Scythians obtained their gold, researchers have been comparing the content and structure of this gold with that found on other territories. There are two hypotheses. The Greek historian Herodotus, who left us the most detailed written description of the Scythians, claimed that they employed a one-eyed people, the Arimasps, to mine for gold. The Arimasps dwelled beyond the Urals, and it is a fact that there are gold deposits in Siberia. According to the other version, the Scythians obtained this metal from the Carpathians, the Balkans, and the Caucasus.
