THE SCYTHIAN "IPPA" MYSTERY: IT’S GREEK TO ME!

Carved stone Scythian horse-headed pestle.

We don’t have much Scythian “to our name”. Meaning: there isn’t much of the language left to us moderns. There is enough, however, to discern something that masquerades as their possible word for “horse”.
My Scythian glossary says that ippa means “mare” or “horse” in that ancient language. Hippocrates – whose name would also seem to indicate “horse” – says in his Diseases that hippaka, or ippaka, is the name of a mare’s milk cheese manufactured by the Scyths. Unfortunately, none of the names for the powerful goddesses or warrior-chieftains recorded in that glossary include the word ippa.
Even so, I’m not sure these words – and the other Amazon horse names, like Hippolyte, Melanippe, and Ainippe, don’t derive from the language of the Greeks who reported them. Greek boasts several words for horse, including:
§  Foráda, “mare”
§  Áλoyo, “horse”
§  Ίππος, “horse”
This last, Ίππος, translates into English script as ippos, which is the word we see repeating in the Amazonian names Alcippe, “Powerful Mare”, Hippothoe, “Imperious Mare”, Lysippe, “She Who Lets Loose the Horses”, et al., and, yes, also in the Scythian words for “horse” and “mare’s milk cheese”: ippa and ippaka.
So, maybe after all, we don’t know which actual word in ancient Scythian stood for “horse” or “mare”. Maybe, all that is left to us is a Greek facsimile of the Scythian word: a shadowy translation of a cultural trait the patriarchal Greeks little understood. Maybe, we need to just hope that the ancient Greeks translated the Amazonian horse names correctly, and that, if they had possessed any knowledge of them, they would have done the same for the Scyths. Alas, the Scythian horse names – if ever there were any – are lost to time.

MLA Citations:

Abaev, V. I. “Scythian Vocabulary in the Sources.” Scythian Lexicon - TurkicWorld, 19 Dec. 2008, s155239215.onlinehome.us/turkic/27_Scythians/ScythianWordListSourcesEn.htm.

Davis-Kimball, Jeannine, and Mona Behan. Warrior Women: an Archaeologist's Search for History's Hidden Heroines. Warner, 2003.

Liddell, Henry George. “Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon.” Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, Ἵππος, Henry George Liddell. Robert Scott. A Greek-English Lexicon. Revised and Augmented throughout by. Sir Henry Stuart Jones. with the Assistance of. Roderick McKenzie. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1940., 1940, www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3Di%28%

Wilde, Lyn Webster. On the Trail of the Women Warriors: the Amazons in Myth and History. Thomas Dunne Books, 2000.


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