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His body and his many tattoos were preserved by the frozen ground of the Altai Mountains which border modern day Mongolia and Siberia. He had died in combat, his skull pierced by a battle ax. He was buried wearing a full length marmot skin coat and alongside him in the grave, laid out with his weapons and possessions were two stallions wearingbridles decorated with gold.
The creature depicted is most likely a snow leopard, the distinctive ringed tail and the feline body make that our best guess. While snow leopards are now extremely rare, due to hunting and the reduction of their habitat, they surely were important to the early nomads of Central Asia; a predator and traveler of similar cunning and skill.
The Scythians are a people lost in the dusk of time, forerunners to the "modern" Mongol empire constructed by Genghis Khan. The Scyths left little in the way of written records and their tombs are our best window on their culture. They were, without dispute, masters of the steppe moving with their "fields on the hoof", hunting, gathering and along the way, finding time to create spectacular artwork indeliably etched on their own bodies.