Mongol saddles and a Mongolian warrior in MyPaint

Salve,
I would like to share a quick sketch I made after a Chinese drawing of Batu-khan and look at the Mongolian saddles through history.
I admit I have neglected the Great Eurasian steppe so there are some images and text to do away with this awful negligence on my part - :)

Again, I will start a link to this great article on the medieval and later Central Asia saddles. And another article titled 'Mongolian Horse and Horseman'

Well, the Mongolian-style saddles of the Great Steppe developed, over a period of 1000 years, from the horned saddles invented by the Indo-European nomads - Saka and Tocharians (Yuezhi) sometime during III-II centuries BC [e.g. according to prof. Nikonorov] - nota bene  there are some very recent interesting discoveries from Mongolia related to soma ritual, amanita muscaria (''muchomor czerwony'' in Polish) in form of tapestries showing armoured warriors, horses and saddles -  through the saddles most fully seen in the Tang Chinese  sculpture and paintings of VI -VIII centuries AD, as evidenced by this beautiful horse here or by image of the saddle horse of great Tang Emperor Tang Taizong:

This is the Middle Ages Mongolian saddle tree from the Ulan Bataar Museum, dated to XV century:

and another old saddle tree:

And this is a beautifully lacquered and painted saddle tree from the Ming Dynasty:

Photos a Mongolian saddle tree and here, and here is an image of modern saddle from Mongolia:

And here there is a great photo of full modern Mongolian saddle outfit.

 And this is my sketch:

 Beautiful saddle (intricate metal work of the pommel visible) from the National Museum of Mongolia.

On this site there is a book on how to make Mongolian saddles [sic!]

Some interesting stories and images of modern Great Steppe by the so called Salomon 'nomads'- or modern travellers in search of adventure

ps
prolific Polish early modern history blogger and researcher Michal Kadrinazi offers a link to a docudrama on the battle of Vienna 1683 Ad.
Also,I can happily share with you that my friend Radek Sikora has finished a book on the winged hussars during the 1683 battle of Vienna.

****
the first image  is a painting of a Mongol warrior painted during the Ming Dynasty.

Sarmatian Warrior of Kosika Vessel

Salve,
we, Polish people, used to call ourselves 'Sarmaci' (the Sarmatians) after the dragon-standard wielding equestrians who formed  tribal confederacies on the Eurasian steppe en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarmatians  (fine book on the Sarmatian warriors is messer Mielczarek's  The Sarmatians from Osprey), and in Roman-influenced Europe fought the Imperial Rome and her allies. They might have  given to the  Western Europe many of later equestrian culture elements, amongst others,  the basis for the Arthurian legends (famous book From Scythia to Camelot) eg  magtudin.org/Arthur%20part%201.htm and the mounted, lance wielding knight (Sasanid Persian learned from them too) sarmatian-gold
In the late Medieval Poland, then emerging powerful state in personal union with Duchy of Lithuania,  the idea of the Polish nation (i.e. nobles and gentry) descending from the Sarmatians was adopted wholeheartedly  and consequently elaborated and woven into our cultural and socio-political fabric, including our own model of democracy and election of kings (sadly they did not follow with the arts similar to Sarmatians, whose work was full of mythical creatures, eagles, horses etc  )
Anyone who has had the opportunity to peruse the book Land of the Winged Horsemen -can be had from Amazon.com  amazon.com/Land-Winged-Horsemen-Poland-1572-1764/dp/0300079184   - can see how serious our Polish nobles were in their pursuit of that mythological, cultural and to large extend a political theme theme.
Generally speaking we Slavic peoples had plenty of contacts with the Sarmatians, reflected in our pagan religious traditions and folk customs, vocabulary, love of horses and color red, and our Polish heraldry reflects the tamgas (property marks) used by the Sarmatians on their mounts and weapons etc, while the very Serbian and Croats (divided now by religion, alphabet, and by the  tragic 1990s wars) are thought to have originated as a direct mixture of Sarmatian warriors (both male and female) and Slavic tribal people.

The object shown above is one of the famous Kosika vessels, also shown here- www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=7466337662455429678  the fragments of several silver vessels from the south Russian steppe in the Astrakhan region have been found and ever since  have given us plenty of fine images of mounted Sarmatian warriors. The second image comes from another Kosika vessel and  my 9 years old son Jasio's drawing comes from that other Kosika vessel showing a armored lancer.
Reading - some sugestions
A good book to read on the Sarmatians is the work of Tadeusz Sulimirski titled 'The Sarmatians' , on the Roman era Bosporan Kingdom  that Sarmatians ruled 'The Army of the Bosporan Kingdom' by already mentioned Polish scholar Mariusz Mielczarek  and much older chapter in the Cambridge Ancient History by Rostovtzeff ,  article about migrations by Vinogradov  http://www.pontos.dk/publications/books/bss-1-files/BSS1_18_Vinogradov.pdf , on Sarmatian art - the Golden Deer of Eurasia, and also  a part of a book on European Nomads, a joint work by various scholars, already linked several posts ago in this entry dariocaballeros.blogspot.com/2011/03/scythian-horse-sketch.html

Today's musings  shall not be the end of Sarmatian thread, I hope to write and illustrate  many more entries  devoted to the Sarmatian warriors (both female and male) and their equestrianism. 

Scythian Horse sketch

Salve,
Since I have not done any writing on the Scythians for a while, I am going to correct this a bit as it reflects my current reading and drawing.

As it may be rather evident from this blog  the European or more precise Eurasian horsepeople of the late Bronze Age and Iron Age are one my fascinations and a reason for  this neverending  desire to read  and find out more about them.
In order to study them one needs to read Russian language publications  and German ones (I do not read German at the level that reading more than a picture caption is Herculean task) , and last 15 years the English language ones have been slowly becoming available, mostly because Russian language scholars have started to write in English. I have to say that in the  early XX the subject was studied in Europe and American but the Soviet Union and Communist China  nightmare across most of the Europe and Asia stopped contacts between the scholars and impeded research on the ancient Eurasian peoples.  War in Afghanistan - from Soviet invasion through civil war and Taliban rule to present Euro-American occupation - prevented research in that very important centre of ancient civilization of the Eurasian people, where perhaps one of the centers of the most ancient civilization originated - Bactria-Margiana Complex (BMC), and from BMC civilization area -Central Asia- the bronze tools, horses etc might have been spread by the Eurasian peoples to China, giving raise to Shang Chinese empire. In context of the XX century Western scholars working on the ancient Eurasian peoples we  should never forget the names of Mikhail Ivanovich Rostovtzeff, Tadeusz Sulimirski, Otto Meanchen-Helfen, or Rene Grousset - books they wrote are still great  journeys into the Eurasian horsepeoples past.

I have been reading several books on the Scythian-Saka horse tack and  riders - most of them in Russian (but there are some very interesting English ones too, written by Russian, European and American researchers  eg  this website dedicated tot he study of Eurasian nomads  under the aegis of Jeannine Davis-Kimball is a great research net library www.csen.org/Articles_Reivews/Bibliography.html  - you can download there this very important book  csen.org/Pubs_Sales_Reviews/Nomads/Nomad-188579-00-2.pdf   )  or in English  where they are evaluating Russian (and combined/joint Russian, Ukrainian and Euro-American research in the Eurasian plains and Caucasus foothills of Russia.
Generally fascinating topic, especially the big 'fight' between scholars regarding the time of horse's domestication in Eurasian plains (Anthony/Brown et al - their wonderful site is here   http://users.hartwick.edu/anthonyd/harnessing%20horsepower.html -  versus Marsha Levine et al, a very prolific researcher eg her article on Botai  http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa/archaeology/Publications/Neolithic/Botai%20and%20the%20Origins%20of%20Horse%20Domestication.pdf - here one of the projects this scholar  is involved the chariot horse in Shang Bronze Age Chine  http://www.arch.cam.ac.uk/~ml12/ChinPalaeoWebsite/introduction.htm )

Iron Age war-hammer from Hungary

Salve,
effigies of horses in nomadic and ancient art are always wonderful to behold. My favorites are the remains of the  Eurasian steppes art from I millennium  BCE (from the steppe kurgans), artifacts belonging to the so called Animal Style, especially from the first part of that millennium when it was relatively free from Greek art  influence in the West, and influencing Chinese art in the East.

But as I am preparing some Hallstatt culture warriors on horseback  I came across this image of  iron war hammer head,  a horse head with its neck worked into a war-hammer head, and I think this artifact is simply beautiful (I have several other drawings of similar artifacts - axes and war-hammers). I decided to do a quick sketch.
ps
Could someone point me to a good book on the Iberian and  Celtiberian warriors and their horses, and the ancient horse tack in the Iberian Peninsula - Spanish or English? I have several drawings of Iberian warriors but I want to learn more, and I downloaded some articles from la revista  Gladius  http://gladius.revistas.csic.es/index.php/gladius