Sagaris



The sagaris is an ancient Iranian (or Persian) shafted weapon used by the horse-riding ancient North-Iranian Saka and Scythian peoples of the great Eurasian steppe. It was used also by Western and Central Asian peoples: the Medes, Persians, Parthayans, Indo-Saka, Kushans, Tocharians, Mossynoeci, and others living within the milieu of Iranian peoples. According to Aristarchus of Samothrace, the legendary Amazons used the sagaris, as well. In The Histories, Herodotus attributes the sagaris to the Sacae Scythians in the army-list of Xerxes the Great.

The sagaris was a kind of battle-axe. Examples have been collected from Eurasian steppe archeological excavations, and are depicted on the Achaemenid cylinders and ancient Greek pottery and other surviving iconographic material. It is a long-shafted weapon with a metal head, with an either sharp (ax-like) or blunt (hammer-like) edge on one side and a sharp (straight or curving) 'ice-pick'-like point on the other. It may have been the sagaris that led medieval and Renaissance authors (such as Johannes Aventinus) weapon to attribute the invention of the battle-axe to the Amazons, and to the modern association of the Amazons with the Labrys.

A shorter form, depicted on coins as held by Spalirises, was labelled klevets by Russian archaeologist and ancient military historian V.P. Nikonorov.