Origin of the Alans

[Alanus]

Jan,

Thanks for the thoughtful post. Your many illustrations of "similar" motifs are quite the collection. However, what if we narrow the selection down by dismissing all "sitting-woman" depictions which don't show a definite Pazyryk-Alan connection? Here are few more examples which mirror the theme you presented. 

   
The Queen Mother of the West shown in a Han-era fresco (top panel) now in the Tokyo Museum. Here we have the same thing-- a seated woman with men offering libations. We also see the common depictions of birds, animals, and even a man astride a horse. 

We are viewing a deity which probably arrived from the mesolithic "Earth Mother." She's universal and has been around almost forever, not just in the Western illustrations you posted but also in the Far East. In China, she was known as 'Xiwangmu.'

   
Here she is in a late Chinese painting. She holds a branch, similar to the Tree of Life, and again we see more branches of the Tree plus a cute duckie.

   
Now we find her on a Gok-Turkic stele. Again, men offer her more libations. (By this time-- 5th to 6th century AD-- the Queen Mother must be ready to fall over sideways!)

These three illustrations could be amplified by more Eastern examples, BUT they are not the same as those I illustrated on my post, nor are they like the first set of examples you posted-- those from Kerch in the Bosphorus Kingdom. In particular, and different from all the others, these Bosphorus illustrations contain specific and unique links to the Alans... and to Pazyryk. We see horses with crenellated manes, a bow-case and quiver that echoes those from Niya and Orlat Plaque. We see a rider wielding a contus (which may have developed from the Shang halberd). One rider carries a long Alanic sword. We also see a yurt which is similar to an Amerindian teepee. This particular style of yurt is recorded by Herodotus as being used by the Argippians in the western Altai. The same shape was used at Pazyryk for inhaling cannabis. All of these Bosphoran features are culturally distinctive, not ambiguous, and unlike everything else... whether it originates from Minoa, the Hittites, the Chinese, or the Turks.

You're an artist. You have an "eye." I'm suggesting that your eye can differentiate the specific from the ambiguous, and you will become more enlightened than our critic, Mr. Azbelev.