I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river
Is a strong brown god—sullen, untamed and intractable,
Patient to some degree, at first recognised as a frontier;
Useful, untrustworthy, as a conveyor of commerce;
Then only a problem confronting the builder of bridges.
The problem once solved, the brown god is almost forgotten
By the dwellers in cities—ever, however, implacable.
Keeping his seasons and rages, destroyer, reminder
Of what men choose to forget. Unhonoured, unpropitiated
By worshippers of the machine, but waiting, watching and waiting.
His rhythm was present in the nursery bedroom,
In the rank ailanthus of the April dooryard,
In the smell of grapes on the autumn table,
And the evening circle in the winter gaslight.
—T.S. Eliot, THE DRY SALVAGES, (No. 3 of 'Four Quartets')
In the 5th c. BCE, the river Dnieper River was known as the Borysthenes, or at least that is the rendering provided by ancient Greek and Roman travelers to the region since Herodotus. It was said to be named after a Scythian river god, whose horned and bearded image turns up on coins from the period.
According to one of the three origin myths provided by Herodotus in his Histories, the Scythian people were descended from Borysthenes through the union of Heracles with one of the river god’s daughters, who was also part serpent. The selection of a hero by a watery serpent woman—a lady of the lake—for special attention turns out to be a recurring theme in Indo-European myths, but that’s a subject for another time.
Some have speculated that this river god might be the Scythian cognate of the Slavic deity Volos/Veles, which would, I think, provide a decent etymology for the ancient name of the river. I’m not a linguist, but “l” ← → “r” are common sound shifts, and I feel ok with something resembling “Volos’ River,” e.g. Volos-Danu/Voros-Danu becoming Borysthenes in a Greek transliteration (with danu of course meaning river). There have been worse Greek attempts at recording foreign words, and the Indo-Iranian language of the local Scythian people would have been particularly challenging to render.
The association with an underworld god might be especially apt, as a high concentration of royal burial kurgans are found along the banks of the river. Indeed, Herodotus makes a point to mention: “The burial-place of the kings is in the land of the Gerrians, the place up to which the Borysthenes is navigable” (Book 4, 71), i.e., just below the rapids. While this may be a reflection of the river’s role as a boundary between tribes, which often attracted burials both for its ability to reinforce ancestral land claims and because of its liminal nature, the river itself may have been believed to offer transit to the otherworld, particularly at this location near the descent of the rapids. Waters of all kinds also frequently served as a kind of nekuomanteion, through which the living might hope to glimpse visions from the dead.
The subsequent name “Dnieper,” seems to have given the river an altogether different character, though its etymology remains in dispute. Some of these are less convincing than others, including a few of these from its Wikipedia entry:
The name Dnieper may be derived either from Sarmatian Dānu apara "the river on the far side" or from Scythian Dānu apr (Dānapr) "deep river". By way of contrast, the name Dniester either derives from "the close river" or from a combination of Scythian Dānu (river) and Ister, the Thracian name for the Dniester.[6][7]
Dnieper was a late name change, well after the Sarmatians had moved into the region and made it their home, making “the far side river” as bizarre to them as calling the Dniester “the close river” would be to the Thracians. It’s also not remarkable for its depth—at least not in antiquity. Rather, I wonder if “Danu Apia” (Apia/Api being another Scythian water and fertility deity, equated by Herodotus with Gaia) might not be more likely, as it would bring the name of this principal, clearly sacred river closer in meaning to rivers like the Ganges or perhaps Saraswati, and not list it merely among the random features in the landscape.
Though aware of both the Danube (Ister) and Volga (Tanais), Herodotus thought the Borysthenes the best river in Europe, and second in the world, only exceeded by the Nile:
“The Borysthenes, the second largest of the Scythian rivers, is, in my opinion, the most valuable and productive not only of the rivers in this part of the world, but anywhere else, with the sole exception of the River Nile...It provides the finest and most abundant pasture, by far the richest supply of the best sorts of fish and the most excellent water for drinking - clear and bright... no better crops grow anywhere than along its banks, and where grain is not sown the grass is the most luxuriant in the world.” (IV.53)
It was for all these reasons that the lands around this river, despite a large portion of them being non-arable, became highly sought and fought over for millennia. Their arable portions became the breadbasket for the region and beyond, and the rich pastures supported large livestock like cattle and horses for those able to herd them, giving rise to the earliest nomadic horse cultures. The unique skills developed to control these large beasts and vast pastures would go on to transform the world.
The river runs from north to south for some 1,350 miles and empties into the Black Sea, or Pontos Euxeinos as the Greeks called it, in a tidal estuary lagoon, or liman, that forms natural salt deposits, providing yet another valuable resource. Control of the river as a route to the sea, especially for trade, would also remain essential to its people throughout its colorful history, from prehistoric amber traders, Scythian nomads, Varangian vikings, and everyone since.
As with most rivers in the region, its west bank is steep and its east bank is flat. Some of these are sandy and beach-like and even lined with dunes. In this somewhat exotic steppe landscape, long stretches of the river’s flat bank consist of floodplains, which, prior to the installation of dams, would flood seasonally. Many are now permanently flooded.
One of the great sacrifices made by the river in the modern era has been the flooding of its rapids, which impeded river travel for some 47 miles. Creation in 1932 of a dam above Zaporizhia (“Beyond the Rapids”) created a massive reservoir over the falls for the Dnieper Hydroelectric Station as well as allowing for a navigable waterway. But when the rapids were flooded, so were countless small islands in the river which no doubt contained much of ecological and archaeological interest. It’s often difficult to reconcile all that the modern world destroys of the past in the name of progress, and though perhaps necessary, the drowning of these islands somehow seems a callous act of demolition.
In The World of the Scythians1, Renate Rolle evokes this lost world poignantly:
Below the rapids of the Dnieper formerly divided into myriad tributaries which flowed round thousands of small islands with an abundance of trees, reeds and meadows. These woods, which are often marshy, are called plavani and were once a paradise for birds and animals including wild boar, deer and elk. All this now belongs to the past. In the time of the Cossacks the ’capital’ was situated on one of these islands, the Sitch of the Zaporogans [Cossacks of the waterfalls] which entered world literature with Gogol’s magnificent descriptions, especially in his Taras Bulba. It was probably also on one of these islands that the famous defamatory letter to Sultan Mohamed IV was written, in a ribald language so well captured by Repin in his painting. The letter ends: ‘For which you can kiss our arses. Camp-ataman Ivan Syrko and all the camp of the Zaporogan Cossacks.’
Rolle actually undersells the contents of the Cossacks’ fabled letter here. After they defeated him in battle, the Sultan had the balls to demand the Cossacks surrender to him anyway, and sent a pompous letter demanding they do so. This was the reply he is said to have received:
Zaporozhian Cossacks to the Turkish Sultan!
O sultan, Turkish devil and damned devil's kith and kin, secretary to Lucifer himself. What the devil kind of knight are thou, that canst not slay a hedgehog with your naked arse? The devil shits, and your army eats. Thou shalt not, thou son of a whore, make subjects of Christian sons. We have no fear of your army; by land and by sea we will battle with thee. Fuck thy mother.
Thou Babylonian scullion, Macedonian wheelwright, brewer of Jerusalem, goat-fucker of Alexandria, swineherd of Greater and Lesser Egypt, pig of Armenia, Podolian thief, catamite of Tartary, hangman of Kamyanets, and fool of all the world and underworld, an idiot before God, grandson of the Serpent, and the crick in our dick. Pig's snout, mare's arse, slaughterhouse cur, unchristened brow. Screw thine own mother!
So the Zaporozhians declare, you lowlife. You won't even be herding pigs for the Christians. Now we'll conclude, for we don't know the date and don't own a calendar; the moon's in the sky, the year with the Lord. The day's the same over here as it is over there; for this kiss our arse!
— Koshovyi otaman Ivan Sirko, with the whole Zaporozhian Host
Who knows what remnants of the past and missing clues to history have been swallowed by the river, forever submerged by the flooding of those banks and on those sunken isles? They’ve haunted me more than they probably should, and I’ve even speculated about them a bit in my novels. Fiction does allow us the luxury of recreating our own version of the past, but fantasy can’t replace the ability to see and touch its artifacts for ourselves—to know they were real.
Rivers, like the ancient gods, are majestic, formidable, bountiful, unpredictable. It may be difficult for the modern mind, so accustomed to seeing our environment in utilitarian terms, to conceive of features and forces of nature as personified, deified, conduits to the otherworld, sacred sites to honor the dead, or deserving of propitiation and gratitude. But for the ancient people who lived alongside it, the Borysthenes river may have been all of these things, and more.
Read More:
The Ancient Geography of Ukraine—Introduction
Leuke, Island of Heroes—The Ancient Geography of Ukraine: Snake Island
Taurica, last refuge of the Cimmerians—The Ancient Geography of Ukraine: The Crimea
Rolle, University of California Press, 1989, pg 15