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Artimpasa (; ) was a complex androgynous Scythian goddess of fertility who possessed power over sovereignty and the priestly force. Artimpasa was the Scythian variant of the Iranian goddess Ashi/Ashi.
Artimpasa is often erroneously called Argimpasa (; ) due to a scribal corruption.
Artimpasa henceforth preserved many traits inherited from ʿAštart, and, reflecting influence from Levantine cults in which the Great Goddess was often accompanied by a minor semi-bestial goddess, it was from the ʿAštart-Aphroditē of Ascalon, to whom was affiliated a semi-human goddess subordinate to her in the form of Atargatis, that was derived the affiliation of the Snake-Legged Goddess, who was also the Scythian equivalent of the semi-human goddess subordinate to the Great Goddess as well as the Scythian foremother and therefore the equivalent of ʿAtarʿatah, to Artimpasa.
This affiliation was so close that the images of the two goddesses would almost merge, but nevertheless remained distinct from each other, and this distinction is more clear in how Artimpasa was assigned the role of the king's sexual partner (see below) and the divine power of the kings who granted royal power, but was not considered the foremother of the people, and in how neither the Bosporan kings of Sarmatian ancestry nor the Graeco-Roman authors' records assigned Aphroditē or Artimpasa as the Scythians' ancestor.
Artimpasa was also identified with the Greek goddess Athena (Αθηνα) in the Bosporan Kingdom due to her warrior aspects.
A Sarmatians decorated with an image of a winged Aphroditē with her head decorated with leaves, and holding a small round object in one hand and a rosette in the other hand was found in the Yanchorak treasure from the 2nd to 1st centuries BCE. This was part of a horse harness and the Sarmatians who copied a Greek representation of Aphroditē associated her image with their own goddess. These representations also characterise Artimpasa as a alongside her status as a .
Another winged depiction of Artimpasa shows her as a winged goddess flanked by deer from a plate found in the alongside a sceptre head shaped like the Snake-Legged Goddess affiliated to her. A possibly winged representation of Artimpasa was on a damaged bronze cart beam decoration from Krasnoye Znamya. That this portrayal of the goddess showed her within a radiate circle, implying she was also a solar goddess. Artimpasa role's as a and the nature of the horse as both solar and chthonic furthermore implied that Artimpasa, although a celestial goddess, was also a killer and earth deity.
A more complex form of the seated Artimpasa motif is found on a 4th-century BCE headgear gold band from Sakhnova, where the seated Artimpasa holds a mirror and a round vessel, with a bearded Scythian with a gorytos hanging on his belt and holding a in one hand and a sceptre in the other hand kneels in front of her. To their right are a musician and two "cup-bearers", and to their left is a youth with a fan and two Scythians drinking from the same (interpreted as "sworn brothers"), and two sacrificers of a ram. This scene is a representation of a sacred feast where the kneeling man, a worshipper or young god, is uniting with the goddess by drinking a holy beverage. This feast is comparable to the festival of (Σακαια) which was celebrated in Pontos in honour of Anahita and was defined as a "Scythian feast" by Hesychius of Alexandria.
A similar artistic motif is that of a horseman facing Artimpasa. One depiction of this scene is from a famous Saka carpet from one of the Pazyryk burials in Siberia representing the seated Artimpasa with her right hand raised to her head and her left hand holding a blossoming branch, with a horseman facing her. Another representation of this scene is found on a 1st-century BCE to 1st-century CE relief from the in which a horseman holding a bow approaches a standing woman who holds a round object (which might be a mirror, a spherical vessel or a fruit), with an altar between them.
Another possible Siberian representation of Artimpasa can be found on two belt buckles depicting two dismounted horsemen, one of whom is holding the horses while the other lays in the lap of a goddess whose torso emerges from the earth and whose hair is interwoven with the branches of a tree above her head. This scene might depict the Scythian ritual sleep on the Earth and could be related to the relation between Artimpasa and the divine twins.
The bezel of the signet ring of the Scythian king Scyles was decorated with the image of Artimpasa seated on a throne and holding a mirror in her right hand and a sceptre in her left hand, with (ΣΚΥΛΕΩ) engraved near the figure of the goddess, and on whose band was inscribed in Greek (), with Argotas being a former Scythian king from whom his descendant Scyles inherited this ring.
The woman in the upper level of the plate was identified an Iranian deity representing Khvarenah, that is divine bliss, and assimilated with Tyche, and the charioteer in the middle section has been identified with Gaiϑāsūra.
The three divisions of the Karagodeuashkh plate have also been interpreted as representing the same goddess respectively reigning the world from heaven, driving the sun-chariot in the middle, and accepting the veneration of humans and blessing them in the lower section. The identification of the goddess with the Scytho-Maeotian Aphroditē, that is Artimpasa, is supported by the use of motifs of flanking a thymiaterion, , and female masks and Bucranium – all symbols of Aphroditē Ourania who was identified with Artimpasa – being respectively used as separations below the three sections of the plate. This identification was further supported by the – which was a symbol of fertility and fortune identified with the Iranian – held by the goddess in the first section; the affiliation of Artimpasa with the chariot-riding Iranian goddess Anāhitā; and the presence of gold pendants in the shape of doves and Gorgoneion, both symbols of Aphroditē Ourania, as decorations of the Karagodeuashkh plate and of the headgear which it was part of.
The third division's scene has been interpreted as depicting either the worship of the Scytho-Maeotian ʿAštart-Anāhitā, that is of Artimpasa, or the goddess granting power to the youth with the . Although the youth with the was visually similar to that of the male figure of the seated Artimpasa compositions, he differed from the latter in that both youths in the Karagodeuashkh plate were represented as equals and seated on the same bench as the goddess, which signaled their divine nature – however the twin gods' smaller statures compared to the goddess, who dominated the scene, implied they were of an inferior rank to her in the mythical hierarchy and were in the rank of divine heroes. This scene therefore represented the Indo-European triad of the Great Goddess with the divine twins, itself related to the connection between the pre-Zoroastrianism Anāhitā and the Nanghaithya twins, ultimately derived from the Indo-European theme of the divine twins as the companions of the Mother Goddess who flanked her symbol of the Tree of Life. Thus, the scene on the Karagodeuashkh plate also represented a Scythian form of the cult of the divine twins.
The divine nature of all the other beings represented on the Karagodeuashkh plate implied that the two hooded figures in the background of the scene could not have been eunuch priests and therefore might have instead represented mythological attendants of Artimpasa of unclear significance in the scene.
The Karagodeuashkh plate thus depicted a communion of Artimpasa with a pair of heroes which therefore represented concepts of eternal life and resurrection and divine legitimation of royal power.
These depictions represent the male figure, who is often a standing youth of smaller stature than the goddess, as subordinate to Artimpasa, who remains seated. This artistic composition reflects a divine marriage of the goddess with a younger god, similar to the union of Cybele and Attis or of Aphrodite and Adonis, or a deified mortal identified with a god or a hero, likely the Scythian forefather Targitaos. These scenes represent this younger god receiving grace endowed by the goddess upon him after the communion. In some variants of this scene, the male partner of the goddess is bearded and is more imposing on horseback, which, if not simply a local artistic variation, reflected the increasing prominence of a warrior god in this ritual.
The image of the seated Artimpasa on the signet ring of Scyles who held a mirror and a sceptre represented communion with the goddess as guaranteeing sovereignty in Scythian religion. The image of the Artimpasa on the ring was therefore a representation of her as a granter of sovereignty, with the ring having been inherited from generation to generation of the Scythian royal dynasty as a token of royal power, and Argotas was a former Scythian king from whom his descendant Scyles inherited this ring. The ring did not feature any image of the male partner of the goddess because the kings were themselves considered to be these partners, with the Scythian royal investiture having been considered both a communion between man and the goddess as well as a marital union which elevated the king to the status of spouse of the goddess and granted him power through sexual intercourse with the goddess. This was also a reflection of Levantine influence on Artimpasa, since Mesopotamian equivalents of Aphroditē Ourania were sometimes represented together with the king in scenes represented sacred marriages, and the stability of royal power in Paphos was believed to be derived from intimate relations between Aphroditē, with whom the queen of Paphos was identified, and the king, who claimed descent from Aphroditē's lover Cinyras.
These scenes however had multiple interpretations, and the communion with the goddess might have also represented blessing of the worshipper with an promise of afterlife and future resurrection through communion with the goddess, as well as an endowment of the king with royal power, reflecting Artimpasa's role as a giver of power and victory, which also explains why all the variants of the scene of the seated goddess and a male partner were found in the tombs of Scythian nobility.
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