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particular creature for an emblem. Even though the Darius, who had married Atossa, daughter of Cyrus. By
granting of arms did not begin until the twelfth cebtury, the time of the Alexandrine writers, the bulk of the
there must have been reasons why these were chosen. Sacae appear to have been dwelling somewhere beyond
Those reasons in many cases must have included their the Jaxartes.
age-long use in their family traditions. What stronger
appeal could there be than a tribal emblem? It is signifi- Diodorus (first century B.C.) says that kindred Sacae
cant that the European royal families in general used peoples spread from the Araxes to as far west as the
the lion emblem, in its various forms, even before for- Don, and that they settled two remarkable colonies
mal arms were created. from Assyria and Media on the latter river, and in Paph-
lagonia and Pontus. This parallels the Sigynnae migra-
One item of evidence is beyond dispute, whatever he- tion, mentioned by Herodotus, who claimed to be
raldic authorities may say. On a number of Attic vases, colonists from Media, and who had earlier migrated
all of c. 500 B.C., heroes of the Trojan war are de- westwards, as far as the Rhine.
picted with devices on their shields. Paris has a lion,
Achilles a lion's face, Patroclus the hind part of a lion, Strabo (first century B.C.) states that this dominant
Ajax a stag, Menelaus a bull. All these are emblems of people had conquered the whole territory from Cappa-
ancient Israel and the royal lion of Judah predominates docia to far east of the Caspian. He mentions that they
among those princes, notably the Trojans. We recall gave their name to Sacasene, the most fertile tract of
also the Roman tradition of their heroes Romulus and land in Armenia.
Remus, supposedly suckled by a "wolf." The legend
could well have moved westwards from Palestine via Pliny (first century A.D.) considered that the name
the Trojan link with Israel of old. Sacae properly belonged to that portion of the Scythian
peoples whose territory originally abutted on the
Summing up: though there is not nearly enough evi- boundaries of Persia itself.
dence to confirm a claim that the Normans generally
were of the tribe of Benjamin, there is testimony suffi- A modern ethnologist, Tarn, states that there were
cient to support a strong possibility that the westward- Sacae both north and south of the Jaxartes about the pe-
moving aristocracy, which took an elite of Judah into riod of Eratosthenes (c. 276-194 B.C.). Those south of
western Europe via Troy and ancient Greece, included that river were the Dahae, Massagetae and Sacaraucae
Israelites of the tribe of Benjamin and that some, at "...a huge confederacy of tribes, lords of the Caspian
least, of these formed part of the ruling class of the steppes, northward from the great Balkan mountains, to
Normans who entered Britain in 1066. the lower Oxus and the Aral."

-- Wake Up! July 1979. Gunther says that the Sacae were Nordics, and were
spread over the whole territory from south-east Europe
Our Ancient Scythic Kinsfolk -- the eastwards, as far as Turkestan, Afghanistan and the bor-
Ubiquitous Sacae ders of India. He adds that fourth-century writers de-
scribe them as being fair or ruddy-fair and tall, and that
they resembled the so-called Kelts and "Germans" of
Although the Persian inscriptions include all the those days. This authority considers that the Medes and
Scythian peoples under the term Saka, it is clear that Persians also were Nordics.
this ancient Persian name was used particularly with re-
lation to a dominant group of nations of Iranian origin. -- Wake Up! July 1979.
The group is now usually referred to as the Sacae.
Their emergence, as such, into recorded history took
place during the early part of the seventh century B.C. The Pioneering Danites

Herodotus (fifth century B.C.) records that, in his day, Dan was the pioneering clan (Deuteronomy 33, 22),
the Saka were located east and south-east of the Sea of and the great rivers and waterways of Europe bear wit-
Aral, even as far as Turkestan and the borders of India. ness to the tribal habit of naming places "after their fa-
He associates the Sacae with the Bactrians, and says ther Dan" (Judges 18, 29). The following are a few
that they were at one period led by Hystaspes, son of examples of this custom culled from Dan: Lost and

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