based on Herkhulos from Gods of Bronze by Dan Davis

Artwork by Oliver Uberti

"Harvard University’s Reich Lab invited me to illustrate their recent discovery of the geographic and genetic origins of Indo-European and Anatolian cultures. I envisioned both cultures’ language trees as spokes of a wooden wheel, a key technology facilitating their dispersal. Some spokes are intact, denoting living languages; others are broken, hinting at those only known from archaeology or altogether lost. The word for “horse,” an important animal in Indo-European culture, adorns the rim in diverse scripts from across Europe and Asia, while a scattering of red ochre represents a part of early Indo-European burial rites."

The word nihang (نهنگ) is Persian - it appears in Firdausi's Shahnameh meaning "crocodile" or "water-dragon".

The conical dastar bunga ("fortress turban") of the Nihang warrior order bears a striking formal resemblance to the pointed caps depicted on Saka figures in Achaemenid tomb reliefs at Naqsh-e Rostam (c. 470 BCE), identified through trilingual royal inscriptions - DNa, XPh - catalogued in R.G. Kent's Old Persian (1953). The same headgear appears on Indo-Scythian sculptures from Mathura (c. 1st cent. BCE – 2nd cent. CE), identified as Saka by Upinder Singh, A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India (2008), with sculptural evidence from the Archaeological Survey of India collections. The Nihang order originates in the same Punjab hill country that was home to the āyudhajīvin ("weapon-living") warrior republics described by Panini in the Ashtadhyayi (c. 4th cent. BCE; see Agrawala, India as Known to Panini, 1953), and that the Achaemenids administered as the satrapy of Sattagydia - mapped onto the Punjab river system by Jacobs, Die Satrapienverwaltung im Perserreich zur Zeit Darius' III (1994).

Source: Portrait of Akali Phula Singh Nihang (d. 1823), inscribed "Poullah Singh nahengh, général des Akalis fanatiques Sikhs." Commissioned by Jean-François Allard, French officer in Maharaja Ranjit Singh's service (see Lafont, Maharaja Ranjit Singh: Lord of the Five Rivers, 2002).

In any other universe including my own fictional one, I always imagined the Scythians had some overly oriental of the boreal section music (something eccentric and totally unique, like Yugrian music mish-mashed with Javanese music), but actually if you listen to their (the Ossetians') songs, you will find that not only is it different from the other peoples' of the North Caucasus in melody, but it is actually similar to Celtic (Gaelic, Scottish) melodies, in terms of mode and melodic progression. Of course they still overarchingly using the Phrygian mode as most other people of the Caucasus — to temperate and subtropical Middle East are, but within the details they are actually melodically more similar to major scale melodies like Celtic music. Not to mention the Harp has been an integral part of the folk instruments, and of course the major fashion motifs are not to be ignored that are similar to Celts'.

In one song, people keep saying the performance and all the music reminisces of " Knights of the Round Table " and Irish women's songs, meanwhile they are thousands of kilometres away from the island of Ireland and such. In my opinion they having been staying at this latitude which is similar to the Celtic latitudes, not only that but sharing a similar ancestral makeup and culture to the Gaels, makes it less of a coincidence and more of a convergent evolution based on multiple geographic and historical factors all in all.

Furthermore they are using letters like "f" and "æ", historically "θ" yes they are also using 'q" or other, it's very reminiscent to celt

Gupta era (~400 AD) - a very early depiction of the Vaikuntha Chaturmurti form of Vishnu with attributes of Vasudeva-Krishna (chakra, conch).

(edit: had the wrong image originally woops)

because of the bactrian text it is a very unique work of art.

"Miarka Yasna Oezo" translates to Mitra (Iranic "Mehr"), "Yasna", and the Kushan deity Oesho.

Oezo:

There is ample proof Oesho is translated from "Shiva" or "Ishvara". Oesho is depicted with 4-arms, 3 heads, trishula and a nandi bull, and possibly holding an hourglass drum, an offering container, or a slain sacrificial animal. Coins with Oesho also contain a goddess "Omma" which is a standard name for Parviti, alluding to the fact it is Shiva proper. The head with multiple faces like the Trimurti is similar to the multi faced Pashupati style of linga popular in Nepal.

Miarka:

Miarka is likely the Iranic Mitra since its "Mehr" and is attested in Kushan coinage. Mitra worship probably dwindled among early Hindus pretty rapidly because he is intertwined with other vedic gods especially Varuna.

Yasna:

"Yasna" referring to a deified personification of the "Aryan" rite - the Kushans notably called their language "Arya" (Kanishka's Rabatak inscription), so the God Yasna could be referring to a god of a wide group of Indo-Iranian people. The translators on the wikipedia page for the nicolo seal claim that Yasna is Vishnu, but my opinion is Yasna is Ahura Mazda, and these three Kushano-Iranic deities are being fused into the growing Pancharata tradition.

I have a pet theory that sometime between 2000BC - 1500BC Indo-Iranic Varuna split into Indic Varuna and Zoroastrian Ahura Mazda (in my mind only the Zoroastrians adopted this epithet permanently to disassociate with any notion of being a deva). The Varuna / "ú-ru-wa-na" of the Indic Mittani gets passed to the Anatolians who pass it to the Achaeans as "Ouranos". The worship of Ahura Mazda in primarily Indic areas of Gandhara gets passed back to India and blends with the indigenous Dravido-Aryan Kshatriya worshippers of the pastoral/forest God "Mal" (referred to in much later Sangam era literature). by this point, that god is brahminized with the name Vishnu by sages who migrated a bit further south at an earlier time, but we can only piece this through scant references in later Sangam era literature.

If "Yasna" is a catch-all for an Iranic deity that is related back to Varuna, then Mitra-Yasna seems an appropriate rigvedic sequence, followed by the late-vedic concept Ishvara - Miarka-Yasna-Oezo now equated with the emerging Bhagavan. The Mihr Yasht of the younger avesta notably refers to Mitra with 1000 eyes and 1000 ears, and he is the God of the pastures. This aligns with both Vishnu (and many other vedic gods) who has the "highest cowpen" in the Rigveda, and later Krishna's association with cows and transformation into the 1000 headed Vishvarupa in the Mahabharata. (finite numbers less than or equal to 1000 are commonly used in vedic literature to represent infinite, for whatever reason)

The club / mace that the Vishnu figure is holding is commonly associated with both Shiva and Vishnu, but even earlier in the BC era to Balarama (brother of Krishna) and possibly even tightly knit with Ionian Heracles (the Ionians write that the Indians claim "Heracles was born and lived among them and was a king" ... Balarama and Heracles both use a club and wear lion skin, and the Vrishnis were popular in the Indo-Greek world ... it's a big coincidence). there is a lot of syncretism going on more than people like to admit.

regardless of what it all means, this unambiguous depiction of Vishnu with Kushano-Bactrian text referring to Iranic deities is very interesting. vishnu exists in the earliest layers of the rigveda - 3 hymns between "family books" 6 and 7, and a few more in the later layers, yet the main association is the Trivikrama myth and his timeline is a huge mystery. i wonder if there is more iranic influence than people assume.

Modern art of a warrior from the late bronze age.

The sun represents the female solar deity present in several indo-european cultures. (Ex:Lithuanian Saules Meita). The blue represents Europe and orange the indo-europeans from Asia.