Beckwith is a distinguished professor of Central Eurasian Studies at the IU Hamilton Lugar School. History Today’s December 2023 article says Beckwith’s book ”spans the world from China to the Danube, joining revolutions of military technology and social practice with equally profound breakthroughs in the human mind – Plato, Zoroaster and the Buddha. Prodigiously learned, the book is full of hitherto unthought-of connections across the northern steppes. Not everyone will agree with Beckwith, but all will be challenged by his book which turns the classical world as we know it inside out.“
The Scythian Empire was published in January 2023, and was reviewed that month in the Wall Street Journal. In his review, Maxwell Carter, vice chairman of 20th and 21st century art at Christie’s in New York summarized, “…superior delivery does not on its own set his book apart. ‘The Scythian Empire’ is simply, dazzlingly original. Ever-narrowing fields of academic study and inability to see the whole historical picture, he suggests, partly explain the Scythians’ discredit and neglect.”
Carter praised not only Beckwith’s book, but the scholar himself, saying, “his curiosity, imagination and learning—from the Yellow River to the Danube, from archaeology to linguistics—do what every history ought to do but few achieve: compel the reader to think.”
In the late 8th and early 7th centuries BCE, Scythian warriors conquered and unified most of the vast Eurasian continent, creating an innovative empire that would give birth to the age of philosophy and the Classical age across the ancient world—in the West, the Near East, India, and China. Mobile horse herders who lived with their cats in wheeled felt tents, the Scythians made stunning contributions to world civilization—from capital cities and strikingly elegant dress to political organization and the world-changing ideas of Buddha, Zoroaster, and Laotzu—Scythians all. In The Scythian Empire, Christopher I. Beckwith presents a major new history of a fascinating but often forgotten empire that changed the course of history.
At its height, the Scythian Empire stretched west from Mongolia and ancient northeast China to northwest Iran and the Danube River, and in Central Asia reached as far south as the Arabian Sea. The Scythians also ruled Media and Chao, crucial frontier states of ancient Iran and China. By ruling over and marrying the local peoples, the Scythians created new cultures that were creole Scythian in their speech, dress, weaponry, and feudal socio-political structure. As they spread their language, ideas, and culture across the ancient world, the Scythians laid the foundations for the very first Persian, Indian, and Chinese empires. Filled with fresh discoveries, The Scythian Empire presents a remarkable new vision of a little-known but incredibly important empire and its peoples.
Beckwith has taught at IU for 45 years, during which time he has developed 48 distinct courses. He is one of the most prolific and versatile researchers in the field of Central Eurasian studies. Beckwith is renowned for revolutionary scholarship that reshapes understanding of how, why, and when the Central Eurasian steppe peoples from Eastern Europe to East Asia influenced the development of knowledge, religious beliefs and societies, not only within their homeland but in the neighboring peripheral cultures of Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, and East Asia as well. His research focuses on the history of ancient and medieval Central Eurasia and the cultures of the peripheral peoples, as well as the linguistics of Aramaic, Chinese, Japanese, Koguryo, Old Tibetan, Scythian, Turkic, and other languages.
He has been named a MacArthur Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, a Fulbright-Hays Fellow, and a Japan Foundation fellow and has had numerous visiting appointments around the United States and the world. He has authored 12 books and over 60 articles.
Christopher Beckwith’s Scythian Empire named Book of the Year 2023
Research Impact
Dec 8, 2023
