First Man Targitaos
Scythian · demigod · mythic primordium · Recorded classification
Culture-hero / first-man tier (rendered 'demigod' per the type constraint, being the offspring of the sky-god and a river-nymph). The genealogical myth survives only through Herodotos 4.5-7; the Pontic-Greek doublet (4.8-10) substitutes Heracles and the snake-maiden. Native theonym unrecorded beyond the Hellenised Ταργίταος.
Parentage
- parent: Sky-Father Papaios
- parent: River-Daughter of the Borysthenes
Children
Domains
- first ancestry
- sacral kingship
Powers
- fathered the founding lineage
Sources
- Targitaos is the first man in the Scythian self-account, son of Zeus (Papaios) and a daughter of the river Borysthenes.: Herodotos, Histories 4.5 (trans. A.D. Godley, Loeb) (primary)
- Older derivation read the name as *Darga-tavah 'whose might is far-reaching'; this is now judged untenable because Old Iranian /d/ had shifted to /δ/ (then /l/) in Scythian, and the form is re-analysed as Targī̆tavah 'possessing the strength of (the goddess) Tarkā'. He is widely equated with the Pontic-Greek Heracles of the parallel myth.: V.I. Abaev, Osetinskii yazyk i fol'klor (1949); R. Schmitt & contributors, 'Scythians,' Encyclopaedia Iranica (secondary)