From Scythia to Camelot: A Radical Reassessment of the Legends of King Arthur, the Knights of the Round Table, and the Holy Grail (Arthurian Characters and Themes) [Library Binding]

C. Scott Littleton (Author), Linda A. Malcor (Author)

Book Description

Series: Arthurian Characters and Themes | Publication Date: May 1, 1994

This volume boldly proposes that the core of the Arthurian and Holy Grail traditions derived not from Celtic mythology, but rather from the folklore of the peoples of ancient Scythia (what are now the South Russian and Ukrainian steppes). Also includes 19 maps.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Teachers of Arthurian sources to undergraduates will find it a useful reference." -- Choice

About the Author

C. Scott Littleton is professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at occidental College in Los Angeles, California. He is the author of numerous books and articles on comparative Indo-European mythology, including the The New Comparative Anthology: An Anthropological Assesment of the Theories of Georges Dumezil (3rg Edition, 1982). He has also published extensively on Japanese Mythology and Folklore.
Linda A. Malcor is a California-based free-lance writer and researcher. She holds a Ph.D. in Folklore and Mythology from UCLA and occassionally teaches and lectures on the Arthurian legends. In addition to scholarly publications, she writes fantasy fiction and screenplays.

Product Details

• Library Binding: 424 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (May 1, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0815314965
• ISBN-13: 978-0815314967
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,194,018 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

61 of 75 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars King Arthur was a North Iranian named Batraz?!, December 22, 1997

By 

[e-mail] (Fremont, California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: From Scythia to Camelot: A Radical Reassessment of the Legends of King Arthur, the Knights of the Round Table, and the Holy Grail (Arthurian Characters and Themes) (Library Binding)

To laypersons with a passing interest in history and archaeology this book will seem both puzzling and difficult to swallow. The authors Littleton and Malcor don't claim to have all of the answers, but put forward an interesting and plausible theory regarding the origins of Arthurian legends. I heard about their work from an issue of Archaeology magazine and managed to purchase their book at one-third the price from a friend at a bookstore. The Roman occupation of Britain is a well known bit of history because without the Roman conquests there the world as we know it would have been a radically different place. What is not well known is that the Romans used Scythian horsemen as their primary occupation force (while stationing British conscripts in other lands). From the Scythians and their stories of Batraz (a hero king of the Caucasian people whose primary descendents today are the Ossetians) Arthurian legends came to be. Also worthy of mention is the daring theory about Lancelot being of Alannic extraction. What is presented is the impact of Iranian-speaking peoples (whose better known cousins established themselves in the Near East from Kurdistan to western Pakistan) upon European culture as part of Roman armies and "barbarian" hordes. These people are a fascinating and little known Indo-European peoples who were assimilated into the general populations of Europe, but live again thanks to the work of scholars like Littleton and Malcor. An interesting work that deserves far more recognition from people interested in Arthurian legends, the various peoples of the Eurasian steppes, or radical theories made plausible.

53 of 72 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Deconstructualist's Heaven, January 7, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: From Scythia to Camelot: A Radical Reassessment of the Legends of King Arthur, the Knights of the Round Table, and the Holy Grail (Arthurian Characters and Themes) (Paperback)

While it makes for an interesting read as an opposing point of view to the current ideas concerning the origins of Arthurian literature, the authors, in their attempt to "deconstruct" the Arthurian myth and cut it clean from Celtic studies, often make outstanding leaps in logic (without sufficiently reliable sources being cited) and quite often mangle the Celtic evidence (which they are trying to discredit) by utilyzing incorrect etymologies of Celtic words and ignoring Celtic literary themes and archaeological evidence which would tend to discredit their Iranian-origin theories. By throwing the baby out with the bath water, they weaken their argument, for it has been consistently proved by other authors in recent years that there is, without a doubt, a strong Celtic influence over the entire genre of Arthurian literature. This shaky scholarship, coupled with a printing that is riddled with spelling/graphical errors unfortunatley leads to a strong warning of caution to any potential reader.

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A "Radical Reassessment" Reassessed., November 9, 2006

By 

R. Andrea "book buff" (Colorado Springs, CO USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: From Scythia to Camelot: A Radical Reassessment of the Legends of King Arthur, the Knights of the Round Table, and the Holy Grail (Arthurian Characters and Themes) (Paperback)

Recommended only for revisionist historians.

Littleton and Malcor purport to prove that just about all--yes, all--Arthurian legends stem from the ancient horse cultures of central Asia. What they deliver is something less. Riddled by unflagged opinions and "presonal communication" masquerading as scholarly sources, this book does provide exhaustive analysis fo many Arthurian tales.

As a goad to further discussion and research, this book works. As "one of the most significant scholarly works on any subject in the humanities written during this century", as the cover blurb claims, it fails.

Reader be warned, Littleton and Malcor do not examine the various theories of who or whether there was a historic Arthur. They are content to accept the work of others there. What they do is discuss the origin of the stories.

They should have reviewed J. R. R. Tolkien's "On Fairy Tales" ("The Tolkien Reader", Del Ray, 1966). While not denying, because he felt it strongly himself, "the desire to unravel the intricately knotted and ramified history of the branches of the Tree of Tales", Professor Tolkienb quotes with approval, "We must be satisfied with the soup that is set before us, and not desire to see the bones of the ox out of which it has been boiled." Despite his decades as Professor of Anglo-Saxon [philology] at Oxford, Tolkien humbly acknowledged himself too "unlearned" to deal with the "questions of origins."

Littleton and Malcor suffer from no such humility, but then their book hardly reflects the high standards of scholarship Tolkien probably sought.

Recommended only for the serious student of Arthuriana. For all I can tell, Littleton and Malcor's theory may be correct, but their methodology and documentation clouds rather than supports their scholarship.