Targitaos

[12] In Greek mythology, Hēraklēs had killed the giant Gēryōn and seized his cows, after which he sailed from Gēryōn's home island of Erytheia to Tartēssos in Iberia, from where he passed by the city of Abdēra and reached Liguria, and then going south to Italy and sailing to Sicily: on the way, he founded several cities and settlements which the Greeks supposedly later "regained."

[14][15][16][17] Therefore, the addition of Hēraklēs in the Hellenised version of the genealogical myth ascribed to the Scythians a partial Greek ancestry.

[22][23] Unlike the more widespread cult of Hēraklēs, the cult of Achilles Pontarkhēs was limited to the region ranging from the island of Leuke in the west to the island of Borysthenes and the north-west coast of Black Sea to the north of Crimea in the east, and was largely connected to his role as the son of the marine goddess Thetis.

[29] The popularity of this identification is attested by the presence of scenes depicting the life of Achilles decorating four gorytoi found in the Chortomlyk, Melitopol, Ilintsy, and near Rostov.

[36] A cult to Targī̆tavah might also have been practised on the middle Tyras river, where the various peoples of Scythia, such as the Scythians, the Getic tribes, and the Greek colonists, believed that Targī̆tavah-Hēraklēs had left his footprint.

[37] The Greek identification of Targī̆tavah with Achilles was connected to a myth already established in archaic times, according to which he was buried on the island of Leuke.

The Greek poet Eumelus mentioned Borysthenis, that is the Earth-and-Water goddess Api who was Targī̆tavah's mother,[25][26][27] in connection to this myth.

These scenes depicted the marriage of Targī̆tavah with Artimpasa, but also represented the granting of a promise of afterlife and future resurrection to Targī̆tavah, and, by extension, collectively to his descendants, the Scythians.

[12] A representation of Targī̆tavah as investing a king is a scene from a silver rhyton discovered in the Karagodeuashkh Kurgan [ru], depicting two bearded adult mounted horsemen.

In the scene on the rhyton, Targī̆tavah, in his role as the first king and divine ancestor of the Scythians acts as a custodian of the power and the victories of his descendants, and the rhyton he holds represents a communion between the king and the god, paralleling the communion with Artimpasa in the scenes with the seated goddess.