Canadian Professor Transforms His Skin With 2,500-Year-Old Scythian-Inspired Tattoos

Matthew Plexman

Getting inked isn’t a new thing. In the BP exhibition “Scythians: Warriors of Ancient Siberia”, you will find skin preserved with ancient tattoos. Dave Mazierski, a medical illustrator and biomedical communications professor from Toronto has made it his mission in life to cover his body in the same tattoos that are found on a 2,500-year-old mummy from a Bronze Age Scythian tribe.

“I was attracted to the beautiful and organic designs when they were shown to me by my former teacher and mentor in the Art as Applied to Medicine program at the University of Toronto, Steve Gilbert, who also happened to be a tattoo artist and historian. I told him I was interested in starting a ‘tattoo project’ in which all of the pieces would (eventually) integrate into a greater whole… I was thinking along the lines of a Japanese style ‘body suit’. I was unfamiliar with the Scythian/Pazyryk tattoos at the time, but when Steve showed them to me, I decided that that was the art I wanted,” said Dave.

More info: The British Museum

Line drawings of tattoos from a Scythian burial.

Fragment of mummified skin showing a Scythian tattoo.

© The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, 2017. Photo: V Terebenin.

Steve Gilbert tattooing Dave Mazierski.

Matthew Plexman

Matthew Plexman