Sarmatian cataphract , great grand father of the Western Knight or something else ? The case of Tryphon son of Andromenou

A Sarmatian Cataphract , the great grand father of the Western knight .Or  he wasn't ? The Stelae ( burial monument )  of Tryphon, son of Andromenos , Crimea 2nd C. AD

     In a number of sources , for example in Tim Newark 's The Barbarians, Arms and Armour publishers , 1985 this horseman is presented as Sarmatian cataphract. Indeed his armament followed the Sarmatian style ( lammelar armour, which was to be the principal type of armour seen in the Eurasian steppes  until the 16th century , long kontos spear and spangenhelm type helmet )
     The inscrption though says a different story : "Τρύφων [υιός] Ανδρομενου ανεθηκεν " Tryphon ,[ son ]of Andomenos dedicated " , in other words, a typical Ancient Greek dedicatory inscrption.Plus the names are Greek ( Tryphon was the name of a hero/ demigod who healed patients through dreams and also Andomenos is a Greek name related to ανδρεία = andreia bravery ) .Last but not least there is no evidence that the Sarmatians adopted to the  Greek culture, and so this horseman, although armed like a Sarmatian cathaphract , wasn't one .
     So what he was ? As it pointed out by Richard Brzezinski in the Sarmatians Ospey Pulications, most probably this horseman may had  come from the Greek speaking settlements / coloof the Bosporan Kingdom ( present day Crimea and southern Ukraine)
This kingdom which was a Pontic Greek and subsequently a Roman dependency faced the Sarmatian tribes to its north and armed a portion of its cavarly in their style in order to counter them.
Another interesting point it is presented in a post of Scolae Palatinae Byzaninae Oplomachia  Group and it concerns the manner the kontos is held Isnt  held either upper as it was the case with all other  horsemen in  the period or in crouched arm as it would have been the case with the latter Western European knights, but it's held with reversed wrist,  a manner which would be used by the " Byzantine " cavarly troops tasked with the breaking of enemy lines and covering the horse archers .
By that time though the kontos would have been renamed as μεναυλιον menaulion and the cataphracts to μεναυλατοι menaulatoi

Bibliography
1. Richard Brzezinski , The Sarmatians 600.BC- 450 AD Osprey 2002
2.Tim Newark , The Barbarians , Arms and Armour Publications , 1985
3 Scolae Palatinae Byzantinae  Oplomachia Group post of 11  November 2018
Chris