Pásztor Emília (szerk.): Sámánizmus és természethit régen és ma - Bajai dolgozatok 23. (Baja, 2019)
Soós Rita: Honfoglalók hidelem világa
Our ancestor's belief system However, the burial site found on Izsák-Baiázspuszta raised the suspicions of being a "shaman's tomb" for different reasons. The body found in the grave belonged to a harelipped man with cleft palate and outwards pointing canines showing slightly hydrocephalic symptoms. His oblique headed and mouthed horse, with a lolling tongue is known as his "táltos". However the grave did not contain a shaman staff or any other object that could be used to contact underworldly creatures, thus the explorer of the tomb, Elvira H. Tóth is of the opinion that it cannot be proved that the deceased person was a táltos. To familiarize ourselves with the believe system of the people of 10th century we can look at more than just the objects they used, we can find out a lot about them by looking at their burial rituals as well. At the same time the fact that we don't possess concrete information regarding the process of the burial rituals form the Conquest period of Hungarians makes matter more complicated. Nevertheless, everything that was buried with the dead represents the belief system of the deceased and the family that buried that person as well. We can be sure that in the tombs from the era of the Conquest period - just as well with tombs of any era - nothing was put into the grave by coincidence or chance. When the horse was buried with its owner it was done because people believed that the buried person will need it in the underworld. The cutlery and bones found in the diggings are proving that, people of said era believed that the deceased will also need food in the underworld. Just as well as the weapons, everyday objects of use and clothing too. Based on the objects found in the graves we can reason that the general belief was that the spirit of the dead can turn malicious and can come back to haunt the living. To prevent this, they put objects made from iron onto the body, this phenomenon is known as the iron superstition. The iron is believed to have trouble repelling qualities even to this day in some areas. Although its appearance is rare in the graveyards of the Conquest period, the fear of the dead might be indicated by the inversely oriented, prone lied, shrunken, bonded, or post mortem punctuated or truncated carcasses as well. When examining how Hungarians viewed the underworld, we cannot forget about Gyula László's inverseunderworld view theory. The basis for this theory is that in several cases some objects were found broken, damaged or being placed differently than the place of use the place of wearing said objects. The broken saddle, unbuttoned outerwear, undone belts, dulled weapons or damaged dishes point to this as well. It was always a question, how representative is the imagery on the objects regarding the worldview of the Hungarians of the Conquest period, thus how much can we rely on them to understand that worldview. 34
