A Herman Ottó Múzeum Évkönyve 32. Kunt Ernő emlékére. (1994)

TANULMÁNYOK - TOMKA Péter: Belső-Ázsia a magyar népvándorlás kori régészet látókörében (magyar és angol nyelven)

and there a meridional (N-S) orientation occurs as well - and this latter one appears always there where groups arrived from the North are involved. 3. Finally I should like to enumerate some selected examples (from the Hun period) having an eye to Korea as well, and to mention also some problems, still unsolved. I have already mentioned that the most characteristic Hun object, namely the bronze cauldron, was originated most probably from Inner Asia, from the vicinity of the Great Wall. István Bona quotes the analogies also in his latest book entitled "Das Hunnenreich", Apart from this object, however, almost all the other object types stop in Central Asia (not even the artificial deformation of skulls seems to be a Hun custom; it belongs most probably rather to the attached Iranians). The explanation is served by that 2-300 years' period which European Huns spent somewhere (obviosly in Central Asia) before they have crossed the Volga - if the identification of Hiung-nu people with the Huns is correct. Apart from cauldrons there are only the generally widespread object types (like bone nocks of bows, trilateral arrowheads and mirrors which have trute Inner Asiatic analogies in this period. Therefore all the more surprising that several phenomane appear in identical or at least in very similar form at just the opposite end of the steppe, that is in Korea. It is well-known that certain diadems of the Hun age have „mushroom-like" decorationst which were a great mystery of research until the funeral crowns of the Early Silla period had become known on which there are true tree-ornaments (shaman-trees, world tree (?). In a royal grave with a golden crown from Kyongju there was also a glass vessel which is the product of a Persian or a Syrian workshop a clear proof of Western connections! It is characteristic that the much debated Borovoe Scucij find (Kazakhstan) was removed from the Hun period by István Bona on the very basis of the Korean analogy, that is of the dagger ornaments found in grave no. 14 of the above-mentioned locality and was put into the Hephthalite period - since this precise analogy is from a period after 520 S.D.! From Korea we may quote also saddle-bows covered with sheets with scale pattern, long swords, harness, bows, etc. In these cases we should not think of convergences. We may reckon with the insufficiencies of research (we have only very limited knowledge on the intermediate areas before the Turkic period), though we must not exclude the existence of direct contacts. It is hard to get away from the ideas that Korean „shamanistic" - though not not belonging to shamans - crowns have relations with headdresses from Transbaikalian (Oroc, Tunguz) areas and that the origin of the European Huns is not yet settled completely. There are a lot of arguments which suggest their Turkish character, though Lajos Ligeti (following P. Pelliot) raised that some - still unknown - Paleoasian people had had to participate in the Hun (Hiung-nu) ethnogenesis. This could be an even more evident explanation of the Koran contacts (related origins). We know that the Hun power is Asia had left strong marks in Transbaikalia which can be traced archeologically as well, here I mention only the Ivolga fortified settlement. As for the studies of my own made on the Hun period, it was the interpretation of a strange find, the Pannonhalma find, which had turned my attention to Inner Asia. The find consists of two bridles, two sets of harness, saddle fittings with scale pattern, two swords (one of them is extremely richly ornamented with an inlaid alamandine decoration set in gold on the cross piece of the hilt and scabbard fittings with scale pattern and at last of a bow with true golden end - and grip covers - and they are not part of a burial. A whole series of great Hun finds were 177