A Nyíregyházi Jósa András Múzeum évkönyve 47. (Nyíregyháza, 2005)

Régészet - János Makkay: The Miracle Stag in Ancient Greek mythical stories and their Indo-Iranian counterparts

The Miracle Stag designated for the Greeks, as well as the peninsula at the Timavus. From that other-world region Herakles brought the slip of the wild olive to Olympia, which till then was treeless. An old vasepainting, however, shows us that he penetrated still further in his pursuit beyond the world's end, even to the Garden of Hesperides. The hind stands beneath the tree of the golden apples, guarded by two women, the Hesperides. According to this picture the hero took the homeward path, escaping from the dangers of remaining in the other world; according to another, his booty was the golden antlers." The further part of my study will mostly be focusing on tracing the hitherto unresolved origin of the belief about the golden-antlered hind, trying to find an interpretation of the question, why and how it got its golden antlers. Gyula László, when studying the Scythian found from Gartsinovo (one large press mould made of bronze, a stray find from Bulgaria (for more details, see FETTICH 1934., and also LÁSZLÓ 1967. Fig. on pp. 44-45.), dating to the 5

th century B.C.), noticed in 1942, that its middle part depicts the body of a typically Scythian deer in the folded pose (bending when tormented by a lion-shaped griffon and a predatory bird), and its body is decorated with ornaments representing heads of several animals: the head of an eagle can be seen on the foreleg, a lion's head decorates the foot of the antlers, while its antlers are topped with birds' and rams' heads. These were common motifs in the so-called animal-style art of the early steppe nomads (as once was thought by Nándor Fettich), or otherwise, according to A. Alföldi, they had a specific conception of a world-view, which is still existing to the present days. Preserved, for example, in Hungarian folk-tales, such motifs show that fighting heroes - one pursuer, and one, who is pursued, taking on themselves the shape of different animals wage their mythical fight, (some times as a combat between the Good White and the Wrong Black, or between Justice and Injustice)." (ALIÖLDI 1931. 394-418., LÁSZLÓ 1942. 45-46., with reference to the opinion of Nándor Fettich. For comments on ALFÖLDI 1931., see KERÉNYI 1930/1984. 27.) According to László, the outer appearance of the harnessed horse was greatly determined by such shiny gold, gilded bronze or bronze metal ornaments, representing other animals. Outstanding examples of such an ornamentation, suggestive also of its reason, are reindeer masks covering horse heads in Central Asia, from the times around the birth of Christ.

13 One year later, in his next article, Gy. László first shortly refused the interpretation of such Scythian horse harnessings and metal frontstalls as proposed by A. Alföldi, M. Rostovceff, H. Schmidt and others, amongst them the assumed role of the frontstalls as Tróivia 9epo')v-representations (LÁSZLÓ 1943. 41-43.). Instead of this, he suggested a different solution: „the gold reindeer masks, found on the head of some horses in the Pazyryk kurgans give important advice on how to explain the former meaning of such representations. The notion of a horse transformed into a deer deeply rooted in the intellectual world of ancient steppic peoples, since its survivals can be found till present times. 1 do not think that the reindeer mask could have been connected with the funerary cult of those days. 1 did not have possibility to study personally the Pazyryk masks, but 1 was able to investigate metal frontstalls and bridle ornaments of identical meaning in the Museum of History in Kiev.

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1 observed weathered " The Pazyryk horse heads were published by Gryaznov, and after him also by TALLGRFN 1933 Fig. 38. László went into details in his footnote concerning similarities between reconstructed Scythian horse harnesses and some aspects of present day Hungarian folk beliefs. Mis conception shows much connection with the astral interpretation of Berze Nagy, discussed above. According to László, „in specific folk songs ol" regös type' from Transdanubia, and also from the easternmost part of Transylvania (the Székely Land), the original central motif (if cleaned from influences of Christian Symbolic) vividly describes such deer representations of the Scythians, and in any case relates the young miracle stag myth, which was brought here, into the Carpathian Basin, by the landtaking Hungarians. The forehead of the stag wears the shiny sun, on his side is the beautiful moon, while its right kidney is marked by some heavenly stars, and his antlers" tines have thousands of links of tow and pitch, and also golden rings. With the help of these heavenly symbols, the young miracle stag visualizes a man, who is a messenger of the Heaven." " For the curious visit of both Gyula László and Nándor Fettich (two young archaeologists of the time) in the Kiev National Museum during the German occupation of the city from 3 December of 1941 till 19 of January, 1942. see FETTICH 2004. 13