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

Makkay János I. Finally, there is a large belt mount made of pure gold, cast and hammered, which once belonged to the famous Siberian Collection of tsar Peter the Great, and was brought there as a stray find before 1844. It was found in the Bajkal area (in the vicinity of Verkhneudinsk, on the territory of Ulan-Ude, or in Mongolia), and dates to the 5-4

lh centuries B.C. On the reverse, an imprint of cloth and two loops for attachment can be seen. The plaque shows a fantastic horse locked in combat with a feline predator (Fig. 28). The horse has a beak-shaped snout and antlers with seven tines, each of which terminates in a beaked bird's head (very probable of eagle), as do the mane and long, curling tail. Empty space on the body is filled with relief images: on the shoulder, a bird; on the body and hind legs, the enlarged head of a bird grasping a ram's head in its beak (for comparison, see piece 'd' above). The horse on the plaque has been described as wearing a mask, as did some of the real horses buried at Pazyryk (RUDENKO 1962. 42., PI. 4: 2. the front, PI. 27: 1. the back of the plate, ORO 2001. Fig. 12. on p. 47., ARUZ FT AL. 2000. 7., no. 210.). Gy. László later repeatedly suggested, that the whole system of belief in such transformed and miraculous stags was originally part of very early (Late Palaeolithic) reindeer- and wild horsehunters, who had followed the retreat of the ice cap (and the resulted wandering of the reindeers to the north), and they spread to the north in Mesolithic times between the 12"' and 6/5"' Millennia B.C. Fig. 27 27.kép 28