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 3. Greek tradition also kept memory of Achilles, who was united to Helen (or Medea) in the island Leuce, the same White Island, near to the mouth of the Lower Danube. Pausanias wrote as follows: A story too I will tell which I know the people of Crotona tell about Helen. The people of Himera too agree with this account. In the Euxine at the mouths of the Ister is an island sacred to Achilles. It is called White Island, and its circumference is twenty Stades. ... The first to sail thither legend says was Leonymus of Crotona The Pythian priestess sent Leonymus to White Island, telling him that there Ajax would appear to him and cure his wound. In time he was healed and returned from White Island, where, he used to declare, he saw Achilles, as well as Ajax the son of Oileus and Ajax the son of Telamon. With them, he said, were Patroclus and Antilochus; Helen was wedded to Achilles,

..." {Pausanias 3.19.11-13. JONES 1955:1. 123. and 15. See also Pindar. Nemea 4,49, and Euripides: Andromache, 1262.) 4. A sanctuary of Achilles was erected on the Island of Borysthenitis, in one of the estuaries of the river Dniepr, where his grave was venerated as a tomb of a heros (CIG 2. 2076., Dio Chrysostomus: Orationes 36.9., Plinius: Nat. Hist. 4.83.). 5. Fragmented sources of the Trojan Cycle (the Cyprid) told the story of Artemis and Iphigeneia at Aulis: when the expedition of the Achaeans was assembled at Aulis for the second time, Agamemnon killed a deer while hunting and claimed to surpass Artemis herself. The goddess in her wrath stopped them from sailing by sending wild weather. When they set about to sacrifice Iphigeneia to Artemis, the goddess snatched her away and conveyed her to the Tauroi and made her immortal, setting a deer by the altar in place of the girl (WEST 1997. 75. and 479., Euripides'. Iphigenia Aulidensis.). According to one account of Herodotus, the Tauri near Scythia sacrifice castaways to a maiden who they say is Iphigenia, the daughter of Agamemnon {Herodotus IV. 103., Pausanias 1.43.1., JONES 1955:1. 229-230.), identified with the goddess Artemis. 6. According to Herodoros of Herakleia, Heracles had a Scythian-type bow for shooting arrows and a Scythian archer, called Teutaros, taught him how to use such a bow {Herodori Fragm. 5., ed. K. AND TH. MÜLLER, NAGY 1909.193., and note 1.). This tradition goes back to the first third of the 2

nd Mill. B.C. at least, and to the steppe. We must remember at this point to the invention of a new bow type in the Don-Volga steppe area around the end of the local Early Bronze Age. The invention was the use of flat bone/horn brackets or long bone tubs onto the arms of the bow for extra stiffness. It has been suggested that this new type of composite bow had emerged there in the Volga-Don area in the Bronze Age in the first third of the 2

nd Mill. B.C., for fighting from chariots. I correlated this case with the curious prelude of the killing of the Suitors in the Odyssey: why they could not bend and string the extremely strong arch of Odysseus, probably a superb composite bow strengthened with additional bone or horn plates on its ends. It can be suggested that this bow type was newly introduced into Maindland Greece around the beginning of the Mycenaean period, while the average composite bows of the Middle Helladic period were made without such reinforcing bone/horn brackets (MAKKAY 2003 A. 38-39., with further literature.). 7. Sinope was a Pontic town, named after Asopus' daughter Sinope, whom Apollo carried off from Hyria and took to the Black Sea {Scholiast on Apollonius of Rhodes, „Sinope, daughter of Asopus". WEST 2003. 247.). 8. The distribution of a small group of Attic red-figured fish plates is limited to the Black Sea area. These plates are unusual in that they appear to be the only fish plates to bear a mythological theme, the abduction of Europe by the bull. They were nearly all found in funerary contexts within a small region, and their painted scenes include Nereids among the sea creatures that accompany Europe on her journey to Crete (BARRINGER 1991. 657.). Europa's transition, across the sea and, even more, across the threshold of maidenhood, is analogous to the transition from life to death. Here, then, is the explanation for the funerary context of the fish plates found in Russia. This transition, in