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 Bronze Age steppic influences, marked by curious recollections back of the distant past, as Pontic relations of Achilles, Herakles and other Achaean heroes, including the adventures of Odysseus clearly show. Very probably, most of the legendary heroes were descendants of the early 2 nd millennium B.C. Indo-Iranian noble leaders that seem to have been intruders from the steppes. In any case, Greek mythology may have somehow received the notion of gold-antlered hind through them. This motiv of the Scythian art was first associated with the reindeer by Gy. László, which was native to the forest steppes of Eurasia till the beginnings of the Bronze Age. This circumstance made possible the emergence of the belief in a mythical hind, wearing golden antlers, amongst Early Iranian, and also Early Indo-Aryan tribes. I think that the Artemis-Heracles variant of the motif of the Miracle Stag is not a preserved Indo-European myth, but that it is an example of a type of mythical story found in Indo-Iranian literatures and archaeological material showing a peculiar, characteristically Indo-Iranian influence in the Early Greek mythology. K. Kerényi, in his important paper, published only in Hungarian, was the first who refused the independent Greek origin of symbolic narratives about the Miracle Stag(Ki-Ri : .NYi 1930/1984. 26. M ). On the other hand, the origin of it may reflect one root of the earliest Indo-European mythology, going back to Upper Palaeolithic times. In other cases of suggested Indo-Aryan - Early Greek common heritage, N. J. Allen came to the conclusion that „the respective narratives grew up in the geographical areas where the deeds of the heroes are set and where the epics were being orally related before they were written down. The two languages [proto-dialectal groups] go back to a proto-language [probably a Late Indo-European dialectal group], and it is increasingly recognised that the proto-language included a poetic language as well as a mythology." (ALLEN 1995. 3.) 5i> Early sources about the miracle stag are evidence for a proto-narrative lying behind Greek and Sanskrit mythical and epic stories. Theoretically, the protonarrative might have originated at a period considerably later than that of proto-Indo-European unity, but there is a real possibility of its more earlier origin from the time of the Indo-European speech community during the Upper Palaeolithic. In any case, the geographical area - where the deeds of the heroes are set and where the epics were being orally related before they were written down - was the steppe belt between the Carpathian Range, the Black Sea and the Volga-Ural area. Concerning its dating only a terminus ante quern can be suggested: before the Middle Bronze Age of the Pontic area i.e. before the 18-17 th Centuries B.C. The 'Hun story' of 4-5* Century Byzantine writers preserved very old religious beliefs and, at the same time, the participants symbolically returned back to the original place of the scene: the Maeotic marshes and the steppe. Presently known archaeological and written sources, however, do not contain any memory of similar narratives about miracle stags and hinds in mythologies of Uralic - Finno-Ugric peoples. Or only in concealed form behind other legends. As for example the case mentioned by Tacitus about an Eastern Germanic tribe, the Nahanarvali: Apud Nahanarva/os antiquae religion is lucus ostenditur. Praesidet sacerdos muliebri or natu, sed deos interpretatione Romana Castorem Po/lucemque memorant. Ea vis numini, nomen Alois (Tacitus: Germania 43.). According to some commentary, the Divine Twins (Näsatyas or Asvins in Ancient India, and Dioscurs in Greek mythology) were also hippomorphic in the German mythology, called A/ces by the Nahanarvali. The meaning of alcis, as recorded by Iulius Caesar, was 'elk'. The reason of this identification was, very probably, because these Twin Brothers originally were elks (POLOMÉ 1994. 49., ZIMMER 1994. 30.). " He considered such az assumption untenable. ä '' For essentially similar comparisons between Old Greek and Sanskrit narratives, see LOUDEN 1999. OSTMO 1997. 3 13. BRAARVIG 1997. 46
