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 in Ancient Greek mythical stories and their Indo-Iranian counterparts János Makkay Short introduction into the Miracle Stag motif of the Hungarian history The deer is probably the most common motif in the animal-style art of the steppe nomads, and was important in other cultures as well - the Greeks told of a hind or deer with golden antlers, and Hungarian Medieval chronicles and folklore included tales of a stag with golden antlers. One of the main concerns of the Hungarian historic research has been the interpretation of the famous story of the Miracle Stag, which, in its many details, relates the conquest of the Carpathian Basin by the tribal organization of Prince Árpád around the end of the ninth century AD. The pursuit of the fleeing stag or hind, as a part of a mythical scene, was the late descendant of an originally Early Iranian/Indo-Iranian, in its later variant a Scythian-Greek, motif. A great Hungarian scholar, András Alföldi, once interpreted it as a saga of the tribal ancestry, symbolicly very probably representing the origin of the Árpádian tribal organization and its conquest of the Carpathian Basin, in 896 AD. (ALFÖLDI 1931.). This event, according to the orthodox theory, would signify an extraordinary period in Hungarian protohistory: the introduction of the Hungarian language into the Carpathian Basin. As it is well known, there are two alternative accounts or theories of Hungarian origins, represented in Academic circles of this country: a. one which says, that the 894-896 conquest of the Carpathian Basin by the Turkic folk of Árpád (the 'Honfoglalás' i.e. 'Landtaking') simultaneously was the coming of the Hungarian language (of Finno-Ugric origin). According to this view, the seven or eight Turkic tribes of Árpád had spoken 'magyar' from time immemorial, or from their assimilation/admixture by Hungarian speaking groups, somewhere in the steppe, between the 3-4. and 9. centuries AD. In the second case, Árpád's folk originally had a Turkic ethnic, speaking a Turkic tongue, and having Turkic ethnic traits exclusively. Foreign scholars have shown themselves increasingly tolerant of the first variant: the Turkic people of Árpád had spoken Finno-Ugric 'magyar' from time immemorial, if not particularly active in formulating similar theories for themselves (RENFREW 1987. 70., 163., 204., RENFREW 2002. 470., COMRIE 2002. 412., 416-417., VAN DRIEM 2002. 240.).' b. There is emerging another view, which was first conceived on archaeological facts, being a more realistic interpretation of extant historic, or very rare protohistoric, sources. This says that the shift of the Hungarian language into the Carpathian Basin was a result of populous folk movements well before 896, and can be connected to the Avarian conquests of the Carpathian Basin in the last quarter of the 6

th (i.e. 567-568), and again, of the 7

th century AD (in the latter case around and following 670). Both (i.e. Early and Late) Avarian conquering warrior groups partly consisted of surviving Hunnic tribes or their dispersed remains, as their tribal names indicate: var-chunni {yärkony in Hungarian place-names) of the Early Avarians, and the Seven Tribes of the Onogurs/Unnugurs, i.e. the ruling clans of the Late Avarian society. There were also Iranian, i.e. Alanian warriors in their ranks. 1 For the Turkic ethnic character of the people of Árpád see MAKKAY 2005A. NyJAMÉ XLVII. 2005. 7-53.