Szittyakürt, 1982 (21. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

1982-12-01 / 12. szám

MARCH 1982

flGHTt*

Page 3

A recent discovery by archaeologists of the ancient city state called EBLA in the 1970’s, once again, allows us a glimpse of how the original Sumerian-Hungarian •" culture, language and writing' hadinfluenced the world. Economic and territorial disputes then as now helped to destroy many ancient cultural centers, peoples, and languages. Ebla suffered the same fate from the hands of the Semitic Akkadians who virtually “borrowed” all that was Sumerian: writing, technology, diplomacy and even stories that long predate the Biblical and Semitic cultures. The following story from The 1982 Marcquis Appontment Book (MCI, Illinois 1981) shows us such an example:

Suppose an American city is buried by a volcanic eruption, like Pompeii. Four or five thousand years in the future, a team of archaeologists digs into the ruins and tries to figure how the people lived.

At first, the artifacts are difficult to interpret. Finding large numbers of blue jean fragments bearing the same few names, the scholars conclude slavery continued into the 20th century and the slaves wore the names of their masters on their clothes. Deciphering a billboard inscription about a “rock concert” suggests that 20th century music was made by somehow banging rocks together. So many remains of dogs and cats are found in the houses there is a natural assumption they were kept around, like chickens, to be eaten.

Then the archaeologists come across the public library, with most of the books and magazines intact, and truer understanding of the life of the times begins to emerge.

Something much like this happened a few years ago in northern Syria. While digging into an ancient mound, archaeologists were astounded to discover a great city, capital of an empire forgotten for more than 4,000 years and virtually unknown to history. Its story was revealed in a vast library of nearly

20,000 clay tablets, mostly unbroken, covered with cuneiform writing.

It was a genuine library. One whole room of the palace had been filled with tablets, organized on wooden shelves with the subject of each tablet written on its edge, like the title on the spine of a modern book.

Previously, Ebla had been known only from a few references in other ancient records of the Middle East, mostly in receipts and other merchant correspondence. Everything in those days was written on soft clay, which dried into a durable record.

Kings of the Akkadian Empire (which became Babylonia) left inscriptions boasting of conquering a place called Ebla, but for all anyone knew it could have been little more than a village. Like modern dictators, kings of old controlled a propaganda department which was ordered to puff up the royal accomplishments and inflate the royal legend as much as possible.

Actually, the library revealed, Ebla itself was the center of an empire. The city of about 22.400 controlled a surrounding population of 260,000—one of the largest population concentrations anywhere in the world at that early date.

Far from being an all-powerful despot, the king of Ebla was elected for seven-year terms by a council of elders. He served as chief administrator atop a pyramid of 11.700 public officials. Bureaucracy was an early invention.

This bureaucracy apparently was needed to help conduct Ebla’s extensive trade. The city was a major manufacturing center for textiles, with craftsmen skilled in working wood, metals and precious stones. The nearby countryside produced wheat, barley, grapes, cattle and other agricultural products for export. The grain could travel in the form of beer. The city made several kinds, including one called “Ebla.”

The ancient Eblaites must have had something else in mind when they named their beers, but to modern ears “Ebla Beer” sounds like the beginning of a battle for brand-name recognition.

With caravans going and coming from the shores of the Mediterranean into the heart of Asia beyond the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, Ebla did not shrink from keeping the trade routes open by force. On occasion, it sent an army as far as 250 miles to subdue the rival trading city of Mari on the Euphrates.

Ebla's most important commerce was in ideas. Not long after the invention of writing by the Sumerians, Ebla adapted Sumerian cuneiform to its own Semitic language. Its school for scribes attracted young men from distant cities. They practiced by copying encyclopedias consisting of lists of plants, trees, animals, birds, fish, metals, minerals. professions, places, personal names.

The scribes even held international academic conferences at Ebla. Writing was still a new and exciting skill. Perhaps the scribes assembled to standardize the earliest known dictionary, written in two languages. From the tablets recovered, modern scholars hope to reconstruct the entire original of about 3.000 words. It listed Sumerian words and gave the Eblaite equivalents.

Ten of the tablets found at Ebla are international treaties. One of the treaties covers trading reciprocity between Ebla and Ashur, a city far away on the banks of the Tigris. Its gist is that both cities are entitled to tax visiting merchants as well as their own: so old is the id^a of double taxation.

Scribes, the intellectuals of the time, were respected. The Ebla archives permit following the career of a scribe named Azi. First, he wrote tablets under the supervision of a teacher. Then he became a teacher himself. Later, he held a high post in the government bureaucracy.

When the Ebla tablets first emerged in 1974, they created a sensation with references to persons and places mentioned in the Bible. Names like Abraham and Ishmael stimulated theories that the Eblaites may have been the direct ancestors of the Hebrews. Sodom and

Gomorrah, cities destroyed in the Biblical account for their wickedness, appear in the Ebla lists as real places where Eblaite merchants no doubt sold their cloth.

On further study, the tantalizing similarities between Ebla names and Biblical personages lead only to contradictions. Ebla lay in ruins many centuries before the dates generally attributed to Biblical events.

The exact date of Ebla’s destruction remains in dispute, although the murder has been confessed by two suspects. Both Sargon the Great

and his grandson, Naram-Sin, left inscriptions claiming the dubious honor.

What is clear is that sometime between 2350 and 2250 B.C. the army of Akkad broke into Ebla despite two miles of walls 50 feet high and 130 feet thick at the base. Savage with blood-lust and victory, they burned the royal palace, library and all. But even as the flames ate away the wooden shelves, the heat baked the dry clay tablets like pottery to preserve the voices of ancient Ebla to speak to us today after more than 42 centuries of silence.

TAMANA

(Pusztaszer)

There is an exciting new book in the making. It will define the “Three Aspects of Tamana Law”:

1. The Hungarian-Polynesian linguistic relationship; 2. The decorative elements of Mánd-Buják; and 3. The pentaton Hungarian folk music elements in relation to some 1,800,000 words and Karpatho- Hungarian toponyms. These words and place names had been.compared to their counterparts in 44 countries on the five continents—so far!

The true scholarship, as the discovers of the “TAMANA-LAW" also realized, teaches us that for all of us in this world there is one common language, one common art, and one common music and therefore, one common origin! It is not logical nor is it proper for anyone people to force upon others their superiority by imperialism, racism, false ethnic superstitions, “pan-supremacy” or the “God’s Chosen People” theory.

The reationality of the Golden TAMANA ERA must permiate the world again which will again bring progress, plenty, and global peace.

Man once again must find selfrespect, in his body and soul so that by his intellect he might prevail, as Mihály Táncsics of Hungary forewarned us.

The following letter to the East- West Photo Journal (Vol. 2, No. 6, Fall. 1981, Honolulu, Hawaii), by Dr. Vámos Toth Bátor gives us a glimpse of the revolutionary work that he began and by now dozens of scholars world wide follow:

TAMANA

In general the more remote and ancient the geographical area, the greater the number of ancient Carpathian toponyms in existence For instance in the New Guinea highlands — in places discovered only 50 years ago by airplanes — there are nearly 100 Carpathian toponyms. They are also abundant in such remote areas as Inner Africa, the Guyana Highlands and the Amur-Bend area.

There are a number of other rather complicated linguistic factors involved in this, but suffice it to say that there is a strong likelihood that at one time there was a universal culture with a Tamana language which bestowed names on many spots in the world. The Magyar language is the richest in ancient root words (63%). Other languages relatively close to the ancient Tamana tongue include Turkish, Basque, Japanese, Finnish, Austronesian, Inca-Quechua, etc. We have also found around 150 toponyms in Hawaii, many of which can

also be seen in Japan.

This linguistic data does point to a cultural relationship of some type between Hungary (where the Magyar language is spoken) and Japan, and seems to lend support to Heine- Geldern’s idea of a Pontic migration from Western Asia to Southeast Asia and on to Japan If is my hope that this research may help us to see our cultural relationships in a universal, intercontinental TAMANA aspect

Dr. Vámos Tdth Bátor

In vour last estimable Journal (Summer ’81) the article “Sailing Along wiih the Sea Nomads" caught my attention. This article fell well within the range of my own research in Honolulu, and I would like to share some of my findings with your readers.

My work has centered on toponyms (ancient geographical names) and over the last six years I have gone through about 1,800,000 toponyms in the gazetteers of 44 countries in the five continents, in addition to the 200,000 entries in the Times World Atlas. My coworkers and I found more than 7,000 Carpathian toponyms (from the Carpathian Basin in Central Europe) occurring in different parts of the world. We have also identified many primary artistic designs (mand designs) occurring throughout the world as well as a widespread ancient pentatonic music. The universality of these geographical names and artistic and musical forms has led me to the conclusion that around

10,000 years ago there was an intercontinental universal culture. I have called this ancient culture TAMANA because Tamana is the most common toponym in existence, occurring in the Carpathian Basin, Mesopotamia, India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Madagascar, Burma, Japan, New Guinea, Kiribati, the Antilles, and in many places in South America (chiefly in the region of the Andes settled by the Incas).

TAMANA