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 there to dwell and raise their herds. ... Issuing forth in the sixth year [of their stay in the Maeotis], they happened in a deserted place to come upon the wives and sons of the sons ofBelar, without any of their menfolk.

... Quickly they fell upon them and carried them off with all their belongings to the Maeotic marshes. ...It happened also in that skirmish that besides the boys there were seized two daughters ofDula, ruler of the Alans, of whom one was taken to wife by Hunor and then other by Mogor; and from these women have sprung all the Huns. According to this source, all the Huns (probably speaking a Turkic tongue) sprung from Alanic (i.e. Iranian) women, and they later became Hungarians with their language of Finno-Ugric origin. More realistically, the story can be seen as a speculative theory, reflecting racial and linguistic conditions of the Steppe, the mixing bowl or crossroad of Eurasia. The writer of the Illuminated (Vienna) Chronicle, during the reign of Louis the Great (king of Hungary from 1342 to 1382), added to the story, that the women were just celebrating the Feast of the Horn or Tuba, when the two brothers (Hunor and Mogor/Magor) abducted them (LÁSZLÓ 1974. 96., SRH I. 251., MÁLYUSZ 1974/2004.).

3 These, and other, details belong to the so-called 'Traditional Hunnic lineage and Hunnic tradition' of the Árpádian tribal confederacy,

4 and especially of the Árpádian ruling family. The long survival of such traditions, the so-called Attila-belief

5 - generally and equivocally denied by most Hungarian historians and archaeologists - can be proven by several historic sources and archaeological finds, neglected, or ignored, by Hungarian experts up to the present. In fact, an important part of the events, descriptions, places, battles, comments, etc., described by our Mediaeval sources as parts of the Attila-belief, relate corresponding events of the Carolingian - Late Avarian period, i.e the time of the wars of Charlemagne against the Late Avarian tribal organization around the turn of the 8

th and 9

th Centuries AD. (MAKKAY 1999.121-123., with further literature). Here there should only be mentioned two archaeological data: the case of the famous Sword of Attila or Árpád, a characteristic sabre of Iranian (North Caucasian) type from the 9

th Century AD, and the miraculous golden Sassanian bowl of the Árpád family. According to Hungarian royal sources (first of all an agreement between the Bohemian and the Hungarian king from 1270-1271), this golden bowl originated from the time of Attila,

6 and had been kept in the Árpádian treasury since immemorial times (MAKKAY 1997.42-48.). From the relevant sources, I mention the relations of the cult of St. Ladislas and his magic Silver Bowl with the Legend of the Gral (MAKKAY 1998. 22-50., with further literature), and the battle places between the Carolingian and Late Avarian army in 791, which appear as battle places of Attila and/or the Huns in the text of Simon de Kéza (MAKKAY 2005. 17-18.). The literary treatment of the Hunnic Heritage and the Attila Belief by Simon de Kéza was by no means a new idea, since extant sources from the 8-12. centuries sufficiently prove that both ideas deeply rooted in the scholarly opinions of Late Carolingian, and later, historians and writers (MAKKAY 1999. 126-145., with further literature). Pragmatical writers, of course, interlinked or intermingled their correct data (on Charlemagne's Avar wars) with the historically kept, but somehow faded, memory of the true Attila the Hun of the fifth Century AD. 3 Anno vero VI-o

m exeuntes, in deserto loco sine maribus in tabernaculis permanentes uxores ac pueros [filios] filiorum Bereka, cum festum tube colerent et coreas ducerent ad sonitum simphonie, casu repererunt. For the drinking horns of sacral use of dux Árpád and the first Hungarian kings, see MAKKAY 2004. 22-26. 4 It says in its extreme form that both the Hungarian (i.e.

Árpádian) folk and its language is of Hunnic (i.e. Old Turkic) origin. 5 It simply means that Attila the Hun was one of the forefathers of Árpád. Árpád himself in the Anonym Chronicle says that he is a descendant of Attila: Dux autem Arpad

... legatione Salani respondit: Licet preavus meus, potentissimus rex Athila habuerit terram, que iacet in Danubium et Thysciam ... (ANONYMUS cap. 14. SRH 1:53.) 6 In fact, from the time of the Late Avarian prince Attila. See MAKKAY 1999., and also MAKKAY 2005. 9-20., with further literature. 9