Századok – 1996

Tanulmányok - Makkay János: A sárkány meg a kincsek IV/733

810 MAKKAY JÁNOS THE DRAGON AND THE TREASURE TROVE by János Makkay (Summary) Recent research has found that the Arthurian legend and the legend of the Holy Grail have been introduced in Western Europe (England, Brittany, and Spain) by the groups of people of Iranian origin settling down there at the time of the Roman Empire. Emperor Marcus Aurelius, for example, settled down 5,500 Sarmatian-Alanian heavily armoured cavalrymen of Iranian tongue by Hadrian's wall in Britain in 173 A. D.. An evidence for this is the dragon standard that occurs several times in stories of the legend of King Arthur. The first chapter of the present article deals with the history of this dragon standard and its relationship with the old Iranian peoples. It is especially interesting in the light of the author's recently published research results concerning Decebal's treasure found by the Roman troops in the course of the Second Dacian War in 106 A. D.. Part of the treasure was namely found around 1543 and included a golden dragon head as part of a dragon standard. Chapter 2 summarizes the oriental, i.e., Iranian traits of the Arthurian cycle. An important element of them led the author to the interpretation of a certain part of the Hungarian legend of King Ladislas the Saint, namely to its repose scene. A similar episode frequently occurs also in the British and continental (Breton and later French) varieties of the Arthurian theme. The common root turns out to be the same Iranian clement as in the case of the dragon standard. The next chapter dealing with the origin of a wondrous golden cup decorated with many precious stones from the treasury of the House of Árpád comes to the same conclusion. In the 13th century, this cup was thought to have belonged to King Attila the Hun. Only two such cups are known to have existed. One of them is the Chosroes cup kept in Paris and the other is a cup found at Röszke-Nagyszéksós as part of the funeral sacrifice of a king of the Huns, probably Attila himself. The Chosroes cup is of Sassanian origin and belonged to Shah Peroz (457/459-484 A. D.). In the middle of the 7th century it got into the treasury of Khagan Kuvrat, then it was owned by the Avar khagan in the Carpathian Basin. During the Avar campaign of Charlemagne in 795-796, the cup got to the imperial treasury at Aachen. One of the miracles recorded in connection with the canonization of Ladislas I was about a silver cup working miracles. The events in connection with the cup are exactly the same as the ones in one of the closing scenes of the story of the Holy Grail: the sinful Lancelot is not allowed to see the Holy Grail. So it becomes obvious that the mythological and legendary elements of the story of the Holy Grail have been brought to the West by Iranian groups settling there. The Hungarians inherited them from the Sarmatians and Alanians living on the Great Plainsoly Grail, in large numbers in the 7th-9th centuries. The fate of the famous Nagyszentmiklós treasure was similar to that of the Peroz cup. The Iranian, i.e., Sassanid origin of the former, the dating of its pieces (jars no. 2 and 7 were made before the 7th century A. D.) and the circumstances of its hiding are dealt with in the last chapter of the article. The impartial analysis of the available data lead us to the conclusion that the treasure was not hidden in the ground in 795-796 by the Avars fleeing towards east to the territory beyond the River Tisza, but was taken from them by the Lower Danubian Bulghars occupying the Great Plains and got into the treasury of the Bulgarian princes who bequeathed it to their successors. It is very likely that the treasure was buried by Bulghar leaders Glad or Salanus when Árpád and the Hungarians arrived in 896. Or it might have been buried in the early 11th century when a late successor of Glad, Ajtony revolted against Stephan I. The site where the treasure was found on 3 July, 1799 is only four kilometers south of Marosvár, the fortified seat of these princes of Bulgarian origin (urbs Morizena). The present article is the first to publish the Hungarian-language letter reporting on the discovery, totally neglected by Hungarian historiography in the past two hundred years.