King Arthur - Sarmatian warrior

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

In 2004, Hollywood released to the world a new version of the story about the world famous King Arthur - the main character of the ancient British epic, the legendary leader of the Britons, who defeated the Saxon conquerors in the 5th century AD. The version of Antoine Fuqua, director of the movie "King Arthur", shocked the audience with an unexpected interpretation of the canonical plot.

In the film, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table are in the service of Rome and are a kind of special forces guarding the westernmost borders of the Roman Empire in the province of Britain from the Saxons. The most shocking detail in the film's plot is the origins of the famous knights. They turned out to be "barbarians" - Sarmatians from the steppes Northern Black Sea region.

Probably, it is not worth saying that such a seditious interpretation of all the usual primordially British events was received in the West, and even in Russia with indignation. Critics have placed the film in the category of "cranberry", on a par with the pseudo-historical "Gladiator". Their reaction is understandable. Since childhood, everyone was brought up on the fact that King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table, the wizard Merlin and the Lady of the Lake are the aborigines of foggy Albion and the exclusive property of British history. It seems that there is nothing more English, and for a more enlightened public - Celtic, than the legends about the mysterious city of Camelot and the magic sword Excalibur.

What do we see in the film? A complete mockery of the "sacred" symbols of Britain. Noble English knights wear "barbaric" Sarmatian military vestments, profess their "barbaric" faith and shout their battle cry before the attack in an equally "barbaric" way "RU-U-U-S!" … (fragment from 1:33:00 in the video under the article)

There is something to come to bewildered irritation.

However, having abandoned emotions, indignant critics were nevertheless forced to admit that there is no real, documentary evidence of the existence of King Arthur … Information about him has not been preserved either in state decrees, or in chronicles or private letters. However, about many events of those "dark" centuries, only scattered rumors have come down to us, recorded from hearsay many centuries later. So the Arthurian story in the form in which we know it was finally formalized in 1139 (more than 500 years after the alleged events), when Bishop Galfried of Monmouth completed "History of the Kings of Britain" in twelve volumes, two of which were dedicated to Arthur. It was there that he was first named king.

Despite the fact that for the overwhelming majority of Britons the idea that the legends of King Arthur are based on the myths of the Sarmatian tribes from the Northern Black Sea region is almost sacrilegious, it was the English historians who refuted the traditional version.

In 2000, the book was published in New York and London Scott Littleton and Linda Melko "From Scythia to Camelot: A Thorough Revision of the Legends of King Arthur, the Knights of the Round Table and the Holy Grail." The book caused a real sensation. The authors investigated the parallels between the legendary epics of the ancient British and the Narts, which researchers trace back to the ancient inhabitants of the Black Sea steppes: the Scythians, Sarmatians and Alans, and convincingly proved the Scythian-Sarmatian basis most of the basic elements of the Arthurian cycle.

For example, one of the key elements of Arturiana is the cult of the sword: Arthur removes it from the stone, and therefore is recognized as the rightful king of Britain; the sword is given to him by the Lady of the lake and then again receives it back, etc. It is known that the Alans worshiped the god of war in the form of a sword set in the ground, and the sword of Batraz, the protagonist of the Nart epic, after death is thrown into the sea, and it is picked up by a hand emerging from the waves. The image of King Arthur is associated with the symbol of the dragon. It was dragons that were used on the standards of the warlike Sarmatians and Alans as a tribal symbol.

But when could Sarmatian myths penetrate British territory?

The answer to this question is given by a doctor of anthropology from the University of Cambridge and an ethnographer Howard Reid … In 2001, his book King Arthur The Dragon King: How the Barbarian Nomad Became Britain's Greatest Hero was published. He studied 75 primary sources and came to the conclusion that the legends of King Arthur, Queen Guinerva, the wizard Merlin, the Knights of the Round Table go back to the history of the Sarmatianswho lived in the steppes of the Northern Black Sea region. Reed drew attention to the objects with images of dragons stored in the St. Petersburg Hermitage; these items were found in the graves of nomadic warriors in Siberia and date back to 500 BC. Dragons similar to the Sarmatians are noted in an illustrated Irish manuscript written around 800. By the way, the British cavalry is still called dragoons.

Reed states that the first squads tall, fair-haired riders, protected by metal armor, under the banners depicting dragons appeared in the Roman army in Britain in 175. Then about 5500 Sarmatian mercenaries arrived on the island. It was they and their descendants who gave the basis for the legend of Arthur.

It is known that neither the Celts nor the Britons had professional cavalry, but the Sarmatians did. Back in the 1st century AD Plutarch colorfully described the heavily armed cavalry, the so-called cataphracts, which formed the core of the Sarmatian horsemen: "… themselves in helmets and armor made of Marcanian, dazzlingly sparkling steel, their horses in copper and iron armor."

The 10th century Byzantine encyclopedic dictionary described in great detail the combat power of the cataphracts. Neither the Romans nor the autochthonous tribes of foggy Albion had anything like this in the 5th, 6th or even 7th centuries of our era. Cataphracts were not known in Europe until the arrival of the eastern "barbarians" there, which means another shock for fans of chivalric romances - the origins of medieval European knighthood should be sought in the east, in the steppes of the Northern Black Sea region.

Reed suggests that the prototype of King Arthur could have been the Alan leader (king) Eohar or Gohar, who lived in the 5th century and was an ally of the Romans in Gaul for 40 years. By the way, the author notes that the word "Alan" may be derived from the word "Aryan", which meant "noble" and which today is given a certain racial stereotype, surprisingly coinciding with the description of the ancient Alans, as tall, stately blondes with fierce blue or green eyes.

By the time the Romans gradually abandoned their possessions, the Sarmatians (Alans) had already become influential landowners, while fully retaining their martial law and influence, maintaining their fame as the best cavalry in the world. The Sarmato-Alans held a high position in Europe in power until the XII century. Among them were many bishops and even one saint named Alan. Many noble European surnames bore the same name. At least until the beginning of the 10th century AD, the counts of Brittany were called. By the way, Wilgelm the conqueror, the one who conquered Britain in the 11th century, claimed that his Breton mother was descended from King Arthur, and invited the Breton Count Alan the Red to lead his cavalry in the Battle of Hastings, where many high-ranking nobles, who also bore the name Alan, fought.

French historian Bernard Bachrach wrote the book "The History of Alan in the West", in which he argued that the emergence of medieval chivalry, the West is obliged, first of all, Scythian-Sarmatians, whose role in the conquest of Europe in the "dark" ages is ignored by modern scientists, despite the fact that they lived for a long time in the territory of modern France, invaded Italy, entered Spain together with the vandals and conquered Africa. In the book, he notes that.

It is worth remembering that to this day the traditional fun of the English aristocrats is hunting foxes.

Based on the above arguments of serious European scientists, one can make an unambiguous conclusion, which these scientists themselves were ashamed to draw, due to the political engagement of historical science. This conclusion sounds very simple: the famous English king Arthur was a Slav - a Sarmatian warrior, and all of Europe in ancient times spoke Russian and was inhabited by Slavs, who came there from Southern Siberia after the onset of a cold snap.

Watch the movie "King Arthur", 2004:

In the director's cut of the film, which is 20 minutes longer than the film version, there is such an episode: when Roman soldiers take Sarmatian boys for military service, Arthur's relatives instruct him: "Do not forget that you are Russian!"