Our antiquity - TROYA (Chapter 4. The gray-haired giant)

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

When you read the Iliad, one involuntarily creates the feeling that the place from where the gods flew to Troy to observe the events taking place there is located somewhere nearby.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

As everyone knows, in relative proximity to the proposed locations of Troy is Mount Elbrus. The dazzling white peak of this giant is visible from almost anywhere in the Stavropol region, which, as we remember, was part of the vast ancient Dardania, the homeland of the legendary Scythian-Trojan king Dardan.

And the views of travelers of ancient times, amazed by its greatness, Elbrus could not help but attract. There are suggestions that Elbrus is the legendary Alatyr mountain.

The meaning of the toponym Elbrus has not yet been determined.

It is interesting that in the languages of most mountain peoples the mountain is called differently, for example, Mingi-Tau (Karachay-Balkarian), Askhar-Tau (Kumyk) or Oshkhamaho (Kabardino-Circassian). This suggests that the name Elbrus may not come from these languages. But from which one?

If we assume that Troy (Ilion) was nearby, first let's write down the well-known name of the legendary founder of Ilion - Il. And now from the Dictionary of the Ancient Slavic Language (AV Starchevsky, St. Petersburg, 1899) we will fetch the curious word "bros", which means "a sign of military commander in the form of a stone mace" (quoted literally). And although there is still "brown" (some part of the body), we will focus on the previous word.

The combination of letters "ou", as many know, according to the previous rules was used very widely, for example, in the ancient name of our people - Rous. After all sorts of reforms and the removal of "unnecessary" letters, we Rus, like many other words, began to write through "u".

Let's go back to our two prepared words, connect them through a soft sign that could arise later, and we get "Il (s) bros", and according to modern rules of writing and pronunciation - Ilbrus, which is very consonant with the current name of the mountain. The meaning of the resulting name - "a stone mace - a sign of Ila's military leader" does not raise any questions for me. Moreover, we got another match within reach of our proposed location for Troy.

“Well, with a bar it’s clear,” the reader will say, “But silt, this is some kind of slurry.”

Let's think about it and first deal with another name for Troy, which we know as Ilion.

In the work "Anatomy of the Iliad" by the Soviet-Russian philologist L. S. Klein, we find the following: “The Homeric epic calls the besieged fortress indifferently by two names - Troy (η Τροίη) and Ilios (η" Ιλιος); the latter, in the post-Homeric time, changed its genus and form, turning into Ilion (το '"Ιλιον) - a form that, it is true, it is already found in the Iliad, but as a rare exception, probably brought in during editing."

It turns out that the more ancient name of the city in the Greek version is Ilios.

But it turns out that Ilios is also a distortion. We read Klein: "In Homeric" Ιλιος, the initial digamma (* ρίλιος) is restored according to contexts in hexameters, so that the word sounded like * Wilios. Both the Hittite and Greek forms are a natural transmission of the possessive form from the eponym Vil / Il, i.e. both denote something Vilovo / Ilovo - a city, a country. This is the same eponym known by the genealogy given by Homer (Π, XX, 231-232) and whose grave Homer marks under the city (Il., X, 415, XI, 166) " …

The conclusion that the name of the city and the name of its founder must begin with "W" was made by Klein when correlating Ilios with Vilusa, mentioned in the Hittite tablets of the Bogazkoy Archive.

The Bogazkoy archive is about 14 thousand cuneiform texts on clay tablets, discovered in 1906 on the site of the capital of the Hittite kingdom, Hattusa (Hattusas), located near the Kyzylirmak river in modern Turkey.

Hattusa was located far from the place where the canon hypothesis places Troy, but stood near a river that flows into the Black Sea. In my opinion, though it was not close to Hisarlik through the Sea of Marmara, that to the Northern Black Sea coast, it was not close, but in general it is possible.

Moreover, we proceed from the fact that Troy was an influential kingdom of that time, and on the southern coast of the Black Sea there were a number of Trojan allies (Pelasgians, Enets, Kikons, Paphlagonians - see the second chapter), Therefore, the possibility of official ties of the Northern Black Sea Troy Vilios with the Hittite kingdom cannot be denied, in my opinion. Their thunder god Tarku, vaguely reminiscent of the Baltic Parkun-Perun, together with the Hittite two-headed eagle, also speak in favor of this.

Klein's conclusions about Vila and Vilios coincide with the hypothesis of L. Ryzhkov, which he expounds in his work "On the Antiquity of the Russian Language." Ryzhkov proceeds from the fact that in Indo-European languages the vowel sound at the beginning of a word means, as a rule, the borrowing of a word, or its distortion as a result of historical processes. He writes that the primary root in Indo-European languages should be based on the consonant-vowel-consonant principle (this also includes words with the consonant sound "y" at the beginning of the word - yar, spruce, etc.). At the same time, for reconstructions, he first of all uses the sound "v". This is not an academic job. However, the coincidence (even if it may be accidental) with the conclusion of the venerable scientist L. Klein, although made for a particular case, still looks curious.

I believe that the conclusions of the academic work, supported by a non-academic hypothesis, allow us to agree that the name of Ilion in the Greek text should sound like Vilios, and the name of its founder - Vil. But Vil and Vilios did not seem to have helped us in any way in finding acceptable domestic roots in the name of the city's founder. But this is only at first glance.

Let's look at the book "Myths of Slavic Paganism" by the author of numerous works on mythology and ethnography of the 19th century D. Schepping. Here is what he writes: "In the Word of St. Gregory (XII century - my note) there is a mysterious name Vila in the singular and masculine gender:" and Khorsu, and Mokoshi, and Vila ", which we take here for Volos …"

I think we found the roots we were looking for. The short name of Volos-Veles coincides with the name of the legendary founder of the city, and the full name is very similar to the name of the city - Vilios. Moreover, we find an overlap between the Hittite Hattusa, Vilusa and our Staraya Russa, Tarusa, Tisza, which can speak of a similar formation of forms in the language of our ancestors in antiquity. By the way, Ruza, Vazuza and Yauza may also be echoes of those times.

Whether the sound "and" appeared in the short name of our god only because of its comparison in the chronicle with Baal, and whether it was used in the full name of Veles, it is difficult to say.

In Slavic mythology, there is such a deity as vila. This is how M. Fasmer defines him in his etymological dictionary: "vila is a female deity, a mermaid, a nymph living in the mountains, water and in the air." Forks are referred to as light deities, and beliefs in them are noted as ancient enough. Since the name "vila" has something in common with the short name of Veles - Vila, we can assume some kind of connection between them.

One of the images of Veles is tour (ox). Perhaps the vowel through "and" occurred through dialects and related languages. The sound of the word "ox" as "pitchfork" is characteristic of the Kuban dialect and the Ukrainian language (there are examples for the words of the Russian language with the sound "e" - biliy, svit, etc.). However, as reported by Yu. V. Otkupshchikov in his work "To the origins of the Russian language" and the more northern Novgorod dialect are also characterized by the replacement of "e" with "i" (sev-siv, hay-sino).

It should be remembered that there are known spelling options for the name of the god Veles, like Vles, Vels, Vals.

A. Tyunyaev also speaks about the possibility of different sounding of the full name of Veles in his work "History of the emergence of world civilization": vils (vils), vlies (vils), vils (vils), vols, vlos, hair, vils, vles, veles …"

Tyunyaev's work is not an academic study, but this approach, in my opinion, is probably not worth rejecting for the following reason.

In the work "To the origins of the word", a completely academic philologist and linguist Yu. V. Otkupshchikov says the following (with abbreviations): “It should be noted that … the Slavs had a taboo name for the bear -‘honey badger’. No traces of the ancient Indo-European name of this beast … have survived. … one must think that … the name of the bear was lost … even before the separation of the Slavic languages into an independent group."

Since, according to B. Rybakov, the more ancient image of Veles is a bear, it can be assumed that the real name of this god has also, unfortunately, been lost. And if it has survived, it is probably partly in the form of the consonants "B" and "L". The consonant "C" is also stable, but to a somewhat lesser extent, as the Slavic Volot and Velet can talk about (giant - in both cases).

The consonants could indicate a connection with the real name of the god, and various vocalizations related to his various properties, functions and / or images. Perhaps this explains the impossibility of establishing a connection between the names Volos and Veles through the use of the means of canonical linguistics? Rybakov, by the way, suggests a taboo on the real name of Veles.

It is also possible that the sound "and" in the name of the city could have arisen already in its Greek interpretation. The encyclopedia of Brockhaus and Efron says that Vil is the Greek form of the name of the Babylonian deity Bel. We will not discuss the comparison now - this is just an illustration that the canonical sources allow the transformation of just the sound "e" into the sound "and" when the word is borrowed in Greek.

Nowadays there are a number of geographical objects with the names Veles, Veles, Velestino, Volos, Volosskaya (Balakleyka), Volosovo, Vilisovo, Vilista (Bolshaya and Malaya), Velisto, Velistitsa, both in the territory of the former USSR and in the Balkans (including number in Greece). For unconventional sounds in relation to the name Veles, I tried to choose hydronyms, because everyone knows that they tend to be the least susceptible to change.

In any case, we have a very close sound of the name of the city of Vilios and the name of the Slavic god Veles, as well as a complete coincidence of the name of the founder of this city with the short name of the same god - Vil. At the same time, Troy (Vilios) is localized with a sufficient degree of confidence in the Northern Black Sea region.

The above, I think, allows us to put forward a hypothesis about the identity of the names and names listed. Therefore, we will use various vocalizations of overhead lines and overhead lines only for convenience of perception, while not excluding the possibility of sounding the name of Veles through "and". And in the course of the study, everyone will decide for himself whether to accept the argumentation given or not.

It is interesting that the antiquity of Veles to the Trojan centuries was involuntarily erected using the conclusions of L. S. Klein, a staunch Normanist. This is the irony of fate.

We figured it out with Il and Ilion, but what about Elbrus?

If we proceed from the fact that the mountain is named after the legendary founder of Ilion, then the sound "v" at the beginning of the toponym Elbrus appears automatically as a result of our localization of Troy. Thus, we get the meaning of the toponym "mace Vila" (or Vela), i.e. Veles. In addition, one of the images of Veles was a tour, whose horns, in principle, are comparable to the two peaks of Elbrus.

“Well, but many write that Veles is a dark god,” some reader will get scared and ask a reasonable, as it seems to him, question, “Is it that our ancestors worshiped dark forces?”

Let's deal with Veles once and for all.

The hypothesis of Ivanov and Toporov opposing Perun and Veles (supposedly a snake) within the framework of their theory of the main myth, we reject immediately and unconditionally. It is difficult to say more succinctly about it than Academician B. Rybakov: “But the most vulnerable point of Ivanov and Toporov's construction is, of course, the identification of Volos with the Serpent, which has not been proven in any way and contradicts the materials collected by the authors themselves. The whole construction of the "myth" about the duel between Perun and Veles the Serpent seems to me far-fetched and completely unconvincing."

Rybakov conducted an in-depth study of the Veles cult. Here is what he writes in his work “Paganism of the Ancient Slavs” about the antiquity of this belief: “From the Paleolithic depths comes, in all likelihood, the cult of Volos-Veles, which also experienced a number of fundamental changes. In all likelihood, Volos is the oldest of all Slavic deities, the roots of ideas about which go back to the bear cult of the Mousterian Neanderthals (100 - 80 thousand years ago - my note). It is probably not important for our research to discuss the theory of human origins. The main thing is that Rybakov, in the coordinate system adopted for academic science, designated a very deep antiquity of belief.

In legends, the Milky Way is associated with Veles: "Veles itched and scattered hair," and his birth is traced back to the myth of the universal cow (according to Rybakov - moose cow), known to us by the constellation Ursa Major.

The Russian name of the Pleiades star cluster in the constellation Taurus - Volosyni (Volosozhary) is associated with Veles. The same Ivanov and Toporov, as well as Yu. I. Semenov, in his work "The Emergence of Human Society" (1962), reported on the sign that the radiance of the constellation Volosynya foreshadowed a successful hunt for a bear. The Serbian scientist N. Yankovic gives data on the Serbian name of the constellation Volosyn - "Vlasici" (ie, the sons of Volos).

And this is how Rybakov characterizes the development of the cult in ancient times: “It is not without the likelihood that ancient Veles could have two animal hypostases: a more archaic, hunting bear (preserved in the North) and a somewhat later, associated with cattle breeding, a tour found in southern Slavic regions from Ukraine to Dalmatia”.

Note that the image of a tour (ox, vila) once again leads us to the places where we localized the beginning of the “bull's way” and Troy, but now in connection with Veles.

Rybakov also reports on the anthropomorphic images of Veles: “Among the pagan idols of the Slavic Middle Ages, the most common is the image of a bearded man with a huge Turkish horn, a cornucopia in his hand. The only deity with whom these images can be associated is … Veles."

In later, Christian times, the veneration of Veles did not disappear. Here is what Rybakov says about this: “In the Christmas-time Slavic rituals, the name of Veles is no longer mentioned, but on New Year's Eve and on Shrovetide, Tur was mentioned in the songs; a bull was led through the villages … The introduction of Christianity was supposed to impose a strict ban on the name of the popular Slavic god and could contribute to the appearance of such a new formation as a tour, a turitsa in Christmas songs."

However, Veles was not only the most ancient, but also one of the most revered gods of Ancient Russia. This is what the "Gustynskaya Chronicle" (early 17th century) reports: "The second (idol) of Hair … is in great honor with them (the pagans)."

Since we mentioned the chronicles, we need to talk about the sources from which we get information about Veles (by the way, as well as about other pagan gods).

Most of the ancient sources, with the exception, perhaps, of the Word about Igor's Host, are works created under the control of Christian church hierarchs in order to fight the old faith, or at least not to popularize it. Foreign European documents of the Middle Ages, where Slavic gods are mentioned, were also written by Christians with all the ensuing consequences. I know less about the peoples who converted to Islam, but I don’t think that the situation there was very different. And the Torah (Old Testament), in my opinion, is the quintessence of the struggle against paganism.

Of course, propaganda can be used both for evil and for good, and understanding this can be subjective. At the same time, both positive and negative images are depicted in an exaggerated form.

I will ask a rhetorical question to readers who, like me, found the times when there was an official ideology in the country: "Could we read a domestic work of those times, where a positive image of a character would be created who professed views hostile to the then existing ideology?"

The conclusion, in my opinion, is obvious. The information about the Slavic gods that we have is most likely greatly distorted, and a number of gods, and the most revered ones, were deliberately demonized. Also, in most cases, we do not know which of the names given in the documents was the name of God, which is a synonym or epithet, and which is the name of the hypostasis, avatars. The pandemonium in the Slavic pantheon strongly reminds me of the situation with the names of peoples among the "ancient" authors.

Of course, our deities cannot be treated as radically as we approached the names of peoples, but, in my opinion, it is necessary to think about how the Slavic pantheon actually looked. The multilevel pyramids of numerous gods used today with unclear and sometimes fictitious relationships, you must admit, do not look very convincing.

If we proceed from the fact that our ancestors were wise (and I think of them that way), then they probably would not wind up a belief system that is difficult for ordinary people to understand (plowmen, shepherds, blacksmiths, potters, builders, hunters, warriors, their wives and children).

But we are somewhat distracted. Most likely, Veles, as the most ancient and one of the most revered gods of the Slavs, became one of the main targets for Christianity in its struggle with the old faith. This can explain the perversion of the true meaning about him. The stamp "cattle god", which the Christian chroniclers appropriated to Veles, probably deliberately narrowed his very extensive functionality. The propaganda exploitation by Christian ministers of one of the symbols of God - the horn of the Turi (cornucopia), as well as the zoomorphic hypostasis of Veles (tur, bull, ox), I think, does not need comment.

But if we look more closely, we will see that Veles is not a dark god, but quite the opposite. Here is what the prominent Russian historian V. O. Klyuchevsky: "Traces of worshiping … the sun under the names of Dazhbog, Khors and Veles have survived in Russian monuments."

Academician Rybakov, in turn, points out that "Veles' day completed the extensive cycle of the winter solstice festivities," and that both terms of the Veles festivities "are associated with the solar phases - the winter solstice and the vernal equinox." Is it possible to associate such a holiday with some gloomy deity as, for example, the pagan Shrovetide with its pancakes, symbols of the sun?

It is believed that among the "Hellenes" the sun was personified in the sky by Helios (Phoebus), and on earth by Apollo. Helios in "ancient" sources is a luminary, and we can find various functions only in Apollo.

Therefore, let's compare Apollo and Veles, while mentally not dividing Helios with Apollo.

In Veles, one of the zoomorphic hypostases is the bear. I did not find direct indications of the presence of the same hypostasis in Apollo, however, a connection with this animal can be traced. According to legend, Apollo helped Admet to get the hand of Alcesta, the daughter of King Iolcus Pelias, to harness a lion and a bear to the chariot. Apollo was also a Hyperborean, i.e. northerner, and in ancient Greek, north and bear, this is the same word άρκτος (arktos). Apollo's twin sister Artemis has one of the possible etymologies of the name, it is a "bear goddess", and one of the cult animals is a bear.

With the image of a tour (bull) it is much easier. Apollo is often mentioned in legends as herding bulls. In the inscription from Xanthus, Apollo is called xšaθrapati (Mithra), as well as Sarapis (Apis in Egypt, the deity of fertility in the form of a bull). In the pseudo-Clementines, Mithras is also identified with Apollo. In Mithraism, the image of the bull was widely used.

We have already spoken about Veles' cornucopia - a symbol of wealth and fertility. According to Rybakov, peasants until the 20th century tied the last uncompressed ears of grain in a knot in the field, leaving them to "a hair on a goatee". Apollo, as we know, was also in charge of fertility.

The function of the patron of wealth in Veles is also expressed through the polysemantic word "cattle" (equivalent to the Latin "pecunia" - "cattle", "wealth"). According to Rybakov, this leads us to a completely definite historical era, when the main wealth of the tribe was precisely cattle, herds of cattle, that is, to the Bronze Age.

Apollo's connection with the patronage of wealth is indicated by the epithet "giver of blessings", which, by the way, brings him closer to Dazhbog.

It is interesting that Velez still, one way or another, controls wealth. On the stock exchanges, as we know, bulls are called bulls, and bulls are bearish. Although, I think grandfather Velez is not happy with the fact that his images are used to trade in emptiness.

Based on the works of B. Rybakov, Veles was, in particular, the deity of hunting prey, and one of his images is a bear, a forest animal. But Apollo also has the epithet Agra (Ἀγραῖος) - the patron saint of hunting, as well as Gilat (Ὑλάτης) - “forest”.

We also know the Christian stamp in relation to Veles - "cattle god", and a bear paw called "cattle god" was hung out to guard livestock in peasant yards. However, Apollo is also the guardian of the flocks and along with this he has an epithet as the guardian of the doors - Firey (Θυραῖος - "door").

In the Word about Igor's regiment Boyan is given the epithet of Veles's grandson, i.e. Veles is the patron saint of poetry, and maybe all arts. Apollo performs exactly the same function. Or maybe Volosyni is not the sons, but the muses of Veles?

Also in the Word about Igor's regiment Velesov's grandson Boyan is called prophetic, which can be interpreted as Veles's patronage of divination and wisdom (we mentioned the Scythian sages Anacharsis and Abaris, revered by the Hellenes, in the second chapter). Apollo is also the patron saint of divination and wisdom, everyone knows about the Delphic Oracle.

A number of sources indicate a connection between Veles and wolves, but the wolf is one of the sacred animals of Apollo, which also has a corresponding epithet - Lycea (λύκος - wolf). You can also add that in Russian folk tales, Ivan Tsarevich's companion is a gray wolf, a positive image.

And now we come to the topic of Veles' connection with death, which is of concern to many. There is indeed a semantic connotation in the name of Veles, which makes it possible to talk about the cult of ancestors, the souls of the dead. This was pointed out by A. N. Veselovsky in his work "Investigations in the field of Russian spiritual verse" (1889), citing a number of parallels (welis - Lithuanian - deceased, welci - souls of the dead).

However, with a one-sided interpretation, they forget that the same root underlies such words as will, greatness, power, etc., therefore, attempts to identify Veles with the other world, in my opinion, are unconvincing.

If we look at Apollo, whose identification with the sun is unlikely to be disputed by anyone, then we will also find a connection with the afterlife in him, including in the epithet Ulius (disastrous). Much has been written about the destructive arrows of Apollo, which bring sudden death to the old and young. But even now they say "God has tidied up (called)" if a person dies. Probably, Apollo and Veles, as strong and highly revered gods, with powers comparable only to the functionality of a biblical god, could not help but be responsible for this side of life.

But the most interesting thing with the similarity of the functions of Apollo and Veles is the solar nature of both gods, which in Veles is confirmed by Klyuchevsky.

If we summarize the comparison of Apollo with Veles, then, in my opinion, the conclusion suggests itself that this is essentially the same deity. At the same time, I repeat that the concentration of all functions of Apollo in "ancient" myths and legends does not mean that he and Helios are different gods. Most likely, these are different hypostases of the same god - the Sun.

Now let's read the name Helios according to the rules of the Greek language - Ἥλιος or Ἠέλιος. It will sound like Helios (aspirated light "x") or Eelios. Here it is appropriate to recall the missing sound discovered by Klein at the beginning of the name of the city "Ιλιος (Ilios-Ilion)."

Now, I think, the following chain of surprise will not cause surprise: Veles-Eelios-Helios-Helios.

Vilios (Ilion), I think we, too, can safely put on a par with these names.

When I was finalizing the draft version of this chapter, to my surprise, I found a coincidence with the conclusion about Veles in the above-mentioned non-academic work of L. Ryzhkov “On the antiquities of the Russian language”. Although Ryzhkov came to him, by no means comparing the functions of Veles and Apollo (Helios), but by means of reconstructing the words: “… a true reading of this word according to the second rule - η = VE -“veles”, i.e. the ancient Greek sun god Helios is the Slavic Veles. … previously, Veles was not functionally defined in the Russian pantheon before it was identified with the ancient Greek Helios (He = Ve). Many researchers repeat the cliché-cliché "cattle god" of Volos-Veles, and only modern linguistics throws bridges to the solar deities of the ancient Indo-European pantheon of the Sumerian times."

But the Sumerians probably had Apollo's griffins at the same time as the bulls of Veles.

But he was even more surprised when he looked into the dictionary of the ancient Greek language of I. Kh. Dvoretsky, 1958, composed of the words of "antique" works and quite academic. The word, which in ancient Greek sounds like βώλος (hair, bolos), is the sun, the solar disk. Is it just another coincidence?

Along the way, we, apparently, answered the question that worried a number of researchers, whether the names Veles and Volos can be considered identical. "Ancient Hellenes" say you can.

Frankly, I did not look for information about borrowing the word hair (bolos) in other languages, so I can only unsubstantiate that the name of our ancient god Volos-Veles may sound in the words of football, basketball, etc.

It is appropriate to recall the legend recorded by Herodotus that the world was created from an egg laid by Phoenix in the sanctuary of Helios, as we now understand it - Veles. Is it not this plot that we see on the wall of the Dmitrievsky Cathedral in Vladimir?

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