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Post by Ardavarz on Dec 10, 2010 2:04:02 GMT 3
I assume somewhere around Bayan Ölgiy. But the title Iltäbär/Eltäbär was a title commonly used by many Turkic peoples, so it was not unique to the Bulghars. The title Iltäbär/Eltäbär is considered mainly as military one (even if it sounds more like "state scribe" or something). Maybe I am wrong but it seems to me that only Bulgars have bestowed it on the kings themselves. (Indeed it appears that Danube Bulgars have used sübägi instead.)
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Post by H. İhsan Erkoç on Dec 12, 2010 17:39:27 GMT 3
Iltäbär/Eltäbär was not only a military title, it was also bureaucratic, as mentioned in Sui-shu 隋書. It was also bestoved to the vassal kings and chieftains while some tribel chiefs also used it. Of course it was used by military commanders too. They were even sent to diplomatic missions. Apart from the Gokturks, the Toquz Oghuz, early Uyghurs and early Qarluqs used Iltäbär/Eltäbär for their tribal chieftains. Some kings of city-states in Turkestan used that as well. If you want, I can give all the examples I know
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Post by ancalimon on Dec 12, 2010 17:51:00 GMT 3
Could there be a connection between those AS people and the Viking ships painted in Azerbaijan in your opinion?
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Post by Ardavarz on Dec 13, 2010 1:15:42 GMT 3
Iltäbär/Eltäbär was not only a military title, it was also bureaucratic, as mentioned in Sui-shu 隋書. It was also bestoved to the vassal kings and chieftains while some tribel chiefs also used it. Of course it was used by military commanders too. They were even sent to diplomatic missions. Apart from the Gokturks, the Toquz Oghuz, early Uyghurs and early Qarluqs used Iltäbär/Eltäbär for their tribal chieftains. Some kings of city-states in Turkestan used that as well. If you want, I can give all the examples I know Well, this would explain things. I couldn't understand before how this can be a military or a royal title given its etymology. Obviously those people haven't taken it too literally . Could there be a connection between those AS people and the Viking ships painted in Azerbaijan in your opinion? I haven't heard about these paintings, but recently I found this: www.davidkfaux.org/CentralAsiaRootsofScandinavia-Y-DNAEvidence.pdfThere is some interesting material in it. I already mentioned about a possible relation between Uldin and Odin in another thread. Still not everything is quite correct. For instance Ossetians don't live in Azerbaijan. Actually they call themselves Ir or Iron ("Ovsi" is a Georgian name) and now prefer the name "Alans". But they refer to the neighboring Balkars (who also claim an Alanic origin) as "Asiag" or "Asson".
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Post by ancalimon on Dec 13, 2010 2:21:19 GMT 3
Could there be a connection between those AS people and the Viking ships painted in Azerbaijan in your opinion? I haven't heard about these paintings, but recently I found this: www.davidkfaux.org/CentralAsiaRootsofScandinavia-Y-DNAEvidence.pdfThere is some interesting material in it. I already mentioned about a possible relation between Uldin and Odin in another thread. Still not everything is quite correct. For instance Ossetians don't live in Azerbaijan. Actually they call themselves Ir or Iron ("Ovsi" is a Georgian name) and now prefer the name "Alans". But they refer to the neighboring Balkars (who also claim an Alanic origin) as "Asiag" or "Asson". karabakh-doc.azerall.info/ru/turkologiya/trk010eng.htmThis is another approach to Odin.
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Post by merlkir on Dec 13, 2010 2:55:02 GMT 3
See, the paper ardavarz posted at least appears to be quite scientific, ancalimon. I'll have to finish it tomorrow though, it's pretty late. (while the author leaps to some dubious conclusions and speculates a lot, it presents a couple of interesting ideas.)
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Post by ancalimon on Dec 13, 2010 3:35:04 GMT 3
See, the paper ardavarz posted at least appears to be quite scientific, ancalimon. I'll have to finish it tomorrow though, it's pretty late. (while the author leaps to some dubious conclusions and speculates a lot, it presents a couple of interesting ideas.) why simply dismiss information we have simply because it's weird? www.mostoriginal.com/unique-gift-ideas-the-cross.phpwww.americancollegeofheraldry.org/cross.htmI don't know if I could go to Armenia to do a research about this (I have Armenian friends in Turkey that would help me) but apparently there are books talking about this. More research on this can not be done because the borders are closed.
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Post by merlkir on Dec 13, 2010 10:14:39 GMT 3
"Weird" is an understatement. A cross are two lines drawn perpendicular to each other, one of the simplest symbols there are. That link you posted, that's not even plausible speculation, it's clear dreaming with an agenda, based on nothing but the author's vivid imagination.
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Post by Ardavarz on Dec 14, 2010 4:55:40 GMT 3
There are two passages in that article about heraldic crosses above (http://www.americancollegeofheraldry.org/cross.htm) which caught my attention:
"Some of the earliest images of crosses were found in the Central Asian steppes, and some were found in Altay. The cross in the old Altaic religion called Tengriism symbolizes the god Tengri; it wasn't an elongated "dagger" cross, instead resembling a plus sign (+)."
"Sun cross: Also known as the Sunwheel, solar cross or Odin's cross, because Odin's symbol in Norse mythology was a cross in a circle."
I don't know how accurate is this information since it sounds a little vague, but if we assume this interpretation it seems that Tengriist and Odinist symbol of the cross were almost identical. And again such syncretism could have arisen in the period of Great Migration when Huns, Goths and other people in the Hun Empire have mingled freely, exchanged ideas and therefore were capable to exercise free thinking without religious restrictions and fear of persecution (perhaps this was the only such place in that time!).
I like to imagine what I would have thought if I was a philosopher living in that era. For instance let's take the Gothic runic alphabet - so called Elder Futhark (designed according to legend by Odin himself!) and write it in a circle as it's often represented. Then let's connect with lines crosswise those four runes phonetically equivalent to the four tamghas which constitute the name "Tengri" (T-Ng-R-I). (In my working model the latter are correlated with the four elements, four points of compass, colours etc.). Thus we'll obtain an almost regular cross within a circle like the solar wheel mentioned in the quotes above (Symbol of Tengri? And Odin?).
Furthermore, the numerical value of these four runes is 55 - the so called "number of Heaven and Earth" in Chinese numerology, which also reminds the 55 "white tengri" in Burjat mythology, the 55 celestial spheres in Aristotle's cosmological model etc.
Of course, this speculation doesn't prove anything. But it is interesting anyway. In fact Omeljan Pritsak already suggested that Odinistic cult of the Vikings has originated from combining the Altaic Tengriism and Alanic Mithraism (indeed a little later - in Khazaria).
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Post by ancalimon on Dec 14, 2010 9:16:16 GMT 3
"Weird" is an understatement. A cross are two lines drawn perpendicular to each other, one of the simplest symbols there are. That link you posted, that's not even plausible speculation, it's clear dreaming with an agenda, based on nothing but the author's vivid imagination. This symbol is on the flags of countries. There "MUST" be something really unknown about it. The thing is it's an icon. It represents what we are today. It's so important that people died on it, people carried it to other continents, people fought for it.
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Post by merlkir on Dec 14, 2010 20:17:39 GMT 3
Ardavarz: I've never heard of the solar cross being connected to Odin in any way - in reputable and trustworthy sources. It appears all over the world as far as early bronze age (iirc) nope, even as early as the paleolithic, so I wouldn't link it to any migration in the AD. (you can see it called Odin's cross all over the web, but those are mainly neo-pagan websites, the same solar cross is also called the cross of Taranis - a celtic deity and another version of the solar cross is also used as Perun's or Svantovít's cross. Since the symbol is so old and since we have very limited knowledge of these pagan religions, I seriously doubt it was actually ever a property symbol of any of these gods. It's mostly neo pagans and white supremacists misusing yet another ancient symbol. Ancalimon and his panturkist ideas is an example of that.) I'll comment on the "Odin/steppe migration to the North" paper when I read it all. Again, it's interesting, but highly speculative. So far (I'm in about a third) there's nothing in the evidence that would suggest a major migration or invasion of a new ruling class. (rather than simple long route trade and minor intermarriage and cultural exchange). ancalimon: it means nothing to me. It's on flags, because it's a handy heraldic sign, because many countries are (or were) mainly christian. Other than that it's just a sun symbol. I don't see any reason to participate or to believe in silly games of puzzle like that link you posted. There is no evidence, nothing plausible about it, just a delusional person finding the exact things he set out to look for. (we explained how this works) I could come up with a hypothesis like that in a week and it would be just as wrong.
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Post by merlkir on Dec 14, 2010 23:20:11 GMT 3
I am still reading the paper as it's quite long and thorough, but I already see a few big problems.
Firstly - just as Thor Heyerdahl before him (wiki this, he put this migration just some 500 years earlier), the author sadly misinterprets his written sources and also is guilty of selective reading of said sources. For instance, believing that Snorri who wrote the Ynglinga saga in the 13th century knew exactly what the reality behind the norse gods was.
That is...very unlikely. His explanation of the mythology as real events of living people was his interpretation of them, based on good knowledge of geography and an honest belief his idea had a solid base.
Which nobody can blame him for, given the 13th century knowledge of history, it was a good guess. (and he wasn't the first one to do so, ancient and medieval historians loved to hypothesize about the possible history behind myth.)
We can't accept his interpretation for several reasons, even with a pinch of salt as the author of the paper suggests.
One of these reasons (I'll probably write something longer about this on my blog as it's an interesting topic, but I'll keep it short here) is the name Odin, which Heyerdahl likened to Utin and the author of this paper attributes to Uldin - a Hunnic ruler.
They both overlook the fact that Odin is a 9th century version of the name - the time appropriate form is Wōdanaz (Ancalimon would probably protest that this is a reconstructed proto-germanic word and thus a part of the giant IE conspiracy, however, the reconstruction is pretty solid and the other - documented forms don't fit either.) or Wodan, which is a documented name from the 6th century (spot on the money). Which doesn't look or sound like Uldin at all.
And while the author does a reasonably good (layman's I would say) job at listing sources, here and there he slips a speculation, or a statement which is not based on anything.
Like his bold claim that the Scythians were Turkic people, which most scholars (sic!) agree on nowadays.
And of course there are generalizations and sweeping bundling of different tribes and peoples into groups, omissions of variety (according to him the Scythians only buried their dead in kurgans, which is an omission, or a deliberately misleading statement to drive his point home, as we know the variety of burial rites in the Black Sea area and the Altai was very wide) and so on.
Overall it's one of the better attempts I've seen, but it's still an attempt to prove a point which seems to have a certain agenda behind it. (being sensational for example.)
(it should also be noted that the author is a psychologist and a geneticist.)
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Post by Ardavarz on Dec 15, 2010 2:37:41 GMT 3
The solar cross is very popular symbol indeed and for many cultures and eras. In fact even today it is used as designation of the planet Earth in astronomy.
As for Uldin, I am more inclined to think that the prototype of Odin was Attila whose personal name was Audan (as well as several other mythical heroes of the Volga Bulgars). This is closer to the Old Germanic form. Moreover Wodan is patron of Wednesday (Wodenes-day) and there is a strange custom observed even today in Tatarstan to perform pilgrimage to sacred places (both Tengriist and Muslim) in Wednesday (despite the fact that the sacred day for Muslims is Friday).
It is still a hypothesis of course. I think maybe this topic with the "migration to the North" is taken too literally. My opinion is that is quite plausible that Norse myths were based on historical events from 4th - 5th century. Especially given that what we know about the religion of Germanic tribes from the sources before the Great Migration is quite different. It's more or less what O. Pritsak suggests - that the Vikings have adopted some traditions of the Steppe people plus several epic tales about the wars between Khazars and Bulghars from 7th century. Only that I think it's a little earlier than that. As Mircea Eliade points out 2 - 3 centuries are needed for history to become a myth.
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Post by hjernespiser on Dec 15, 2010 7:09:43 GMT 3
merlkir, Why even bother reading that paper? It was obvious from the first page that it was going to have logic flaws.
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Post by merlkir on Dec 15, 2010 12:12:58 GMT 3
Ardavarz: I think the migration period is too late, my guess would be something much earlier (early bronze age or so) . The thing is - the germanic (the base for norse one) mythology was already quite formed (it seems) by 6th century. It doesn't seem plausible to me that so many germanic tribes (Langobards and many others) would suddenly start worshipping a leader who invaded Norway or Sweden (which in that period was a bit of an end of the world) immediately. Why would they? It had no real impact on them. hjernespiser: well, I like to get to know a hypothesis before I disagree with it.
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