LÁSZLÓ BOTOS

THE HOMELAND RECLAIMED

Chapter 8

The Discovery of Writing

    Zsófia Torma, already in the 1800s, found near Tordos (now Turdas in Rumania) a large number of ceramics decorated with signs similar to those on Sumerian and Trojan pottery.[1] The Hungarian Academy of Science did not acknowledge this discovery but contemporary foreign historians, researchers of the Sumerians, accepted her conclusions and acclaimed her work. In 1961, N. Vlassa, a Rumanian archeologist, excavated a settlement at Tatárlaka (now Tartaria, in Rumania), 18-20 kilometers from Tordos and, on the lowest level, found 26 burned clay idols and 3 amulets on which writing is clearly visible. This writing closely resembles the prehistoric writing of Jamdet Nasr.[2]

The Tatárlaka (Tartaria) tablets

    In 1965, Adam Falkenstein, a German archeologist, stated that the art of writing was developed at Tatárlaka under Sumerian influence. At the same time, M.S. Hood stated that the Tartaria amulets have no connection to writing. He stated that the Sumerian merchants brought these amulets with them and the people of Tatárlaka just copied them without any knowledge or understanding. This infers that the people of Tatárlaka never knew the meaning of the text, although they used the amulets for their religious ceremonies. Historians in general give very little credibility to the theory that the Sumerian people might have migrated out of the Carpathian Basin and could have taken with them the aforementioned knowledge, religion and folklore to Mesopotamia. The majority of historians are of the opinion that civilization progressed from south to north and, as the last Ice Age retreated, the territories that became free of ice were gradually populated. The announcement of Boris Perlov that the Tartária amulets were made of local clay exploded this opinion. He said that the signs on the amulets were the remains of a widespread writing system. His C-14 analysis placed them at 5000 B.C. or approximately 1000 years older than the Al Ubaid findings and 2000 years older than the Minoan ceramics.

     The Tatárlaka signs were written by impressing the letters onto the soft clay surface, which was then baked. This discovery that the technique of "Sumerian" writing was first used in Tatárlaka shocked the scientific world. It meant that this writing technique was taken from here to Mesopotamia. The Tartaria tablets resemble the Tordos-Vinca ceramic shards. This is proof that the Tatárlaka signs were not a local development but a major part of the epigraphic writing of the Vinca culture which dominated in the sixth and fifth millennia B.C.[3]

     According to Sándor Forrai, all writing systems are interconnected. Historians in general have not considered this possibility. If they had taken this into consideration they would have discovered that the Árpád Magyars were not barbarian illiterates. In the ninth century, they possessed the most advanced abbreviated writing system, the runic script.[4]

     According to Forrai, writing developed in the Carpathian Basin and became more sophisticated in Mesopotamia. Among the ten signs on the Tartaria tablets, six are identical to the characters of the Magyar runic script. One of them was the double cross, which represents the "gy" sound. In Sumerian the double cross represents the sceptre, the sign of the ruler, which is translated as PA. Similar runic signs were found in the Balkan Peninsula. The connection between the Tordos, Tatárlaka, Balkan, Cretan, Minoan, Egyptian, and Mesopotamian writing systems was presented by Jovan Todorovich, a Croatian historian who specialized in writing systems.[5]

      In Mesopotamia, the Sumerians developed the pictographs into a system of ideograms, in approximately 3,500 B.C. The infinitive was expressed by combined pictographs, which became an ideogram. For. example, the verb "to eat" was expressed by the pictograph of bread in the pictograph of the mouth. The syllables that included consonants were expressed with suffix signs. This was possible because their language was agglutinative, as is the Hungarian language. They used written determinatives that were not pronounced, for example the eight-armed cross or star, which indicated "DINGIR" - divine or heavenly connections. In time the eight armed cross was simplified to the single cross in cuneiform, which later became the same sign in the Magyar runic script and represented the phoneme "D". In no other runic script did it have the "D" sound. The Sumerian pictographic writing influenced the Egyptian pictographs. Because the Egyptians used this writing primarily in their churches and on their statues, the pictographs became called hieroglyphs, which means holy carvings.

    Chambell, an English researcher, writes that in Upper Egypt, in the city of Karnak, on the wall of one of the temples, it is written in hieroglyphs, that in the empire in the reign of the Pharaoh Tutmoses III, there lived a people called the Maghars who were fighting on the side of the Hittites. The hieroglyphic text mentions the cities of Arad, Árpád and Maghara in the land of the Maghars. (Arad is also the name of a Hungarian city which was given to Rumania in 1920.) The name Maghar is almost identical to the Sumerian name MAH-GAR and the Hungarian name Magyar. Since the signs of the Magyar runic script most closely resemble those of the Phoenician runic script and Hungarian city names appear in that region, it would indicate that the Magyars lived here at the time of the development of the runic script. This runic script spread to Inner Asia among the Turkic peoples and spread to the west among the Etruscans in the Italian peninsula and the Pelasgians in the Greek islands. The early Greek and Latin-speaking peoples also used the runic script. Forrai made a table that shows fifty percent similarity between the Magyar and Phoenician runic scripts and forty-four percent resemblance between the Magyar and Etruscan runic scripts. There was only a twenty-eight percent resemblance to the Old Turkic runic script. This disproves the theory that the Magyar runic script developed from the Turkish. The Glagolitic, Cyrillic or other scripts do not resemble the Magyar runic script.

     The reason that the runic script is written from right to left is that, in early times, the script was carved onto horizontal, rectangular wooden rods. The rod was held in the left hand and the runes were carved with the right hand, so it was logical that it would read from right to left. Even the earliest Latin writings were written from right to left. The direction changed when papyrus replaced wood. The earliest carved script was called epigraphic script. This later became paleographic writing when papyrus was used. The special characteristic of the Magyar runic script was its ability to abbreviate. Abbreviation was necessary because carving on wood was a long and tiresome task. The scribe-carver made the best use of the materials and time available. These abbreviations always followed the rules of the Hungarian grammar. The same methods were used approximately one thousand years later by those who developed the Hungarian shorthand writing. In 1598, János Telegdi wrote his Latin Rudimenta, which explained the rudiments of the Magyar runic script, for use in school.[6] He wished to reinstate the use of the old Hungarian runic script into the Hungarian public life, because this is the only suitable writing system to express the Hungarian speech perfectly. For every phoneme there is an individual sign. Thirteen Hungarian phonemes cannot be expressed by the Latin alphabet. This is why approximately one thousand years was needed to perfect the expression of Hungarian phonetics in the Latin alphabet. For example, we have to use two letters to express the Hungarian phoneme "gy" as in Magyar. In the runic script there is an individual sign for the sound "gy". Similarly, the Magyar phonemes "sz", "ty", "zs" and others have to be expressed by two letters in the Latin alphabet.

    The first agricultural settlements appeared in the Balkan Peninsula in the 6th millennium B.C. How did the early farmers live? They lived in mud huts and they cultivated the land with stone tools. The main crop was barley. At the end of the 5th. millennium B.C. houses appeared with clay walls. The frame of the house was made of wood; the walls were woven out of twigs and covered with clay mud. The house was heated with a large earthenware stove. When the house deteriorated with age, it was demolished, levelled to the ground and a new one was built on top of the ruins. Thus the ancient settlements were built one on top of the other, just as the Sumerian cities in later times. In time, the farmers learned how to use the axe and other tools, which they made of bronze.

     What did the ancient populace of Transylvania look like? The large number of statues found during the excavations help us to form a picture of them. They portray a peaceful manly face with a well-developed nose. The hair was parted with a comb and braided at the back of the neck. (The Huns, Avars and Magyars wore their hair in the same way.) It is interesting that the 5000 year-old man, recently discovered in the Alps and nicknamed "The Ice-man", in reconstruction also had a well-developed nose with a high bridge.[7]

     The statues of women are covered with geometric designs. The same designs can be found on statues from the earlier Tordos settlements. These lines, cunningly folded into each other, had some meaning in the past, maybe tattoos that could have been fashionable at that time, or maybe a magical fantasy, whose meaning we do not know today. At that time the fertility cult was widespread, and many statues of the fertility goddess have been found. A pitcher from the early Vinca culture is decorated with a drawing which was probably a picture of a tabernacle seen from outside. The early Sumerian tabernacle is very similar in appearance. Is this another coincidence? Two thousand years separate the two tabernacles. T.S. Passek, Doctor of History of the Soviet Academy of Science, appointed V. Titov, an archeologist, to research the question of "Sumerians" in Transylvania. Titov came to the following conclusions:

    1. The Tartaria tablets were created locally and the signs on them were the remains of a widely used writing system.

    2. The text of one of the tablets names six ancient totems which are identical to those on a list found at the Sumerian city of Jamdet Nasr and also to those on the burial stamps of the Kőrös (Starcevo) culture, which predated the Vinca culture and is the predecessor of all other cultures.

    3. The signs should be read counter-clockwise.

    4. The meaning of the texts (using a Sumerian decipherment) seems to indicate that the ancient Transylvanians conducted ritual killings. At Tatárlaka a mutilated man's skeleton was found, which would seem to prove this.

    5. The local god named SAUE is the equivalent of the Sumerian god USZMU. The translation of one of the tablets indicates that the god SAUE, commanded the ritual burning of the tenth leader of the tribe in the 40th year of his rule.[8]

    What do the Tartaria tablets reveal? There are many theories but, as yet, there is no definitive answer. A unified study of the Tordos-Vinca cultural remains could probably provide the solution. What do the Tartaria tablets tell us about the people who wrote the Sumerian language before the country of Sumer actually existed? Dr. Titov asks if they might be the ancestors of the Sumerians.

     Some historians believe that the proto-Sumerians separated from a people who were living north of the Caucasus in Gruziya (present-day Georgia), settled for a time in Kurdistan and later finally settled in Mesopotamia. Dr. Titov asks how they were able to give their knowledge of writing to the peoples of South East Europe. As yet there is no answer to this question.

     The Kőrös (Starcevo) and Balkan cultures exerted a great influence on the culture of Asia Minor. We can see the influence of the Tordos-Vinca culture on the Aegean culture. The epigraphic writing on the ceramics found in the legendary Troy is identical to that on the ceramics of the Tordos-Vinca culture. Dr. Titov states that the primitive writing system of the Aegean culture goes back to the fourth millennium B.C. and was influenced by the Balkan and Mesopotamian cultures. Other historians support his conclusions, notably John Dayton and Sir Leonard Woolley.

     Here it should be noted that, in the fifth millennium B.C., the creators of the Vinca culture migrated through Asia Minor into Kurdistan and Huzistan and settled there as proto-Sumerians. In this territory, shortly after they arrived, the epigraphic writing-system known as the Proto-Elamite writing system was developed, which was very similar to the earlier Tatárlaka and the later Sumerian writing.

     It is now clear that the people who developed writing were not the Sumerians but the ancient populace of Transylvania. What other explanation could there be for the fact that the most ancient Sumerian writing found in Mesopotamia, which was dated to the fourth millennium B.C., appeared in an already well-developed form? The Sumerians, in Mesopotamia, used the same epigraphic writing as the people of the Carpathians and Balkans and developed it into pictographs and cuneiform.[9]  In their tablets they do not call themselves "Sumerian". This name was given to them in the 19th. century by the western historians. They called themselves MAH-GAR.

    The Tartaria amulet has been deciphered using the Sumerian language. Dr. Titov deciphered it into Russian. Sándor Székely deciphered it into Hungarian and with the help of Dr. Ferenc Badiny-Jós, refined the decipherment using the Sumerian Lexicon of Professor René Labat. Dr. Badiny states that all other decipherments are incorrect:

The Tartaria Amulet

     "The reason for the error in decipherment was that those who deciphered the tablets did not notice that the hole above the vertical line of the cross which divides the disk into four segments was part of a Sumerian pictograph (Labat No.74) GIDIM, which means demon." This decipherment by Sándor Székely, led Dr. Badiny to conclude that the writing on the amulet was Proto-Sumerian.

     The discovery of the word GIDIM, demon, indicates that the people who wore these amulets believed that every creation on earth has a counterpart in heaven. This view was taken from the Sumerian religious remains. The more imperfect the earthly creation, the more perfect was the heavenly counterpart. The heavenly counterpart of the underworld was paradise or Dilmun. The counterpart of the most merciless queen of the underworld, ERESKIGAL was INNANA, the virgin mother. Every city on earth had a heavenly counterpart. The counterpart of the city of UR was the moon; that of SIPPAR was the constellation Aquarius. Already, in the oldest Sumerian epigraphs, the cross was found as a letter-sign meaning pair or counterpart (Labat, No. 74)[10]

    Dr. Badiny modified the observation of Sándor Székely in the following way. His interpretation is that the cross that is connected to the hole or circle in the amulet does not mean "demon" but rather informs us in which direction to read the signs. The signs should be read in a clockwise direction not counter-clockwise as Dr. Titov recommended. The decipherment should start at the upper left comer. Sándor Székely correctly stated that the first sign was DUR-DIS. DUR = settlement, foundation, or as a verb, to live or to settle. (Labat, No.436) DIS = God, One. (Labat No.480) Sumerologists take the meaning of this word from the Semitic Akkadian, and do not pronounce it DIS but ISTEN which means "God" or "One". The Sumerian language uses the word DIS to express "the only one" or "God". Dr. Badiny points out that the Hungarian word "dics" meaning "praise" originates from the Sumerian DIS and in old Hungarian meant "the only one". Therefore DUR - DIS can be deciphered as "the only settlement" and, added to the sign of the cross, it meant "the counterpart of the only settlement." In this sphere of concepts, the "counterpart" refers to the heavenly counterpart who could not be a demon but a godly power or defending spirit. This is why it is logical that the circle is located at the end of the cross and served as a hole with the purpose of allowing the tablet to be used as an amulet. The DUR sign, according to Labat 436, can also be pronounced as TUR. TUR-DIS is almost the same as TORDOS. If we apply the Sumerian vowel harmony, which is accepted by every Sumerologist, we find TUR-DOS. This means that the name TORDOS is 7000 years old. The meaning of the signs deciphered so far is "the defending spirit of the counterpart of Tordos."

     The epigraphs of Tatárlaka must be accepted as Proto-Sumerian, as has been acknowledged by the Soviet archeologists. This means that the epigraphic signs, which were found in the Sumerian cultural centers, are a more developed form of those found on the Tartaria tablets. We can find an outstanding example in the sign of DUR. On the Tartaria tablet, the upper part of the vertical line of the sign of the cross points toward heaven and the lower part to the earth, which shows that the two are connected. The Sumerian epigraph does not demonstrate that concept because the spreading of this religious view made it unnecessary. By that time it was accepted that Heaven and Earth were connected. Most of the epigraphs of Tatárlaka and Sumer are almost identical. The difficulty is with the decipherment of the later signs, which are ideograms that could express proper nouns, adjectives or verbal nouns and the possessive case, which is derived from the context of the signs. The following is the decipherment of the right upper quarter of the tablet: The first sign is identical to the one in the left upper quarter, DIS meaning "God, or Glorious". The second is a smaller form of the same sign. The next sign is a small circle and the last sign in the line resembles the letter "C". The sign above them looks like a rake and is deciphered as SAL-AS (Labat No. TM.329), meaning "charming woman, witch". The decipherment of the circle is SAR (Labat No. 396) meaning "perfection". The last sign, resembling a "C" is deciphered as BUZUR (Labat No. 411) meaning "secret". The line then reads: DIS SAL-AS SAR BUZUR which means: "The glorious charming woman (goddess) who knows all secrets".

    As we can see, this is a prayer to the protectress of Tordos and this decipherment explains why so many small statues of the fertility goddess were found around Tordos near the tablets. The signs in the lower left quarter of the tablet: the first sign is IGI (Labat, 449), which means "eye". The second sign is deciphered as MIN (Labat, 471) means "two" and the third sign PA (Labat 295) means "head, leader". Therefore the meaning of IGI MIN PA is: "two guarding eyes". The fertility Goddess in ancient times was often portrayed as the Goddess of the Eyes, with representations of owl's eyes on many of the statuettes and artifacts. According to the grammatical rules of the Sumerian language, there is a possessive relation with the goddess in the upper right hand quarter. The meaning of the three groups so far deciphered is: "The two watchful eyes of the patroness of Tordos, the glorious goddess who knows all secrets." The last quarter completes the prayer. The first sign SA (Labat 353) means "face" and "attention, watchfulness". The next sign AB (Labat 128) means "father". The semi-circle is the rising sun deciphered PIR (Labat 381). The three signs together SA-PIR-AB mean: "the watchful sunfather" or the concept of the Sun God. The full text of the amulet is: "May the two watchful eyes of the patroness of Tordos, the glorious goddess who knows all secrets, protect us in the light of our Sun God".[11]

                    Table of signs from Tatárlaka and Sumer

     The cult of the Mother-Goddess has been extensively researched by Professor Marija Gimbutas of the University of California, Los Angeles.[12] Numerous statues of the Fertility Goddess have been found in Central Europe, particularly in the Carpathian Basin, dating back to the 6th and 5th millennia B.C. About sixty of them were found at Mehtelek. According to József Bíró, at the time of the Kőrös culture, the Mother-Goddess was called ERES or ERŐS. This name is preserved in the name of the city Erősd. The name of the Greek God of Love, EROS, may be connected.[13] In The Language of the Goddess, Professor Gimbutas offers an explanation for the lines on the statuettes of the Goddess. The M sign had aquatic significance, as did the chevron and the meander. It is interesting to note that the ancient people also represented the Mother Goddess as a "primeval mother" in the form of a doe.[14] In the Magyar legends, the progenitress of the Magyar and Hun nations was also a doe. According to Marija Gimbutas, the Mother Goddess has been called ANA, ANNIA, ANU or ANKU.[15] In Hungarian, the word for "mother" is "anyu". The Sumerian word for "mother" was AMA. The Sumerian God of Creation was ANU. Somehow, in the migration from the Carpathian Basin to Mesopotamia, the matricentric pantheon of goddesses became a patricentric pantheon of gods, but the name for the creator remained --ANU.

     Many of the figures of the Goddess are decorated with three parallel lines. This pattern is repeated many times on vases and other artifacts. Professor Gimbutas says: "The tri-line sign seems to symbolize a triple or multiple life substance of dynamic quality..." "The triple source is linked with the triple Goddess, an astonishingly long-lived image documented as early as the Magdalenian epoch..."[16]  She mentions that this symbolic tradition is continued in Anatolian and Mycenaean figurines and in Bronze Age figurines from Cyprus. This tri-line symbol can also be found on representations of the Goddess in Sumer. The Sumerian Goddess of Fertility and Birth was NINHURSAG. Again, the "Ice-man" found in the Alps, wore tattoos of three and four parallel lines. It has been suggested that he might have been a shaman or a trader.

    The Rumanian/Hungarian dispute about who has more right to the possession of Transylvania motivated the scientific world to research the area of Transylvania. The theory of the Daco-Roman continuity has gradually lost credibility while more and more data have come to light to prove the Magyar continuity. Ida Bobula, Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at Ricker College 1951-1959, found 535 Hungarian words identical to Sumerian words in the Sumerian lexicon. This significant discovery revived the dormant theories of the nineteenth century researchers of Sumerology, Colonel Rawlinson, A.J. Sayce, Lenormand and others, that the Sumerian language shows connections to the Ural-Altaic languages, especially the Hungarian language. The research of Ida Bobula and Zsófia Torma motivated Kálmán Gosztony, a professor at the Sorbonne University in Paris, to continue the research of the Sumerian-Hungarian connections. He expanded the number of Sumerian-Hungarian cognates to 1200 and presented sixty grammatical rules that were identical in Sumerian and Hungarian.[17]

Zsuzsanna Kovács-Telekiné studied the ancient history of Transylvania from original documents and she noticed that, when Ptolemy mentions the populace of Dacia (Transylvania), he writes "Kau-ko encio". She noticed that if we leave off the "encio" it becomes "Kau-ko" or in Hungarian "kő-kő" which means "hegy-hegy" or "mountain-mountain" i.e. mountains. This document was dated only twenty to thirty years after the Roman conquest of Dacia. She also noticed that Ammianus Marcellinus, writing about the war of the Roman Emperor Valens against the Goths also writes the name of Transylvania as "Kau-Ko".[18] The Sumerian words KO, KA, and KAU all have the same meaning as the Hungarian "Kő" i.e. "stone". In Sumerian, the plural was formed by repeating a word: "KAU-KO" i.e. "mountains". The Szekels today still use the word "Stone" for "Mountain". The names of many Transylvanian mountains end with "kő", like Unokő, Szarkő, Siposkő. These mountains are all 1600 to 2000 meters high. If we take the root of the the name "Caucasia" (cau) then the name is identical to the Proto Sumerian name for Transylvania.

      The ancient Magyar suffix "A" means river. Many of the rivers in Hungary end with this suffix: Duna, Tisza, Száva, Dráva, Morva, Mura, Rába, Rabca, Zagyva. The River Euphrates in Mesopotamia was called in Sumerian BARANYA.

     Zsuzsanna Kovács-Telekiné, at the 27th International Orientalists World Congress at Ann-Arbor, Michigan in 1967, presented another name of the River Danube which was "Ister", the name of the Sumerian Goddess of Fertility, ISTER. At the 29th International Orientalists Congress at the Sorbonne in 1973, she presented Sumerian words, which she found as geographical names in the Carpathian Basin. SAMAS was the name of the Mesopotamian Sun God ,which is reflected in the name of the river Szamos. NAP is identical to the Magyar word "nap" which means "sun". Napoka is the ancient name of the city of Kolozsvár (now Cluj in Rumania) and contains both the words NAP and KO. The Sumerian word AM-ARU means "flood" (Hungarian - áradat) and can be found in the name of the River Maros, which is called by the local people "Maras". "OS" or "as" (in ancient Magyar "aszo") is identical to the Sumerian AS which means "river". A smaller river in the vicinity of the River Maros is called today the Sik-aszo. The Transylvanian river Zsil is identical to the Sumerian word ZIL, which means "sparkling" (Hungarian-csillog). The ancient name of the river Olt was ALUTA which was one of the names of the Sumerian goddess of Fertility who was also called INNANA and ISTER.[19]

      Historians have for decades questioned whether the development of writing took place in Mesopotamia or the Carpathian Basin. The diffusionist anthropologists and the migrationists state that writing developed in the Near East. The followers of the Radio Carbon 14 school state that it developed in Transylvania. The geographical names of the Carpathian Basin are of Proto-Sumerian and Proto-Magyar origin, several thousand years earlier than the arrival of the Dacian and Latin languages in this territory. This fact could be of vital importance as an argument against the Daco Roman theory. The ancient people of the Danube region, that is the ancient populace of the Kőrös culture, not only migrated with their carriages to Mesopotamia but also left their mark on the territory of Egypt. I shall present a few old Egyptian and Hungarian words which are identical and I would like to suggest that the migration from the Carpathian Basin was not concentrated only in Mesopotamia, but spread in all directions. John Dayton believes that some of the populace of the Carpathian Basin migrated across the Mediterranean by sea, reaching the Levant and continuing on to Egypt "in large ships of Lebanese cedars and others carried on to Mesopotamia with their solid-wheeled carts and oxen." He also suggests that, because of the similarities between the Sumerians and the people of the Indus Valley, "objects and traditions were carried towards the Indus".[20]

     Professor Tibor Baráth of the University of Montreal did extensive research into the Magyar/Egyptian connections which he published in 1968 and 1973.[21] He presented many cognates that indicate a close connection between the two peoples. The word "water" in Old Egyptian was "MO" which remains in the Hungarian word "mo", which means "wash", and in the Hungarian word "mocsár", which means "swamp". The Egyptian name for "house, building, palace" is FAR which resembles the Hungarian words "vár" (castle) and "fa" (wall). The name of the Egyptian ruler is pharaoh and the ancient meaning is "large house" (Hungarian - nagy ház). The Hungarian counterpart is "háznagy" (majordomo) or "várnagy" (commander of the castle). The word "country" in the Egyptian language is TA, which resembles the Hungarian word "ta", which means "region". The word TA is from the Old Egyptian word GEB-TA. The meaning of GEB is "grassland". This resembles the Hungarian "gyeptaj" which means "grassland". In ancient times, Egypt was caller MAZAR, MIZIR, which reminds us of the name of the Magyar people. Another word which makes us wonder is the Hungarian word "nádor" meaning "palatine" which linguists try to trace to the Slavic languages in spite of the fact that the Slavs have no similar rank. Egypt's attorney general was NADRJ.

    In the preface of his Tibetan-English Dictionary, Sándor Kőrösi-Csoma writes that the Sanskrit language shows more connections to the Hungarian language than it does to the language of any other European nation. The structure of the Sanskrit language and the structure of several Indian languages are parallel to the structure of the Hungarian language and all are different from the Western European languages. For example, in Hungarian, suffixes are used instead of prefixes. The only exceptions to this rule are Proper Nouns. Several verb tenses are formed by adding a syllable, rather than by using an auxiliary verb as do all the other European languages.[22]

    I would like to draw the reader's attention to the fact that the origins of the Hungarian people have not yet been determined. One area, which has not been researched, is the analysis of the settlement and geographical names. There are many names whose meanings are as yet unknown, for example the river Sajó and the settlements along this river, Sajóbabony, Sajóecseg, Sajógalgóc, Sajókaza, Sajósenye. These names are the proofs of the antiquity of the Hungarian people. Another interesting Hungarian word, which dates back to the late Paleolithic Era, 25,000 years ago, is "kövesztett" as in "kövesztett szalonna", which today means "steamed or boiled bacon". The actual meaning of the word "kövesztett" is lost today because of the changes made by the progress of technology. This word reflects the period in which men heated stones in fire and on the hot stone, in a pot of water, the bacon was cooked until it became soft. With this process, the bacon was preserved and was easily edible. Therefore the word "kövesztett" meant "softened". Looking at the word "kő" which means "stone" we might logically think that the word "kőveszt" means "to harden", whereas it actually means "to soften".

     Although it is generally believed that the Hungarian language stands alone and is unrelated to any of the other European languages, except Finnish, there is established research comparing Hungarian to more than sixty languages, which are completely isolated from each other. Is it possible that the Hungarian language is related to these languages? Sándor Kőrösi Csoma, the author of the Tibetan-English dictionary, identifies 240 Sanskrit words with Hungarian words. József Aczél states that the Magyar people had a close connection with the Greeks. Ármin Vámbéry establishes a Turkish-Magyar connection. Bálint Gábor Szentkapolnai studied the Mongol-Magyar connection.  Christoff Sonngott researched the Armenian-Magyar similarity. Zsigmond Varga researched the Sumerian-Hungarian connection. László Szabédy studied the Latin-Magyar connection. Géza Kúr researched the Etruscan-Magyar identity and the above-mentioned Tibor Baráth, the Egyptian/Magyar connection. János Fadrusz studied the similarities between the Magyar Runic Script and the Etruscan alphabet finding all the letters identical except four.

    Adorján Magyar writes that it is an established fact that if a people obtained knowledge of an object from another people, then they also adopted the name of that object. The uniqueness of the Hungarian language is that its vocabulary shows a close relationship to most other European languages. This quality led European linguists to state that the Hungarian language was a language of borrowings taken from all the European nations. It is easy to disprove this view of the Hungarian language. In the Hungarian language there are logical word derivations and the words are logically connected to each other. A language made up of borrowed words cannot be so logical. The present Hungarian word "kő", "stone" is in proto-Magyar KA, KE, KU, and in a dialect of Hungarian today is KU. The Hungarian word "kemény" meaning "hard" was formed from the proto-Magyar word KA, KE, KU. The root words are always of one syllable. The words KA, KE, KU are not only one syllable but they only have two sounds (phonemes). For the prehistoric man the hardness of the stone was of major importance. The name of the quality of hardness was derived from the stone (KE - Ke-mény). Without any doubt the Slav word "kamen" which means "stone" and is of two syllables and five sounds, is a later development and is derived from the Hungarian word "kemény". There is obviously a reasonable connection between the Hungarian words "kő" and "kemény". At the same time between the Slav word "kamen" (stone) and the Slav word "tvrdo" meaning "hard" there is no accoustical or meaningful connection. This signifies that these words are not developed from each other.

     The Hungarian word "viz" (water), the Finnish "vete", the Slav "voda", the German "Wasser" are related accoustically. We can see that the Hungarian word is of one syllable, the others are of two syllables and four or five sounds, which proves that they are all later developments. In the Turkish language the words for water and stone are of completely different form. "Su" or "tas" means "stone" (kő), "sub" means "water" (viz). This means that the Magyar language did not originate in Asia but developed in Europe. Is it possible that the nomad Magyars did not know of water and stone while they were in Asia and found them only when they migrated to Europe? Of course not, but since they now use the ancient words for these objects, they obviously adopted the language of the autochthonous people of the Carpathian Basin which is now known as Magyar or Hungarian. We can conclude that these ancient words originate from the Prehistory of Europe and that the modern Hungarians are descended from a people indigenous to Europe. The language is obviously very ancient because most of the root words are of one syllable, e.g. "fej" (head), "szem" (eye), "kéz" (hand), "láb" (leg), "lég" (air), "fű" (grass), "fa" (tree), "tűz" (fire), "víz" (water). The modern Hungarian language is the European ancient language, which developed in the Carpathian Basin. The ancient populace migrated from the Carpathian Basin in every direction and from this ancient populace the European peoples, the Aryans, took their knowledge and their words.

    This is why the Hungarian language has cognates and grammatical similarities in more than sixty languages. If we take the Hungarian language as the "lender" language, then most of the linguistic problems can be solved.[23]

    Géza Barczi, a member of the Hungarian Academy of Science and a supporter of the Finno-Ugric hypothesis, published the Etymological Dictionary of the Hungarian Language.[24]  He lists the words that supposedly came into the language of the Árpád Magyars at the time that they reclaimed their homeland from the Slav people who were supposedly living in the Carpathian Mountains at that time. Barczi says that, because the Magyars were extremely barbarian and nomadic, their vocabulary was very poor, especially in expressions describing occupations. How could the people of Árpád have taken these words from the Slav people? Gyula László, who was also a Finno-Ugric theorist, writes of the Slavs: "The Byzantine writers mentioned the timid people of this territory (Carpathian Mountains), who were afraid to come out of the forests, who knew very little about metals and lived almost at the level of the Stone Age people, gathering nuts and berries and living from fishing and hunting and a little primitive agriculture."[25] "We have found very few archeological data which prove the existence of the Slavs. Those few artifacts which were found were discovered in the valleys of creeks and in caves and indicated that the Transylvanian Slavs lived almost at the level of the Stone Age people."[26]

     The lifestyle of the Slavs who lived on the periphery of the Carpathian Basin was close to the level of the people of the Stone Age. Supposedly the standard of living of the Western Slavs was higher but did it reach the standard of living of the Avars who were living in the Carpathian Basin before the arrival of Árpád's Magyars? The contemporary writers describe the Avars as a rich, civilized people who enjoyed luxury. The Avars or Var-Huns built enormous strongholds made of earth and clay and received their name from this activity (Vár-Huns or Vár-Kuns, "vár" in Hungarian means "castle"). They used the Slav or servant people to do the construction of these castles. The Avars settled the Slavs, who lived on a Stone Age level around the Avar strongholds, in an area called the "gyepű", the marchland or no man's land. The duty of the Slavs living in the marchland was to guard the Avars from attack and in later wars they fought in the front lines.

     "The conqueror, to a certain extent, has to make the conquered people conform to his standards, otherwise he could not make use of them."[27] The Slavs were under the Avar military rule and Avar rulers governed them. Later, the Slavs began to organize their lives in the same way the Avars did. Before this could happen, the Avars had to educate the Slavs and raise them from the Stone Age level. This effort resulted in a large part of the Avar vocabulary being adopted by the Slavs. The Hungarian words that have been labeled as “Slav borrowings” are ancient Avar-Magyar words. At the same time, these words can be found in the Sumerian vocabulary.

    The name by which the Slavs called the Avars - OBOR - is itself a Sumerian word. UB means "region" (Labat 139-306) UR means "lord" (De Sarzec 291)[28]  The word UB-UR or OBOR means "feudal lord". The Magyar historians were forced to accept that there were two homecomings of the Magyars because Gyula László's proofs were so convincing.[29] The first of the homecomings was that of the Avars, the second one, that of Árpád and the Magyars. The people of Árpád, at least the Megyers, from which the nation took its name, spoke the same language as the Avars and the ancient populace of the Carpathian Basin, with whom the Magyars made an alliance. Many words from this ancient language appear in the list of the so-called "Slav borrowings", in the language of the Slavs and also among the Sumerian vocabulary. The linguists did not find many specifically Avar names in the Carpathian Basin because the ancient populace, the Avars and the Magyars all spoke the same language. In some way they were all connected with the Sumerian language. It is obvious that the Slavs took over words from the ancient language and the Avars and not the reverse. The Slavs definitely do not originate from Mesopotamia. Those Slav words that can only be analyzed with the help of the Sumerians, must have been adopted from the Avars, the Magyars or the ancient populace of the Carpathian Basin. The Finno-Ugric linguists state that the words that the Slavs borrowed from the Avars are Slav words and the barbaric Magyars borrowed these words from the Slavs.

     Géza Barczi stated that the Magyars borrowed occupational vocabulary from the Slavs. The Byzantine writers wrote that, at the time of the Avars, the Slavs were on the level of the Stone Age. At that time, they obviously did not have occupational words. If they developed occupations that they learned from the Avars, they would have adopted the Avar words for those occupations. The Finno-Ugric linguists declare that the names of the following occupations which are Hungarian words, were borrowed by the Magyars from the Slavs: "mészáros" (butcher), "esztergályos" (woodworker), "kádár" (cooper), "takács" (weaver), "csizmadia" (bootmaker). These words can be found in Sumerian also. If a people, which had no connection with Mesopotamia, had in their vocabulary a large number of occupational words, then without doubt we can state that they must have taken over these words from another people who had a connection with the Sumerian people or from the Sumerians themselves. "Mészáros" (butcher) is in Sumerian MASARU (D. 594-8g) meaning "to cut" [30] and US (DSA-113) meaning "person doing the action". Therefore MASARUS (mészáros) means "a cutting man" or "butcher". This word then existed in Sumerian and in the ancient Magyar language.[31] "Esztergályos" (woodworker or turner, now lathe-operator) was in Sumerian ISTERGALUS. IS - means to drill through (DSA-138). TER - means "tree” (D.375-21) GAL means "great, huge" (DSA-39), and US- means "man" (DSA-113). So the meaning of the word ISTERGALUS (esztergályos) is "man who carves the tree" or "woodworker” .... “Kádár" (cooper) is in Sumerian KAD-UR. KAD means "basin" (L.222). UR means "man" (L.225-575). The meaning of the word KAD-UR (kádár) is "man who makes basins or barrels" or "cooper". "Takács" (weaver) is also supposed to be a word borrowed from the Slavs, but it is unbelievable that a people who lived in caves would have a weaving loom. The word "takács" is in Sumerian TUKU which means "to weave" (D.125-43) or "weaver" (DSA-207) and added to this is US (DSA-113) meaning "man". The word TUKU-US (takács) means "weaving man" or "weaver". In the ancient language the "U" was predominant and it changed to "A" in the Hungarian language. The "s" often became "cs" in Hungarian. Gyula László writes that the Magyars of Árpád wore a linen shirt with a stand-up collar.[32]  The shirt was made of a woven material because the old Magyar word for shirt was "inag", now "ing". In Sumerian IN (DSA 77) means "flax" and AG (DSA-7) means "to make" and INAG means "shirt".

     In the graves of the Árpád Magyars, large numbers of saddles, bits, stirrups, horseshoes, swords, needles, artistically decorated belt-buckles and jewelry were found. This proves that there were blacksmiths, silversmiths and fine artisans. Gyula László found, in the Slav graves of the time of Árpád, clothes which were made of animal skins and sandals made of leather and thongs.[33]  In the Magyar graves of the same period were found the remains of boots.[34]  The boots were sewn from the side, had soft soles, and were made of leather and felt. The Slavs wore sandals, not boots, but according to the Finno-Ugric linguists they had a word for a boot maker. At the same time, the Magyars wore boots but according to the Finno-Ugric linguists, they had no word for "boot maker".[35]

     Ida Bobula made the significant observation that the "Slav" words, which the Finno-Ugric linguists claim were "borrowed" by the Magyars, do not exist in the Slav languages which are spoken in territories distant from Hungary. The distant Slavs use other words for the same concepts. This indicates that the neighboring Slavs borrowed from the Magyars and not the reverse.           

     According to the Germans, the German word "dolmetschen" (to interpret) came from the Magyar word "tolmácsol" (to interpret). The Germans and the Slavs took it from the Magyars in the thirteenth century. It is possible that, many centuries earlier, it had been adopted by the Magyars from the Mitannian language.[36]  It is interesting that the Hungarian word for "explain" is "magyarázni" which means to use the Magyar language to explain a concept. This must be a very ancient word.

    Dr. József Aczél, a Greek scholar, states that the Magyar people had close connections with the Greeks.[37]  He finds 3000 Pre-Hellene and Hellene root words that are identical to Magyar root-words and also finds grammatical similarities. Besides the linguistic connection, there are other connecting factors. Herodotos writes that the name of the first Scythian king was Targiatos. By linguistic progression, the hard consonants became softer. The "t" became "h". If we drop the Greek ending "os", then we find the name of one of the mountains of Transylvania, Hargita.

    Hippocrates (460-377 B.C) when he writes of the winds, waters and places, writes: "In Europe, there is a Scythian people who are living around the Meotis lake different from all other peoples, who are called Sarmatians. Their women ride horses, use bows and arrows and throw spears at their enemies, until they lose their virginity. They eat cooked meat and drink milk from their horses, and eat "ippak" which is cottage cheese made from horse milk." It is interesting to note that the Magyars also drank horse-milk and ate "ippak". Herodotos (484-424 B.C.) (Book IV, Ch.V) writes that the Scythians say that they are the most ancient people on the earth and the children of Targiatos. The legend says that Targiatos descended from Jupiter and one of the daughters of the river-god, Bory. During the rule of Targiatos, a plough, yoke, axe and a cup fell from heaven, all made of gold. These golden objects burst into flame as Lipoxais, the eldest son of Targiatos, approached them and he fled. The second son, Arpoxais, also fled. The youngest son, Kolaxais, was able to approach without their bursting into flame, so he inherited them. This is the reason that the Scythians always carried a cup on their belt. Herodotos (Ch.10) writes that Hercules tied his oxen and fell asleep. When he woke up, he did not find his oxen. In a cave, he found a hermaphrodite who told him the oxen were there but she would give them back to him only if he would sleep with her. Therefore, Hercules gave her his bow and his belt from which a cup was hanging and he stayed with her. They had three sons, Agathyrs, Celon, and Schytes. The Scythians claim to be the descendants of Schytes, the youngest son of Hercules. From the linguistic evidence and the legends, it appears that there was a connection between the Greeks and the Scythians.[38]

     Every legend has a historical background which, in time, changes and fades and develops into the legend or even into a folk-tale. The deeds or acts are not fabricated but reflect actual events which are exaggerated or clouded.