Klára Friedrich
THE MYSTERY OF TATÁRLAKA
Part 6.
Parallels to the disk.
The Hungarian Finno-Ugric historians do not pay attention to the Tatárlaka finds and the Tordos-Vinca (Bánát) culture. Maybe they do not know that this territory, until June 4, 1920, was part of Hungary and it has been inhabited by the ancestors of the Hungarians demonstrably for least 8000-9000 years.
Foreign scholars are all the more interested. In the 1980’s, a researcher, by the name of Shan Winn, assembled a catalogue of 210 Vinca signs. We Hungarians are not even allowed near this work. Winn discovered five basic signs, from which all the others are built. In 1977 Sándor Forrai, researcher of the runic script, assembled the signs of the ancient Magyar Runic Script in a table and he too assembled them according to five basic signs. The basic signs of Winn and Sándor Forrai (even though they never knew one another, nor each other’s works) are almost the same, except for a – literally -- tiny point.
Top: Basic signs of Sándor Forrai
Bottom: Basic signs of Shan Winn
This agreement of results proves my theory that almost all scripts on our planet originated from our Hungarian ancestors and these were created in Transylvania. The proof of this creative process is Zsófia Torma’s more than 11 thousand piece collection from the banks of the river Maros. Winn himself believed the precursor of writing to be the Vinca sign-system which – according to him – evolved in this territory.
Marija Gimbutas called the Vinca system “ancient European signs”. It is shocking that the afore-mentioned foreign researchers never thought of the possibility that the ancestors of the Hungarians created this writing and transmitted it to the rest of the world. The reason for this omission is the propagation of the Finno-Ugric theory, according to which the Magyars fled from the Besenyő attacks and entered the Carpathian Basin in 896 A.D. like oxen, illiterate barbarians, chewing raw meat. They do not want to pay official attention to our runic script. Gábor Jáki was able to study Zsófia Torma’s drawings of the disks in the library of Princeton University, yet we at home, in Hungary, do not have access to these, even in the Széchenyi Library in Budapest.
Nevertheless, parallels of the signs on the disk can be found first of all in Zsófia Torma’s collection. We have to thank Anna Walter Fehér for publishing the drawings of about 150 disks in her book: Az ékírástól a rovásírásig (From Cuneiform to the Runic Script). Some of them are pierced at the center, others are not, but all of them contain signs. Similar to these, for example is the runic-disk from the Olt valley, in Transylvania, and the disks found at Lake Velence’s ancient settlement at Sukoró, in Transdanubia, Hungary, the Knossos tablets. . .
The question arises as to what goal was served by these disks? It is obvious that the ones pierced in the upper third part were worn around the neck as a magical object or a protective, strength-giving object or they simply used them for decoration or made them as gifts.
They could have been spindle-rings with a hole in their center, weights for the fishing nets, or holding devices for stone maces. They could have used the ones without the holes as seals. Mária Tóth Kurucz, in her book: Erdélyi festett edények (Painted vessels from Transylvania) and Veronika Marton in her book: A napkeleti pecsétnyomók (Seals of the East Matrona Publ. – Győr 2004) give further information on the subject of these latter objects.
It is my opinion, which I already expressed in: Kárpát-medencei birtoklevelünk (Our Letter of Ownership to the Carpathian Basin), that the great number of disks with writing on them from the Torma collection (and there may be many more which have not yet been excavated!) may indicate that, in Tordos, in the Neolithic, a school was operating, where they could lay out syllables, words, sentences with these disks and they learned to read in this manner. I also believe that these disks served not only the goals of the local „public school”, but that our ancestors spread the knowledge of writing through the entire territory of Europe and Asia and even further and they themselves created these „tools of learning”.
Parallels to the rectangular, pictographic tablet
First of all, we find similar tablets in Mesopotamia, from Uruk’s Jamdet-Nasr culture, from between 4600-3000 B.C. In the Oates book: The Rise of Civilization (A civilizáció hajnala), we can see, on a good, color photograph, the tablet which is most often shown as a parallel to the Tatárlaka tablet. It originated from the Jamdet-Nasr excavation site, near the Sumerian city of Kis. It is five thousand years old and, according to Sumerologists, it contains a list of accounts of animals, bread and beer. So, beer drinkers might say: “See, the Sumerians already .....” Unfortunately, the authors do not tell us which sign is the pictogram of the beer. The two Blau tablets, from a very early Sumerian time, belong to the very treasured objects of the British Museum. Gábor Jáki, who prepared a table of signs as an addendum to Zsófia Torma’s work, shows that eleven signs on the Blau tablets are identical to the Tordos sign and two are identical to the Tatárlaka signs.
The third tablet, with the animal figure.
Sir Leonard Woolley (1880-1960), a British archaeologist, excavated a grave in the city of Ur, where he found 74 human remains and also a beautifully crafted statue of two goats rearing onto a tree. The tree is 50 centimeters high and it is covered with gold plates.
In Veronika Marton’s book A napkeleti pecsétnyomók és pecséthengerek (Eastern Seals and Seal Rolls) we find similar drawings on the Uruk and Mitanni seal rolls.
In her book: A magyar nép eredete (The Origin of the Magyar People. Anahita Ninti Publisher, without date), Dr. Ida Bobula shows the two goats rearing onto the tree of life on a shell-plaquette from the city of Ur; moreover, in her book, there is the triple mountain[1] at their feet. It is also she, who realized the parallels between the pictograph of the Tatárlaka tablet and the two goats rearing onto the Tree of Life which were depicted on the cover of a 7th century gold-covered axe which came from a Scythian kurgan from Kelermesz. I found, in Lizett Kabay’s books, Hittite parallels and 9th century Magyar parallels from Tatabánya.
The back of a 19th. Century pocket-mirror
From Huszka József: Magyar-turáni ornamentika
Published by Nyers Csaba 1996
József Huszka called the Tree of Life the Tree of God
In 1899, an artist from Nógrád County carved onto a horn two deer-like animals around the Tree of Life. The information came from Fél-Hofer-Csilléry – A magyar népművészet (The Hungarian Folk Art, Corvina, 1969). We found, in the same book, a picture carved on the back of a bench where two deers stand next to the Tree of Life.
The Assyrian King Tukulti Ninurta (13th c. B.C.) borrowed from the Sumerians the design for the mural in his palace, on which we find again the two goats with the Tree of Life.
Animals with horns, at the Tree of Life
From a Celtic sword.
Jan Filip: A kelta civilizáció és öröksége, Gondolat, 1966
The Tatárlaka tablet, with the animal figure, along with the Mesopotamian statue of Ur, the Scythian axe and the Tatabánya ornament beautifully proves our Sumerian-Scythian-Magyar relationship and other parallels and borrowings show the influence the symbols of our people had upon the decorative art of other nations, which adopted our culture. Here I mention shortly that we also have rampant lions at the Tree of Life, on an Avar sceptre (Mátyás Jenő Fehér Avar kincsek nyomában. Translation: In the Tracks of Avar Treasures.), on our most beautiful musette cover from Etelköz and on the crest of the Hungarian Pauline Order. This latter is shown in the book of Tamás Gönczi: Ennek a világnak... (This world’s.... Bé-Bé Publisher 2003).
The above examples don’t claim to be a complete list and they are all younger than the Tatárlaka finds, proving that the Carpathian Basin was the birthplace of writing and of a wonderful decorative art, which sent its messages through symbols. Our ancestors tirelessly shared these in an unselfish manner, along with their technical discoveries, like the plow and the potter’s wheel. Quite literally, we were the benefactors of Mankind, for which we have never received any thanks. Our youth is taught from schoolbooks, written by foreigners, that our ancestors were destructive barbarians. The idea of „Every good turn deserves another” remained only a part of our Magyar fairy-tales.
Before I commit to paper my theory concerning the meaning of the Tatárlaka tablets, I bring you a little collection by Johannes Friedrich: Geschichte der Schrift (The History of Writing, Heidelberg 1966). This collection is very similar to the sign collection of Zsófia Torma and to the alphabet of our Székely-Magyar runic script. The phonetic value of these signs is debated in several places and they do not coincide with our characters but, since ours are the earliest, I believe that these letters were handed down by our ancestors during their teaching journeys. A lot of material can be collected from other sources concerning the history of writing:
For example, the trade-marks from Föhr-Island (Atlantic Ocean), the seals from the Indus Valley, the Byblos, Cypriot, Celtic, Phoenician, Punic, Ancient-Semitic, Samaritan, Aramaic, Palmirian, Pre-Arab, Numidian, Ancient Greek, Frigian, Lydian, Karian (Asia Minor), Etruscan, Reto, Germanic runic signs, Arsacian-Pehlevi, and Ancient-Turkish writings and the sixty-two letter phonetic Chinese alphabet which was introduced into the schools in 1918 and which is written from left to right.
It is very interesting that, out of the 26 letters of the writing -- which was called Iberian by Johannes Friedrich –22 are identical to the ancient Magyar runes even though the sound value is the same in only two signs.