Klára Friedrich
THE MYSTERY OF TATÁRLAKA
Part 8.
Photograph by Papp Attila
After the last Ice Age, approximately 8-9000 years ago, our ancestors developed a pictographic method for people who did not yet read, on our planet. Researchers call these -- in connection with the Tatárlaka find -- Sumerian pictographs. This is inaccurate because we know that the pictographs found in Mesopotamia are younger than the ones in the Carpathian Basin, so it is more accurate to call them Carpathian Basin pictographs.
These pictographs were created by our ancestors because the illiterate people needed a tool of expression, which could be used universally and which was as universal as the traffic signs today. Most of the people on Earth were able to understand these since their fragments can be found everywhere among the relics of the New Stone-Age.
During the Intermediary Stone Age and the Neolithic the density of the population was very low and this helped the work of the „teachers”. With these pictographic notes, our ancestors were able to create for their “pupils”, things to remember and the „pupils” were able to do the same for themselves, for their companions and their „teachers”. Since our ancestors distributed this pictographic system, with which they prepared the way for true writing, they began in undisclosed antiquity to prepare the variations of their 30 or 32 letter alphabets for the „interested” public and to distribute them 5-6000 years ago.
These variations were prepared in the territory of today’s Tordos, on the banks of the river Maros, where their workshop was found, as Zsófia Torma’s disks – to which number over ten thousand pieces – attest (and how many more may still be in the ground!!!)
With these ABC variations, they went on the road again to teach in the same way as they did with their pictographs. There were people who came to the Carpathian Basin, to learn these letters. We know from Ferenc Kállay (Pogány magyarok vallása – translation: The Religion of the Pagan Magyars, Hasonmás edition, Püski publ. 1961), that the Pelazgians took 16 Scythian letters to Greece. So our ancestors’ teaching activity continued during the Scythian age too.)
They preserved the sound value of the ancient, original 30 or 32 set of characters for their descendants in the Carpathian Basin. These, together with their phonetic value remained intact only here. The German runic script attests to this. Either the Scythians or the Huns gave them these letters to the Germans, so that out of the 24 German runic signs, 13 are identical in form with the Székely-Magyar letters; their sound-value, on the other hand, is completely different. In the same way, in the Greek alphabet (which consists of 23 letters) l2 are the same in form as the Magyar runic letters but only the letter A corresponds to the runic in sound value.
The ancestors of the Hungarians created the variations of letters and modes of writing with fantastic ingenuity and then, with great unselfishness, gave them away, with surely no little difficulties. Each alphabet that was given away contained more or less elements of the 30 or 32 letter alphabet of the Carpathian Basin and this refers to their origin. But the full model comes together only within the Magyar Runic Script and the sound values attached to the characters. This we call today the Székely-Magyar Runic Script. This is an important proof of the fact that our Magyar ancestors always lived here in the Carpathian Basin from times immemorial and it is, for this reason, that we can call this writing: Our Letter of Ownership to the Carpathian Basin. That the Magyar is the oldest language of the world was already proposed in the 19th century by the historian, and philologist Professor István Horváth and by Mihály Táncsis politician and writer. The experts of the Tamana theory acknowledge this, along with Adorján Magyar, ethnographer and Professor Ferenc Badiny/Jós, Sumerologist.
We did not have the opportunity to examine the real tablets and to measure them, for the reasons we already stated earlier. The measurements of the accurate copies of the Kolozsvár Museum where we bought them are the following: the diameter of the disk is 5.5 cm., its thickness is 1.5 cm. The width of the rectangular tablet with the hole is 5.5 cm., its height 2.5 cm. and its thickness 0.5 cm. The tablet with the animal figure which is not pierced is 4.7 cm. wide, 3.0 cm. high, and 0.8 cm. thick. If we go back to page 65 (in the original work Kőbe-fába) we can see that the three measurements differ greatly from one another and, because we have to suppose that both Vlassza and the French researcher, Masson, were able to measure a few small objects we can be sure that they did not hold the same tablets in their hands. So we cannot know whether the original tablets will come back or not to the Museum at the end of the examinations in Germany.
The weight of the copied disk is 70 grams. The data of Vlassza and Masson indicate a thicker disk, which may have easily reached a weight of 100 grams. I tried my disk copy on a string. Because of its weight I was only able to stand or lie down. When walking or moving it dealt a heavy blow to the chest. For this reason, it could not have been worn, either during a ceremony or as a magic amulet or decoration. This is also supported by the writing on it, which described the last section of the life of our ancestor during the Neolithic. Of our 30 or 32 letter alphabet there are four letters visible. The disk itself and the central cross together form the letter F of the Székely-Magyar Runic Script, which represents our planet Earth (Föld). In our ancient belief system, according to Arnold Ipoly (Magyar Mythológia – Reprint, Európa Publ. 1987.), it is a talisman against devils and witches. With this cross, Our ancestors wanted to wish the deceased a quiet rest.
The story begins with the little V sign in the upper left quadrant of the disk, which is a Sun symbol, signifying the first rays of the Sun in the East and it also means the beginning.
The next is the letter Z of the runic script, the beginning letter of her family name, the name of her clan, of the family where she belonged. The Hungarians write their family names first because, by this, they give respect to their forebears and their families. At the same time, this also signals that the family is more important than the individual and they don’t push themselves forward selfishly.
The following sign is the letter NY of the runic script, the beginning sound of the deceased’s first name. There is no Christian name in the Judeo-Christian calendar which begins with NY, since the impoverished Latin alphabet has no sounds for 13 Magyar sounds, among them the NY sound. There was no Latin letter for NY when we were forced to use the Latin alphabet. So I turned to Csanád Szegedi’s book: A magyar eredetű keresztnevek teljes tára (The Complete Collection of Magyar First Names, Budapest 2002.), where I found 25 names beginning with the sound NY. Of course it is not certain that any of these was the name of our ancestor.
The lower left quadrant witnesses a sad happening. It describes how the lady with the Z. NY. monogram died. She was killed by two arrows. Under the arrows, the fourth runic sign is GY, the beginning sound of the name of the person or people who caused her death upon her.
The disk’s upper quadrant is a kind of obituary. As we have seen, the comb-like drawing means rain. On our disk it means that the people cried for the beloved person who died, „their tears ran like rain”. Following the tear expression, the drawings under the comb-like sign refer to the mourners, the bigger ones probably mean her children, the smaller ones her grandchildren.
On the lower right quarter of the disk there is a fire-place and the image of the fire can be seen, which means here that the deceased was cremated. On the right side, a Sun and Moon altar is standing, in front of it the Táltos[1] and the family and members of the community say farewell to our ancient mother. The altar and the Sun, which rests upon the crescent Moon, shows us a picture of the departing soul waving back to us or blessing us with uplifted arms. A similar figure can be seen at the time of the full moon, also in the lower right quadrant of the Moon. So the disk contains four rovás letters, the other signs are part of the pictographic system of the Carpathian Basin. The goal of our ancestors was that, when anyone, at any time finds these grave goods they will be able to understand its message.
On the other tablet with a drilled hole, they left a description for later generations, telling us how the deceased spent her life. The two little V signs are in the middle column and that is the beginning. There is picture of a plant and the head of a horse, so she spent her life in tending plants and mainly in horse-husbandry. On the upper part of the left side we find three arrows and the mixed outlines of several prone animals. From this one can deduce that, not only was she killed but her animals were also killed by arrows. We see in the lower left corner a letter T of the runic script or the head of a colt, divided with two lines. If this is a letter T, then it is the beginning letter of the name of a survivor. The storage pot beside her indicates a diligent, frugal person. The unbroken vessel and the little colt show that, even if it was late, help did come and at least these could be saved.
They drew the picture of a funerary urn, into which they placed the bones, which are represented above it with two lines and they also placed into it an object, similar in form to the K letter of the runic script. Probably this represents the tablet, which they placed into the urn. On this there is a Carpathian Basin pictograph and possibly runic letter.
The third tablet with the animal figure also refers to the attack, not on the deceased person but on her people. The disk and the tablet with the drilled hole were placed onto the neck of our ancient mother during the funeral, because they described her. Only the string turned to ashes. The third tablet was not drilled through. This means that it was not hung on the neck of the deceased. We learn from this tablet that our ancient mother was a peaceful member of her community, grew plants, raised animals, had her own script and was literate. Through her pictographs, she kept in contact with illiterate communities and taught them. She was a diligent and frugal member of her community. It was this community which was attacked by the devilish being pictured on the left side of the Tree of Life, which tried to destroy the ancestors of the Hungarians and chase them away from their Tree of Life, that is, from their land. All this took place 7-8000 years ago in Erdély (Transylvania), but if we look back to our past, all this repeats itself in our history. Our ancestral mother waves back encouragingly and blesses us from the lower right quadrant of the disk.
Two more small rays of hope: a history book for 5th. graders was published by the Gyula László Historical and Cultural Association, Budapest, 2004 and edited by Kornél Bakay. On page 43, our disk can be seen. This publication has great merits but we have to mention that the runic alphabet in it does not follow tradition; it is faulty and ugly. The school book also shows, in changed form, the Nicholsburg alphabet which was found in 1933, in Bartholomeus Angelicus’ book entitled: De proprietate rerum, published in 1483.
The second ray of hope is that I received a slide from Béla Gondos, in August of 2004, where the monument of Alsó-Tatárlaka is visible with the three little tablets on it. So maybe our first written relic, which contains a text with faultless sequence of thoughts, will not be forgotten.
József Barta, who published this work, as he was looking for a picture of Zsófia Torma on the Internet (www. prehistory. it/ftp/tartaria_tablets_) stumbled on the study of the Italian scholar, Marco Merlini: Milady Tartaria and the Riddle of Dating the Tartaria Tablets. Merlini traveled to Transylvania in October, 2003, where he reexamined these finds in Rumanaia. On the basis of this examination, the Anthropological Research Center of the Rumanian Academy of Science, stated that the bones were those of an old woman. They attributed to this lady, who lived 7000-8000 years ago, certain sicknesses. It is not surprising for this Institute to state such things when they are studying the ancient ancestors of the Hungarians. I will not taint the pages of our book by naming the sicknesses in these statements.
According to Merlini, the results of the C14 examination brings up the question as to why Vlassza, after his excavation, again fired the tablets, but did not record how long or at what temperature. Most interesting is the fact that the Italian researcher mentions a few opinions of other scholars, according to whom Vlassza, the archeologist of the Museum of Kolozsvár, was able to have access to the relics of the collection of Zsófia Torma, which were displayed in the basement, and he took from this collection certain artifacts, which he himself placed in the grave and which became known as the Tatarlaka finds.