DUMUZI

The Way of the Hosts – The Legend of Csaba

In Hungarian mythology the youngest son of Attila (Etele) was called Csaba, which in Turkic and old Hungarian also meant shepherd, the “shepherd of the people”. This legend is about the mythical guardianship he symbolizes for the people of Transylvanian Hungarians who treat him as their ancestor and guardian “angel” in a loosely translated sense. The Transylvanian-Hungarian anthem even calls to him for his protection.

After the death of Attila in 453AD, his elder son Aladár, rushed to take the reins of government. The Germanic chiefs and their allies were able to surprise and kill him before he reached his destination. His brothers, scattered over the country, were pushed out by the rebellion of the Gepids, Sverves and Visigoths (Germanic tribes). Dengezik ruled from the area of the Don and Dniper rivers, a still large Hun Empire, constantly fighting the Gepids, Goths and Byzantium (Eastern Roman Empire). In 469 he died in battle. The Hun nations however continued in this region.

Attila’s youngest son Chaba (historic Irnak), whose mother was the daughter of the Byzanteen general Honorius, relinquished the Carpathian basin with his depleted nation, to rejoin his eastern relations. They returned to strengthen themselves, so they may be strong enough to return and also to cleanse Attila’s holy sword in the waves of the circular sea, to restore it’s magical powers.

At the border territory of Transylvania, he left 3,000 young warriors under the leadership Örmedzur, to keep guard over the land. These men were the ancestors of the Seklers. (Segel=border guard). The field of Chigle was their home, which today is the country of Csík in Transylvania. Before their separation Chaba prayed to their god Damacsek, that whenever his people were in trouble the forces of nature shall warn him, and he will return to protect them, even from the ends of the earth. The message carriers of earth, water, air, and fire will reach him wherever he might be.

They barely reached the other side of the Carpathian mountains, before the neighbors of the Sekel rose against them. The earth began to tremble and the crowns of the pine trees shake and sent the news to the departing men of the imminent danger of their brothers. So a party of their armies returned and scattered their enemies.

One year latter the residents of the valley again became jelous of the tranquility of the Sekel’s and they threatened them with their armies. The stream ran screaming into the river, the river to the sea, carrying the message for help, which arrived in time and saved them. Three years later new nations surrounded the Sekel, and it soon became a contest of life and death. The breeze would not be fast enough to reach their kinsmen, staying at this time among kinsmen in Greece, but sitting on the wings of the windstorm or the plains, it found them far in the southwest and for the third time helped them to achieve victor over their enemies.

After a while, Chaba and his people left Greece and returned to Scythia. He took with him his mother who he presented to the nobility of Scythia. The Hun nobility looked down on him for he was not a pure noble Hun blood and even more so after he married a Choresmian woman. His clan grew into a tribe in Scythia and is believed to be the Aba clan which returned to Hungary with Arpad’s Magyar confederacy.

Meanwhile in Transylvania, a long time elapsed, the young saplings became giant old trees, the weapons of the young warriors were handed down to their grandchildren. From the boarder guards a new nation developed. From the border lands a new country developed, which were led by their chiefs, the Rabon-bán. (Bán is marsgrave in Hungarian) It was a long time before new neighbors came to being who dared to threaten them. This however did not take forever to happen and again a tremendous army arose and attacked the Sekels, who in time began to waiver. But the traveling star of the Sekel’s did not sleep, remembering the promises to the gods, carried their message in burning light from the earth to the halls of heaven, to the long dead hero Chaba. Down below, the last of the battles was in preparation, with a handful of the survivors facing the enemy, when all at once the drumbeat of the hooves of their steeds and the clatter of arms and armor was heard from above, and the brilliant starry army paraded in the heavens above. The brothers, who in times of danger returned three times in the past, have again returned in just a nick of time again.

Like silent ghosts in a long line they crossed the heavens and flew down to earth, where the snow capped mountains reach to the sky. No one could escape the ones who cannot be wounded. Panic struck the sea of attackers and they fled in all directions. Since then the Sekel has been at guard on the frontier and soon perhaps this trust will no longer be required… (Through most of Hungarian history their special charge was boarder-guardsmen.) The path of the shining ghostly army, on which they came and went, became permanent and unremoveable from the dome of heaven, caused by the hooves of their horses, which are visible during midnight as the milky strip shinning in the sky. This strip of light, the “Way of the Souls” from thereafter we called the “way of the hosts”, reminding us of Chaba and his heroic father Attila.

When, under the leadership of Arpad, the Magyar brother nation appeared in the east, to take over the inheritance of Attila, they immediately made alliance with them. They were kept in their tasks as boarder guards for the new nation, with special priviledges and their own lands and leaders. They have never waivered in their duties to the present, as Rumanians and Russians have taken their lands, they are still there.

Definitions and comparisons of the legend and its names and terms:

Attila’s son Dengezik means “sea storm” in Cuman Turkic.

Attila’s son Aladár supposedly is from the Alanic language meaning centurion. They were one of the allied people of the Huns, of Indo European origin (Iranic language). In Hungarian legends they are also the wives of the Scythian men of the ancestors of the Huns and Magyars indicating a close family relationship. They are credited in transferring the Hun and north Messopotamian sword cult to early England as Excalibur and King Arthur legends, since they were recruited from Pannonia by the Romans, including their sword smithing tribe known as caliburnus. The sword in the rock was a north Messopotamian motif originating from the Scythians who are also North Messopotamian in origin who eventually were conquered by the Iranian Sauramatians. “black cloaks”.

The explanation of Attila and fejEDE-lem (ruler)

The name Attila as written today is completely in a wrong form, based on western European spelling rather than old Hungarian. That is why it’s explanation from German is also totally wrong and illogical.

The Ural-Altaic explanation of Attila’s name

Ete-le =old Hungarian for Attila. The meaning can be easily explained using old FinnoUgrian as well as Altaic languages to which the Huns belonged. Proto Uralic *ede = lead, front becoming in Hungarian elö due to a common *D’ > L change. Proto Altaic *ed-er=lead man, leader with an identical root to Uralic & FinnUgor. That is why some people claim that there was an earlier Ural-Altaic language family to which, the eastern Altaic and western Uralic branch of languages descended from. Hungarian belonged to an ancient western branch with very little eastern traits among Hungarian racial types except of course the allied Turkic groups. These two forms of the word are recreations based on descendant languages in both groups and as such are many thousand years old — at least 8,000 years old, which coincides with the great flood of the Black Sea which is recounted by the Sumerian myth of Gilgamesh. There were other languages which also have this word in new word of derivation which I will now introduce.

Old Hungarian fej-EDE-lem = ruler, archaic term for king. fej=chief/head/main while the suffix lem is a generic suffix like the English -ship suffix. Also in Turkic “lem” and in Sumerian it’s “-nam”. Hurrian is an ancient northern Messopotamian language of the earliest non Semitic people of North Messopotamia, who were there long before the Semites who came from Arabia and north Africa. The land and aboriginals of the area were also called Subar, Supar, etc by many ancient languages of Messopotamia. A name which one of Arpad’s sons in Byzantium also claimed as the original name of his people. Whether this meant just the Magyar clan or all Hungarian tribes is unknown. Up to the 15th century there was a county of Madzsar Agadzor in Armenia preserving their memory along with legends of their origin from Nimrod’s son Sevortik. (see the New Arab Encyclopedia) Egyptian literature also claimed all of north Messopotamia to be designated as MAGAR, while Messopotamians called it SUPAR. (Wallace Budge, “an Hyeroglyphic Dictionary”-see the geographic index in volume 2.)

AD-AL =king in Hurrian, AL can also mean lord in Hurrian but more likely just a suffix here. IURI =lord in Hurrian (UR in Hungarian, but also in FinnoUgrian for the lead male!) BARI =kingdom in Hurrian, which in Hungarian is BIRO-DA-LOM, meaning empire. The same term BAR in Sumerian means king, ruler. TARSHUA=all the people in Hurrian, which in Hungarian TARSHA-SAG=society using a suffix SHAG in Hungarian for the generalization found also in Hurrian as SHA where the G ending was dropped. In Sumerian SHAG =head, high just as in Ugrian and it also is used to designate people in general. For example SAG-GIG=black heads, refers to the common people. Refer to the works of Speiser on Hurrian/Subarian language research.

It is especially in the mythology and art of the Hurrians where we find the prominent place of the tree of life which in some art forms is the prototype of the 8th century Hungarian palmette style found on many metal ornaments and which is mistakenly atributed to Iranian influence. The fact is that much of Iranian art and building forms originate from the Hurrians which have been in north Messopotamia well before 3,000 BC. Their lands coincides with the Biblical land of Mount Ararat, from whence the great rivers of Messopotamia originate. This is also called the land of Eden in the Bible although the Sumerian term EDEN means plains not mountains.

Similarly southern Messopotamia originally was also non Semitic, and the main culture there which we now call Sumerian, whose origin was also from the north, from around the Black Sea area. However the so called Sumerians never called themselves or their language by this term since their chief tongue was called EMEGIR and their country was called KIENGI. The term UR in their language means hero, giant and also guard. Hungarian ÖR=guard, ORI-as=giant. Possibly linked to ÖR-medzur. MEDZUR actually sound like an archaic form of Madzar=Magyar the ruling/kingly tribe found amongst eastern Scythians also.

And now for the main point to this long winded introduction to ancient history;

The legend of Csaba (Chaba) the shepherd and guardian of the people is originally written down in Sumerian, though this does not prove it’s Sumerian origin, for it could be much older and be but a story brought by the Sumerians from their original northern home beyond the Caucasus. See the National Geographic underwater expeditions in the Black Sea, researching the biblical or Sumerian legend of the Flood.

Chaba or SEB was a guardian and shepherd also in Turkic and Hungarian, CHOBAN, Sumerian �ib-ad = shepherd, pasture; but he was a semi-divine person who was the husband of the Sumerian goddess INANA who every fall is taken down into hell causing the death of vegetation and every spring is released to cause the rebirth of nature. No his name has nothing in common with the English Sheep-herder since the root word is not sheep. This is a good example of a coincidence. His most commonly known name is the later Messopotamian TAMUZ or the earlier Sumerian DAMUZIG the person to whom Chaba prayed to in the written account of the old Transylvanian Chronicle as DAMACSEK.

The old Hungarian language also has an unusual sound change where the intervocalic M often changes to V, in the root word. There are ample evidence of this in many examples compared to the other FinnoUgrian langauges and Sumerian. Similarly here the TAMUZ name changed to TAVASZ meaning Spring time, the rebirth of nature/plants etc. This rebirth was also symbolized by the ancient custom of preparing Easter eggs by Hungarians, Ob-Ugrians, Iranians, Huns etc. Hun painted eggs have been found in Hun graves in Hungary! I have examples. The act of watering the ladies was also to make them fertile symbolically.

There is another aspect of the legend of Chaba from yet another northern source. The legend of the Khorezmian Scythians Chaba was also symbolized as the guardian semi divine horseman “Sabasios” or “Sievus” the divine ancestor of Chorezm, often shown on their seals and art. (S.P. Tolstov, Ancient Chorezm- in Russian & Hungarian) Naturally here we are only assosciating a common name to Chaba and not the same person. Chorezmia was founded also by the Hurrians “churri”.

Remember that Chaba married a Chorezmian woman in the legend. There is another distant corroboration to this story from as far away as India where there are stories of Scythians of the Chaba tribe of Chorezm since some of them also went to India.

by Fredi Hamori