Treasure of Nagyszentmiklós
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The Treasure of Sânnicolau Mare is a valuable collection of twenty-three 10th century gold vessels, found in Sânnicolau Mare, Romania, Transylvania in 1791. In 1791 this town was Nagyszentmiklos, in Torontál County, Hungary, that why it has the name Treasure of Nagyszentmiklós. The treasure was transferred to the capital of the Habsburg Kingdom, Vienna.
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[edit] Archaeological Background
- The sack of Tiflis by the Khazars, presumably in the spring of AD 629, .... [During the period of occupation] the Kagan sent out inspectors to supervise the manufacture of gold, silver, iron and copper products. ... [Thus] in the course of their incessant Caucasian campaigns during the seventh century, the Khazars made contact with a culture which had grown out of the Persian Sassanide tradition. Accordingly, the products of this culture spread to the people of the steppes not only by trade, but by means of plunder and even by taxation.... All the tracks that we have assiduously followed in the hope of discovering the origins of art in the tenth century have led us back to Khazar territory[1]
[edit] Hungarian and Bulgarian connections
The above is a remark of the scholar referring to the spectacular archaeological finds known as the "Treasure of Sânnicolau Mare". The treasure, consisting of twenty-three gold vessels, dating from the tenth century, was found in 1791 in the vicinity of the town of Sânnicolau Mare. Bartha[3] points out that the figure of the "victorious Prince" dragging a prisoner along by his hair (see figure on your left), and the mythological scene at the back of the golden jar, as well as the design of other ornamental objects, show close affinities with the finds in Novi Pazar in Bulgaria and in Khazar Sarkel. Both Hungarian and Bulgars archeology consider the connections of the tresury of Nagyszentmiklós to the migration of their ancients because these close affinities between archaeologic finds. Both were allied with Khazars for a period. The treasure, gives us at least some idea of the arts practised within the Bulgarian, Hungarian and Khazar Empire (the Middle-Asian, the Persian and the Byzantine influence is predominant, as one would expect) [4].
[edit] The Khazar relation
One school of Hungarian archaeologists maintains that the tenth century gold and silversmiths working in Hungary were actually Khazars.[6] Magyars migrated to Hungary in 896, led by the Megyer tribe, and some tribe of Khazars, known as the Kabars, settled with them in their new home. The Kabar-Khazars were known as skilled gold and silversmiths; the Magyars had old relations with other steppe people, too. The Khazar origin of some of the archaeological finds in Hungary is not implausible - as will become clearer in the light of the Magyar-Khazar nexus discussed elsewhere.[7]
[edit] The Persian relation
Khazar art, like that is believed to modelled on Persian-Sassanide art patterns. The Soviet archaeologist Bader[8] emphasized the role of the Khazars in the spreading of Persian-style silver-ware towards the north. Some of these finds may have been re-exported by the Khazars, true to their role as middlemen; others were imitations made in Khazar workshops - the ruins of which have been traced near the ancient Khazar fortress of Sarkel. The Swedish archaeologist T. J. Arne mentions ornamental plates, clasps and buckles found as far as Sweden, of Sassanide and Byzantine inspiration, manufactured in Khazaria or territories under their influence.[9] Thus Khazars, Hungarians and Bulgarians could have been intermediaries in the spreading of Persian-Sassanide art in Eastern Europe [10].
[edit] The Central Asian connections
Several elements of the Treasure of Nagyszentmiklos has Central Asian counterpart. One is the scene of Garuda bird's lifting up human body. This motif can be found all over Central Asia, India and Siberia. The motif of an animal drinking from the cup has also a general occurrence all over Eurasia from China, through Siberia, to Hungary. The occurrence of the nautilus shell in the set refers to relations to India, where this animal is living in the Indian Ocean. This relation goes back to the Heptalites, the white huns ruling between 4. and 5. Century, A. D. in Gujarat, Rajastan, India. This conncetion is explaining the relations with the conquesting Avar tribes in the 6. cemtury coming to the Carpathian Basin through the Bizantian capital, where they arrived at Easter of 567. [11].
[edit] References
- ^ Dunlop, D. M., "The Khazars" in The World History of the Jewish People, see Roth, ed.
- ^ Kells Portraits and Eastern Ornament by Harold Picton in The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, Vol. 73, No. 426 (Sep., 1938), pp. 121-123.
- ^ Bartha, A., A IX-X Századi Magyar Társadalom (Hungarian Society in the 9th-10th Centuries) (Budapest, 1968).
- ^ László Gy., Rácz I. (1986): A Nagyszentmiklósi kincs (Treasure of Nagyszentmiklos). Helikon, Budapest
- ^ Kells Portraits and Eastern Ornament by Harold Picton in The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, Vol. 73, No. 426 (Sep., 1938), pp. 121-123.
- ^ Dunlop, D. M., "Khazars" in Enc. Judaica, 1971-2 printing.
- ^ The Thirteenth Tribe by Arthur Koestler
- ^ Bader, O. H., Studies of the Kama Archaeological Expedition (in Russian, Kharkhov, 1953)
- ^ Arne, T. J., "La Su de et l'Orient", Archives d'Études Orientales, 8º. v.8, Upsala, 1914.
- ^ Bálint Cs. (2005): A nagyszentmiklósi kincs. (Treasure of Nagyszentmiklos). Varia Archaeologica Hungarica c. series, XVIa, Budapest
- ^ Bálint Cs. (2000): Der Schatz von Nagyszentmiklós in der Bulgarischen Archäologischen Forschung. = Acta Archaeologica Academiae Hungaricae, 51. 1999/2000. 1-4. 429-438
