The Hyborian Age is a fictional period within the artificial mythology created by Robert E. Howard, in which the sword and sorcery tales of Conan the Barbarian are set.
The word "Hyborian" is a transliterated contraction by Howard of the Ancient Greek "hyperborean", referring to a "barbaric dweller beyond the boreas (north wind)."[1] Howard stated that the geographical setting of the Hyborian Age is that of our earth, but in a fictional version of a period in the past, c. Upper Paleolithic (40,000 to 10,000 BC).[2]
The reasons behind the invention of the Hyborian Age were perhaps commercial: Howard had an intense love for history and historical dramas; however, at the same time, he recognized the difficulties and the time-consuming research needed in maintaining historical accuracy. By conceiving a timeless setting — a vanished age — and by carefully choosing names that resembled our past history, Howard avoided the problem of historical anachronisms and the need for lengthy exposition.[3]
Although he is not represented in Howard's library, nor alluded to in his papers and correspondence, there is a strong likelihood that Howard's conception of the Hyborian Age originated in Thomas Bulfinch's The Outline of Mythology (1913), acting as a catalyst that enabled Howard to "coalesce into a coherent whole his literary aspirations and the strong physical, autobiographical elements underlying the creation of Conan."[3]
In Howard's artificial legendarium, the Hyborian Age is chronologically situated between two other eras: "The Pre-Cataclysmic Age" of Kull (c. Upper Paleolithic 20,000 BC) and the onslaught of the Picts (c. 9500 BC).[2] According to "The Phoenix on the Sword", the adventures of Conan take place "...Between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the Sons of Aryas..."[4]
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Howard explained the origins and history of Aquilonia and its people in his essay "The Hyborian Age". The civilizations of Thuria, Lemuria and Atlantis, mentioned in his series about Kull, all fell to a cataclysm only a few centuries after the reign of the Valusian King.
According to the essay, at the time of this cataclysm a group of primitive humans were at a technological level hardly above the Neanderthal. They fled to the Northern areas of what was left of the Thurian continent to escape the destruction. They discovered the areas to be safe but covered with snow and already inhabited by a race of carnivorous apes. The apes were large with white fur and apparently native to their land. The stone age invaders engaged in a territorial war with them and eventually managed to drive them off, past the Arctic Circle. Believing their enemies fated to perish and no longer interested in them, the recently arrived group adapted to their new, harsh environment and its population started to increase.
One thousand five hundred years later, the descendants of this initial group were called "Hyborians". They were named after their highest ranking god deity, Bori. (Howard apparently based this god on Búri, first god in Norse mythology, father of Borr and through him grandfather of Odin, Vili and Ve). The essay mentions that Bori had actually been a great tribal chief of their past who had undergone deification. Their oral tradition remembered him as their leader during their initial migration to the north though the antiquity of this man had been exaggerated.
By this point the various related but independent Hyborian tribes had spread throughout the northern regions of their area of the world. Some of them were already migrating south at a "leisurely" pace in search of new areas in which to settle. The Hyborians had yet to encounter other cultural groups but engaged in wars against each other. Howard describes them as a powerful and warlike race with the average individual being tall, tawny-haired and gray-eyed. Culturally they were already accomplished artists and poets. Most of the tribes still relied on hunting for their nourishment. Their southern offshoots however had been practicing animal husbandry on cattle for a number of centuries.
The only exception to their long isolation from other cultural groups came due to the actions of a lone adventurer, unnamed in the essay. He had traveled past the Arctic Circle and returned with news that their old adversaries, the apes, were not in fact annihilated. They had instead evolved into apemen and according to his description were by then numerous. He believed they were quickly evolving to human status and would pose a threat to the Hyborians in the future. He attempted to recruit a significant military force to campaign against them. But most Hyborians were not convinced by his tales and at last only a small group of foolhardy youths followed his campaign. None of them returned.
With the population of the Hyborian tribes continuing to increase, the need for new lands also increased. The Hyborians started expanding outside their familiar territories, beginning a new age of wanderings and conquests. For five hundred years the Hyborians spread towards the South and the West of their nameless continent.
They encountered other tribal groups for the first time in millennia. They conquered many smaller clans of various origins. The survivors of the defeated clans merged with their conquerors, passing on their racial traits to new generations of Hyborians. The mixed-blooded Hyborian tribes were in turn forced to defend their new territories from pure blooded Hyborian tribes which followed the same paths of migration. Often the new invaders would wipe away the defenders before absorbing them, resulting in a tangled web of Hyborian tribes and nations with varying ancestral elements within their bloodlines.
The first organized Hyborian kingdom to emerge was Hyperborea. The tribe that established it entered their Neolithic age by learning to erect buildings in stone, largely for fortification. These nomads lived in tents made out of the hides of horses, but soon abandoned them in favor of their first crude but durable stone houses. They permanently settled in fortified settlements and developed cyclopean masonry to further fortify their defensive walls.
The Hyperboreans were by then the most advanced of the Hyborian tribes and set out to expand their kingdom by attacking their backwards neighbors. Tribes who defended their territories lost them and were forced to migrate elsewhere. Others fled the path of Hyperborean expansion before ever engaging them in war. Meanwhile the "apemen" of the Arctic Circle emerged as a new race of light-haired and tall humans. They started their own migration to the south, displacing the northernmost of the Hyborian tribes.
For the next thousand years the warlike Hyborian nations advanced to become the rulers of the Western areas of the nameless continent. They encountered the Picts and forced them to limit themselves to the western wastelands which would come to be known as the "Pictish Wilderness". Following the example of their Hyperborean cousins, other Hyborians started to settle down and create their own kingdoms.
The southernmost of the early ones was Koth which was established north of the lands of Shem and soon started extending its cultural influence over the southern shepherds. Just south of the Pictish Wilderness was the fertile valley known as "Zing". The wandering Hyborian tribe which conquered them found other people already settled there. They included a nameless farming nation related to the people of the Shem and a warlike Pictish tribe who had previously conquered them. They established the kingdom of Zingara and absorbed the defeated elements into their tribe. Hyborians, Picts and the unnamed kin of the Shemites would merge into a nation calling themselves Zingarans.
On the other hand at the north of the continent, the fair haired invaders from the Arctic Circle had grown in numbers and power. They continued their expansion south while in turn displacing defeated Hyborians to the south. Even Hyperborea was conquered by one of these barbarian tribes. But the conquerors here decided to maintain the kingdom with its old name, merged with the defeated Hyperboreans and adopted elements of Hyborian culture. The continuing wars and migrations would keep the state of the other areas of the continent for another five hundred years.
The Hyborian Age was devised by author Robert E. Howard as the post-Atlantean setting of his Conan the Cimmerian stories, designed to fit in with Howard's previous and lesser known tales of Kull, which were set in the Thurian Age at the time of Atlantis. The name "Hyborian" is a contraction of the Greek concept of the land of "Hyperborea", literally "Beyond the North Wind". This was a mythical place far to the north that was not cold and where things did not age.
Howard's Hyborian epoch, described in his essay The Hyborian Age (most recently republished by Del Rey in The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian in 2003), is a mythical time before any civilization known to anthropologists. Its setting is Europe and North Africa (with occasional references to Asia and other continents; e.g. Mayapan, representing the American continent) – with some geological changes.
On a map Howard drew conceptualizing the Hyborian Age, his vision of the Mediterranean Sea is also dry. The Nile, which he re-named the River Styx, takes a westward turn at right angles just beyond the Nile Delta, plowing through the mountains so as to be able to reach the Straits of Gibraltar. Although his Black Sea is also dry, his Caspian Sea, which he renames the Vilayet Sea, extends northward to reach the Arctic Ocean, so as to provide a barrier to encapsulate the settings of his stories. Not only are his Baltic Sea and English Channel dry, but most of the North Sea and a vast region to the west, easily including Ireland, are too. Meanwhile, the west coast of Africa on his map lies beneath the sea. There are also a few islands, reminiscent of the Azores.
In his fantasy setting of the Hyborian Age, Howard created imaginary kingdoms to which he gave names from a variety of mythological and historical sources. Khitai is his version of China, lying far to the East, Corinthia is his name for a Hellenistic civilization, a name derived from the city of Corinth and reminiscent of the imperial fiefdom of Carinthia in the Middle Ages. Howard imagines the Hyborian Picts to occupy a large area to the northwest. The probable intended correspondences are listed below; notice that the correspondences are sometimes very generalized, and are portrayed by ahistorical stereotypes. Most of these correspondences are drawn from "Hyborian Names", an appendix to Conan the Swordsman by L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter.[5]
| Kingdom, Region, or Ethnic Group | Correspondence(s) |
|---|---|
| Acheron | A fallen kingdom corresponding to the Roman Empire. Its territory covered Aquilonia, Nemedia, and Argos. In Greek mythology, Acheron was one of the four rivers of Hades (cf. "Stygia"). |
| Afghulistan | Afghanistan. Afghulistan (sometimes Ghulistan) is the common name of the habitat of different tribes in the Himelian mountains. The name itself is a mixture of the historical names of Gulistan and Afghanistan. |
| Alkmeenon | Delphi. Its name derives from the Alcmaeonidae, who funded the construction the Temple of Apollo in Delphi, from which the oracle operated. |
| Amazon | Mentioned in Robert E. Howard's "Hyborian Age" essay, the kingdom of the Amazons refers to various legends of Greek Amazons, or more specifically to the Dahomey Amazons. In classical legend, Amazonia was a nation of warrior women in Asia Minor and North Africa. The legend may be based upon the Sarmatians, a nomadic Iranian tribe of the Kuban, whose women were required to slay an enemy before they might marry. |
| Aquilonia | France in the Middle Ages and to a certain extent embodying many aspects of the Roman Empire with occasional hints of England. The name is borrowed from Aquilonia, a city of Southern Italy, between modern Venosa and Benevento; it is also an ancient name of Quimper, and resembles that of Aquitaine, a French region ruled by England for a long portion of the Middle Ages. The name is derived from Latin aquilo(n–), "north wind". |
| Argos | Various seafaring traders of the Mediterranean Sea. The name comes from the Argo, ship of the Argonauts; or perhaps from the city of Argos, Peloponnesos, reputedly the oldest city in Greece, situated at the head of the Gulf of Argolis near modern Nafplion. Also hints of Italy in regards to the indigenous population's appearance, names and culture. Howard labels the populace of his Argos as "Argosseans", whereas the folk of the historical Argos are known as "Argives". In Hyborian Age cartography, Argos takes on the shape of a "shoe" in its border boundaries as compared to Italy appearing as a "boot". The coastal city of Massantia derives its name from Massalia, the name given to Marseilles by its Greek founders. |
| Asgard | Dark Age Scandinavia. (Ásgard is the home of the Æsir in Norse mythology). |
| Barachan Islands | The Caribbean Islands. The pirate town of Tortage takes its name from Tortuga. |
| Border Kingdoms | German Baltic Sea coast. A lawless place full of savages, Conan once traveled through the Border Kingdom on his way to Nemedia. He befriended Mar the Piper and the King of the Border Kingdoms. He helped save the kingdom before returning to his quest to reach Nemedia. |
| Bossonian Marches (Aquilonia) | Wales, with an overlay of colonial-era North America. Possibly from Bossiney, a former parliamentary borough in Cornwall, South West England, which included Tintagel Castle, connected with the Matter of Britain. |
| Brythunia | The continental homelands of the Angles and Saxons who invaded Great Britain, which is the origin of the name, though the civilization depicted is similar to that of medieval Poland, Lithuania, Latvia. Semantically, the name Brythunia is from the Welsh Brython, "Briton", derived from the same root as the Latin Brito, Britannia. |
| Cimmeria | While Howard wrote that there was a continental shift after Conan's time, some scholars believed that the Gaelic regions that are supposed to encompass the British Isles was the geographical place of Cimmeria even though ostensibly it can also be argued from Howard's map of the Hyborian Age that it's a part of North America that is shared with the Picts. Howard states in The Hyborian Age that "the Gaels, ancestors of the Irish and Highland Scots, descended from pure-blooded Cimmerian clans." The name is based on that of Cimmeria, which was once hypothesized to be the homeland of the Celtic Cymric tribe, due to the word's similarity to the names of Celtic areas such as Cymru (the Welsh word for Wales), Cumbria, etc. Conan, a Cimmerian, has an Irish name, as do the Cimmerian gods Crom, Lir and Manannán mac Lir (gods of the sea; the latter two mentioned in Xuthal of the Dusk) |
| Conajohara (Aquilonia) | Perhaps the name is based on the Conestoga wagons used by American settlers; the name's ending may come from Guadelajara or similar place names occurring in North America. |
| Corinthia | Ancient Greece. From Corinth (Korinthos), a rich city in Classical Greece. Possibly suggested to Howard by the Epistles to the Corinthians, or by the region of Carinthia. |
| Darfar | Howard derived this name from the region of Darfur, Sudan, in north-central Africa. Darfur is an Arabic language name meaning "abode (dar) of the Fur", the dominant people of the area. In changing the name to Darfar, Howard unwittingly changed the Arabic meaning to "the abode of mice". The original Darfur is now the westernmost part of the Republic of the Sudan. |
| Gunderland (Aquilonia) | The Netherlands, Probably derived from Gelderland a province in The Netherlands; perhaps Germany or ancient Burgundy. Probably from Gunther (Gundicar) , King of Burgundy or Gunderic, King of the Vandals. |
| Hyperborea | Finland, Russia and the Baltic countries (Hyperborea was a land in "outermost north" according to Greek historian Herodotus. Howard's Hyperborea is described as the first Hyborian kingdom, "which had its beginning in a crude fortress of boulders heaped to repel tribal attack". |
| Hyrkania | Mongolia, Hyrcania. In classical geography, a region southeast of the Caspian Sea or Hyrcanian Sea corresponding to the Iranian provinces of Golestan, Mazandaran and Gilan. The name is Greek for the Old Persian Varkana, one of the Achaemenid Empire satrapies, and survives in the name of the river Gorgan. The original meaning may have been "wolf land". In Iranian legend, Hyrcania was remarkable for its wizards, demons, wolves, spirits, witches and vampires. |
| Iranistan | An eastern land corresponding to modern Iran. Historically, the name of the country is derived from the Iran + the Persian istan, estan, "country". |
| Kambuja/Kambulja | The original name of Cambodia, now Kampuchea. |
| Keshan | The name comes from the "Kesh", the Egyptian name for Nubia. |
| Khauran | The name perhaps derives from the Hauran region of Syria. |
| Khitai | China. The name is derived from the English word "Cathay" and Marco Polo's Cathay (kăthā'), derived from the word Khitan and/or Khitai, a Mongolian people who conquered northern China and founded the Liao dynasty (937–1125), and/or "Khitan", a medieval Tartar word for China. Also, the Kara-Khitai were a prominent tribe amongst Mongol steppe tribes. In Russian and other eastern European languages China is called Khitai. |
| Khoraja | The Kingdom of Jerusalem and possibly the associated Principality of Antioch, County of Edessa and County of Tripoli, collectively known as Outremer. The name itself was inspired by the references of Sax Rohmer to the fictional city of Khorassa in The Mask of Fu Manchu novel. |
| Kosala | From the ancient Indo-Aryan kingdom of Kosala, corresponding roughly in area with the region of Oudh. |
| Kozaki | Semi-barbaric steppe-dwelling raiders analogous to the Cossacks. |
| Koth | From the ancient Hittites (the name Koth may come from the fact that the Hittites are called in the Bible the children of Heth, and the Egyptians called their land Kheta); The Kothian capital of Khorshemish corresponds to the Hittite capital of Carchemish. Perhaps from The Sign of Koth in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath by H. P. Lovecraft. There is a town of Koth in Gujarat, India, but the connection is doubtful. Howard also used the same name in his interplanetary novel Almuric. |
| Kusan | Probably from the Kushan Empire. |
| Kush | From the kingdom of Kush, Nubia, North Africa. |
| Meru | Tibet. In Hindu mythology, Meru is the sacred mountain upon which the gods dwell. NOTE: Meru is not an original Hyborian Age country and was created by L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter. |
| Nemedia | The Germanic Holy Roman Empire. Nemedia was the rival of Aquilonia (which corresponds to France), and depended on Aesir mercenaries for their defence (as the Byzantine Empire hired Vikings as the Varangian Guard). The name comes from Nemed, leader of colonists from Scythia to Ireland in Irish mythology; perhaps the name is also meant to allude to Nemea, home to the Nemean Lion of Greek mythology. The name may also be suggestive of various names for Germany in Slavic languages, e.g. Czech Německo. |
| Ophir | Ancient Ophir, a gold-mining region in the Old Testament, possibly on the shores of the Red Sea or Arabian Sea (e.g. western Arabia), though clearly Howard saw it as situated somewhere in Italy. |
| Pelishtim (tribe) | Philistines (P'lishtim in Hebrew). The Pelishti city of Asgalun derives its name from Ashkelon. The Pelisti god Pteor or Baal-Pteor derives its name from the Moabite Baal-Peor. |
| Pictish Wilderness | Pictish Scotland, with an overlay of North America during the European colonization of the Americas, possibly even colonial-era New York. Howard bestows names from Iroquoian languages on many, though not all, of his Picts (see also: Bran Mak Morn). Note that the name "Pict" comes from the Latin language term for "painted one", which could be applicable to a number of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. The historical termed Picts were a confederation of Celtic tribes in central and northern Scotland which bordered Roman Britain. |
| Poitain (Aquilonia) | A combination of Poitou and Aquitaine, two regions in southwestern France. From the 10th to the mid-12th century, the counts of Poitou were also the dukes of Aquitaine. |
| Punt | The Land of Punt on the Horn of Africa. A place with which the ancient Egyptians traded, probably Somaliland. |
| Shem | Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine, and Arabia. In the Bible, Shem is Noah's eldest son, the ancestor of the Hebrews, Arabs and Assyrians; hence, the modern "Semite" and Semitic languages (via Greek Sem), used properly to designate the family of languages spoken by these peoples. |
| Stygia | Egypt. The name comes from Styx, a river of the Greek underworld in Greek mythology. In earlier times the territory of Stygia included Shem, Ophir, Corinthia, and part of Koth. |
| Turan | Proto-Indo-European name for Turkestan. A Turkish land, possibly referring to the Gokturk Empire, the Timurid Empire, or the Seljuk Empire. The name derives from Turan, the areas of Eurasia occupied by speakers of Ural–Altaic languages. The names of the various Turanian cities (e.g. Aghrapur, Sultanapur, Shahpur) are often in Persian language. King Yezdigerd is named after Yazdegerd III, ruler of the Sassanid Empire. The name of King Yildiz means star in the Turkish language. The city of Khawarizm takes its name from Khwarezm, and Khorusun from Khorasan. |
| Uttara Kuru | From the medieval Uttara Kuru Kingdom at the north and central of Pakistan. |
| Vanaheim | Dark Age Scandinavia. (Vanaheim is the home of the Vanir in Norse mythology) |
| Vendhya | India (The Vindhya Range is a range of hills in central India). The name means "rent" or "ragged", i.e. having many passes. |
| Wadai (tribe) | The Ouaddai Empire. |
| Wazuli (tribe) | The Waziri tribe in northwest Pakistan. |
| Zamora | The Romani people. The name comes from the city of Zamora, Zamora province, Castile-Leon, Spain, alluding to the Gitanos of Spain (see Zingara for discussion); or possibly it is based on the word "Roma". There may also be some reference to southern Italy, as Zamorans dance the tarantella.[6] Also hints of ancient Israel and Palestine. |
| Zembabwei | The Munhumutapa Empire. The name comes from Great Zimbabwe, a ruined fortified town in Rhodesia, first built around the 11th century and used as the capital of the Munhumutapa Empire. Oddly, this is the same route as the modern name for the Republic of Zimbabwe. |
| Zingara | Spain/Portugal. Iberian Peninsula as a whole. Zingara is also Italian for "Gipsy woman"; this may mean that Howard mixed up the source names of Zingara and Zamora, with Zingara originally meant to apply to the Roma kingdom, and Zamora to the Spanish kingdom. |
| Zuagir (tribe) | The name is perhaps derived from a combination of Tuareg and Uyghur. |
| Other Geographic Features | |
| Amir Jehun Pass | Takes its name from a combination of the Amu Darya river and the Gihon river (Jayhoun in Arabic), which has been identified by some with the Amu Darya. Perhaps corresponds to the Broghol Pass, which is near the headwaters of the Amu Darya in Wakhan. |
| The Himelian Mountains | Take their name the Himalayas but correspond more closely to the Hindu Kush or Karakoram ranges. |
| The Karpash Mountains | The Carpathian Mountains. |
| The Poitanian Mountains | The Pyrenees. |
| The River Styx | The Nile. |
| The River Alimane | Alamana river, (present Spercheios) in Greece. |
| Vilayet Sea | The Caspian Sea. The name comes from vilayet, the term for administrative regions in the Ottoman Empire. |
| Zhaibar Pass | The Khyber Pass which has been the traditional borderline between Afghanistan and Pakistan. |
| Zaporoska River | The Dnieper river and/or the Don and/or the Volga. The river's name was probably influenced by Zaporizhian Sich, a settlement of the Cossacks in Zaporizhzhia (region). It was situated on the Dnieper river, below the Dnieper rapids (porohy, poroz.a), hence the name, translated as "territory beyond the rapids". |