Book of Veles
The Book of Veles (also: Veles Book , Vles book , Vlesbook , Isenbeck's Planks , Велесова книга, Велес книга, Книга Велеса, Дощечки Изенбека, Дозенки for the first time in an ancient Russian text in 1950 Изенбека, Дозенки San Francisco was released.
It supposedly contains religious passages and reports on the history of the Slavs and their religious morals in early Cyrillic script. The most ancient stories in the book date back to the 7th century BC. BC, i.e. at a time when there was no Slavic script. The youngest to the 9th century AD, when there was already a translation of the holy script in Cyrillic letters (around 866).
The book was supposedly discovered in 1919 and disappeared again in 1941. It is believed to be a fake from the 1940s or late 19th century. In addition, different versions of the text exist in the modern editions of the book. Independently, it is regarded by many Slavic Neopagans as their holy book and has been taught in schools as evidence of Slavic history since Ukrainian independence in 1990.
authenticity
However, almost all scientists consider it a fake. Nonetheless, it is mainly considered genuine by Ukrainian, and occasionally Polish, Baltic or Russian scientists. Based on this idea, new editions such as the Aryan Vedas , a Pan-Slavic ideology, have recently emerged .
The history of the book can only be traced back to the mid-1950s, when a copy of the book and a photo of one of the boards first appeared in a Russian émigré newspaper in San Francisco. Some scholars believe that the entire book was the result of a collaboration between the editors of this newspaper and Yuriy Mirolyubov , who later claimed to have found the book. Others believe that either the entire book or just the only surviving board was forged by the Russian collector and forger Alexander Sulakadzev in the early 18th century. Finally, there is the theory that Mirolyubov found one or more pages of Veles' book and forged the rest of the text to prove his own theories about the early Slavs.
The book is written in a language very similar to the ancient East Slavonic language. Therefore, once translated into a modern alphabet, much of the text of the book is readable by people who speak the modern Slavic languages . However, professional historians, especially specialists from the ancient Slavs, are skeptical of many components or the linguistic usage of the words (modern or medieval Slavic words are occasionally and unwittingly used in place of their archaic equivalents), the spelling, phonetics (lack of understanding of the sound of 'f's, which existed in ancient Slavic but later disappeared, the arbitrary use of unstressed vowels etc.), grammar (grammatical forms do not match early Slavic languages) etc. These peculiarities point to an artificially "aged" text by someone with inadequate Knowledge of the early Slavs. In the words of historian OV Tvorogov:
“This analysis brings us to a final conclusion: we are dealing with an artificial language, 'created' by a person who was not very familiar with the history of the Slavic languages and someone who has his own [...] language system could not develop. "
Opponents of general science claim that the mismatches may be due to locally different dialects in the assumption that the book was written or compiled by multiple people, as its supporters claim.
The alphabet of the books is also controversial as the book was written using an alphabet similar to Cyrillic . The actual existence of the written language among Slavs prior to the introduction of Glagolitic and Cyrillic in the ninth to tenth centuries is partially contested.
Those who believe in the authenticity of the book claim to be able to refute any criticism, for example by arguing that errors in the language may have occurred during the translation of the text. They also claim that such a good forgery would have required a greater skill than Mirolyubov's and that - apart from national pride - he had no personal benefit from forging the book.
As long as the original boards are lost, there will likely be no consensus on the authenticity of the book. In any case, there is a possibility that future discoveries of artifacts in the Slavic area will either support or disprove the facts in the Book of Veles, thereby confirming its authenticity or falsification.
The boards
The Germanic and Slavic languages use a simple word that is closely related to writing ( English "book", German " Buch ", Russian and Bulgarian "буква" (bukva) - "letter"), related to the word " Buche " . Hence it is believed that the earliest writings were scratched on beech wood. The book of Veles was the only text ever found on wooden boards. Other texts, especially the birch bark documents from Novgorod, are written in Cyrillic or runic characters and stylistically completely different.
The boards are 38 cm wide, 22 cm high and approx. 0.5 cm thick. The corners and surfaces of the boards are uneven, at the top there are two holes to connect the boards. The text was scratched into the boards and later covered with paint. Lines of text (approximately straight and parallel) are arranged on the boards, with the upper ends of the letters touching these lines. So the text is written below the lines of text, not above. The size and shape of the letters vary, an indication of the fact that several people wrote the text. Some boards are partially or largely rotten.
The story of the discovery of the book
1919 was lieutenant of the white Russian army Fedor Arturovich Izenbek a bundle of wooden boards, described in an unknown script on a plundered property of Kurakins near Kharkiv . After the defeat of the army, Izenbeck emigrated to Belgrade , where he tried unsuccessfully in 1923 to sell the boards to the Belgrade museum and library. In 1925 he settled in Brussels , where he handed the boards to Yuriy P. Mirolyubov, who was the first to seriously examine the boards. Izenbeck handled the boards very carefully, he did not allow them to be removed from his house and turned down the proposal of a professor at Brussels University to make the boards available for research. Later, this refusal to have his texts examined by others led to the suspicion that these texts were a forgery .
For fifteen years, Mirolyubov restored, photographed, copied (when it turned out that the photographs were illegible) and translated the text. He managed to copy most of the boards.
In August 1941, Brussels was occupied by the Germans , Izenbeck died and the boards were lost. Speculations say that the Germans took the boards into their archives ( Ahnenerbe ) and moved them to England near Aldershot or Crookham at the end of the Second World War , to this day. However, according to speculation, the majority of the ancestral inheritance should have been conquered by Soviet troops. In this case, the boards are said to have been kept in a secret KGB archive instead . Others believe that the boards burned in a fire that the German Wehrmacht started. In the West it is of the opinion that the boards were destroyed in order to avoid exposure as a forgery and thus to create a myth whose origin can no longer be proven due to the lack of artifact.
Mirolyubov emigrated to the United States and gave the material to the Russian Museum in San Francisco . In 1953 the material was found by the professor AA Kurenkov (Kur), who then published it in the Zhar-Ptica magazine from March 1957 to May 1959 . Later the text was examined by S. Paramonov ( Lesnoi ).
Extracts
Board 2 / B
We were forced to retreat into the woods and live as hunters and fishermen. So we could
escape the danger. We survived a darkness and started building cities
and houses everywhere . After the second eclipse there was a great frost and we moved
south as there were many places there were grass […] and then Romei took
our cattle for a good price and they kept their word. We went
to the southern […] grassland and had a lot of cattle […]
From board 7 / A
The enemies are not as numerous as we are because we are Russians and they are not.
Board 11 / A
We worship the first Triglaw , we bow to him, and we sing in his honor.
We praise Svarog , the grandfather of the gods, who is the related ancestor of all gods
and creator of everything that lives, the eternal spring that flows into summer
and everywhere and in winter and never freezes. And on this living weather he feeds
and gives us life until we reach the blessed fields in paradise . And to God Perun , the thunderer, God of battle and struggle, we say:
"You keep us alive with the eternal turning of the circle and lead on the path of the Prav
through battles to the great Trizn". And all who were killed in battle -
may they live forever in Perun's regiment . God Svantovits honor
we raise, since he is the God of Prav and Jav , and for him we sing, as it the light is
with which we see the world. We see and we are in Jav and he from Nav
protects us, and therefore we praise and sing for him. We sing and dance for him and call
our God of the earth , who constantly receives the light of the sun and the stars .
And all honor to Svantovit, our God, who
opens our hearts for us to confess our bad deeds
and to the good let's turn. May he embrace us like children, since this is said:
what is created with half the spirit could not be seen,
as it is a great secret, how Svarog can be Perun and Svantovit at the same time.
Two beings in heaven Bieleboh and Czorneboh are
And both commands and receives Svarog.
After them come Hors , Veles and Stribog and then Visenj , Lelj and Letic .
From board 26 / B
[...] time goes by and we come to the blue river , since
our time is not endless . There we meet ancestors who graze on Svargas herds and
put up containers . Their lives are exactly like ours, only there are neither Huns nor Greeks [...]
English-language literature
- The Book of Vles or Vles knyha , translated by Victor Kachur. Columbus, Ohio, 1973.
- Kaganskaya, Maya. "The Book of Vles: Saga of a Forgery," Jews and Jewish Topics in Soviet and East-European Publications , # 4 (1986-1987) 3-27.