The Thirteenth Tribe by Arthur Koestler

[alchemy]

No surprise where this book recommendation came from, and as has been stated previously it is a good read. Surprisingly & refreshingly, it even has its fair share of wry humour --- not something you usually come across within what is in essence a history book.

A few thoughts I had, and points or oddities I highlighted while reading, which are all in addition to the great work Laura has previously shared:

Ibn Fadlan, the fastidious Arab, liked neither the climate nor the people of Khwarizm (Khazars):

They are, in respect of their language and constitution, the most repulsive of men. Their language is like the chatter of starlings. At a day's journey there is a village called Ardkwa whose inhabitants are called Kardals; their language sounds entirely like the croaking of frogs.

Pgs 36/37

This struck me as, perhaps, a very literal reference to the 'language of the birds'.

If you look back to the map on page 10, you will see that the Khazars are stuck between the Bulgars to the NE, and the Bulgars to the West. On page 21, Koestler mentions:

All we can say with safety is that the Khazars were a 'Turkic' tribe, who erupted from the Asian steppes, probably in the fifth century of our era.

This could provide one possible means of transmission of Altaic, gnostic information. What I have wondered about for some time is, where did the Bogomils (of modern day Bulgaria -- i.e., the Bulgars) obtain their information to transmit to the Cathars, as seems to have been the line of transmission? This might possibly fill that void, and within the broad timeframe necessary.

A further item:

The list [of later Austrian Jewish princes, reputedly descendants of the former Khazar Empire] gives not only their alleged names, some of which have a distinctly Ural-Altaian ring, but also the length of their rule and the place where they were buried...

Western Europe was recovering from the overhead comet strike in the 6th century CE (per Gregory of Tours, among others). The rise of the Bogomils/Cathars, as well as gothic culture and architecture, appear on the scene quite suddenly circa 10th century CE, which broadly correlates with the exodus of Khazars due to the incursions of the Rus and double-dealing of the Byzantines in the very late 9th and early 10th centuries CE.

Just a thought...

Another portion I found interesting was pgs 66/67, wherein King Joseph replies to Hasdai with the (perhaps legendary) account of their conversion to Judaism:

Joseph's account starts with a eulogy of his ancestor, King Bulan, a great conqueror and a wise man who 'drove out the sorcerers and idolators from his land'. Subsequently an angel appeared to King Bulan in his dreams, exhorting him to worship the only true God, and promising that in exchange He would 'bless and multiply Bulan's offspring, and deliver his enemies into his hands, and make his kingdom last to the end of the world'.

[...]

King Bulan is quite willing to serve the Almighty, but he raises a difficulty:

Thou knowest, my Lord, the secret thoughts of my heart and thou hast searched my kidneys to confirm that my trust is in thee; but the people over which I rule have a pagan mind and I do not know whether they will believe me. If I have found favour and mercy in thine eyes, then I beseech thee to appear also to their Great Prince, to make him support me.

The Eternal One granted King Bulan's request, he appeared to this Prince in a dream, and when he arose in the morning he came to the King and made it known to him...

This example of angels appearing immediately reminded me of the C's comment that angels and the like are frequently 4D sts intervention. This is not proof of course, simply interesting speculation.

Next: on page 77, Koestler outlines some interaction between the Alans and Khazaria:

[...] speaks of an attack on Khazaria by the Alans, acting under Byzantine instigation, under Joseph's father, Aaron the Blessed. No other Greek or Arab source seems to mention this campaign. But there is a significant passage in Constantine Porphyrogenitus's De Adminisdrando Imperio, written in 947-950, which lends some credibility to the unknown letter-writer's statements:

Concerning Khazaria, how war is to be made upon them and by whom. As the Ghuzz are able to make war on the Khazars, being near them, so likewise the ruler of Alania, because of the nine Climates of Khazaria [the fertile region north of the Caucasus] are close to Alania, and the Alan can, if he wishes, raid them and cause great damage and distress to the Khazars from that quarter.

Now, according to Joseph's Letter, the ruler of the Alans paid tribute to him, and whether in fact he did or not, his feelings toward the Kagan were probably much the same as the Bulgar King's. The passage in Constantine, revealing his efforts to incite the Alans to war against the Khazars, ironically reminds one of Ibn Fadlan's mission with a parallel purpose.

A quick reminder on the Alans:

The Alans were a tribe from the Caucasus and possibly Northern Iran who may have brought the original elements of the Grail mythos to Western Europe. Alanic soldiers fought for the Romans in the later days of the empire and were stationed among other places in Britain and Western France.

It is speculated that many of the West European noble houses were originally of Alanic descent, originally from the 5th century. Also Eleanor of Aquitaine, the sponsor of Chretien de Troyes was probably of Alanic descent, presumably with traditional knowledge of the mythology passed down in the family.

The Alans were accomplished horsemen, generally tall, with red or blond hair. They may have transmitted the elements of the Nart sagas found to this day in Ossetia, in the Caucasus, to Europe. These elements include a cup that will choose the noblest and purest warrior from the feast gathering and offer drink to only him. Also a shirt of golden mail occurs in these sagas. Scott Littleton and Linda Malcor suggest in their book "From Scythia to Camelot" that the Arthurian mythos were actually a cross pollenization of the Nart sagas and West European Celtic myth. The hero Lancelot for example would derive his name from 'Alan of Lot.' The parallels between Arthurian myth and the practices of the Alans are too numerous to list here. The reader is referred to Littleton and Malcor.

See Chretien de Troyes, Grail, Fisher King

This too might have provided a means of transmission of what ultimately became the Cathar heresy. At any rate, here we have a strong kingdom (the Alans) perhaps paying tribute, but at the very least having interactions with, an equally strong (and probably stronger) kingdom on their borders (the Khazars). Whether the Grail, and/or gnostic knowledge, were transmitted to (or through) the Khazars, I cannot definitively say, but the interaction & timing is very interesting.

Again, a recommended book as there are pieces of the puzzle present here...

Cheers,

John

 

[thorbiorn]

Note of 20061026: For updated information on the Khazars and their relationship with Judaism kindly refer to:Are Russian Jews Descended from the Khazars? by Laura
For more information about the Huns from a Chinese perspective refer to Notes to "The Mystic vs Hitler" - end of note.

Review of and excerpts from
The Thirteenth Tribe
THE KHAZAR EMPIRE AND ITS HERITAGE
Arthur Koestler


Considering the very character of the material presented in this review and summary the choice has fallen to post under "History" rather than "Books".

The first time I found mention of the book was on this site, later I found it while researching a topic. Most recently I found several references in the book 911, The Ultimate Truth by Laura Knight Jadczyk, who in my version on respectively page 390 and page 397 writes:

The interested reader is invited to read Koestler's book with its original research and clear exposition of the links between the Khazars and the Eastern European Jews.

Koestler quotes at length from ancient accounts of the Khazars and I highly recommend this book to the reader not only because it is well researched, but also because it can be quite entertaining reading!

Eventually the inspiration to actually read the whole story came and I was not disappointed. In fact although the book has emphasis on the Khazars and the history of Eastern European Jews, there are plenty of other reasons to read the book for anyone who is even slightly interested in the history of Europe and West-Asia.

One very honourable feature of the work is the appendix where Arthur Koestler gives a number of interesting personal details about the researchers that preceded his work and from which he quotes.

Below is a list of contents followed by some excerpts.

PART ONE
Rise and Fall of the Khazars
I RISE
II CONVERSION
III DECLINE
IV FALL

PART TWO
The Heritage
V EXODUS
VI WHERE FROM?
VII CROSS-CURRENTS
VIII RACE AND MYTH
Summary
Appendices
APPENDIX I: A NOTE ON SPELLING
APPENDIX II: A NOTE ON SOURCES
(A) ANCIENT SOURCES
(B) MODERN LITERATURE
APPENDIX III THE "KHAZAR CORRESPONDENCE"
APPENDIX IV SOME IMPLICATIONS - ISRAEL AND THE DIASPORA
APPENDIX IV SOME IMPLICATIONS - ISRAEL AND THE DIASPORA
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
REFERENCES


The Huns, predecessors of the Khazars:

1.3 Even the Huns, of whom we know much more, are of uncertain origin; their name is apparently derived from the Chinese Hiung-nu, which designates warlike nomads in general, while other nations applied the name Hun in a similarly indiscriminate way to nomadic hordes of all kinds, including the "White Huns" mentioned above, the Sabirs, Magyars and Khazars.

In the first century AD, the Chinese drove these disagreeable Hun neighbours westward, and thus started one of those periodic avalanches which swept for many centuries from Asia towards the West. From the fifth century onward, many of these westward-bound tribes were called by the generic name of "Turks". The term is also supposed to be of Chinese origin (apparently derived from the name of a hill) and was subsequently used to refer to all tribes who spoke languages with certain common characteristics - the "Turkic" language group. Thus the term Turk, in the sense in which it was used by mediaeval writers - and often also by modern ethnologists - refers primarily to language and not to race. In this sense the Huns and Khazars were "Turkic" people.[�] The Khazar language was supposedly a Chuvash dialect of Turkish, which still survives in the Autonomous Chuvash Soviet Republic, between the Volga and the Sura. The Chuvash people are actually believed to be descendants of the Bulgars, who spoke a dialect similar to the Khazars. But all these connections are rather tenuous, based on the more or less speculative deductions of oriental philologists. All we can say with safety is that the Khazars were a "Turkic" tribe, who erupted from the Asian steppes, probably in the fifth century of our era.

The Turkut kingdom, immediate predecessors of the Khazars

1.5 But before becoming a sovereign state, the Khazars still had to serve their apprenticeship under another short-lived power, the so-called West Turkish Empire, or Turkut kingdom. It was a confederation of tribes, held together by a ruler: the Kagan or Khagan[��] - a title which the Khazar rulers too were subsequently to adopt. This first Turkish state - if one may call it that - lasted for a century (circa 550-650) and then fell apart, leaving hardly any trace. However, it was only after the establishment of this kingdom that the name "Turk" was used to apply to a specific nation, as distinct from other Turkic-speaking peoples like the Khazars and Bulgars.[***]

The Khazars had been under Hun tutelage, then under Turkish tutelage. After the eclipse of the Turks in the middle of the seventh century it was their turn to rule the "Kingdom of the North", as the Persians and Byzantines came to call it.

Origin of the name Khazar

1.3 The origin of the name Khazar, and the modern derivations to which it gave rise, has also been the subject of much ingenious speculation. Most likely the word is derived from the Turkish root gaz, "to wander", and simply means "nomad". Of greater interest to the non-specialist are some alleged modern derivations from it: among them the Russian Cossack and the Hungarian Huszar - both signifying martial horsemen;[**] and also the German Ketzer - heretic, i.e., Jew. If these derivations are correct, they would show that the Khazars had a considerable impact on the imagination of a variety of peoples in the Middle Ages.

The Khazars and the real Khazars

1.5 The collapse of the Hun Empire after Attila's death left a power-vacuum in Eastern Europe, through which once more, wave after wave of nomadic hordes swept from east to west, prominent among them the Uigurs and Avars. The Khazars during most of this period seemed to be happily occupied with raiding the rich trans-Caucasian regions of Georgia and Armenia, and collecting precious plunder. During the second half of the sixth century they became the dominant force among the tribes north of the Caucasus. A number of these tribes - the Sabirs, Saragurs, Samandars, Balanjars, etc. - are from this date onward no longer mentioned by name in the sources: they had been subdued or absorbed by the Khazars.

1.6 There is another picturesque passage in an Armenian chronicle, quoting the text of what might be called an Order of Mobilization issued by the Khazar ruler for the second campaign against Persia: it was addressed to "all tribes and peoples [under Khazar authority], inhabitants of the mountains and the plains, living under roofs or the open sky, having their heads shaved or wearing their hair long".[17]

This gives us a first intimation of the heterogeneous ethnic mosaic that was to compose the Khazar Empire. The "real Khazars" who ruled it were probably always a minority - as the Austrians were in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy.

1.15 Artamonov holds that the Khazars and other Turkish people were ruled by descendants of the Turkut dynasty, the erstwhile sovereigns of the defunct Turk Empire (cf. above, section 3). Zeki Validi suggests that the "Imperial Race" or "family of notables", to which the Kagan must belong, refers to the ancient dynasty of the Asena, mentioned in Chinese sources, a kind of desert aristocracy, from which Turkish and Mongol rulers traditionally claimed descent.

The Conversion

After the defeat by the Arabs in 737, the Kagan's forced adoption of Islam had been a formality almost instantly revoked, which apparently left no impression on his people. In contrast to this, the voluntary conversion to Judaism was to produce deep and lasting effects.

It seems indeed that the Judaization of the Khazars proceeded in several steps. We remember that King Bulan drove out "the sorcerers and idolators" before the angel appeared to him; and that he made his Covenant with the "true God" before deciding whether He was the Jewish, Christian or Muslim God. It seems highly probable that the conversion of King Bulan and his followers was another intermediary step, that they embraced a primitive or rudimentary form of Judaism, based on the Bible alone, excluding the Talmud, all rabbinical literature, and the observances derived from it. In this respect they resembled the Karaites, a fundamentalist sect which originated in the eighth century in Persia and spread among Jews all over the world particularly in "Little Khazaria", i.e., the Crimea. Dunlop and some other authorities surmised that between Bulan and Obadiah (i.e., roughly between 740 and 800) some form of Karaism prevailed in the country, and that orthodox "Rabbinic" Judaism was only introduced in the course of Obadiah's religious reform. The point is of some importance because Karaism apparently survived in Khazaria to the end, and villages of Turkish-speaking Karaite Jews, obviously of Khazar origin, still existed in modern times (see below, Chapter V, 4).

Thus the Judaization of the Khazars was a gradual process which, triggered off by political expediency, slowly penetrated into the deeper strata of their minds and eventually produced the Messianism of their period of decline. Their religious commitment survived the collapse of their state, and persisted, as we shall see, in the Khazar-Jewish settlements of Russia and Poland.

Origins of the Khazar people in terms of Jewish history

2.5 Joseph then proceeds to provide a genealogy of his people. Though a fierce Jewish nationalist, proud of wielding the 'sceptre of Judah", he cannot, and does not, claim for them Semitic descent; he traces their ancestry not to Shem, but to Noah's third son, Japheth; or more precisely to Japheth's grandson, Togarma, the ancestor of all Turkish tribes. "We have found in the family registers of our fathers," Joseph asserts boldly, "that Togarma had ten sons, and the names of their offspring are as follows: Uigur, Dursu, Avars, Huns, Basilii, Tarniakh, Khazars, Zagora, Bulgars, Sabir. We are the sons of Khazar, the seventh..."

The identity of some of these tribes, with names spelt in the Hebrew script is rather dubious, but that hardly matters; the characteristic feature in this genealogical exercise is the amalgamation of Genesis with Turkish tribal tradition.[������������]

Footnote to the above found in the reference section:

[������������] It also throws a sidelight on the frequent description of the Khazars as the people of Magog. Magog, according to Genesis X, 2-3 was the much maligned uncle of Togarma.

Regarding the 'frequent description':

1.3 After a century of warfare, the Arab writer obviously had no great sympathy for the Khazars. Nor had the Georgian or Armenian scribes, whose countries, of a much older culture, had been repeatedly devastated by Khazar horsemen. A Georgian chronicle, echoing an ancient tradition, identifies them with the hosts of Gog and Magog - "wild men with hideous faces and the manners of wild beasts, eaters of blood".

On the origins of Yiddish

7.3 Having disposed of the alleged Western origin of the Germanic element in Yiddish, Mieses went on to show that the dominant influence in it are the so-called "East-Middle German" dialects which were spoken in the Alpine regions of Austria and Bavaria roughly up to the fifteenth century. In other words, the German component which went into the hybrid Jewish language originated in the eastern regions of Germany, adjacent to the Slavonic belt of Eastern Europe.

The Turkish language of the Karaite Jews

7.3 Characteristically, the only sector among the Khazarian Jews in Poland which resisted both the spiritual and worldly temptations offered by the German language were the Karaites, who rejected both rabbinical learning and material enrichment. Thus they never took to Yiddish. According to the first all-Russian census in 1897, there were 12894 Karaite Jews living in the Tsarist Empire (which, of course, included Poland). Of these 9666 gave Turkish as their mother tongue (i.e., presumably their original Khazar dialect), 2632 spoke Russian, and only 383 spoke Yiddish.

Modern Jews

8.1 THE Jews of our times fall into two main divisions: Sephardim and Ashkenazim.
The Sephardim are descendants of the Jews who since antiquity had lived in Spain (in Hebrew Sepharad) until they were expelled at the end of the fifteenth century and settled in the countries bordering on theMediterranean, the Balkans, and to a lesser extent in Western Europe. They spoke a Spanish-Hebrew dialect, Ladino (see VII, 3), and preserved their own traditions and religious rites. In the 1960s, the number of Sephardim was estimated at 500000.

The Ashkenazim, at the same period, numbered about eleven million. Thus, in common parlance, Jew is practically synonymous with Ashkenazi Jew. But the term is misleading, for the Hebrew word Ashkenaz was, in mediaeval rabbinical literature, applied to Germany - thus contributing to the legend that modern Jewry originated on the Rhine. There is, however, no other term to refer to the non-Sephardic majority of contemporary Jewry.

For the sake of piquantry it should be mentioned that the Ashkenaz of the Bible refers to a people living somewhere in the vicinity of Mount Ararat and Armenia. The name occurs in Genesis 10, 3 and I Chronciles 1, 6, as one of the sons of Gomer, who was a son of Japheth. Ashkenaz is also a brother of Togarmah (and a nephew of Magog) whom the Khazars, according to King Joseph, claimed as their ancestor (see above II, 5) But worse was to come. For Ashkenaz is also named in Jeremiah 51, 27, where the prophet calls his people and their allies to rise and destroy Babylon: "Call thee upon the kingdoms of Ararat, Minni and Ashkenaz." This passage was interpreted by the famous Saadiah Gaon, spiritual leader of Oriental Jewry in the tenth century, as a prophecy relating to his own times: Babylon symbolized the Caliphate of Baghdad, and the Ashkenaz who were to attack it were either the Khazars themselves or some allied tribe. Accordingly, says Poliak,[218] some learned Khazar Jews, who heard of the Gaon's ingenious arguments, called themselves Ashkenazim when they emigrated to Poland. It does not prove anything, but it adds to the confusion.

An online version of "The Thirteenth Tribe" I found on
http://www.iamthewitness.com/Koestler13thTribe.htm This page begins with the words:

"What is a "Jew"? Do "Ashkenazi" Jews have a right to Palestine? Not according to many historians, such as Arthur Koestler, who wrote The Thirteenth Tribe "

But what does Arthur Koestler actually write?

Since the site I downloaded from jumps to an undifferentiated conclusion and thereby misleads those readers who do not pay attention to the last appendix, I take the liberty of copying it in full, while highlighting those excerpts which do not support the suggestion that the web page makes.

Arthur Koestler in The 13th Tribe wrote:

APPENDIX IV

SOME IMPLICATIONS - ISRAEL AND THE DIASPORA

WHILE this book deals with past history, it unavoidably carries certain implications for the present and future.

In the first place, I am aware of the danger that it may be maliciously misinterpreted as a denial of the State of Israel's right to exist. But that right is not based on the hypothetical origins of the Jewish people, nor on the mythological covenant of Abraham with God; it is based on international law - i.e., on the United Nations' decision in 1947 to partition Palestine, once a Turkish province, then a British Mandated Territory, into an Arab and a Jewish State. Whatever the Israeli citizens' racial origins, and whatever illusions they entertain about them, their State exists de jure and de facto, and cannot be undone, except by genocide. Without entering into controversial issues, one may add, as a matter of historical fact, that the partition of Palestine was the result of a century of peaceful Jewish immigration and pioneering effort, which provide the ethical justification for the State's legal existence. Whether the chromosomes of its people contain genes of Khazar or Semitic, Roman or Spanish origin, is irrelevant, and cannot affect Israel's right to exist - nor the moral obligation of any civilized person, Gentile or Jew, to defend that right. Even the geographical origin of the native Israeli's parents or grandparents tends to be forgotten in the bubbling racial melting pot. The problem of the Khazar infusion a thousand years ago, however fascinating, is irrelevant to modern Israel.

The Jews who inhabit it, regardless of their chequered origins, possess the essential requirements of a nation: a country of their own, a common language, government and army. The Jews of the Diaspora have none of these requirements of nationhood. What sets them apart as a special category from the Gentiles amidst whom they live is their declared religion, whether they practise it or not. Here lies the basic difference between Israelis and Jews of the Diaspora. The former have acquired a national identity; the latter are labelled as Jews only by their religion - not by their nationality, not by their race.

This, however, creates a tragic paradox, because the Jewish religion - unlike Christianity, Buddhism or Islam - implies membership of a historical nation, a chosen race. All Jewish festivals commemorate events in national history: the exodus from Egypt, the Maccabean revolt, the death of the oppressor Haman, the destruction of the Temple. The Old Testament is first and foremost the narrative of a nation's history; it gave monotheism to the world, yet its credo is tribal rather than universal. Every prayer and ritual observance proclaims membership of an ancient race, which automatically separates the Jew from the racial and historic past of the people in whose midst he lives. The Jewish faith, as shown by 2000 years of tragic history, is nationally and socially self-segregating. It sets the Jew apart and invites his being set apart. It automatically creates physical and cultural ghettoes. It transformed the Jews of the Diaspora into a pseudo-nation without any of the attributes and privileges of nationhood, held together loosely by a system of traditional beliefs based on racial and historical premisses which turn out to be illusory.

Orthodox Jewry is a vanishing minority. Its stronghold was Eastern Europe where the Nazi fury reached its peak and wiped them almost completely off the face of the earth. Its scattered survivors in the Western world no longer carry much influence, while the bulk of the orthodox communities of North Africa, the Yemen, Syria and Iraq emigrated to Israel. Thus orthodox Judaism in the Diaspora is dying out, and it is the vast majority of enlightened or agnostic Jews who perpetuate the paradox by loyally clinging to their pseudo-national status in the belief that it is their duty to preserve the Jewish tradition.

It is, however, not easy to define what the term "Jewish tradition" signifies in the eyes of this enlightened majority, who reject the Chosen-Race doctrine of orthodoxy. That doctrine apart, the universal messages of the Old Testament - the enthronement of the one and invisible God, the Ten Commandments, the ethos of the Hebrew prophets, the Proverbs and Psalms - have entered into the mainstream of the Judeo-Helenic-Christian tradition and become the common property of Jew and Gentile alike.

After the destruction of Jerusalem, the Jews ceased to have a language and secular culture of their own. Hebrew as a vernacular yielded to Aramaic before the beginning of the Christian era; the Jewish scholars and poets in Spain wrote in Arabic, others later in German, Polish, Russian, English and French. Certain Jewish communities developed dialects of their own, such as Yiddish and Ladino, but none of these produced works comparable to the impressive Jewish contribution to German, Austro-Hungarian or American literature.

The main, specifically Jewish literary activity of the Diaspora was theological. Yet Talmud, Kabbala, and the bulky tomes of biblical exegesis are practically unknown to the contemporary Jewish public, although they are, to repeat it once more, the only relics of a specifically Jewish tradition - if that term is to have a concrete meaning - during the last two millennia. In other words, whatever came out of the Diaspora is either not specifically Jewish, or not part of a living tradition. The philosophical, scientific and artistic achievements of individual Jews consist in contributions to the culture of their host nations; they do not represent a common cultural inheritance or autonomous body of traditions.

To sum up, the Jews of our day have no cultural tradition in common, merely certain habits and behaviour-patterns, derived by social inheritance from the traumatic experience of the ghetto, and from a religion which the majority does not practise or believe in, but which nevertheless confers on them a pseudo-national status. Obviously - as I have argued elsewhere[284] - the long-term solution of the paradox can only be emigration to Israel or gradual assimilation to their host nations. Before the holocaust, this process was in full swing; and in 1975 Time Magazine reported[285] that American Jews "tend to marry outside their faith at a high rate; almost one-third of all marriages are mixed".

Nevertheless the lingering influence of Judaism's racial and historical message, though based on illusion, acts as a powerful emotional break by appealing to tribal loyalty. It is in this context that the part played by the thirteenth tribe in ancestral history becomes relevant to the Jews of the Diaspora. Yet, as already said, it is irrelevant to modern Israel, which has acquired a genuine national identity. It is perhaps symbolic that Abraham Poliak, a professor of history at Tel Aviv University and no doubt an Israeli patriot, made a major contribution to our knowledge of Jewry's Khazar ancestry, undermining the legend of the Chosen Race. It may also be significant that the native Israeli "Sabra" represents, physically and mentally, the complete opposite of the "typical Jew", bred in the ghetto.

One importance of the book therefore is that it helps one to defend oneself against premature conclusion as promoted by the website I quoted from and also as found also elsewhere.

thorbiorn

 

[thorbiorn]

The whole idea for this post began with considering the word Asena that Koestler mentions in 'The Thirteenth Tribe. This again led to considering possible links between the Scythians and the Khazars as well as the consequences.


Asena and Asgard

Arthur Koestler in The Thirteenth Tribe chapter one section three wrote:

In the first century AD, the Chinese drove these disagreeable Hun neighbours westward, and thus started one of those periodic avalanches which swept for many centuries from Asia towards the West.

and

1.15 Artamonov holds that the Khazars and other Turkish people were ruled by descendants of the Turkut dynasty, the erstwhile sovereigns of the defunct Turk Empire (cf. above, section 3). Zeki Validi] suggests that the "Imperial Race" or "family of notables", to which the Kagan must belong, refers to the ancient dynasty of the Asena, mentioned in Chinese sources, a kind of desert aristocracy, from which Turkish and Mongol rulers traditionally claimed descent.

In the word "Asena", there is 'AS' a sound also found in Asgard.

'Gard' in Scandinavian languages is as 'a farmstead' in English. In Nordic mythology 'gard' is used in the description of the world as consisting of Asgard where the forces of light, the 'Ase', live, Midgard where man lives, and Udgard where the forces of entropy and darkness live.

In the list names on Laura's genealogy page; http://www/laura-knight-jadczyk.com I found a several names with the surname Asgard, or the German Asseburg, which could be a variant of the former:

Aethelbert ASGARD
Alusa ASGARD
Baeldeg ASGARD
Beltsa of ASGARD (194 - ____)
Beornec ASGARD
Cadwalladr of ASGARD (193 - ____)
Casser ASGARD
Eobba ASGARD
Finn ASGARD (130 - ____)
Folcwald of ASGARD (100 - ____)
Friege (Frigga) of ASGARD (219 - ____)
Gechbrond ASGARD
Geta. ASGARD (King)
Hryp ASGARD
Ingui ASGARD
Odin (Wotan) of ASGARD (215 - ____)
Rothmund ASGARD
Trygils ASGARD
Tytmon ASGARD
Daughter ASSEBURG
Dietrich ASSEBURG

Looking up under the oldest dated name there is:

Folcwald of ASGARD

100 - ____

* BIRTH: 100, Asgard, Asia or East Europe
Father: Geta. ASGARD

Family 1 :

1. +Finn ASGARD
------------------------------------------------------------------------

__
|
_Geta. ASGARD _______|
| |
| |__
|
|
|--Folcwald of ASGARD
| (0100 - ....)
| __
| |
|_____________________|
|
|__

Then I looked under Odin, which today is considered one of the Nordic gods, an 'Ase' and immortalised in WEDNesday, the day of Odin. In Denmark also in the name of the town Odense on the island Fuen, mostly known as where the storyteller Hans Christian Andersen was born.

Odin (Wotan) of ASGARD

215 - _____

* BIRTH: 215, Asgard, Asia or East Europe
Father: Frithuwald (Bor) FREALAF
Mother: Beltsa of ASGARD

Family 1 : Friege (Frigga) of ASGARD

1. +Casser ASGARD
2. +Baeldeg ASGARD
3. +Wechta VON SAXONY
4. +Skjold of DENMARK
5. +Balder of SCANDINAVIA

So what we have so far, is that in the first century AD. The Chinese drove some disturbing Hun neighbours off to the west. These had rulers that allegedly took pride in being associated with 'Asena' aristocracy. Within 200 years there appear in Scandinavia and Northern Germany powerful people born in the East, who get into positions of power surprisingly quickly, and many carry the name with the component AS like in Asgard.

What is seen from the name list about the 'Asgard' family's migration to Northern Germany and Scandinavia corresponds with what is described about the Scythians in The Ancient History of the World, page 281 in my version:

At the end of the classical period these steppe dweller had been driven to the edges of their homeland by the Altaic speakers, the Huns and Turks. ... The assumption has been that the Scythians, the sub-tribes of Iazyge, Sarmatians, Alans, etc vanished without a trace. But that is not, apparently, the case. It seems clear, upon reviewing the evidence, that the steppe dwellers became the aristocracy of Europe.

Possible cultural links between the Scythians and The Khazars
Although it is written by Arthur Koestler's source that Asena was a kind of "desert aristocracy from which Turkish and Mongol rulers traditionally claimed descent" it does not follow necessarily that the first original "Asena chiefs" were Mongolian any more than some of the pharaohs were like the local Egyptians. However the topic of Asena and whether there in fact is a link between the different 'AS' sounds in Asena, and Asgard and what they represent in terms of "desert aristocracy" and home of the gods, is a matter of further study, which could also include the word Asia. For the time being I shall be grateful for the catalytic inspiration 'ASena' has given. There are other ways to investigate links between the cultures of the Khazars and the Scythians.

First of all, if we are to trust the sources of Koestler, the Huns did not move until the Chinese drove them off. The move of the Huns etc was like a domino effect initiated by the Chinese. From the Cassiopaen transcript 010823 the implication is that the Huns were not the first to go, if the ancient residents of northern China were Scythians of Caucacian origin:

Q: (L) Where do the Scythians come from?
A: China.
Q: (L) How did they get to China?
A: From the Caucasus.
Q: (L) So, they started off from the Caucasus, went to China, and were later driven back West by the Chinese? Is that it?
A: Yes.
Q: (L) Northern China or Southern China?
A: North.

Northern China include the Sinkiang province, Inner Mongolia and the areas between the rivers of Amur and Hwang Ho. The Hwang Ho river is also called The Yellow River as on the map below.
http://go.hrw.com/atlas/norm_map/china.gif
These are all south or east of the Altaic region from where the Turkish speaking people are set to have come, that drove the Scythians back.
The Altai mountains are explained as:

Altai or Altay (both: ăltī', �l-, ăl'tī, Rus. əltī') , geologically complex mountain system of central Asia; largely in the Altai Republic, Russia, and in Kazakhstan, but extending into W Mongolia (where it is called the Mongolian, or Gobi, Altai), and into N China.

The Altai mountains are visible on the maps below which also give a good idea of the wast distances that these people including the Khazars covered before arriving in Eastern Europe.

So one can propose the Scythians were first driven North towards the steppe by the Chinese and then from the Eastern steppe towards the West by other Mongolian includingTurkish people.

Having some idea of the areas under consideration, next is needed some more information about steppe people living there now and before. To explore this I shall give a resume of a presentation that was on the National Geographic channel in 2005, with most of the recordings having been done in late 2004.

It was about the Amazons. One American lady who had been interested in the story of the Amazons for many years were in Southern Russia, it had been reported that a skeleton of a lady had been found a few meters below the steppe buried with weapons, and jewellery.

The grave was dated to about 500 years BC. What they also did was taking the skull measurements to the forensic lab, which remodelled the lady so she came back to life sort of. She was a Caucasian. In Russia and the Ukraine you would be able, with a bit of patience, to find someone similar.

The team of researchers and photographers visited a museum in Munich were Greek pottery with Amazonian themes were shown, the way of dressing, shoes, weapons etc. We also saw some copies of old manuscripts or books were they are mentioned.

In the ancient records, the Amazons are described as having been defeated, assimilated and disappeared to the East. The reason for disappearing was that they did not get along with the local ladies of the new tribe, whom they found lazy, so some of them succeeded to convince their new husbands to leave.

Knowing the last traces of them were in the eastern direction, they went looking for them, in Mongolia. In the Western part they found that the nomads still living there were having bows that looked identical, traditional shoes that looked the same, and belts with a characteristic conch exactly as on the old pottery pieces in the museum. The conch was taken as an indication that originally the culture had been closer to the sea or and area which had water. In fact The National Geographic show concluded that it must have been the seas of the West, like the Black Sea, or Caspian Sea that the Amazon culture originated. However using the above transcript, the Amazon culture could hypothetically speaking also have been taken from an older culture that did not originate in the Western parts of Asia but on the Northern rivers of China.

The art of being able to shoot with a bow while on the horse in full speed was also shown. It is a skill attributed to the Amazons in the old texts. Having seen this much of confirmation in terms of art, dress and behaviour, they asked if there were any people around with more Caucasian features because all they had observed so far was very Mongolian. They got the advice to look further up. Next they packed the 4x4 and went on their way. Far away and high up in the mountains of Western Mongolia close to the Chinese border, and close to the vegetation limit and the advancing snow of the approaching winter, they spotted a young girl of something like 9 years with a phenotype variance in the direction of Caucasian. They received a DNA sample of her and her mother and sent them off for analysis in Munich, while the Russians sent off a piece of bone from the woman that had been dead but well preserved lying 2500 years, 12 feet below the Russian steppe.

The German scientists worked on identifying the mtDNA and discovered after a few days to their surprise and amazement that the Mitochondrial DNA of the ancient woman and the two Mongolian ladies were identical. This means that there would be a direct link between or along the line.

Later it was confirmed that a number of the skeletons found in Southern Russia previously considered to have been of men, because they were buried with weapons, were in fact women.

The conclusion is that the culture of steppe people 2500 years ago was close to those of several Mongolian tribes today and that they have genetic similarities.

Note: Just after I had written and posted the above account of the National Geographic show I searched a bit more. There is a description National Geographic website with the DVD ot the show, that is the one I most likely saw. Also there is an interview with the archaeologist, Jeannine Davis-Kimball who appears on the DVD.
Jeannine Davis-Kimball with Mona Behan have also written a book with the title Warrior Women. There is a short summary:

Kimball-Davis found that women priestesses, warriors, and hearth women were given positions of prominence in burial mounds and depicted in cave paintings as substantially larger and more powerful than men. But she found no physical evidence for a tribe of women warriors living independently of men like the legendary Amazons.

Inferences and discussion
As a premise we can say that the Amazons were before the Huns and the Khazars, who all were before the Mongolians of today. Therefore, since the culture in-between has been pretty unchanged it is probable that all these steppe people had similar cultures. And the fact that the mtDNA of an Amazon, a Caucasian, was found in the Mongolian ladies indicates that at least some of those people who existed in-between whether Scythians or Huns or Khazars also shared the same mtDNA.

In the SOTTsupplement mentioned in post one, where the Koestler book is referred to and in the 911 book there is mention of Nostradamus and Edgar Cayce. They speak of the Mongols and Mongolism. Edgar Cayce is quoted as having said:

If there is not the acceptance in America of the closer brotherhood of man, the love of the neighbor as self, civilization must wend its way westward - and again must Mongolism, must a hated people be raised.

Hated because it caused destruction in the forms of Djenghis Khan and earlier the Huns. However Mongolism can be understood as not related to race but to the way of behaving. It was probably only named Mongolism because it was a manner that in historical context was first identified and associated with Mongols. Therefore the raids of America and aligned countries into Afghanistan and Iraq could also be termed Mongolism, just as earlier the advent of Europeans to America, since from the point of view of the victims, the difference is marginal.

In their time the Huns were put to flee by the Chinese, and in front of them went the Scythians. Today as a historical parallel, Mongolian people have taken over many fields of business that used to be associated with the descendants of the Scythians. These then in the case of countries like U.S.A., and Britain, have been excelling in making arms. This has been to the partial detriment of many average citizens in many countries including their own, at least US welfare, except among those who are rich already and even own some factories in the East, have not fared that well.

From another thread, Are the Nephilim and Hitlers Master Race really just Psychopaths?, post # 2:

Laura wrote:

In other words, the story of the genetically enhanced intelligence of Ashkenazi Jews is very likely an anthropological description of the process of natural selection for not only intelligence, but for psychopathy.


Lobaczewski remarks that psychopaths are generally lower in intelligence than the populations of normal humans he has studied. We believe that this is due to the fact that the very intelligent psychopaths do not ever find themselves subjected to being studied. This certainly causes us to re-think the work being done in Ethnic Specific Weapons, the importance of mtDNA to that work and, naturally this:

One of the earliest factual references to the Khazars occurs in a Syriac chronicle dating from the middle of the sixth century. It mentions the Khazars in a list of people who inhabit the region of the Caucasus. Koestler recounts that other sources indicate that the Khazars were intimately connected with the Huns. An interesting connection considering the legend that the Huns were a tribe of peoples that descended from Scythian witches who, cast out of their tribes, "mated with devils in the desert."

In my version of the 911 book, page 395, the last sentence is not there, maybe it is in the new version. Either way, from modern science or ancient legend, if any of the Arms-producing pathocrats, wearing masks of sanity make and use Ethnic specific weapons, the curses of the witches, that is death and destruction, might catch up with their own people and the descendants of their own ancestors. But these considerations are likely only of importance for people with conscience.

Thorbiorn

 

[Johnno]

Thankyou for this. A lot of interesting finds amongst your research.

If you can, try to hunt down a copy of John Philip Cohane's "The Key" which traces a lot of commonality in place names as well as peopl/tribe names.

http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?sts=t&an=cohane&y=0&tn=key&x=0

He mentions the "asa" root either being a fertility god (as in ishtar) or a snake as in asp.

The word Kazar can be broken down too..... oca/asa . Oc most likely being the god or beliefs and way of life of the "circle people". For example the old druids were known as Ogham. Langue d'Oc the old language in France giving rise to the provence of Languedoc is another interesting avenue.

Asena breaks down to asa/ana (ana equating to "great") to Asena from the description describes "the great snake people" or "great ash people". I'd say from the examples of them finding their way into aristocracy fairly quickly points more to "the snake"!

One could spend hours on this.

 

[Anders]

Likewise thank you Thorbiorn for a most interesting post. It puts the Nordic mythology in a different light.

While doing genealogy research I found a site that also attempt listing the genealogy of many of the ancient and mythical figures in history. It can be found here http://www.american-pictures.com/genealogy/persons/default-names.htm

1.3 Even the Huns, of whom we know much more, are of uncertain origin; their name is apparently derived from the Chinese Hiung-nu, which designates warlike nomads in general, while other nations applied the name Hun in a similarly indiscriminate way to nomadic hordes of all kinds, including the "White Huns" mentioned above, the Sabirs, Magyars and Khazars.

I noticed that on the above mentioned genealogy site under the king list, that kings of China has the word 'Hsiung-nu' in brackets after China, which looks very close to the word Hiung-nu mentioned above.

Asena breaks down to asa/ana (ana equating to "great") to Asena from the description describes "the great snake people" or "great ash people". I'd say from the examples of them finding their way into aristocracy fairly quickly points more to "the snake"!

It made me think as I remembered from childhood the stories of the giant ash tree in Nordic mythology. On the net I found this regarding the old ash tree yggdrasil http://www.pantheon.org/articles/y/yggdrasil.html

In Norse mythology, Yggdrasil ("The Terrible One's Horse"), also called the World Tree, is the giant ash tree that links and shelters all the worlds. Beneath the three roots the realms of Asgard, Jotunheim, and Niflheim are located. Three wells lie at its base: the Well of Wisdom (Mímisbrunnr), guarded by Mimir; the Well of Fate (Urdarbrunnr), guarded by the Norns; and the Hvergelmir (Roaring Kettle), the source of many rivers.

Four deer run across the branches of the tree and eat the buds; they represent the four winds. There are other inhabitants of the tree, such as the squirrel Ratatosk ("swift teeth"), a notorious gossip, and Vidofnir ("tree snake"), the golden cock that perches on the topmost bough. The roots are gnawed upon by Nidhogg and other serpents. On the day of Ragnarok, the fire giant Surt will set the tree on fire.

Other names for the tree include: Ask Yggdrasil, Hoddmimir's Wood, Laerad and Odin's Horse.

To me it appears as quite a rich and descriptive picture of reality with the snakes (entropic principle) gnawing at (undermining) the roots of yggdrasil (the creative principle) the lifegiver. Asena could therefore describe the potential of either becoming "the great snake people" or "the great ash people", depending on the choices made. This could have an effect on the consequences of Ragnarok, if we follow the analogy. A tree that has had its roots eaten (in Australia known as the disease 'dieback') is very unlikely to survive a fire, whereas a tree with a strong root system has a much stronger chance of surviving a fire.

So the Nordic mythology can be seen to encourage understanding or as Laura often points out : "Those, who don't learn from history (roots) are bound to repeat it."

Anders