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  • Writer's picturepeter clings

Santnicolau Mare treasury tells more

Updated: Oct 9, 2020

There is a very interesting collection at the Museum in Vienna called the Treasure of Nagyszentmiklos. It contains various objects of gold that add up to almost 10 Kg of gold. The objects contain inscriptions and decoration that give the impression of a collection accumulated over many centuries. It must have been the treasury of a powerful tribe. One could draw analogies to the famous 12th century German story of the Niebelungen


The collection is shown in the image below, more details can be found from Treasure of Nagyszentmiklos

The is one item in the collection that gives away the time when the treasury was buried. The Christian serving tray Bouyla must have been used to carry the Eucharist. One of the points of contention between the Eastern and Western Christian Church the making of the Eucharest. Since the inscription on it is with Greek characters, it is most likely that it was inspired by the Eastern Church. The Eucharist in Greek is called αντίδωρον, antídōron or "in place of the gifts". One can remember from my earlier posting about the origin of the Romanian name for Danube that the root word Dona is present in the Greek word for the Eucharist too. So this object must have been one of those many Dona (Eng. for 'gifts' or donations :-)) that the Eastern Roman Empire made to the Barbarians to keep them content


But there is no written evidence of any Avar (Barbarian) to Byzantine direct contact (Byzantium and the Avars, 6th-9th Century AD), let alone attempts to proselytizes with them. The inscription with Greek characters could not have been produced during the times of the Avars. It is of a much later making. There are characteristics on the Buyla inscription, on the most important object of that treasury, that places the entire treasury to 10th to 11th century


Just look closely at reproduction below. The cross in the middle is that of a Metropolitan (not even a simple Bishop) if you care to know much about Byzantine church hierarchy and practices. The only one that I know ever in the region is Metropolitanate of Tourkia established by Hierothes in Morissena, that is Cenad just 5 Km away from the location where there treasury was found. Csanad is the name of the guy who betrayed and assassinated Antony the last Gyula in line. The known Greek monastery in Morissena/Csenad was destroyed in 1018AD replaced with a Cistercians monastery shortly after (read about Gerard of Csanád). The monastery was destroyed by the Mongols in 1242 and never rebuilt. The object itself is valuable by its weight. If I am not mistaken is weighs almost 2 kg of gold

A translation of the text in Romanian can be found at https://www.peterclings.com/post/text-misinterpretation-on-the-buyla-inscription

The location where the treasury was found is highlighted on the map below. Cenad

In conclusion, it is more likely that the entire collection belonged to the 10th century leader Ahtum / Ajtony described in the http://www.ehumana.hu/arpad/szoveg/eg08-1.htm. The major problem with dating the treasury is that it gives credit to the Byzantine chronicles of the 10th and 11th century such as Constantine VII (the famous author of the De Administrando Imperio) who names the ancient Hungarians as Tourkoi consistently. That the Byzantine regarded those ancient people as Turks may actually be true. The question than is how the Magyar language came to be non-Turkic when it started as one



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