Aleppo (Arabic: حلب, Ḥalab) is the most significant city in Northern Syria and the country's second most populous settlement. It is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, having served as a vital commercial hub along the Silk Road for millennia. There is no universally accepted etymology for the city's name. It appeared as Ha-lam in the Eblaite tablets as early as the 3rd millennium BC, while the Hittites referred to it as Halpa.
Figures 1/a. Decorated egg from
Dobronak of the "living + tree" type
Figure 1/b. Readable representation of
the World Tree,
Figure 1/c. The "living" (élő) hieroglyph
Figure 1/d.
Figure 1/e.
At the 2026 Easter egg exhibition in Dobronak, I
noticed several decorated eggs featuring a World Tree representation alongside
the "living" (élő) hieroglyph (Fig. 1). This "living"
hieroglyph is identifiable with the striped half (Arpadian stripes) of the
Hungarian coat of arms and the letter "l" in the Szekler-Hungarian
Rovas script.
While the World Tree depictions on these eggs vary, they can all be deciphered using the system of Hungarian hieroglyphs. The tradition of "readable" World Trees composed of Hungarian word-signs can be traced back to the Paleolithic across numerous points in Eurasia and the Americas.
Easter eggs that combine these two units (the "living" hieroglyph and the tree) belong to the "living + tree" (élő + fa) typological convention. This convention is present not only on Hungarian decorated eggs (Fig. 1/a) but also on coinage from the Arpadian era (Fig. 2/c). These examples answer the question of whether the term "Tree of Life" (életfa) is an original designation or a recent academic invention. Based on Hungarian variants, this is not a modern scholarly term but a linguistic usage preserved from antiquity. Other designations (Sky-high Tree, World Tree, Sacred Tree, etc.) all evoke the same Milky Way (tree, world pillar, celestial river) identified with God.
Figure 2/a. Hittite/Luvian "city"
sign as the World Pillar.
Figure 2/b. Sarmatian deer from Filippovka with
similar hieroglyphs.
The Hittite Halpa origin of the name Aleppo allows us
to glimpse how ancient this designation is and what it truly signifies. Our
attention is drawn to the Hittites because the Hittite (Luvian) hieroglyphic
script contains a logogram for "settlement/city" (Fig. 2/a) that
resembles the "living" sign found on Easter eggs, the Arpadian
stripes, and the Szekler letter "l." However, the use of the
"living" sign was not restricted to a single people. Its widespread
nature is illustrated by its presence in the Indus Valley script, alongside
approximately 40 other signs identical to Hungarian characters (Fig. 2/d).
Sarmatian usage points to one possible historical link
through which the "living" sign may have entered the Carpathian Basin
(Fig. 2/b). The Sarmatians (descendants of the Medes and Mitanni) inhabited the
Carpathian Basin even before the Roman era, and large masses of them became
part of the modern Hungarian population. Of course, the character set of
Hungarian hieroglyphic writing was already generally known and widespread from
the Pyrenees to America during the Stone Age. Nevertheless, specific layers of usage
and conventions—such as this "living + tree" composition—can be
isolated and tracked, allowing for the identification of specific ethnicities
or cultural influences.
For a long time, the acrophony of the "l" Rovas sign was debated, as the readings él (to live), élő (living), or élet (life) did not seem reconcilable with the "settlement/city" meaning of the Hittite logogram. Ultimately, the Halpa variant of Aleppo and the Dobronak Easter egg provided the answer:
The prefix hal- in the city's name is cognate with the name of the Greek sun god Helios, which hides the equivalent of our word élő (living). This is also related to the name Allah and the word Elohim (gods). Such correspondences between divine names and the Hungarian word élő are not isolated cases. It is a widespread phenomenon that common words in the Hungarian language are cognate with the divine names of foreign peoples. This massive linguistic and paleo-religious correlation justifies the historical conclusion that, at the end of the Paleolithic, Hungarian or a culture closely related to it exerted a significant influence on its environment.
The suffix -pa in the city's name, meaning "tree" (fa), can be approached through the name of Jaffa (formerly Joppe, meaning "Good Tree" / Jó fa – VG) and the polis - falu correspondence. The ancestor of the word polis was likely adopted by the Greeks from the Sabirs (Hurrians) in Anatolia. The name Jaffa also dates back several millennia; for instance, it is mentioned as Yapu in 15th-century BC Egyptian records, showing a p-f sound shift at the beginning of the word.
These three words (Alpa, Yapu, polis) testify to the
strong connection of settlement names to the Milky Way and the World Tree
identified with God. The connection of the "tree" to God can be
inferred from the fact that both élő (living) and jó (good) are epithets of the
God of the Hungarians, from which divine names evolved in the Bronze Age and
Antiquity. Thus, Bronze Age settlements were most notable for the "tree
cult" practiced there at the time of their foundation.
The name of the city Assur ("ancient
stem/lineage" or "ancient lord" / ős szár, ősúr) is also tied to
this tree cult, as evidenced by Assyrian World Tree depictions. This usage of
words and signs, and this paleo-religious worldview, is thanks to the
pre-Sumerian Sabirs (also known as Hurrians), who formed the core population of
Assyria. Notably, according to the Byzantine Emperor Constantine
Porphyrogenitus, the ancient name of the Hungarians was Sabir (Savartoi
asphaloi).
Simo Parpola attributes great significance to the Assyrian World Tree, viewing it as the foundation of European and Jewish culture. This is supported by the archaeological framework established by Kornél Bakay regarding a once-existent Hungarian or Hungarian-related culture.
The sign usage of this Bronze Age tree cult has been preserved in Hungarian Easter eggs (Fig. 1/a) and Arpadian-era coins (Fig. 2/c). Through Hungarian hieroglyphic usage, a compound word expressing this paleo-religious association has survived—the same one that created the name of Aleppo ("Living Tree") some five thousand years ago.
Figure 2/d. Indus Valley sign
depicting the world pillar supporting the sky.
Notes
(1) Simo Parpola (2007) writes: "To date, I have
systematically reviewed approximately 75 percent of the Sumerian vocabulary and
identified more than 1,700 words and morphemes that can be reasonably
associated with Uralic and/or Altaic etymologies, allowing for systematic sound
shifts and semantic shifts. Somewhat surprisingly, the words of potential
Altaic etymology represent only a small minority (about seven percent) of the
total, and it is unlikely that this picture will change substantially by the
time the project is completed. While a close relationship between Sumerian and
the Altaic family as a whole thus appears excluded, a genetic link with Turkic
seems possible, as most of the correspondences are with Turkic languages, and
these are core words and grammatical morphemes also found in Uralic languages.
Virtually all the compared items are thus Uralic,
mostly Finno-Ugric. Most of them are found in at least one major Uralic branch
besides Finnish, so they are certainly very ancient, dating back to at least
3000 BC. A large proportion of the words are known only from the Finnish
language, but this does not prevent them from being ancient as well, as they
lack [other] etymologies and are largely words common to all eight Finnic
languages.
This collection of words covers the full spectrum of
the Sumerian vocabulary (Fig. 5) and includes 478 common verbs of all possible
types, such as verbs of being, bodily processes, sensory perception, emotion,
creation, communication, motion, etc.; body parts, kinship terms, natural
phenomena, animals, plants, weapons, tools, and various technical terms
reflecting the cultural level of the Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods (in the
fields of agriculture, food production, animal husbandry, weaving, metallurgy,
building technology, etc.). I emphasize that the majority of the words in
question are basic words, and 75 percent of them show very good formal and
semantic agreement. ...
The question may arise as to why these numerous
lexical correspondences with the Uralic language were not discovered earlier.
The explanation is simple. A good knowledge of Uralic languages, as well as an
understanding of the intricacies of Sumerian phonology and the cuneiform
writing system, is necessary to recognize Sumerian-Uralic connections, and such
a combination of expertise is rare. Very few Assyriologists know Uralic
languages, and experts in Uralic studies know no Sumerian. Naturally, alongside
the necessary specialized expertise, the will to seriously study the question
would also be required—and this will has been entirely absent from Assyriology
for the last 120 years. ...
The Sumerians thus arrived in Mesopotamia from the
north, where the Uralic language family is located. ... I would not rule out
that their homeland can be identified with the Maykop culture of the North
Caucasus, which flourished between 3700 and 2900 BC and was in commercial
contact with the Late Uruk culture. Placing the Sumerian homeland in this area
would help explain the non-Uralic features of Sumerian, as the Kartvelian
languages spoken to the south are ergative and have a verbal prefix system similar
to Sumerian. The Sumerian words for 'wheel' and 'harness for draft animals,'
shared with Uralic, show that its separation from Uralic occurred after the
invention of wheeled vehicles, which have been known in the Maykop culture
since approximately 3500 BC."
The territory of the Maykop culture became Sabir a
thousand years later, meaning the Sumerians emerged from among the Sabirs.
However, phenomena indicating linguistic affinity are not limited to the
Sumerians but can be detected more broadly—for instance, in the naming of
cities and gods. Based on the occurrences of the Sabir ancestral sentence-sign,
this larger area is linked to the Sabirs. Similar conclusions regarding the
once-significant influence of Hungarian or a Hungarian-related culture can also
be formulated based on the archaeological horizon.
Archaeologist Kornél Bakay summarizes the uncovered
processes of Hungarian prehistory as follows (Archaeological Sources of Our
Prehistory, Vol. III): "the so-called Pre-Scythian ancestral population
including the ancient Hungarians (which, according to our hypothesis, was not
an Indo-Iranian speaking population!) migrated continuously from the Upper
Paleolithic from the south, in various waves, towards the north, reaching the
Ural region, the Minusinsk Basin, and the territory of Western Siberia mostly
through the Caucasus and Central Asia (the eastern side of the Caspian Sea) and
the current North Chinese region. This vast landscape already possessed
extremely favorable conditions four to five thousand years ago, both
ecologically and in other respects." (Bakay, ibid., p. 141). "N.L.
Chlenova clearly saw and attempted to prove with archaeological methods that
from the end of the 3rd millennium BC, a massive unified region was established
from the Pacific Ocean, China, and the Ordos region all the way to Central
Europe, with a common material culture (arrowheads, daggers, knives, horse
tack, ceramics, stone box graves) and a common spirituality, whose defining
archaeological cultures were the Seima-Turbino, Karasuk, and Tagar
cultures." (Bakay, ibid., pp. 149–150).
Bibliography
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III. kötet [Archaeological Sources of Our Prehistory, Vol. III].
Parpola, Simo (1993): The Assyrian Tree of Life:
Tracing the Origins of Jewish Mysticism and Greek Philosophy. In: Journal of
Near Eastern Studies, 52(3): 161–208.
Parpola, Simo (2016): Etymological Dictionary of the
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Pp. xliv + 426; xxviii + 436.
Parpola, Simo (2007): Sumerian: A Uralic Language (I).
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Varga Géza
