The Signs of the Hunnic Deer from Nalingaotu, China

- A kínai Nalingaotu hun szarvasának jelei -

A volume titled Problems of Identifying Hunnic Archaeological Finds in the Carpathian Basin: The Case of Horse Burials (A hun régészeti leletek azonosításának problémái a Kárpát-medencében: A lótemetkezések esete) by Attila P. Kiss, edited by Csilla Balogh and Hákán Aydemir, has been published on academia.edu. The cover features the golden, deer-like mythical animal from Nalingaotu, China. This is not an ordinary deer, but a hybrid creature with a bird's beak and branching antlers (Fig. 1). In accordance with the miraculous deer depictions of the Migration Period, it is covered with Hungarian hieroglyphs. Namely, the ancient religion—ultimately of Stone Age origin—provided its most important depictions with prayers and explanatory texts written with Hungarian logograms, and in some cases constructed them entirely out of logograms. The Hunnic golden deer discussed below conforms to this requirement, to the representational and sign-using customs of the ancient religion. In the present article, in order to provide a necessary supplement to the work of the author and the editors, I decipher the short hieroglyphic texts on the body of the deer.

Fig. 1. The Hunnic deer of Nalingaotu (China, Shaanxi History Museum)

The colophon of the volume calls it a "bird-headed and horned mythological animal", and gives its provenance as Nalingaotu, Shenmu County, Shaanxi Province. According to the Shaanxi History Museum, it was unearthed in 1957 and is currently preserved there. Its maker is unknown; it is generally linked to the Xiongnu—Asian Hun—milieu of the northern Chinese steppe. A 2024 description based on the museum's material dates it to the Warring States period, between 475 and 221 BC. However, the dating is not uniform: the museum's English website calls it Han-dynasty.

According to interpretations, it may have been the ornament of a high-ranking person's headdress: this is indicated by the tiny fastening holes on the flower-like pedestal. It is particularly interesting that its antlers are formed by sixteen bird figures, and its tail also ends in a bird-like creature. Thus, the deer–bird composition is not a mere impression, but the consciously designed pictorial structure of the object.

The Logograms of the Hunnic Deer

Every sign on the Hunnic deer of Nalingaotu is identical to one of the logograms of the Hungarian hieroglyphic script. These signs also match the signs of the Székely script still in use today, though there they are mostly letters denoting only a single sound. An exception is Ak – the name of a god, e.g., Heracles, or his epithet, e.g., brook (patak). Similarly, Ten is an exception, which was the ancient name of God (ős + ten). These two logograms remained unchanged even after acrophony took place, obviously in connection with the need to preserve the most important divine names.

Fig. 2/a. The logograms of the Hunnic deer found at the Nalingaotu site and their Székely equivalents

The Hunnic hieroglyphs in Fig. 2/a are easily identifiable with the signs of the Székely script that have remained in use to the present day. Only the connection between the Ra(gyog) ('shine/radiate') hieroglyph and the letter "R" of the Székely script needs to be illuminated by outlining the history of the Székely letters "r" and "R". This sign originally looked like what we know today as the Egyptian hieroglyph denoting the name of the sun god Ra. It is a circular sign with a dot in the middle, or without a dot. At one time, it denoted the name of a Stone Age sun god. During the history of the sign, the circle became a square, and the dot became a horizontal or slanted line. Later, due to carving technology (rovás), the lower and upper horizontal lines of the square disappeared, because a horizontal line cannot be carved, or is not easy to carve. That is, a sign form emerged that is identical to today's Székely letter "R". The Ra(gyog) hieroglyph in Fig. 2/a may correspond to one of the intermediate stages of the above process. On this, see Fig. 2/b and the article titled From the Hieroglyph of Sun God Ra to the Székely "R" Rovás Letter (Rá napisten hieroglifájából székely "R" rovásbetű)!

Fig. 2/b. The development of the form of the Székely "R" and "r" rovás letters (top left: the Egyptian hieroglyph of sun god Ra; top right: the Sarmatian equivalent of the sign; bottom left: a Hungarian folk sign variant from a Transylvanian plate copied by Imre Czibor; bottom right: the letters "R" and "r" of the Székely script)

The Sentence-Signs of the Hunnic Deer

The Hunnic sentence-signs allow us to infer recurring textual phrases in word usage as well. This, in turn, proves the existence of a highly developed ancient religion (worldview, conceptual and sign system) of Stone Age origin. This can be seen based on a few parallels of the Ak ügy sign-pair existing on the Hunnic deer (Figs. 3/a – 3/e).

Fig. 3/a. The Ak ügy "Heracles River" sentence-sign of the Asian Hunnic deer, next to it from left to right the Székely script signs for Ak "brook, Heracles" and "ü" (ügy "river")

The Ak ügy sentence-sign in Fig. 3/a is one of the names of the Milky Way identified with God, when the star-path is regarded as a river and identified with the son member of the divine triad, God Ak. This god was referred to by the Greeks as Heracles and is described as the forefather of the Scythians. It is a detail of numerous hieroglyphic texts.

Fig. 3/b. A vessel of the Hamangia culture in Bulgaria from around 5000 BC with 4 pairs of the Ak ügy "Heracles River" sign running around the outside of the vessel, referring to the sacred rivers of Eden (photographic graphic)

Fig. 3/c. A Scythian stele of the Okunev culture, with the symmetrical sentence Lyukó Ak ügy "Lyukó is the Ak River" on the god's forehead

The applications of the Ak ügy sign-pair document the ancient religious career of the antecedent of the Székely script. The connection between the sign usage of the Asian Hunnic golden deer and the South Siberian Okunev culture is indirect, yet extremely deep from a developmental-historical and iconographic perspective: the art of the Okunev culture can be considered one of the most ancient roots from which the millennial tradition of Inner Asian and steppe mythical deer depictions unfolded.

The Okunev culture flourishing in the Yenisei region is much earlier: it can be dated to the Early Bronze Age, roughly between 2500 and 1800 BC. In contrast, the Nalingaotu find originates from the Late Iron Age, the 4th–3rd centuries BC (the Xiongnu period). During the nearly two thousand years that elapsed between the two, South Siberian and Mongolian rock art, as well as Late Bronze Age deer stones, transmitted the motif.

In the Okunev culture, the antler appeared as a symbol of the sun, as well as an emblem of otherworldly transformation, the shamanic crown, and cosmic connection. This principle was inherited further: the oversized, proliferating antler structure ending in bird heads seen on the head of the Nalingaotu golden deer carries forward this same transcendent, sky-reaching function.

Okunev sculpture and small statuary liked to merge human, avian, predatory, and ungulate traits in the form of fantastic beings, multi-headed or antlered monsters. The Nalingaotu find is likewise a hybrid being: with a deer-like body, a bird-of-prey beak, and mythical antlers. This magical mixing of forms and species is rooted in Siberian animism and shamanism, whose earliest complex artistic expression was precisely the Okunev culture.

Fig. 3/d. Samarra bowl from the 7th millennium BC, with a swastika in the center symbolizing the four sacred rivers of Eden (the Halys, Araxes, Tigris, Euphrates), and along its rim the sentence Ak ügy (in modern Hungarian: Heraklész folyó / "Heracles River"), referring to the Milky Way identical with God, is repeated

On the left edge of Fig. 3/d, the hieroglyphs of the Samarra bowl unearthed in the territory of present-day Iraq can be seen from top to bottom: the swastika (the "jóságos Dana" / "benevolent Dana" sentence-sign), as well as the jó, Ak, and ügy logograms. On the right are the Székely signs corresponding to the hieroglyphs: "j" (jó "river"), Ak "brook, Heracles", and "ü" (ügy "river"). The Samarra bowl defines, or points in the direction of, the source region of the ancient religious sign usage found on the Asian Hunnic golden deer. According to the standpoint of archaeology, there is no direct historical or geographical connection between the Samarra culture (Late Neolithic, ca. 6000–4800 BC) and the Okunev culture (Early Bronze Age, ca. 2700–1800 BC), as they are separated by great temporal and geographical distances. However, archaeologists do not utilize the possibilities offered by the shared sign usage connecting the two cultures, and therefore their standpoint is not sufficiently well-founded. For example, they know nothing of the result of the mathematical probability calculation performed with the help of Tibor Nemetz. According to this, the reason for the similar written signs found in the world's writing systems is common origin, a genetic relationship manifested in sign usage and the worldview connected with it. That is, despite all archaeological considerations, the sign usage of the Samarra and Okunev cultures is organically connected; at most, archaeologists, historians, and linguists do not yet know, or are unwilling to give, a satisfactory explanation for this. However, sign-pairs such as Ak ügy demand an explanation and signify existing connections.

Fig. 3/e. Detail of a rock carving along the Amur from around 4000 BC, with the Ak ügy sign-pair (the figure was also published by Mihály Hoppál)

In Fig. 3/e, on the head of God, the sentence Szár Ak isten, ügy szár (in modern Hungarian: Úr Ak isten a folyó ura / "Lord God Ak is the lord of the river", or Heraklész isten a folyó ura / "God Heracles is the lord of the river"), written with Hungarian logograms and readable in Hungarian, can be seen. The Ak ügy sign-pair featured in it, together with its parallels, documents that the signs found in both the Asian Hunnic sign inventory and the Székely script have been continuously in the service of the ancient religion for at least 9,000 years. This continuous use can be demonstrated for the majority of the Székely signs and can already be documented in the Stone Age from the Pyrenees to America. This makes it possible to decipher Stone Age and later inscriptions with the help of the Hungarian hieroglyphic script (the antecedent of the Székely signs employing logograms).

Fig. 3/f. The reading of the most common Velemér rafter pattern is Ak szár ügy (in modern Hungarian: Ak úr folyó / "Lord Ak River"); in the bottom row of the figure are the Székely script's "Ak" (brook, Heracles), "sz" (szár "plant stem, lord"), and "ü" (ügy "river") rovás signs

Fig. 4/a. The Jó sar "Good Lord" sentence-sign of the Asian Hunnic deer; in the top right corner of the figure are the Székely script's "j" (jó "river, god, good") and "s" (sar "corner, lord") signs

Fig. 4/b. The Great Wave off Kanagawa, woodblock print by Katsushika Hokusai; the curling wave is the pictograph of jó "river", and the mountain is that of sar "corner, lord"

The identity of the pictorial content of Figs. 4/a and 4/b can be traced back to the correspondence of the essence of mythology and the continuity of ancient religious sign usage.

Fig. 5/a. The Ten sar "Lord Ten" sentence-sign; on the right edge of the figure from top to bottom are the Székely script's Ten "life, god" and sar "corner, lord" signs

Fig. 5/b. The phrase Ten sar "Lord Ten" also appears in the reading of the hieroglyphs of the wooden coffin found in the Alanian necropolis of Podorvannaya Balka

The reading of the Hungarian text on the Alanian wooden coffin shown in Fig. 5/b, from right to left, is: Ten magas kő sar (in modern Hungarian: Ten a magas kő ura / "Ten is the lord of the high stone"); in the bottom row of the figure are the Székely ten, magas kő ('high stone'), and sar "corner, lord" signs corresponding to the Alanian hieroglyphs (after Yatsenko).

The Reading of the Deer's Signs

From the eye and the antler of the deer (on the latter with boustrophedon line direction: proceeding first from right to left along the bottom of the antler, and then from left to right along the upper part of the antler), the sentence Lyukó a ragyogó, nagy, égi Ak ügy (in modern Hungarian: Lyukó a ragyogó, nagy, égi Heraklész folyó / "Lyukó is the shining, great, celestial Heracles River") can be read out. On the body of the deer, the sentences Ten sar "Lord Ten" and Jó sar "Good Lord" were recorded. This written monument conforms to the similar procedure observed in hundreds of hieroglyphic texts. We can read short ancient religious prayers in a pictorial structure of ancient religious significance.

Literature

Kiss P. Attila (2023): Problems of Identifying Hunnic Archaeological Finds in the Carpathian Basin: The Case of Horse Burials (A hun régészeti leletek azonosításának problémái a Kárpát-medencében: A lótemetkezések esete), in: International Symposium on Interdisciplinary Hunnic Books (Interdiszciplináris hunkönyvek nemzetközi hunkönyvek szimpóziuma), November 13–14, 2023, Istanbul.

Sergey Aleksandrovich Yatsenko (2013): Some Problems Regarding Early Medieval Turkic Tamga-Sign Studies (Néhány probléma a kora középkori török tamgajel-tanulmányokkal kapcsolatban) (academia.edu)

Varga Géza (2018): The Mathematical Probability Calculation of Mathematician Tibor Nemetz of Rovological Significance (Nemetz Tibor matematikus rovológiai jelentőségű valószínűségszámítása)

Varga Géza (2018): From the Hieroglyph of Sun God Ra to the Székely "R" Rovás Letter (Rá napisten hieroglifájából székely "R" rovásbetű)

Varga Géza (2021): 7,000-Year-Old Samarra Bowl with the Sentence Ak ügy "Heracles River" (7000 éves Szamarra tál Ak ügy "Heraklész folyó" mondattal)

Varga Géza (2025): The Rafters of Velemér as Decipherable Symbols of the World Tree (A veleméri szarufák a világfa elolvasható jelképei)

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Angol kulcsszavak (nemzetközi kereséshez):

Nalingaotu, Shaanxi History Museum, Xiongnu, Asian Huns, Hunnic art, golden deer, mythical deer, Hungarian hieroglyphic script, Székely script, rovás, logograms, sentence-signs, ancient religion, Okunev culture, Samarra bowl, Hamangia culture, Milky Way, Heracles, Lyukó, boustrophedon, history of writing, Géza Varga

Magyar kulcsszavak (hazai kereséshez):
Nalingaotu, hun aranyszarvas, ázsiai hunok, hsziungnu, magyar hieroglif írás, székely írás, rovásírás, szójelek, mondatjelek, ősvallás, okunyevi kultúra, Szamarra tál, Hamangia kultúra, Tejút, Heraklész, Lyukó, busztrofedon, írástörténet, Varga Géza