Barbarians- Secrets of the Dark Ages

by Richard Rudgley

  To this day their ethnic and linguistic affiliations are poorly understood. Their language is usually thought to belong to either the group that includes Turkish, or the group that includes Finnish and Hungarian. I wanted Tomka's input on this question, hoping his expertise might be able to produce a definitive answer, a rare thing in the world of Hunnic studies. What of their language? He smiled and said that we do not know but, most likely, it was a member of the language family that includes Turkish and Mongolian (known as Altaic after the Altai mountains of Central Asia). Even some of the few supposedly Hunnic words that have come down to us via the history books may have been Gothic translations instead.

  Jordanes, when writing of the Huns, may have altered the actual Hun words to suit the Gothic tongue. According to Professor Tomka, the very name Attila is the Gothic version of an unknown Hunnic title and translates as 'little father'. Others translate it as 'daddy'. That the most famous Hun of them all may be known only by a foreign name is another remarkable testimony to the enigmatic place of the Huns in the history of our continent. Linguistic comparisons have been made between the names of the Attila clan and other words given by Jordanes and words that made their way into the language of the early (pre-Slavic) Bulgarians. Based on the similarities found between the two tongues, a 'Hunno-Bulgarian' branch of the Altaic language family has been suggested as a way of pigeonholing the language of Attila and his people.

  It will have become apparent by now that the Huns were not a people to be easily pigeonholed. It would be wrong to think of them as a single, unified society that was simply at odds with the dominant superpowers of the time – the Chinese, Persian and Roman empires. One cluster that splintered off the main body were the so-called White Huns who, finding the region to the north of Persia to their liking, gave up the nomadic lifestyle to settle there permanently. The rest of the Hunnic hordes kept on the move, not drifting aimlessly but resolutely westwards. Although literacy was a feature of the pre-Islamic Persian empire, the Iranian written sources concerning the Huns amount to little more than a few disconnected fragments.

  If we go further to the east and into the cultural sphere of China, we find much more in the way of historical information that not only tells us about the life of the eastern Huns but also gives us the much needed background to their later arrival on the fringes of Europe and the Roman empire. It was first suggested in the eighteenth century that the Hsiung-nu, a nomadic and bellicose people mentioned in Chinese sources from the Han dynasty, may be none other than the Huns who swept so dramatically into the European continent. Like most of their counterparts in the Greek and Roman worlds, the Chinese writers had no inclination to give a carefully balanced account of their war-like nomadic neighbours who lived beyond the Great Wall.

  We have already seen what made the Goths a distinct group. It was not their language or their ethnic unity; it was their name (a banner under which a multi-ethnic society could come together) and the fact of their being under the leadership of a royal clan. The same is the case with the Hsiung-nu, the name given in the Chinese accounts to refer to the multi-ethnic state built up by the nomads. These people were ruled over by a royal clan of Huns that are called Lüan-t'i in the older sources and T'u-ko from the third century AD onwards.

  By AD 48 the Hsiung-nu had split into two major divisions, rather like the Goths of Europe were to do. The southern branch settled down in the lands of northern China and in doing so accepted Chinese sovereignty. They retained a certain independence for a century and a half until their ruling Hunnic clan merged with the ruling class of the Chinese Han dynasty and then submerged into it in AD 216, thereby losing its own name and separate identity.

  The Long Trail from Dzungaria to Hungary

  Meanwhile, the northern branch of the Hsiung-nu kept their independence and the Hunnic name of the T'u-ko clan lived on, but unlike their southerly neighbours they were not able to settle down. In AD 91 they were pushed out of their homeland (now Mongolia) by their enemies, the Hsien-pi. This was to mark the beginning of a long westward migration of the Hun tribes from their traditional territory. They had to relocate, and their leader held court in the Ili Valley in what is now Dzungaria, the northern region of Xinjiang in China that lies between Kazakhstan and Mongolia. Their enemy took over vast tracts of land that had formerly been under the sway of the northern Hsiung-nu. By the middle of the second century AD the latter found themselves reduced to being merely the rulers of Dzungaria.

  After the Chinese tell us these intriguing facts about the political fortunes of the barbarians on their borders, their records dry up. For during this time the Chinese too were losing territory, and their control over the western provinces of their empire waned; thus they ceased to share a common border with the Hsiung-nu. The trail of clues that shed a little light on the otherwise obscure westward migrations of the Huns can be picked up again over 200 years later, in the passing comments of an Armenian historian named P'awstos Buzandats'i. Writing in 380, he tells us that the king of the Maskut people has hired a considerable number of nomads as mercenaries to fight against the Armenians, among them being the Hon – clearly a reference to the Huns. The Armenian king he mentions as being the target of this mercenary force (Khosraw III) reigned from 330 to 338. Then, in the 350s, the Huns, fearless of the might of the Persian empire, entered one of its provinces and forced a treaty with its Iranian inhabitants.

  In the latter part of the fourth century another Iranian people, the Alans, were to become the next victims of Hun expansionism. Under the leadership of a Hun king whose name is usually given as Balamber (but may better be written as Balamur, meaning 'the daring one'), the Alans were press-ganged into becoming the poor partner in an alliance with their new-found neighbours. According to the Gothic historian Jordanes, he was the first leader of the Huns to be deemed a real danger in the western world. It has been suggested that there is reason to doubt whether he was actually a real historical person, and that he may have been concocted by Jordanes. This seems unlikely, for the historian had nothing to gain from creating this Hun leader (who is said to have defeated Gothic forces as well as Alans) out of thin air.

  We have now traced the Huns from their first appearance in history, on the periphery of the Chinese world, down to the time of Uldin and later leaders who were described in the previous chapter. The earlier and lesser-known phase in the history of the Huns began their migration across the vastness of Central Asia towards Russia, precipitated by the concerted Chinese campaigns against the northern Hsiung-nu. The shifts of power in the heart of Central Asia were to have a knock-on effect thousands of miles away, resulting in the Huns' appearance on the eastern fringes of the Roman world in the fourth century. There may have been another factor involved in the Huns' migration: their ever-present and pressing need to feed their horses and herds. Perhaps the climate on the steppe further to the east took a turn for the worse and the grasslands were unable to feed the countless animals of the Huns. Others have argued the opposite – that the favourable conditions of the time may have resulted in a population explosion among both man and beast, and that this was the driving force for their expansion. The lure of gold and other treasure undoubtedly played a role too, for the riches of the Roman empire were hardly a secret and attracted all the barbarian tribes without exception.

  Whatever the factors, the story of the Huns is, in both time and space, of truly epic proportions. It is all the more remarkable in that none of our sources from either east or west were written by this enigmatic and powerful people themselves.

  In the introduction to this book I remarked on how both the Roman and the British empires sought to understand the 'primitive', 'savage' and 'barbaric' peoples with whom they had contact. They were not always successful, especially when confronted by a very different way of life from their own. The cultures of nomads were based, as we have seen, on very different principles and concerns to those of the urban-based empire builders. The tension between the settled agricultural peoples and
pastoral nomads undoubtedly has its roots in prehistory. Whether through trading or raiding, nomads have always relied on their more settled neighbours for grain and other foodstuffs which their own way of life usually does not allow them to produce. It would be wrong to assume, however, that because they were nomads they were constantly moving. Provided the local land could sustain them, they would simply rotate the pasture around them in a similar way to a farmer rotating his fields. But whether on the move or not, the Hun 'empire' was never anything remotely like the Roman empire, nor would it ever have developed along the same lines had it continued.

  The Chinese also had difficulty in understanding the psychology of the nomads. To settle down and become farmers would have been living death to the Huns. They were not, as the archaeology shows, entirely averse to building settlements – it was just that they did not want to be tied down to them. Evidence of a Hsiung-nu settlement has been discovered at a site near Ivolginsk in the southern part of the Buryat region, north of Outer Mongolia. Only 10 per cent of the site has been excavated so far but already more than fifty houses have been discovered. Initial estimates place the population around the 3,000 mark. Other evidence reveals that through agriculture, the raising of livestock and a host of crafts and cottage industries (including metal and bone working as well as pottery), they were able to supply all the needs of a population of up to 13,000 nomads.

  The market towns that grew up under the stewardship of the Hsiung-nu were only a part of their trading system. The Chinese sought to placate the nomads with sometimes lavish gifts. Chinese silk and rice wine were reported to be among the most prized goods among the Hsiung-nu. The mind-set of the nomads was very different to that of both the Chinese and the Romans. The chieftains and kings of the Huns did not simply want tribute payments and gold to stockpile in the same way that the sedentary city-dwellers might hoard their riches. A nomadic leader would often demonstrate his own power and prestige by giving away much of his own wealth to his followers. The more lavish and generous, the greater the leader. It was not simple greed for gold that motivated the nomadic leaders, material wealth was also a means to an end. One needs only to recall the austerity of Attila's clothing and simple wooden goblet and compare them to the rich trappings of his entourage to see this nomadic psychology in action.

  There is an instructive anecdote in the account of Priscus concerning the Huns and the difficulties the Romans sometimes had in understanding them. Two Romans were made prisoners of war, having been captured by the forces of Onegesius, Attila's second-in-command. In his previous life the first of them had been a prosperous merchant. Nevertheless, he accepted his lot and decided to take up the warrior lifestyle and, moreover, married a Hun woman. By going native he received the respect of his captors and gained not only his freedom but a good job in the military and as much wealth as he had before he had been caught. The second man to have been taken captive was a prestigious architect and oversaw the construction of a magnificent bathhouse for his new Hun master. Rather than being rewarded with his freedom, he was treated with disdain and demoted to the lowly role of being a simple attendant at the baths!

  Hadrian's Wall, marking a line between civilisation and barbarism.

  The mausoleum of Theoderic, King of the Ostrogoths, Ravenna, Italy.

  The sarcophagus inside the mausoleum of Theoderic.

  Mosaics in the church of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna, Italy.

  A modern mosaicist at work in Ravenna.

  Barbarian jewellery unearthed at the site of Szilágysomlyó-Şimleul Silvaniei, Transylvania.

  The deliberately deformed skull of a Hun, from Kerts, southern Russia.

  Kassai Lajos, horse archer, on the target range and outside his yurt, or nomad's tent, Kaposmero, southern Hungary.

  The fourth century Saxon boat found in the Nydam bog in southern Denmark in the 1860s.

  Sæ Wylfing, 'the sea wolf's she-cub' half-scale replica of the Anglo-Saxon ship from Sutton Hoo, built by Edwin and Joyce Gifford.

  The reconstructed Anglo-Saxon village of West Stow, Suffolk, England.

  An experimental replica of the Anglo-Saxon dwelling known as a Grubenhaus, West Stow.

  The helmet from the Sutton Hoo ship burial, near Woodbridge, Suffolk, England.

  The fallen warrior scene, a panel from the replica of the Sutton Hoo helmet made at the Tower of London armoury.

  The lesson was crystal clear. Roman values counted for next to nothing in Hun society.

  The Search for the Golden Bow

  After my initial meeting with Peter Tomka, the whole Asian background to the history of the Huns' involvement in European affairs was unfolding before me. I decided to follow it up with a visit to Tomka in his hometown of Gyur in western Hungary. I wanted to see with my own eyes some of the tiny artefacts that marked the route of the Huns across thousands of miles of the flat, monotonous landscape of the steppe.

  Gyur is a provincial industrial town, not without charm in the old quarter where Tomka works and studies. We headed for his museum, accompanied as before by Janos Tari. As we walked across a square around the corner from the museum, Tomka remarked in the most casual and offhand way, almost in passing, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, that this was the spot where he had found some deliberately deformed Hunnic skulls that had come to light while part of the square was being dug up. The skulls that had first intrigued me in my quest to understand the Huns had resurfaced here in Gyur.

  Once settled in Tomka's museum office, we began talking about the culture of the Huns again. Tomka answered one of my questions in his broken English saying, 'Bones not speaking.' But while the bones were silent, the skulls (at least the deformed ones) were one of the few indicators of Hun presence – or at least Hunnic influence. To find an archaeological signature of a non-literate people is not easy. One of the few characteristic artefacts that has been definitely linked to the presence of the Huns is a distinctive type of copper or bronze cauldron. Elongated and cylindrical, they are typically 50-100 centimetres high. They do not seem to have been ordinary vessels for everyday cooking tasks, and it may be that they were ritual objects used at funerary feasts. Over twenty such cauldrons have been found stretching across a huge swathe of land from the Ob river region in western Siberia to the battlefield of the Catalaunian Plains in France. The majority have been found in the military bases of the Huns in the Carpathian Basin and the Romanian plain.

  Another way of tracing the trail of the Huns across Asia to Europe is by a scarce kind of small animal carving. One of these distinctive objects, carved from wood and covered in gold, was found in a Hungarian village among the artefacts recovered from a grave belonging to the Roman period. The peculiar way in which the ears, neck and head are crafted links it with others of the same type found over a vast region – Belarus, southern Russia, Kazakhstan and Tuva. The earliest of these carvings are those found to the east; the latest are those found in European sites. This shows that the people who made them originated in the east, and this fact makes the Huns the prime suspects for leaving behind these cultural signposts of their movements.

  Tomka told me that, according to legend, Attila had found a mystical sword (echoes of King Arthur and the Excalibur story) that was said to impart to him dominion over the whole world. I jokingly asked him if he had excavated this sword. He laughed and said no, but he had found something that may have the fingerprints of Attila on it. I knew he wasn't talking about something we could take down to Scotland Yard but I was intrigued by what he actually meant. He went on to describe a very important find that had been dug up about half an hour's drive from Gyur in a place called Pannonhalma. In the corner of a field a hoard of golden treasure had been found by local peasants. Two golden horse bits and the other surviving horse decorations were identified by Tomka as undeniably belonging to the Huns. Similar pieces have been found elsewhere in Hungary and further afield in southern Russia, but this remains the richest hoard of Hunnic gold found in what was then the Roman
province of Pannonia.

  I was beginning to hope that some kind of picture of Hun life could be reconstructed from the few material remains that we could assign to their workmanship. Tomka, with the freedom from the beady eye of conservators that only the curator of a small museum can have, came back from the storeroom brandishing a 1,600-year-old sword. It was a metre long and had a very narrow blade – an eastern type clearly distinguishable from the shorter and lighter swords of the same age used by the Romans and the German tribes. He handed over the sword for my perusal then gestured to me to give it back, indicating that the best was yet to come.

  Tomka explained that the sword was not the most important symbol of Hunnic military prowess. This singular honour went to the equipment of the horse archer. When he told me he was going to show me a golden bow, I was expecting something quite spectacular. I have to say that when he returned once more from the storeroom, this time with an old cardboard box, I began to have my doubts. He removed the lid with a dramatic flourish and withdrew from a mass of tissue paper some tiny fragments of wafer-thin gold leaf. Naively, I had been expecting something more dramatic – not a solid gold ornamental bow but certainly an artefact more substantial than that which lay before me on the table. But the treasure hunter in me soon subsided and I realised that, fragmentary as these remains were, their significance was as great as if the whole bow was right there in front of me. The delicate golden pieces that adorned it showed that the bow was not made for practical use – it was a symbol and, moreover, must have belonged to a very important Hun chieftain.