The Ideology Of The Ninth And Tenth Centuries 113
similarity between Tengri and Umay is shared by a third deity, mentioned in
Turkic manuscripts—Iduk Yer-Sub (“the Sacred Earth-Water”) who could be
identified with the Scythian Api or Mother-Goddess.442 Trying to understand
the character of the goddess Umay, S. Kliashtornyi quotes S. Ivanov, according
to whom various Turkic tribes upheld archaic notions about “the great creative
and vital force that occupied the sky”. This vital force was later personified
by Umay.443
According to the Altaic peoples, Umay resided at Lake Milk “on top of the
mountain that stood at the center of the Middle Earth, at the foot of the sacred
tree that grew from the Navel of the Earth and Sky”.444 Lake Milk is regarded as
the center of the eternal life-force of the Cosmos. In it Umay bathed and sated
her thirst. However, Lake Milk is also the symbol of sacral purity,445 manifested
in a Celestial Goddess through her image as a Maiden. It is worth recalling
that according to Greek mythology, Hera renewed her virginity by bathing in
the waters of Kanathos. The notion of the tree, located near the lake on the
mountain, is also of interest. It can be seen as similar to the domain of Diana
Nemorensis. In the folklore of the Turko-Mongol peoples, the tree is the dwell-
ing place and semantic substitute for the female deity, as the giver of life.446
According to Turkic notions, the tree and the river are associated with the
chthonic principle. It is presumed that the funeral of a tree corresponds to the
belief about the journey of the souls of the dead down the river.447
Umay is also the goddess that carried the souls of the dead. Moreover, her
cult is associated with fire (part of the notion about the tree and the sacred
mountain seen as a cosmic axis and the river in the horizontal plane of the
world) and she is called “Mother Fire”.448 The custom of the ancient Turks to
bury their dead with their horses indicates the symbolic role of the horses
(similar to that of the river and the tree) as intermediaries between the world
of the living and the realm of the dead. And according to a Turkic legend, the
Fire Mother rode a white and yellow horse.449
442 Venedikov 1987, 253; Kliashtornyi 1984, 18–19; Kliashtornyi and Sultanov 2000, 157; L’vova,
Oktiabr’skaia, Sagalaev, and Usmanova 1988, 20, 29–30; Potapov 1979, 73 and 77; Stoianov
2006a, 43.
443 Kliashtornyi 1984, 19.
444 L’vova, Oktiabr’skaia, Sagalaev, and Usmanova 1988, 123.
445 L’vova, Oktiabr’skaia, Sagalaev, and Usmanova 1988, 123 and 131.
446 L’vova, Oktiabr’skaia, Sagalaev, and Usmanova 1988, 127.
447 L’vova, Oktiabr’skaia, Sagalaev, and Usmanova 1988, 75.
448 Potapov 1979, 270 and 279–280; Aksenov 2002, 11–12 and 2004c, 208; Neikova 2006, 24–25.
449 Nestorov 1990, 72 and 88.