The Ideology Of The Ninth And Tenth Centuries 115
could denote a female deity. He assumes that if the missing part of the inscrip-
tion reads “until the sun shines”, it is possible to look for a semantic connec-
tion with Mithra (sun) and Anahita (water). “The imposing similarity in the
concepts of holiness and power” between the Bulgarian and the Persian ruling
tradition455 speaks in favor of such an interpretation.
It is presumed that the goddess, carried by an eagle, that is depicted on ewer
no. 2 and probably on ewer no. 7 from the Nagy-Szent-Miklós Treasure, is the
Iranian Anahita.456 O. Minaeva stresses that “the symbolism of the motifs and
the style of workmanship on the two ewers, as well as part of the treasure, indi-
cate rather a Middle Asian environment”.457 One of the murals at Panjakent
455 Chobanov 2008, 96. There is also a somewhat unclear account that mentions “Bulgarians
called Slavs”. They worshipped a female statue and lived close to the Holy Mountain
(Bozhilov 2008, 367). The text is from The vitae of George III Hagiorite, the hegumen of
the Iviron monastery (1044–1056). Of particular interest is the description of the place,
inhabited by this group of “Slavs”. The place in question is remote and located in “an iso-
lated desert, between fearsome peaks, and overgrown with oak forests” (see also the other
accounts about these Bulgarians in Bozhilov 1995b, 16–18). With regard to the Bulgarian
cult of the female deity, of special interest is the unresolved question as to why the clas-
sical image of the Gorgon Medusa can be found both on monuments of folk art (pictures
on bricks and lead amulets) and those of the nobility (a bronze vessel from Preslav) in
the time following Bulgaria’s Christianization (See Rashev 2007b, 7–11). Still, it should
be noted that the classical myth of Medusa contains the legacy of the ancient Neolithic
Great Goddess. According to Campbell 2005, 37 and 163–165, the mythical context of the
legend of Medusa, Poseidon and the heroism of Perseus includes the myths of the death
and resurrection of the Moon king, as well as those of the ritual regicide. Also of impor-
tance is the fact that the Gorgon Medusa, depicted on the bronze vessel from Preslav, is
flanked on both sides by a griffon, which ties this composition to the concept of the world
tree (Vitlianov 1997, 340–341 and 353 fig. 1).
456 Mavrodinov 1959, 128; Vaklinov 1977, 149; Vaklinov and Vaklinova 1983, 10, 14, 30, and 46;
Aladzhov 1999, 19–21. See also Minaeva 1988, 49–53. According to Ovcharov 1989, 433–434,
the ewer no. 2 “does not simply contain a depiction of Anahita, but of her hypostasis
with the Turkic (here—the Proto-Bulgarian) goddess Umay [.. .] the fusion of the two
cults should have older roots and have occurred in the lands of Middle Asia, where the
Proto-Bulgarians lived for a long time (after the second–third centuries) alongside such
centers of Iranian culture as Khwarezm, Sogdiana and Bactria. The analysis of the female
image from ewer no. 2 leads to a similar conclusion [.. .] Khwarezm was a center of dis-
tribution of the “naked Anahita” variety; the region is thought to be a center for the cult
of Anahita in general [.. .] The scene with Anahita is an exceptional example of the com-
bination between Turkic ceremonial and pictorial traditions and Iranian mythology and
iconography”.
457 Minaeva 1988, 53.