118 CHAPTER 1
The hero in the epos of the Karachays and Balkars (the neighbors of the
Ossetians, descended from the Alans) Eriuzmek was taught wisdom by his wife
Satána. The Adyghe-Abkhaz Satána-Guasha was an eternally young and beau-
tiful woman. She endowed her youngest son Sosriqwe (whom she did not give
birth to or breastfeed) with wit, cunning and the ability to see into the future
and to influence nature and men. The Adyghe Satána was the embodiment
of wisdom and beauty, a skilled judge, the companion of abundance and a
mainstay in the fight against enemies. In some places in the epic the goddess is
also presented as a Maiden Warrior—in particular, when she battles her future
husband.469
With regard to the cult of the Great Goddess among the Alans, of partic-
ular interest is the account of Venantius Fortunatus from the second half of
the sixth century, in which he lists the following people as worshippers of the
Maiden: Ethiopians, Thracians, Arabs, Dacians, Alans, Persians and Britons. It
is obvious that the Maiden here is not the Christian Virgin Mary.470
The composition in which the deity or the world tree is surrounded on both
sides by two mirrored lions, horses, birds or other zoo- and anthropomorphic
figures is often found on Saltovo amulets. The amulets with a protome of two-
headed horses could be seen as depictions of camel or bird protomes. This
motif has an analogy in a group of Ugrian earrings, found in some Saltovo
settlements.471 It is possible that an earlier local prototype is the basis of the
image of the Great Goddess with a protome of animals, depicted on a group
of fibulas from the Crimea and the Don Region that date from the sixth to the
seventh century, i.e. the period when a large part of this region was part of
Khan Kubrat’s Great Bulgaria.472 Also noteworthy is the fact that according to
V. Flerova, the design, used by the Saltovo artisans, resembles the well-known
type of depiction of the Serpent-Legged Goddess.473 The fact that the animal
protomes on the Saltovo amulets are turned away from the central figure and
not towards it, prompts V. Flerova to interpret the scene is a manifestation of
the “bipolar nature of the solar dynamic: the progressive and regressive halves
of the cycle”. It can refer to various deities from the pantheon with different
469 Karpov 2001, 338, 341, 344, and 346.
470 Maenhcen-Helfen 1973, 293–294.
471 Flerova 2001a, 43; see also Mikheev, 1982; Golubeva 1984; Aksenov 1998.
472 Flerova 2001a, 46–48.
473 Flerova 2001a, 47.