120 CHAPTER 1
the Kushans and the Hephthalites, are similar.479 According to P. Georgiev, the
Bosporan tamgas “are graphic diagrams of the divine investiture and divine
nature of kingship and the king himself ”.480 Thus, the scene on a plate from
a head-dress depicts the goddess Nike wedding the ruler who is sitting on a
horse. Two plates from the Taman Peninsula, dating from the second to third
century, have the same motif, but the ruler in them is replaced by a trident.481
In accordance with the logic that V. Flerova follows, unlike the bidents from
the Don Region, the Bulgar bident (the ypsilon with two hastae) depicts the
whole compositions (with the hastae).482 It is quite impossible to relay all the
different views on the meaning of this symbol here.483 P. Petrova associates
the ypsilon with the ancient Indian concept of the ancestor-twins holding
the trunk of the sacred tree. This symbol represented the concept of power
and became the sign of their exclusive right to rule over the lives and fates
of the people.484 In her opinion, the combination of the ypsilon and the two
hastae can be interpreted as: “1) an ideogram of the divine twins (ancestors);
2) written characters for “God”; 3) written characters denoting divine power, be
it heavenly or khan’s (kingly)”.485
The symbol could also be a combination of the notions of the divine twins
with the ones of the Great Goddess. In the Ossetian epos, the ancestor of the
Narts is a she-wolf (wolf ) that gave birth to twins, and in Bulgarian Christmas
songs a deer leads two twin brothers to their future wives.486 V. Flerova assumes
479 Flerova 2001a, 43 and 53–56; Poluboiarinova 1981, 169 and 177–178; Tolsov 1948a, 184–
- The existence of similarities between the culture of the Bulgars and the Bosporan
Kingdom, along with the fact that the Bulgars lived on its lands for several centuries,
requires more attention to be paid to the Bosporan influence on Bulgar culture (see
Stanev 2005; Pritsak 2006, 19).
480 Georgiev 1997, 54.
481 Georgiev 1997, 54; according to Georgiev 1997, 51–52 and 57, the Bosporan system of royal
symbols was influenced by (or rather, merged with) the Hellenic trident of Poseidon.
Poseidon himself is regarded as the guardian of the Bosporan state from the fourth cen-
tury BC onwards. On the archaic motifs in the classical myth of Poseidon (the god with a
trident) and the connection with Neolithic notions, see Campbell 2005, 58ff.
482 Flerova 2001a, 60.
483 See for instance Aladzhov 1999, 30; Stepanov 2000, 133–143; Georgiev 1996; Rashev 1992;
Popkonstantinov 1997.
484 Petrova 1990, 40–41; the text refers to the Ashvini twins. In Indian mythology they unite
various opposites and are identified with “sky and earth, eternity and time, priest and
king, as the two halves of one Spiritual person” (Campbell 2005, 275).
485 Petrova 1990, 42.
486 Golan 1993, 197; Iordanov 1996a, 34. In the Nart epos, Dzerassa, the daughter of the Ruler
of the seas (and the mother of Satána) gives birth to twins, one of whom later marries
Satána (Dumézil 1976, 235).