The first written account of the carpatho-danubian pontic area (the area between the Charpathians, the Danube and the Black Sea) was that of the father of history, Herodot of Halicarns. (about 484-420 B.C.) and it refers to the expedition of Darius, the king of the Persians, in 514 B.C., against the Scythians to the north of the Black Sea. On this occasion Herodot refers to the Getae who dared to oppose the great king. He states the Getae are the bravest and the most righteous of the Tracians and they think they are immortal: their faith is that they don’t die, instead they go to Zamolxis-their god – which some think is the same with Gebeleizis. When there is thunder and lighting these Tracians shoot their arrowsmup to the sky and threaten their god, because they do not recognize any other god but their own.
Also from Herodot we find out about a specific ritual connectd to Zamolxis: sending a messager every four years to tell the god their needs and pleas. The sending was made as follow: they drew one of the Tracians, ennumerated all the things he had to tell the god an then was thrown and fell on thre spears that were fixed with the sharp side up. If the messenger died empaled, they belived that Zamolxis was favorable to them an he received their requests; however, if he didn’t die, they would blame the messanger for being an evil man and would send another one in his place.
At the beginning of the Christian age, the Greek geographer Strabo (about 58 B.C.) offers another version on the mith of Zamolxis. In Strabo’s version Zamolxis was Pytagoras’s slave and such he learned from the phylosopher some sciences of the sky, then he learned others from the Egyptians, because he wandered through those parts of the world as well. After he came back to his home land, he became very important among the greatest of his people, by showing them the signs of the sky.Finally, he convinced the king to share the throne with him, as he was able to announce the wishes of the gods.
At the beginning, he was chosen to be the great priest of the most venerated of their gods, and after a while he was himself considerated a god. He then retreated to a cave that was inaccessible to others, where spent a long time, rarely meeting with people from outside, except for the king and his servants. The king, seeing that the people were much obedient to him than before, as someone who commands them under the advice of the gods, gave him his full support. This habit remained to this day; traditionally, there would always be such a man that got to be the king’s counsenllor and for the Getae this man would actually be called a god. Even the mountain with the cave was considered holy and this is how they call it. Its name is Kogainon, like the river that folws next to it.
As expected, there were early attempts to identify this mountain. One of the oldest contenders to the title was the mountain and the river Gogany near Mika, south of the Danube...which semms far from true. Romanian archaelogists lean more towards Gradistea hill in Orastie Mountains, next to which flows the river Gradistea.
Bucegii between Kogainon and Sahashrara
author: Dan Anghelescu
