Thracian Religion

Thracian religion comprised the mythology, ritual practices, and beliefs of the Thracians, a collection of related ancient Indo-European peoples who inhabited eastern and southeastern Europe and northwestern Anatolia throughout antiquity and included the Thracians, the Getae, the Dacians, and the Bithynians. The Thracians themselves did not leave many written descriptions of their mythology and rituals, but information can be drawn from archeological sources and ancient Greek writings. Thracian religion, especially its creation myth and pantheon, were derived from the conjectured Proto-Indo-European religion. Thracians believed that the world was composed of four elements: Air, Earth, Fire, and Water. This concept dates from the early Bronze Age, around the fourth millennium BCE, and was recorded in poems and hymns created during the 2nd millennium BC transmitted through oral tradition. By the end of the Bronze Age, the cult of the Sun was prevalent throughout Thrace. Common household and artistic objects were decorated with symbols of the Sun, and these symbols were carved into rocks. In the late Bronze Age, there were considerable cultural contacts between Thrace, northern Greece, and Asia Minor which resulted in significant exchanges of religious beliefs. Thracian imported belief in the Great Mother Goddess. In the later 2nd millennium BCE and the early 1st millennium BCE, the concept of the divinization of the mountain coexisted with a flourishing megalithic culture as evidenced by rock-cut niches of rectangular, circular, or trapezoidal shape to receive votive gifts, platforms for sacrifices which included troughs and outlets to drain a victim's blood, rock-cut sacred steps to springs or rock sanctuaries, complexes of megalithic structures, and dolmens (megaliths consisting of a large flat stone laid upon upright stones). In this era, the four elements were conceived of as forces or energies which were combined in the form of the mountain, which was personified as the Thracian Great Mother Goddess. A symbolic representation of Thracian cosmology is the image of a horned eagle clutching a hare in its talons and a fish in its beak. The eagle represents the element of the Air and things above. The hare represents the Earth and things in the middle. The fish represents Water and things below. During the late Bronze Age and the early Iron Age, the cult of underworld deity Zagreus (Dionysus) spread from Anatolia into Thrace, from where it later spread into Greece. This cult was initially opposed by practitioners of the local solar cults, but ultimately prevailed and became merged with sun worship. Cultural exchanges resulted in the Thracian adoption of the names of Greek gods who were added to the names of their own gods. The Thracians giving linked the name of Apollo to those of domestic gods Derainos, Zerdēnos (god of heaven, lightning, and rain), and Kendrisos (the Thracian God Rider, an enigmatic horseman whose image appears on over 4,000 dedicatory monuments). The name of Greek Hermes was added to that of Perpheraios, and Artemis was linked to Bendis (earth mother) and Basileia. Bendis had a dual aspect as both virgin and matron, the principal roles of women in ancient times. According to Bulgarian culturologist Ivan Marazov, only two major deities are attested in the Thracian pantheon: Great Goddess Bendis and Hero God Zis, a sky and lightening god. Zalmoxis was a demigod, the legendary founder of a dynasty of priests connected with the northernmost Thracian peoples. In the Thracian religion, no distinction was made between the mythical and heroic past and the present. Gods and heroes were believed to still be performing their valorous deeds in the present in heavenly realms that were not detached from the earth and the lives of its inhabitants.