From: Torsten
Message: 66657
Date: 2010-09-27
>'Schon im Altertum hat ihr reicher Inhalt die Habgier der Menschen gereizt; wie das Schatzhaus des Atreus" sind gerade die größten und ihm vergleichbaren Monumentalbauten in der Umgebung von Kertsch, der "Czarskii", der "Solotoi", der "Melek-Tschesmenskii"-Kurgan u. a. m. früh ausgeraubt worden. Das Schicksal hat es gefügt, daß wir in der Lage sind, die Tätigkeit dieser antiken Grabräuber einmal noch in flagranti festzustellen; im Jahre 1847 wurden in einem der zahlreichen Kurgane auf dem Höhenzuge des Jus-Oba, in einem Laufgraben, wie ihn die Grabräuber anzulegen pflegten, um in das Innere der Grabkammer einzudringen, die aufrecht stehenden Skelette zweier Manner gefunden; der von ihnen angelegte Gang war eingestürzt und hatte sie verschüttet; an den Gürteln dieser Manner waren eiserne Schwerter, zu ihren Füßen lagen Schaufeln, und neben einem derselben ein Häufchen von 54 Broncemünzen des Mithradates Eupator, die einer der Grabräuber in seinem Beutel bei sich getragen hatte [Vgl. Kondakov und Graf J. Tolstoi, Russische Altertümer I (1889) S. 23 (russ.)].'
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Torsten" <tgpedersen@> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Improved Proposal:
> > A good deal of the Roman utensils and weapons found in Germanic
> > graves are loot from around Capua given as payment by Spartacus to
> > the Cilician pirates, allies of Mithridates in the war, for taking
> > his army to Pontus (for a journey to Sicily, as Plutarch states
> > http://tinyurl.com/38kcgvw
> > local fishermen or boats from his presumptive Sicilian associates
> > would have sufficed) and later taken by troops remaining loyal to
> > Mithridates after the final debacle in 63 BCE to the Przeworsk
> > culture, whence to the supposed Germanic Lubiesewo princely
> > graves.
>
>
> So now I need to find out how Odin/Olthaces/Arivistus/Harigasti got
> the loot. I came across this:
>
> John Lindow
> Swedish Legends of Buried Treasure
> The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 95, No. 377
> (Jul. - Sep., 1982), pp. 257-279
>
> 'The relative importance of buried treasure and its claim on the
> imagination is further indicated by attributes assigned to Odin,
> head of the Norse gods, by the medieval Icelandic mythographer
> Snorri Sturluson. In a euhemeristic account of Odin's founding of a
> kingdom in the North, Snorri wrote in his Ynglinga saga:
>
> Odin knew all about treasure in the ground, where it was hidden, and
> he knew the charms which would open the earth and boulders and
> stones and mounds, and he bound with words alone those who dwelt
> there [scil. supernatural beings and/or the dead] and went in and
> took what he wanted .... Odin established those laws in his land
> which had previously been maintained among the Æsir. Thus he
> established that all dead men were to be burned on a pyre with all
> their possessions. He said that with such riches as he had with him
> on the pyre each would come to Valhalla, and those too he would
> enjoy, which he had buried in the ground [Aðalbjarnarson
> 1941:19-20; my translation].
>
> The beliefs implicit in this passage have been adduced as one of the
> reasons for the large number of treasure finds from the Viking age,
> as part of the more general context that people regularly buried
> their valuables, particularly in times of unrest (Rasmussen
> 1957:244). '
>
>
> If this is true, Odin was a grave robber.