PART 6 – Ch.XXXIX.6

The great Pelasgian empire

(Decline of the Pelasgian empire)

Other kings of the divine dynasty

PART 6

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XXXIX. 6. I. Vulcan (‘Ephaistos, Opas).

In the ancient Egyptian and Phoenician traditions are also mentioned other kings from the divine dynasty, whose chronological order cannot be fixed, but whose names still echo today in Romanian epic songs.

According to Manetho (Fragm. In Fragm. Hist. gr. II. 527), the first king who had reigned over the valley of the Nile, predating even Montu or Uranos, was Vulcan, considered by the Egyptians as the god of fire, of sun and of light.

The country of Vulcan was, according to Homer, near Oceanos potamos, where all the gods had been born. A son of Vulcan was called Ardalus (Pausanias, Gr. Descr. II. 31. 3), an eponymous term which indicates that Ardel, or today Transilvania, had been the original country of Vulcan and his son. This Ardalus, as Greek traditions tell us, had invented the flute, the oldest musical instrument of the peoples of Latin nationality, the sweet and melodious sounds of which echo far into the distance [1].

[1. We have the same tradition in Romanian religious carols, in which it is said that “the golden flute had been made by the renowned goldsmith (Vulcan), and that he had given it to his brother (Francu, Motii, p. 118)].

Vulcan was called Hephaistos by the Greeks, and Opas by the Egyptians (Cicero, Nat. Deor. III. 22), a name which belongs to the Pelasgian popular language from the northern parts of the Istru.

The Greeks, as Herodotus writes, honored the feast day of Vulcan with a characteristic ceremony. Those who took part in this festivity ran on the streets with lighted lamps (lib. VIII. 98). Vulcan was venerated in antiquity not only as god of the smiths, but at the same time as god of the flame, as “flamma lucens”. The feast day of Vulcan, called by the Greeks lampadephoria, was therefore a festivity of the lamps.

In the folk language from across the Carpathians, the traditional lamp of the Romanian peasant is called opaitiu and hopaitiu, from “hopaia” or “vapaia”, flame (Tocilescu, Mater. Folkl. p. 1576,1602), Lat. flamma.

Therefore, the Greeks and the Egyptians had borrowed the celebration of the “hopaite” (lampadephoria) from the pastoral tribes of the Pelasgians, and they had applied to the divinity the characteristic name of this folk festivity, ‘Ephaistos, Dorian ‘Aphaistos (C. I. Gr. nr. 1179), Opas in Egyptian language.

In the historical traditions of the Germans, Vulcan figures under the name Wielant, Weland and Valland, and is a grandson of king Vilkinus.

Wielant, as the medieval poems tell us, was a duke from Hunaland, the country of Attila’s Huns. Exiled by two giants who had occupied his country, and becoming destitute, he went to the dwarves, where he learnt the art of metal working, and later became the most renowned goldsmith. According to German traditions, he worked in Kallova or Ballova in the Caucasus mountain (Goikelsas, Gloggensachsen), and sculpted drinking cups “in urbe Sigeni” with great art (Grimm, Die d. Heldensage, Gottingen, 1829, p. 29, 210, 288, 341).

The Caucasus of German legends is the Caucasus from the Istru. A village in the mountains of Banat has existed under the name “Kallova” up to the last centuries (Pesty, A. Szor. Bans. II. 101), while “urbs Sigeni” is without doubt “Sibiul” (TN – city in Transilvania).

We find the same tradition with Homer: Vulcan, ousted from Olympus by Jove (understand Olympus from Atlas mountain), had worked 9 years in a cave from Oceanos potamos (Istru), around which the huge river flew whispering and foaming (Iliad, XVIII, v. 402) [2].

[2. In a Romanian epic poem it is said:

“Down in the valley at the well, where Dunarea is heard,

At the well of Balan, sat the mother of Valcan”.

(Teodorescu, Poesii pop. p. 551)]

The tradition of German poems, that Vulcan had visited the country of the dwarves, is ancient.

Herodotus writes (lib. III. 37) that in the magnificent temple of Vulcan in the city Memphis of Egypt, the simulacrum of this god was shown under the figure of a pataichos, pygmy [3].

[3. The existence in prehistoric times of a race of pygmies is today out of any doubt. In the regions of central Africa, or in the south-western parts of the Nile, have been discovered in recent times the remains of an ancient population of dwarves. The anthropological characteristics of a pygmeic race have been also stated in southern France, in the mountains of Helvetia, and on the territory of European Russia, near the Black Sea. It is supposed that a significant number of pygmies had migrated in prehistoric times from Africa towards the southern parts of Europe (Corresp.-Blatt d. deutsch. Gesellsch. f. Anthropologie, 1894, p. 144). This invasion of African dwarves is mentioned in a folk song from Vascau (“Nicolae, my dear, the dwarves come all the time…”). In German legends the dwarves figure as masters of the art of metal working (Grimm, D. M. 416). According to folk traditions form Banat, the deserted mines from there had been worked in ancient times by dwarves. A colony of dwarves had also existed in Homeric times southwards from the mouths of the Danube, near the Black Sea (Pliny, lib. IV.18. 6; Homer, Iliad, III. 6).

In Romanian epic songs, the same Vulcan, whom the Egyptians venerated as an ancient king and defender of theirs (custodem Aegypti), appears only as a simple Captain.

His war comrades, who had come from the southern countries to look for him at the lower Danube, say the following about him (Teodorescu, Poesii pop. p. 550):

[4. An echo about the exile of Vulcan in the desert (wilderness) of Africa seems to have been preserved in the following verses (Ibid, p. 541):

We haven’t seen Valcan, for more than one year;

We don’t know, has he gone in the wilderness (desert),

Or has he become an outlaw…].

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