A First Comprehensive Exhibition on the Hungarian Conquest

István Fodor, László Révész, Mária Wolf (Hungarian National Museum), Ibolya M. Nepper (Déri Museum, Debrecen) and 13 other contributors: The Ancient Hungarians (In English). Catalogue of the Exhibition of the Same Title. With maps, photographs and drawings. Hungarian National Museum, Budapest, 1996, 480 pp. Photos by J. Hapák; Drawings by I. Dienes and A. Bánó; Translated by Magdalena Seleanu.

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For the first time, practically all the finds from graves of tribal leaders or princely burials can be seen together, from Geszteréd, Rakamaz, Tarcal, Eperjeske and three burial grounds in Karos. This same point of view is evident in the catalogue, a scholarly bibliography being added to the detailed descriptions given in a language easy to understand. Each chapter is headed by a short introduction with information on the relevant historical questions. This is truly the first serious archaeological survey since József Hampel's summary, Archaeological Finds from the Conquest Period, published in 1900.

The organizers also intended to correct some generally held erroneous views. Thus certain scholars and laymen have tried to present Árpád's conquerors as a nomadic and barbarian people, a tendency much in evidence since the 1950s. They also gave the cõup de grace to widespread and foolish misconceptions, such as theories of Sumerian-Hungarian, Hun-Hungarian, Irani-Hungarian, and most recently even Germanic-Hungarian kinship.

They also attempted to show that Conquest Period Magyars were not culturally inferior to any of the contemporaneous neighbouring peoples. The difference was only that, compared to others, for example the Slavs, they maintained stronger eastern features, a fondness for, and the influence of Persian (Sassanian) silk, ornaments, jewelry and pottery. The exhibition shows this in great detail, with a rich assemblage of finds.

The exhibition steers clear of arguments between scholars that manifest themselves in theories that sometimes contradict each other. A representative show cannot have the goal of drawing attention to dozens, or perhaps hundreds, of existing but incompatible theories, some of them not even well founded. The theory of what is known as the Dual Conquest, is avoided, as is Gyula Kristó's view presented in English, Hungarian History in the Ninth Century (Szeged, 1996,), that Árpád's people in fact were Turks who became Magyarized, and these Turks turned Magyars then, after 896, absorbed the Slavs in the Carpathian Basin.

According to some, this notion which emphasizes the role of the Slavs above all is a simple consequence of the Soviet occupation. In this case, however, this is not true: it was only the result of unnecessary time-serving and subservience. This was also borne out by a visit of N.P. Tretyakov, an eminent Soviet-Russian archaeologist, in June 1953, who, examining the cabinets in the Acquincum Museum, told Hungarian scholars that in his view there could not have been a significant Slav population in the Carpathian Basin on the eve of the Hungarian Conquest, and certainly no purely Slav population. They presumably were Avars and Gepids, but not pure Slavs. This, he said, might have been the reason for the Hungarian language coming into dominance. It is regrettable that of all the Soviet opinions this was the one that was not taken seriously, while so much that was silly was.

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