A Land of Myth, Mystery or Men?

 So if this Golden Fleece thing was just a smash and grab job, why is Georgia so important?  

    It would seem that Georgia has been a crucible for mankind since before we were mankind.  As related in an earlier edition, multiple Pre-Homo Sapien specimens have been found in the region of Dmanisi.  Under present anthropological understanding, the importance of this find would have been meaningless - or worse, mis-interpreted - were they not found in such close proximity to each other, as in Dmanisi.  As I understand it from reading in the Georgian National Museum, this has never been found before.  Why were our earliest humanoid species discovered together outside Africa in Georgia?  A distance of at least 1,600 kilometres (1000 miles).  Could they have been at the meeting with God (entry 24 February 2020)?

Skull, Homo-erectus(Author's collection)

    As noted in the last several entries, evidence of contact between Hellenic Greece and western Georgia was effected in approximately1200BC through Jason and his Argonauts but their knowledge of the Golden Fleece in Greece begs the question: who told them about it?

    In Greek Mythology we encounter Prometheus.  A demi-god of the heroic nature but one that ran afoul of his full-blooded cousins by stealing the secret of fire and giving it to mankind.  For this transgression, he was chained to a mountain top where an eagle pecked his liver out by day and it re-constituted itself by night.  That mountaintop was non other than Mount Kazbegi located in Georgia on the border with Russia along the Georgian Military Highway.  Georgian mythology has a similar character who suffered the same fate named Amirani.  Did Jason return with that bit of information too?

Mount Kazbegi centre image (Author's collection copyright 2020)

    The concentration of unique languages is prolific in the Caucasus as well.  It seems that every mountaintop speaks a different language (not dialect) and most are too old to have an alphabet.  The Georgian alphabet itself is among the oldest in the world.  Interestingly, mythology comes to the rescue here as well.  Local legend has it that while distributing languages to the world’s people, God placed all the languages in large panniers and mounted them on a donkey for easier transport.  While walking over the Greater Caucasus Mountains, the high, jagged peaks tore the bottom of the panniers and many languages fell across that small area before the holes were patched.

Georgian village in Svaneti Region of Georgia
(Author's collection copyright 2020)

    Life in the Caucasus has never been easy and it takes a hearty breed to survive.  It stands to reason that anyone standing out in a crowd like that would be legendary in their exploits.  This holds true for Georgia.  Many larger-than-life characters have existed throughout time.  King Vakhtang Gorgasali was said to have been deer hunting one day in the fifth century AD.  He was in an unfamiliar region, a bog-ridden area next to the Mtkvari River when he wounded a stag with an arrow.  King Vakhtang chased the wounded deer into the bogs where it disappeared from site through the morning mist but he heard it fall into the marshy waters.  So sure was he that the animal was dead that he ran forward unprepared, only to see the stag emerge from the waters unharmed and run away unscathed.  Bewildered by this, he investigated the reason for it and is credited with discovering the curative waters which gave rise to the city of Tbilisi: the capital of today’s Georgia.

Hamams in Old Towne Tbilisi (Author's collection, copyright 2020)

 

    Later, after a war with the Ottoman Empire, Tsarist Russia was trying to “Tame” their recent acquisition called Georgia and many a hard man was drawn to the Caucasus to test his mettle and make his fame.  In fact, a large body of Russian literature is linked to the wars of oppression in the Caucasus and one of the greatest insurgencies ever fought took place there: driven by the unbending will of its best known leader, Imam Shamil, an Avar from today's Daghestan.  With drive in mind, history would soon recognise another Georgian: Ioseb Dzhugashvshvili.  We remember him as Josef Stalin and he killed millions of people trying to impose his will on the world under the guise of communism.  

     Perhaps, unbending will is the true mystery of the land God reserved for himself.  Each individual I met there, over decades of interaction, was a force to be reckoned with - men and women both.  So if the region's mystery is, indeed, the unbending will of men, Caucasians most likely created the circumstances from which myth emerged and with this en-ending supply of wilful people, the Caucasus has remained prominent in the development of mankind since the dawn of time.

So what really happened?

      Legend tells us that a generation before the Trojan War, in ancient Thessaly, King Pelias stole the throne from his half-brother King Aeson.  In doing this, Pelias made a dangerous enemy in Aeson’s son, Jason, but sent him off on a quest to the empire of Colchis (modern day Georgia).  If completed successfully, this quest had the ultimate pay-off - Jason would be crowned king of Pelias and if he failed, Jason would pay the ultimate price.  To this end, Jason surrounded himself with some of the greatest heroes of the day and it was these heroes and their exploits that grew into legend.  This is the story first related in the third millennium BC by Apollonius of Rhodes entitled, The Argonautica.

All legends are based in truth and this one is no different.  It would appear that wealth and nation building were paramount to would-be-kings even thousands of years ago.  All empires need a financial reserve as well as sustained revenue and it was well known that Colchis was rich in gold. What made them so rich was their particular methods of acquisition.  The Rioni River and its tributaries were populated with wooden vessels outfitted with sheep skins that would take advantage of the rivers’ currents to sift the gold particles as they flowed out of the Greater Caucasus Mountains.  It is not hard to believe that over the millennia, such a simple but revolutionary technique would become the myth of the Golden Fleece.

Colchian earrings - circa 1st millennia BC. (Author's collection, Copyright 2020)

If true, it would seem that the real reason for this exploit was the acquisition of technology - not a simple smash-and-grab robbery.  Think of it like the old adage, “give a man a fish and feed him for a day.  Teach him to fish and you’ve fed him for life.”  Is that the real reason Jason surrounded himself with demi-gods?  How else could one expect to acquire such sensitive information?  

Jason knew that he had to have every skillset possible in order to have any chance of success.  

       Historians and storytellers differ in their passenger list aboard the Argo but generally agree that 50 crewmen were necessary and among the crew there are a few names that always appear: Heracles, Castor, Pollux, Peleus and Telamon.  It was these men, with their varied specialties and capabilities, who had been brothers in arms for such a long time that made Jason's success nearly a forgone conclusion.

Necklace from Vani, Georgia - circa 1st Millennia BC. (Author's collection.  Copyright 2020)

So we see that financial stability and corporate espionage were most likely the basis for the exploits we call the Quest for the Golden Fleece and in an effort to ensure success, Jason surrounded himself with men capable of a variety of skills - skills like; cunning, strength, intelligence and endurance.  Skills that may or may not be required for success but whose lack, when needed, would ensure failure. 

        Yet, in the end we see that for all his planning, preparation and coordination, it was an unforeseen capability that won the day for Jason: magic.  The magic of love when Medea fell for Jason and agreed to help him steal the Golden Fleece from her father, King Aeetes of Colchis.

Bracelet from tomb in Vani, Georgia - circa 1st Millennia BC.
(Author's collection. Copyright 2020)

Origins of the Golden Fleece Myth

    In European culture seeking wisdom - especially hidden knowledge - finds its reflection in the symbols associated with gold: the Golden Fleece, the Philosopher’s Stone and the Holy Grail.  For all the qualities it embraces - this eternal and most noble of metals - gold was recognised as the metal of the sun.  It has become the foremost physical medium for the expression of men’s spiritual endeavours and the scientific knowledge about working gold is seen as one of the revelations of wisdom itself.

Detail on a 18th century BC cup from Trialeti depicting a religious ceremony.
(Author's Collection. Copyright 2020)

  The two phenomena: gold and knowledge, especially the knowledge of gold amongst the Colchians, were the genesis for rationalising the myth of the Golden Fleece.  It was this Golden Fleece that was the main goal of the first long-distance maritime adventure in mankind’s recorded history.  The Greek philosopher and mythographer Euhemerus went so far as to interpret the Golden Fleece as a technique of writing in gold on parchment or a book written on skins which describes the method of obtaining gold by means of chemistry.

Fourth century BC example of Colchian goldsmith techniques.
(Author's collection.  Copyright 2020)

  Why is the myth of the Golden Fleece - which emerged from the culture of classical antiquity and pursued its life in the alchemy of Medieval Europe - connected to Colchis?  The answer to this question may be found in Greek written sources that mention Colchis as “rich in gold”, similar to the cities of Mycenae, Sardis and Babylon which were all famed for their wealth.  Perhaps more significantly, the answer lies in the knowledge of obtaining, working and using gold for high spiritual goals - the wisdom that was continuously refined, preserved and passed down throughout the centuries in the territory of Colchis and the entire country of Georgia. Today we witness the demonstration of this wisdom in the golden artefacts found all around the country we call Georgia and we continue to re-discover these techniques and knowledge through our study of these pieces of history.

Colchian fourth century(approx) plaque depicting bull, boar and lion.
(Author's collection. Copyright 2020)

Why Colchis?

"The wealth of the regions about Colchis, which is derived from the mines of gold, silver, iron and copper, suggests a reasonable motive for the expedition of Jason."

Strabo, Geographica, 1.2.39

Excavation at Vani, Georgia - Colchian city.  (Author's Collection. Copyright 2020)

    In today’s “age of reason”, we use science to explain our world.  In the previous world it was religion that explained how things worked and before that, it was myth that gave reason to our world.  

Strangely, even today, the Caucasus is a world of myth.

    Myths and legends carry a powerful message through time - how the tellers of these tales view themselves.  Every tribe under the sun has these stories - each rooted in a time too distant to remember and each of them fascinating.  Yet all of these legends have one thing in common - they stand the test of time.  We, as people, are inextricably bound to the past: it makes us what we are today and shapes what we will become tomorrow.  One could even say that without the past there would be no future.

Waterfront in Batumi, Georgia - eastern Black Sea (Author's Collection. Copyright 2020)

    Strabo describes the wealth of an ancient civilisation as the plausible impetus for one of history’s most enduring myths but perhaps the wealth described by Strabo above can be explained by an even older Georgian myth.

In the beginning, God created the Earth and all its people.  He then asked all the people to attend a gathering so that he may parcel out all the lands of the Earth to them for habitation.  On the appointed day, all the peoples of Earth gathered and received, from God, what we call today their ancestral homelands.  Conspicuously, one group of people was not present, but God went ahead and gave the lands out as gifts to those that were.  Once all the lands were dispersed and the people departed from the gathering, the one missing group arrived.  God said unto them, “My children, I’m sorry but you are late and no land is left to be given unto you as a home.  Where have you been?”  The group replied to God that they had been feasting and toasting God’s good name and his benevolence and, according to their traditions, could not stop the feast in order to attend his meeting.  They apologised profusely but re-iterated that they were late because their particular form of worship had deterred them from arriving on time.  So the Lord spoke to this group of people and said, “You are a genuine and pious people who deserve a good homeland, as such, I will give unto you the place on Earth I had reserved for myself: Georgia.

10th century AD (approx) ruins overlooking Rioni River 
from Bagrati Cathedral in Kutaisi, Georgia
(Author's collection. Copyright 2020)

    God’s reservation of Georgia as his own refuge could be an acceptable reason for us to believe in the incredible mineral wealth of the region and through time, this could have manifested itself in the great wealth of the empire of Colchis.  This empire on the eastern end of the Black Sea in today’s Georgia was the target of Jason and his boatload of adventuring heroes.

Colchian anthropomorphic figures in main sqaure fountain. Kutasisi, Georgia
(Author's collection. Copyright 2020)