THE HITTITE MYTH OF “THE TSARINA OF THE CITY OF KANESZ AND HER THIRTY SONS” AND ITS BYELORUSSIAN PARALLEL Cover Image

Хеттский миф "О царице Канеса и 30 ее сыновьях" и его белорусская паралель
THE HITTITE MYTH OF “THE TSARINA OF THE CITY OF KANESZ AND HER THIRTY SONS” AND ITS BYELORUSSIAN PARALLEL

Author(s): Andrej Prohorov
Subject(s): Anthropology, Language studies, Language and Literature Studies, Customs / Folklore, Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology, Culture and social structure
Published by: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Sklodowskiej
Keywords: the Hittite myth of thirty sons of the Tsarina; the Byelorussian tale Mag- Małyszok; number 30; Irish folklore; Old Testament

Summary/Abstract: In the paper a parallelism is proposed between a Hittite myth of thirty sons of the tsarina of the city of Kanesz and a Byelorussian tale “Mag-Małyszok”, which deals with the miraculous birth and further life of the thirty-first son of an elderly couple. On the basis of W. Propp’s thesis, which states that “there are traces of weak forms of social life in the tale”, a number of historically-attested examples of dividing the whole into thirty parts are mentioned (in ancient Rome, among mediaeval Slavs, or in pre-colonial Uganda). Some motifs connected with the number 30 (33) in East-Slavonic and Irish folklore as well as in the Old Testament are also analyzed. A conclusion is drawn that the myth of thirty brothers, reflected in Hittite and Byelorussian texts, formed the basis for distinguishing thirty communal types within the Indo-European group.

  • Issue Year: 8/1996
  • Issue No: 8
  • Page Range: 159-165
  • Page Count: 7
  • Language: Russian