Most residents of the Krasnodar Territory have heard (and many have been there) the name "Tkhamaha", strange for the modern ear. This is the name of a beautiful mountain range located in the Seversky region and the settlement of the same name. Many people probably think that this is not a Slavic name, but this is a delusion. Based on the study of ancient Slavic chronicles, tales and chronographs, there is reason to conclude that in ancient times our ancestors settled throughout Eurasia, including the Krasnodar Territory. The proof of the above is the same geographical names of objects, repeated from region to region (according to the research of S. S. Pechenev, about half of the names of the rivers of Siberia coincide with the names of the rivers of India and Europe).
We find an explanation for this in the Vedas of the Polabian Slavs, published by S. Verkovich under Tsar Alexander II: “At that time, many places were deserted and then our grandfathers settled on them, and … what places they seized, they gave them other names … Our grandfathers spread throughout the whole earth, and then … each army, which consisted of 5-10 thousand souls and left to populate some other empty place, was given the name that their voivode bore, and this name remained with those forever; that is why our grandfathers, when they were divided many times into many troops, took many names, and so until now they began to differ among themselves only by the name of the voivode, or the king. The Slavs thus perpetuated the names of their governors and kings - the memory of them was preserved in the names of the clans.
The names of geographic places also often coincided with the names of ancient heroes and gods. D. Kalyuzhny and S. Valyansky in their book "Another History of Russia" give a whole list of true Slavic names, chosen by them from the archival records worn by our ancestors before Christianization, and we, reading them, seem to be traveling across the geographical map of our Motherland. See for yourself: Argun is a gorge, Volga is a river, Mamai is a mound, Pechera is a river, Shaban is a mountain, Chernogor is a mountain, Akhun is a mountain, and further Shipka, Skand, Tarkhan, Utesh … And all these are Slavic names. Rivers such as Don, Dnieper, Dniester are associated with the Slavic name Dana, and this is the goddess of waters.
And what is the name immortalized in the name of the Tkhamakh ridge and the settlement of the same name? In ancient times, among our ancestors, the word "HA" meant a positive masculine principle, and the word "THA" meant an intuitive feminine principle (hence Ha-Tha is a balanced system). This means that we already need to look not for a hero, but for a heroine who lived in ancient times in our places.
And such a great woman was found. According to Slavic chronicle sources and legends, the life story of our heroine unfolded as follows. In the 6th century BC. Persian king Cyrus II (Cyrus the Great), from the Achaemenid dynasty, invades the Caucasus. By this time, he had already conquered all countries from the Syr Darya and the Himalayas to the islands of the Aegean Sea. To conquer new lands, he had to go only to the north, which he did, but there his hordes were defeated by the queen of the Saks-Masagets (this, let us explain, is not the self-name of our ancestors, but the name received by the Rus of these lands from the Greeks). Her name was Siromakha.
Tsarina Siromakhova literally means - the widow (orphan) Makhov, since the word "orphan" means lonely. From ancient legends, we know that her husband was the great Slavic king Mach, who united the scattered clans of our ancestors into a powerful state. The borders of the Slavic kingdom stretched from the Don and Donets to the Caspian Sea, where the border ran along the Araks River.
In the Araks region in 529 BC. the battle of the Saks-Massagets (ancient Rus) with the Persian hordes, the captive Cyrus was executed.
Now we will give an excerpt from Herodotus, which will confirm both the tale itself and the fact that Cyrus was going to cross exactly Araks: “At that time one woman ruled over the Massagets, whose name was Tamiris, meaning that she was a widow after the death of her husband. Cyrus sent her an offer to marry him. But Tamiris, who realized that he wanted to marry not her, but her kingdom, rejected the offer. Then, since his cunning failed, Cyrus approached Araks and launched an open campaign against the Massagets. He built bridges across the river and built towers on ships that were supposed to serve as ferries."
Promotional video:
It remains to deal with the name Tamiris. Herodotus probably copied the name of the queen from the scroll of the Babylonian priests during his visit to Babylon. There was not enough time, he was in a hurry, and he did not know the Persian language, he used a translator, most likely a local Greek. The translator turned out to be not very literate in ancient Persian cuneiform. He knew letters, the alphabet, and nothing more. In short, the translator of Herodotus did not take into account that the Persians do not write a sentence from left to right, but quite the opposite. So Herodotus had TAMIRIS instead of SYRIMAT in his records, or more precisely, SYRIMATH. Cuneiform instead of SYROM (A) managed to convey SYRIMATE.
The word "widow" did not yet exist, it was replaced by the word "siromakha", "orphan", which means "lonely", "abandoned". It is possible that the name of the people "Sarmatians" also came from "sirmata", "siromakhi" these are the Slavic tribes that remained "sire", lonely after the death of Tsar Mach …
Let's return to our heroine, Queen Siromakh. What a pity that her usual name has not survived.
18 years after the death of Cyrus, Darius I, the new ruler of Persia, decided to punish our ancestors for the death of his predecessor and in 513 BC. moved through the Bosphorus and Danube to the Northern Black Sea region. Queen Siromachus (Tamiris) was still alive. It is known that she participated in the council of elders, and rumor attributes it to her the idea of luring the Persians into the depths of the steppe, followed by setting fire to herbs and "partisan" war. The main prince over the Rus was then Tsar Kanysh, and the son of the former queen Vinamir commanded the troops on the battlefield.
According to tradition, her contemporaries tried to immortalize the name of the greatest queen in the geographical name of the Caucasus - and not somewhere on the outskirts of her kingdom, but in the central part. This is the explanation for the name "Tha-Maha", that is, Queen Tha, the wife of King Maha. This is indirectly confirmed by the presence of extensive ancient burials in this area. Mounds simply abound around Thamakhi.
There are just thousands of them, most of the mounds are just earthen, and some are lined with stones on top, but there are also memorial stones installed, and memorial stones were installed then only for great people. Around the vast valley, located at the foot of the ridge, on the mountain peaks, the ruins of stone watchtowers have been preserved. This place is also convenient in the field of communications - the roads lead to the direction of Goryachiy Klyuch (now it is not in the best condition), to the sea, and to the steppe zone, to Krasnodar.
Such a place was also beneficial from the point of view of protection from surprise attacks, since the valley is surrounded by mountain ranges. Perhaps the queen was buried somewhere nearby? There is a huge mound located right in the valley. But archaeologists must answer this question.
From her nickname, perhaps, the name of a new family originated - the Sirmakhs, distorted by the Greeks into the Sarmatians. Likewise, her great-great-grandson Ostar (422 BC) gave a generic name to the Taur (Stavram) tribes, who were mainly engaged in cattle breeding. The Tavrida Peninsula (now Crimea) was named after him.
Here are the legends about the queen, written off by Yu. P. Mirolyubov from beech tablets and published abroad (with small abbreviations).
The Legend of Queen Siromakhova
When Tsar Mach died in Russia, everything went to dust. The cattle died, robbers attacked from all sides and took people into slavery. The Russians wept:
- Siromakhs (Sarmatians) we are poor! There is no one now to harrow us from the enemy!
The widow queen heard that cry and said so:
- … Why argue? I will be your boss. And whoever does not obey me, I will take off his head completely!
Messengers from afar rushed here and brought bad news that the king of the Vail [Babylonians] Kiryaka was going to Russia with an army of many and had already interrupted the midday guard.
The queen of Siromakhov called her son Boguraz, ordered him to go at noon and find out from the enemy his insidious plans.
Tsarevich Boguraz went to look for viles. And those, cunning, went out of the way, hid in the mountains, and left the carts on the road. And in those carts - earthen jugs, and in the jugs - old, strong wine. Tsarevich Boguraz flew into the carts with his army, took the goods, drank the wine, and then fell into the booths and fell asleep in the sun.
Then they, drunk, were chopped up and chopped up, and Boguraz was completely taken. Boguraz the Tsarevich came to his senses, he strained and bitterly became twisted, that he made such a mistake and allowed himself to be taken drunk.
And the queen Siromakh already found out about this, put her youngest son Vinamir over the army and hastened to the rescue. She walked for two days, but she was late - they killed the prince's viles.
Mother-Siromakhova cried, and then attacked Kiryaka-Tsar, defeated his army, and captured the Tsar himself.
They brought Kiryaka to the queen, and she said to him:
- Why did you ruin my son Boguraz? Why did you come to drink Russian blood? And he wanted blood, so it will be for you!
And the queen ordered to cut off the captive vaila's heads, and to give Kiryaka the king his fill with their blood.
And when they made him so drunk that he became drunk, they took off his head, so that it would be discouraging for others to covet Russia in the future.
And for a long time the Queen Mother-Siromakhova ruled our grandfathers and righteous judgments. And more than once grandfathers fought with Vaila, that they went to Russia in war, but they did not manage to beat our grandfathers or enslave our Rus.
The invasion of the Oiran king Kiryaka
And there was a queen over our ancestors, and her name was queen Siromach. She collected the Russian army, made her son Vinamir voivode and sent them against the enemy.
What kind of dust rises across the steppe and where does the crow fly? And it flies to make an ambulance, it senses the death of many brave knights. And the greyhound messengers also fly, they carry the tsarina's order to everyone, they tell everyone to leave by midnight in the dark forests, hide in the gullies so that the enemy does not get cattle, so that the enemy does not grab people, does not beat people, does not disfigure the old and small, does not shed Slavic blood.
Oh, don’t cry, don’t shout, Russian mother, when your children are called to the slaughter, don’t kill them prematurely. If Perun will save them, they will return, and they will fall, like heroes, with glory, they will go to Iriy to the meadows of Svarozh. Perun himself will ride out to meet them on a horse white as snow and take them to his heavenly palaces.
They turned the carts by midnight, the horses, bulls with cows, sheep, calves started to go into the dense forests to hide from the Oirans [Iranians], wait out the inevitable disaster.
And horsemen fly across the steppe, and throw a cry in all directions:
- All who are young - go to the army!
- All who are strong, go to the army! Go defend the Russian land!
Serbs are coming to our aid, Slavutans are coming wide from Dnipro, people are coming from the Carpathian Mountains, they are in a hurry to help us! Hold on, brothers, defend the Russian land, do not give up the enemy!
And two formidable forces clashed, like two waves in the steppe sea. Sharp arrows clanged here, copper daggers glittered, hot blood poured onto the ground. The warriors fight until the evening, and one day, and the other, and the third, only when darkness descends, they disperse to their camps.
And they took the Russes in full of the Tsar Kiryaku himself with the governors and brought them to the queen.
Memorial stone near mounds near Thamakhi