The ‘Open-Air’ Burial Rite within the Pagan Culture of the Abkhaz and Adyghe Peoples, by Bella S. Khotko

Bella Khotko
Research Fellow, Department of Ethnology and Folk Art,
T. M. Kerashev Adyghe Republican Institute of Humanitarian Research

(Обряд «воздушного» погребения в пространстве языческой культуры абхазов и адыгов)
Translated by AbkhazWorld

Abstract

This article examines one of the most striking rites of Abkhaz–Adyghe paganism, namely the cult of ‘open-air’ burial. Drawing upon historical documents, archival materials, and translated literature, the study demonstrates that the ‘open-air’ burial rite constitutes a phenomenon characteristic of Abkhaz and Adyghe culture across a clearly traceable historical period extending up to the mid-nineteenth century. The cultural-historical approach adopted by the author makes it possible to identify a typology of the ‘open-air’ burial rite and to determine its stable and variable, common and local elements.

Keywords: open-air burial, pagan cult, druidism, oak log-coffin, sacrifice, god of thunder and lightning, Abkhaz, Adyghe.

The study of pagan cults and beliefs is particularly relevant today, a period marked by growing national consciousness and a renewed curiosity regarding the history and spiritual culture of one’s people. In turning our attention to one of the many pagan cults – the rite of ‘open-air’ burial – we may confidently state that this ritual is among the most ancient pagan ceremonies, a significant rite in expressing religious views and ideas grounded in the sacralisation of kinship and ethnogenetic ties. Although the mere fact of ‘open-air’ burial is well known, it contains much ‘hidden’ information, lost meanings, and encrypted codes, the deciphering of which constitutes the aim of this research.

The earliest information about such a rite appears in Hans Schiltberger’s account from around 1405. The German traveller wrote that the Circassians buried people struck by lightning in coffins suspended from tall trees. After the burial, a solemn ceremony was held at the site for three days. Those gathered consumed the meat of sacrificial animals, sang, and danced. The ritual was repeated every year until the corpse had completely decayed [1]. This account represents the earliest known reference to the cult of the god of lightning and the practice of ‘open-air’ burial in Circassia.

At the basis of the rite lies an observable connection between human beings and trees. One may assume that the meaning of the ritual was the transfer of the soul and body of the deceased to their primordial ancestor – the tree – from which all people were believed to originate. The burial of only those killed by lightning suggests, apparently, that the rite was associated with the god of thunder, Shible. Lightning tended to strike trees, particularly large ones. When a body was hung upon a tall tree that had been touched by divine fire, it was symbolically ‘given back’ to the deity Shible [2].

In the mid-seventeenth century, Evliya Çelebi also recorded the practice of ‘open-air’ burial among the Circassians and Abkhaz: ‘This people do not bury their dead nor cover them with earth. They hollow out the interior of a thick oak trunk into the form of a log-coffin and place the deceased inside. They close the log tightly and pierce openings above and below. Then it is hung from the branches of a spreading tree and left there. Through the openings honeybees eventually enter and deposit honey. In this way, they learn that the deceased is in paradise. If the bees do not deposit honey, they weep, exclaiming: “Oh! Our deceased is in hell.” In deepest grief, for the spirit of the deceased they slaughter 5–10 pigs and distribute them to guests’ [3]. Çelebi also noted that he himself had been offered honey taken from such a coffin-log. It is likely that this refers to a significant proportion of the deceased, not only those killed by lightning or men of high status.

The belief in ancestral connection with trees is probably older than the identification of the tree with a deity, in this case Shible. Thus, originally, a large proportion of deceased men may have been buried in trees; later the rite changed somewhat and came to be reserved for selected individuals. Burials upon trees began to be performed only for those killed by lightning, as noted by Schiltberger.

In the seventeenth century, some sources claim the practice was widespread (Çelebi and others). However, there exist other data (archaeological and historical) indicating that the principal form of burial remained ingumation in an earthen grave, in a wooden log-coffin, or in a burial chamber. Reports of ‘open-air’ burials amongst the Abaza and Circassians most likely pertained to certain social groups – priests, clan elders, and segments of the nobility who had not adopted, or had withdrawn from, Christian or Muslim norms.

The French traveller Ferrand, who visited several regions of Circassia, wrote: ‘They show great respect for the bodies of deceased fathers and other relatives, which they place in wooden coffins upon tall trees’ [4]. If taken literally, this suggests that only men were buried in trees. A similar conclusion may be drawn from the account by Apollonius of Rhodes (third century BCE), who described a Colchian custom according to which deceased men were tied to treetops, whereas women were buried in the ground. From this one may infer a deeply rooted universal conception that the earth (Mother Earth) embodies the feminine principle, and the sky the masculine. Hence, men were given to the sky (the tree), and women to the earth [5].

One may assume that one variant of the ‘open-air’ burial rite was the custom of hanging upon trees the weapons, clothing, and other possessions of the deceased, or items donated in his honour. Such observations were recorded by Evliya Çelebi, K. Glavani, J. de Luca, and N. Witsen. The latter notes the existence of trees from which arrows, bows, and other objects hung, and which were held in such reverence that even robbers feared to touch them [6]. Glavani wrote of a tree called penekassan, upon which ‘the dying leave their sabre, musket, and clothing’ [7].

Druidism – the veneration of trees – became one of the most enduring pagan traditions in Circassia. In Tavernier’s work there is a splendid drawing of a Circassian prince’s residence: at the very centre of a large circular square stood a tall pole bearing the skin of a goat. It is noteworthy that only the skin of a goat was displayed, never that of a sheep or bull. ‘They stretch this skin on two sticks,’ Tavernier explains, ‘drawn from leg to leg, and they hang it upon a pole driven into the ground in the middle of the village. The number of skins corresponds to the number of animals slain, and every passer-by bows deeply before them’ [8].

Here we see the combination of at least two pagan cults: the cult of the goat and the cult of ‘open-air’ burial. Much is known of the goat cult among the Abkhaz and Adyghe; it remained firmly rooted into the nineteenth century. On the death of an enemy, it was specifically a goat that was sacrificed. Thus, the periodic raising of a goat’s hide in the centre of the ‘hippodrome’ may have signified a military triumph or a more modest victory. Tavernier’s description refers to the Circassian principality of Temirgoy (Kemirgoy) and dates to around 1640.

In the first quarter of the nineteenth century, an author known only by the initials N. N. again mentions the survival of the ‘open-air’ burial rite among the Adyghe: ‘The festival of Shible (the god of thunder), celebrated annually for seven days, is the most remarkable remnant of paganism. Inhabitants of several villages gather together and erect an altar upon an elevated place. It is fixed upon four poles driven into the ground, arranged so that its corners face north, east, west, and south. Around this altar they slaughter bulls, goats, and rams as sacrifices to the god Shible. They surround the altar with the heads of the slain animals, stuck upon stakes. For six days the feasting continues – eating, drinking, horse-racing, and shooting with muskets and bows. On the seventh day they burn the heads of the sacrificial animals and depart. This festival is held whenever someone is killed by lightning. Such a death is considered a divine favour. The deceased is placed upon the altar described above, and his death is celebrated in the same manner as during the annual festival established in honour of the god Shible and in memory of all those slain by lightning’ [9].

In 1837, James Bell recorded the rite of raising a goat’s hide on a horizontal crosspiece affixed to a tall pole, with a specially constructed canopy beside it supported by four pillars [10]. The ritual space was enclosed by a wattle fence. In the same year, a Russian officer, N. M., while in the Pshada region, described notable structures that may be interpreted as funerary monuments – a type of gazebo – and as shelters for ‘open-air’ burials: ‘From the dense groves there occasionally appeared auls, and in small glades one encountered rather handsome monuments of the mountaineers: painted wooden shelters on four pillars, with carvings and latticework’ [11].

A later reference to the persistence of ‘open-air’ burial in Circassia was made by the archaeologist V. Sizov, who surveyed a number of burial grounds along the Circassian coast. The dominant burial rite observed by Sizov in this region was interment in a stone cist beneath a mound. The typical orientation was with the head facing north. Sizov emphasised the ethnogenetic and cultural continuity of this burial rite with the traditions of the megalithic, dolmen-building epoch. ‘The durability of these traditions,’ writes Sizov, ‘can be explained only by the continuous survival of these ancient customs within the same ethnic group that has occupied the region since time immemorial.’ He then offers a remarkable hypothesis concerning both collective burials in a single tomb and cremations – in stone cists and in urns. ‘Such a fact,’ he writes, ‘is explicable by the existence in these places of a custom of suspending the bodies of deceased persons upon trees, from which, after several years, the bones would fall and be collected into family tombs. This rite, mentioned by ancient authors, survived into later times: for instance, the ataman of the Raevskaya stanitsa witnessed in the 1860s how the Natukhai buried in this manner a comrade killed by lightning.’ Kadriqov, a Circassian Natukhai who served as Sizov’s translator and guide and who settled in the stanitsa after the end of the Caucasian War, likewise asserted that the Circassians hung upon trees the corpses of those killed by lightning. ‘Such a custom must be regarded as a surviving ancient funerary rite that did not dissolve into Muslim beliefs and in which traces of the worship of the god of thunder are still felt’ [12].

Among the Abkhaz, similar rites were observed. As noted earlier, the ancient author Apollonius of Rhodes (third century BCE) reported that among the Colchians it was considered sacrilegious to burn or bury in the earth the bodies of deceased men; instead, they were wrapped in untanned ox hides and, with the aid of ropes, hung from trees far from the city, while the bodies of women were committed to the earth. Nicolaus of Damascus (first century CE) likewise confirms that ‘the Colchians do not bury the dead but hang them upon trees.’ Claudius Aelian (third century CE) also stated that ‘the Colchians bury the dead in skins: they sew them up and hang them upon trees.’ In the seventeenth century, Lambert, describing the custom of ‘open-air’ burial among the Abkhaz, wrote that they ‘hollow out the trunk of a tree into the shape of a coffin, place the dead inside, and suspend the coffin from the treetop using a strong grapevine. Upon the same tree they hang all the weapons used by the deceased in war during his lifetime’ [13].

Tsarevich Vakhushti Bagrationi (1696–1757), a representative of the Georgian dynastic house and a scholar-encyclopaedist, wrote of the religious character of the Abkhaz in his work Geography of Georgia: ‘By faith they are Christians, but are ignorant in all things; they may be compared to idolaters, for they do not bury their dead. Rather, along with their ornaments, armour, and clothing, having placed them in a coffin, they set them upon trees. If the dead whistle with the help of the devil, they believe that he shall be saved’ [14].

G. Janashvili, the translator and commentator of Vakhushti’s text, adds in a note: ‘The Abkhaz to this day (until the late nineteenth century – B.Kh.) place the body of a person struck by lightning into a coffin, set it upon a wooden platform, and leave it there until only the bones remain. Then the coffin is removed and buried, and the usual funerary rites and commemorations are performed’ [15]. The sources allow us to assert with confidence that only men were accorded the rite of ‘open-air’ burial.

Sh. D. Inal-ipa confirms Janashvili’s observation, noting that even in the twentieth century those killed by lightning were placed for some time upon high platforms, around which a ritual procession accompanied by a special song (af-rashaa) was performed. Eventually, however, they were necessarily committed to the earth, and lamentation over the deceased was forbidden [16].

The fact that for millennia the highlanders of the North-West Caucasus adhered to the rite of ‘open-air’ burial speaks for itself: a coherent religious culture lay behind this custom. The persistence of this pagan cult in Abkhazia and Circassia is particularly striking, all the more so given the Caucasus was never closed nor inaccessible to external influences in any historical epoch. Missionaries moved freely through the region; bishoprics and archbishoprics were established. Nonetheless, paganism retained its status as a national religion up to the early nineteenth century. Overall, the rite of ‘open-air’ burial survived among the Abkhaz and Circassians until the seventeenth century, and in residual forms until the mid-nineteenth century.

Thus, we may confidently state that the population of the North-West Caucasus preserved adherence to rites associated with ‘open-air’ burial throughout the entire observable historical era. The stable elements of the rite include:

• veneration of the god of lightning;
• the association of the rite with the sacred space of a holy grove;
• the construction of a platform for the sacrificial animal.

Equally stable was the choice of the goat as the sacrificial animal. The elevated status of the goat is demonstrated by the fact that this species of domestic animal was itself accorded ‘open-air’ burial.

Typologically, the Caucasian ‘open-air’ burial rite may be compared with preliminary ‘open-air’ burials in Zoroastrianism. The dakhma towers fulfilled the same function as trees in the Abkhaz–Adyghe cultural sphere. In Zoroastrian tradition, bones cleansed by the elements (air, sun, water) were placed in sealed tomb-chambers. Abkhaz–Adyghe conceptions accord with Zoroastrian views, according to which dead flesh must not defile the sacred spirit of the earth. Tomb-chambers were, in essence, not only dolmens but also the stone cists of the North-West Caucasus.

The rite of ‘open-air’ burial in the North-West Caucasus presupposed the functioning of family tombs, since excavated stone cists contain from one to nineteen ‘sets’ of bones of the deceased. Accordingly, we may assume that in the forests adjacent to burial grounds with stone cists, special areas were arranged for preliminary ‘arboreal’ or ‘open-air’ burial. In light of the exceptional devotion to this rite, it may be supposed that it possessed a prestigious character and served to delineate the indigenous Abkhaz–Adyghe cultural space.

The stability of the rite in time and space was supported by:

• its organic integration into the system of paganism;
• adherence to the rite across all social strata;
• the existence of a belief that the rite was primordial, inherited from remote ancestors;
• the cultivation of the rite by priests and individuals particularly knowledgeable in the performance of pagan cults.

Shared among the Abkhaz and Adyghe is the preference for ‘open-air’ burial in the case of those killed by lightning or those men distinguished in some way from the wider community.

There is considerable variation in the manner in which the rite was performed, both regarding how the deceased was treated (wrapped in an animal skin, placed in a wooden box, laid in a tree hollow, suspended by ropes) and regarding the behaviour of the community. Tribespeople might feast, dance, sing songs, lament, sacrifice animals, hang the clothing and weapons of the deceased upon a tree, and so forth.

Overall, the ‘open-air’ burial rite is interwoven with the broader system of concepts defining Circassian druidism and is not found outside the settlement area of the Abkhaz–Adyghe peoples. Nevertheless, the typological connection with Zoroastrianism makes it possible to interpret ‘open-air’ burial as both a preliminary rite (prior to the final deposition of remains in the earth) and a prestigious one.

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[1] Travels of Johann Schiltberger through Europe, Asia, and Africa from 1394 to 1427, in: The Adyghe, Balkars, and Karachays in the Writings of European Authors of the 13th–19th Centuries. Nalchik, 1974, p. 40.
[2] Khabekirova Kh. A., Musukaev A. I. The World of the Tree in Adyghe Culture. Nalchik: El-fa, 2001, p. 49; Lyausheva S. A. The Evolution of Adyghe Religious Beliefs: History and Modernity (A Philosophical–Cultural Analysis). Rostov-on-Don: SKNC VSh, 2002, p. 38.
[3] Çelebi E. The Book of Travels, Vol. 2: Lands of the North Caucasus, the Volga Region, and the Don. Moscow, 1979, pp. 75–76.
[4] Ferrand. A Journey from Crimea to Circassia, in: The Adyghe, Balkars, and Karachays in the Writings of European Authors, p. 112.
[5] Khabekirova Kh. A., Musukaev A. I., op. cit., p. 50.
[6] Witsen N. Circassia, in: The Adyghe, Balkars, and Karachays in the Writings of European Authors, p. 88.
[7] Glavani K. Description of Circassia, in: The Adyghe, Balkars, and Karachays in the Writings of European Authors, p. 162.
[8] Tavernier J.-B. Six Voyages to Turkey, Persia, and India Over Forty Years, in: The Adyghe, Balkars, and Karachays in the Writings of European Authors, pp. 77–78.
[9] N. N. The Religion of the Trans-Kuban Circassians, Telescope: Journal of Contemporary Enlightenment. Moscow, 1832, Part 8, pp. 126–131.
[10] Bell J. Journal of a Residence in Circassia During the Years 1837–1839, Vol. 2, trans. K. A. Malbakhov. Nalchik, 2007, p. 73.
[11] N. M. A Memory of the Caucasus, 1837. First Article, Library for Reading. St Petersburg, January 1847, Vol. 80, Section III, p. 65.
[12] Sizov V. The Eastern Coast of the Black Sea. Archaeological Excursions, in: Materials on the Archaeology of the Caucasus. Moscow, 1889, Issue II, pp. 154–158.
[13] Lamberti A. Description of Colchis, Now Called Mingrelia, Concerning the Origin, Customs, and Nature of These Lands, in: The Adyghe, Balkars, and Karachays in the Writings of European Authors, pp. 58–60.
[14] Tsarevich Vakhushti. Geography of Georgia, introd., trans. and commentary by M. G. Janashvili, in: Notes of the Caucasian Department of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society. Tiflis, 1904, Book XXIV, Issue 5, p. 547.
[15] Ibid., p. 235 (note 618).
[16] Inal-ipa Sh. D. The Abkhaz. Sukhum: Alashara, 1965, p. 548.

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