The translation of the “Veles Book” by Valentin and Yulia Gnatyuk, apparently, should complete the discussion about the authenticity of wooden tablets with writings carved on them, found in 1919 by Colonel F. A. Izenbek in the estate of the Donets-Zakharzhevsky princes near Kharkov.
So in this translation there is an extremely important argument indicating the authenticity of the text of the “Book of Veles”.
This is a list of the main calendar holidays of the year: Kolyada, Yaro, Krasnaya Gora and Ovseni (Great and Small). They mark the so-called “Cross of the Year”, that is, the winter and summer solstices and the spring and autumn equinoxes. The fact that Kolyada is Winter Holidays, and Yaro or Yarilin’s day is Kupala, has been known for a long time.
But as for Red Mountain and Ovsen, none of the ethnographers and folklorists of the 19th and 20th centuries ever connected them with the spring and autumn equinoxes. Today we have good reason to do so.
And the fact that modern (early 21st century) scientific data indicates that neither F.A. Izenbek nor Yu.P. Mirolyubov could have known in the first half of the 20th century, but knew the “Veles Book”, confirms its authenticity.
S. V. Zharnikova
