Illyrian Religion

Illyrian religion is the religious beliefs and practices of the Illyrian peoples, a group of tribes who spoke the Illyrian languages and inhabited part of the western Balkan Peninsula in or before the 8th century BCE until the 7th century CE. The nature of this religion has been imperfectly reconstructed based on personal and place names, and a handful of classical sources. Much evidence pertaining to pre-Roman Illyrian religious practices is contained in religious symbols, which are depicted in every type of ornament. These symbols reveal that the chief object of the prehistoric cult of the Illyrians was the sun. Illyrians believed in supernatural powers. They attributed to the pagan deities powers to influence everyday life, health and disease, natural abundance, and natural disasters. Illyrian names for animals identify them as mythological ancestors and protectors, and the serpent was one of the most important animal totems. In later times, vestiges of serpent worship were considered an obstacle to the adoption of Christianity. Horsemen were a common object of hero worship. A 3rd-century BCE artifact depicts a scene of warriors and horsemen in combat. One of the horsemen carries a giant serpent as a protector totem. Illyrians believed in the force of spells and the evil eye, and in the ability of protective amulets to waed off the evil eye or the bad intentions of their enemies. Some aspects of the deities and beliefs of the Illyrians are ultimately derived from Proto-Indo-European mythology. The folk beliefs of Albania and south Slavic peoples have preserved traces of Illyrian religious symbolism. Neolithic and Bronze Age traditions included the cult of the Earth Mother, the cult of the sun, and the cult of the serpent. In early Iron Age, Illyrian art was geometric and non-representational, featuring combinations of concentric circles, rhomboids, triangles, and broken lines. The absence of figuration may indicate that anthropomorphic cults did not exist. The dominance of geometric art reached its climax in the 8th century BCE, and is the only feature that the various regions of Illyrian held in common. Artistic ornaments produced from the 6th century BCE onward began to reflect archaic Greece and Etruscan influences. Symbols indicate that the cult of the serpent was dominant in the southern regions of Illyria, while the waterfowl and solar symbols predominated in the north. The serpent, an underworld deity, was the symbol of fertility and protector of the hearth, but could also be connected with the cult of the sun. Many symbols throughout Illyria were associated with the Sun. The solar deity was depicted in animal figure such as birds, serpents, and horses, or was represented geometrically as a spiral, a set of concentric circle, or a clockwise facing swastika. In the 2nd century CE, Greek writer Maximus of Tyre reported that the Illyrians of Paeonia worshipped the sun in the form of a small round disk fixed on the top of a pole. This form is also depicted in the coins of the Illyrian city of Damastion. Archaeological findings have shown that Illyrians and Thracians practiced ritual sacrifices to the sun in round temples built in high places. The deer was an important sun symbol, and is beleived to be the main sacrificial animal offered to the Sun. Remnants of the cult of the sun were preserved by Albanians until the 20th century.