The “Ancient Magyar” Myth from the Premodernity to the Postmodernity

The myth of the “ancient magyar” ancestry and lifestyle is a fictional, composed and from time to time hyperbolized tradition, which served political legitimacy and verification of continuity. I follow up the myths’ appearance, elaboration and its role in making culture in three different historic stages: the middle ages (premodernity), the turn of the 19–20th century (modernity) and after the democratic transition in 1989 (postmodernity). In line with Assmann, this mythology refers to a timeless, mythic eastern antiquity, which can be put in to the cultural practices of the everyday life (baranta, horse archery, yurt, hun-magyar kinship, ancient Hungarian fashion, shamanism, etc) and so bridges, eliminates history and the historic memory. In this process continuity, root seeking – or as Hobsbawm puts it – making social tradition and culture is significant. This is not a top-down project, but has a particular grass-root, civil, oppositional feature, which denies the idea of the conservative Hungarian state founded by I. Stephen.