Tengri VerseENTR

Four ages · one line

Timeline

From the endless waters to the leaving of Ergenekon. Where a being of the codex enters the story, its plate stands beside the line.

Age I

Age of Chaos and Creation

The cosmogonic period.

  1. Ak Ana exists in the endless waters and sets the idea of creation in motion.

  2. Kayra Han shapes the universe; Tengri is the abstract absolute above it all, not a maker with hands.

  3. The Sky (9 layers), the Earth (1) and the Underworld (9) take form.

  4. The World Tree grows and joins the three worlds.

  5. The first spirits emerge.

  6. Erlik, once a great helper walking beside Ülgen, gives in to hubris: he brings into being a world and creatures of his own, demands a throne equal to Ülgen's and builds himself a palace with a golden throne in the Sky.

  7. The First Sky War: Ülgen hurls Erlik and his palace down from the Sky, and Kayra Han casts him out of the realm of light, the first great exile.

Age II

The Golden Age and the Founding of Töre

The period of the Great Ancestors.

  1. Ülgen establishes the celestial order.

  2. The nature spirits (Yer-Su), the İe of places and elements, emerge.

    İe (Yer-Su)

  3. The first humans, Törüngey and Eje, are created, and Ülgen gives them fire struck from a white stone and a black stone; the fire keeps its İe.

  4. Özlüt, Erlik's daughter, leads them by a trick to the forbidden fruit on the World Tree, an illusion of knowledge or immortality; the purity of Earth is broken, darkness can now seep into mortal spirits, and Ülgen closes the layers of the Sky.

  5. Ülgen confines Erlik to the lowest layer of the Underworld, within limits that keep him from interfering on Earth.

  6. The first shamans (Kam) appear.

  7. The sacred tribes form.

  8. Oğuz Kağan rises, founds the order and divides the world among his six sons; the six lineages, their 24 tribes and their Ongun descend from them, Töre takes shape as an institution, and Kök Böri walks before his army.

    Kök Böri

Age III

The Dark Age and Isolation

The Ergenekon period.

  1. Erlik's shadow reaches out of his confinement: his whispers and the dark spirits he made seep into the world.

    Körmös

  2. The tribe wars begin, and some sacred places are lost.

    İe (Yer-Su)

  3. In the great war the steppe people are brought to the brink of extinction.

  4. Kök Böri appears as a she-wolf, Asena, finds the last surviving child, feeds him and hides him in a walled valley.

  5. The survivors take refuge in the valley of Ergenekon for centuries of isolation.

  6. The iron mountain is melted, closing the age.

Age IV

The Age of Rebirth and the Rise of Erlik

The Age of New Heroes.

  1. The people leave Ergenekon as one khaganate, led by a man of the Gün Han lineage, Kün-Kağan's grandfather, and Kök Böri does not appear.

    Kök Böri

  2. At the exit the leader swears the exit oath on a bear's paw with Aba as witness: the steppe and nothing beyond it, and the valley is not sealed.

  3. The iron rite: every year on the day of the exit the khagan, then the beys, heat iron and strike it on the anvil, and the oath is said again over the anvil.

  4. Leaving Ergenekon tears down the walls of a sheltered sacred place and shakes the cosmic balance on Earth.

  5. Regaining power, the people fall into hubris and stray from Töre.