The Murkum, Godddess of Mount Haramosh in the Karakorum mountains of northern Pakistan

The peak of Haramosh is over 24,000 feet, in the Gilgit-Baltistan region.

I'm very happy to have found this source, which other writers gave short and tantalizing quotes from, online. Years ago I scribbled down references to a Dardic goddess whose altars were piled with goat horns (very much like that of archaic Artemis on Delos!) but they disappeared into my files for decades. When I finally located them going through my folders on Iran, there was a reference to Jettmar's article that, in the 1980s, I had no hope of getting my hands on. But now it is online as a pdf!

Everything below is quoted from the article; my comments are in brackets. I dictated this text electonically so that I could provide more of it for you than by typing it in, but may have missed resulting spelling errors.

“Ethnological research in Dardistan 1958,” Karl Jettmar. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 105/1, 1961, pp. 79-97

All the women of [the Haramosh] valley worshipped a female deity, the Murkum. She helped and delivery and protected mother and child; yep she was also the chief owner all ibexes and wild goats denoted by the collective term of ‘mayaro’. Therefore she was venerated by hunters, Too, who brought her horns.

The great thrill of the investigations I made in the Haramosh Valley was finding a sanctuary of the Murkum in good order and even in use, in spite of 200 years of Islamic past. It lies almost 3000 m. above sea level near the summer village of Guré, just in front of the tremendous flag of the Haramosh, and this is no accident, as the mountain what is considered the proper home of the Murkum. On the steep slope [88] there is an altar built of boulders dominated by a cliff as big as a house with the juniper tree growing beside it. Next to it is a spring. Below the altar, crude benches of stones were directed for the annual meeting of the women. Nut trees grow between them. Even they are considered holy and no branches were ever broken off. [See the end of this post for photos of living altars of the same kind, just over the border in Tibetan-speaking Ladakh.]

I was told that, when the village was founded, the goddess appeared in the shape of a she-ibex on that cliff promising happiness and fertility. Every year the women were together here. Then she herself would send the sacrifice—a she-ibex.

One man only was allowed to join in the ceremony, the priest of the Murkum, the ‘zhabán.’ It was his duty to kill the ibex and to divide up the meat on the altar. This was eaten by the women sitting on the benches below. Then the priest danced before the goddess (without clothes, as some audacious people maintained) taking liberties with the surrounding women. The women, however, would be him and torment him to their hearts content. No man was allowed to oppose the behavior of the ‘zhabán’. [Projection alert:] it seems that he even had full sexual rights on all women of the valley. He was called ‘buck of the women-flock.’ …

The ministry of the zhabán is now abolished, but women anxious about the welfare of their families still come to the altar table and put leaves of juniper between the boulders. When I visited the place, I found fresh, green branches there. In Haramosh, I saw another sanctuary of the Murkum, stone benches on both sides of the path between the winter and summer villages. When people shift over in spring time, no woman who has born a child since the previous autumn will pass here without distributing bread in honor of the Murkum and putting some Juniper branches between the rough stones of the benches.

Today in this northern area they do not remember a male god of any importance comparable to that of the Murkum. …

We have heard that tales of fairies exist almost everywhere, but in some remote valleys the fairies are considered as smaller images of the Murkum, perhaps ask her younger relatives. They have preserved their aboriginal name of ‘darniji’ instead of the Persian ‘peri.’

In a village on the borders of Punyal I was told of the sanctuary of Murkum and her suite [following]. It was described as a big menhir surrounded by many similar but smaller stones. The locals explained that Murkum and her maidens could rest only on hilltops. The highest mountain is the residence of the great goddess herself, on the others there sit the darnijis. If you want to receive them you must build hilltops in miniature models.

One group of the darnijis wear the white caps of the unmarried girls. It is their duty to help the hunters and the shamans. As everywhere in the Gilgit Agency they are called ‘racchi,’ i.e. ‘helpers,’ ‘guards.’ [This is probably derived from Indic rākṣī: “protector, guardian.”] When they appear to the hunter in a dream in order to grant him an Ibex they do not bring him flowers or fruit as is otherwise related, nor do they simply betray the whereabouts of the deer tongue, but they present him with a human head. Apparently that means the soul of the mayaro which is to be the victim. [89]

[Mayaro refers to wild horned animals, especially the ibex or mountain goat, the markhor (the largest kind of mountain goats, with long twisted horns), or wild sheep. Their relation to the darnijis or fairies is explained in an earlier section:]

Ibex and markhor, collectively called ‘mayaro,’ pass for the domestic animals of the fairies, their sheep and goats. Therefore, no animal of this kind can be killed by man which has not been slaughtered before by those ladies.

[This compares very closely to Scottish traditions of the glaisteagan, deer fairies; as well as the Cailleach, who also selects deer to be taken by hunters—or protects them from the men, and punishes men who over-hunt or disrespect her "herd."]

[Another parallel exists in the Dardic cultures, to a very widespread European tradition known as “the miracle of the bones,” in which ancestral spirits or witches hold a feast after slaughtering animals, usually cattle. They then gather up the bones into the skins and resurrect the animal by pronouncing a simple spell or rite. In one witch trial of the Italian Alps, the formula was Sorge, Ronzola: “Get up, Bossie.” Or the witches’ goddess (in Ferrara she was called Sibillia) would revive the animals by touching the bundle with a wand. A similar story was told as far away as Estonia. In Switzerland and central Europe, it is ancestral spirits who do this, visiting a household and making a feast with the best cow, while the terrified householder looks on; and then bringing her back to life.]

After the meal they reanimate it by putting the bones together and covering the skeleton with the skin. Then they leave the resurrected animal to one of their chosen man who is just performing the dream ceremony. [88]

[Jettmar also describes ancestor stones called botébat, upright stones belonging to the males, and smaller flat stones lying on the side, the female stone. He compares these with megaliths in eastern Tibet, to which I would add the Khasi in far northeastern India (Meghalaya, Assam. This matrilineal society has the same arrangement of standing male stones and earth-lain female stones.]

It was used as a chopping block for dividing the meat of the slaughtered animals. At some places it seems to have been connected with the female principle. Once I was told that such a stone had been brought by the grandmother in a similar right. During the marriage ceremony the bride groom had to sit down on the ‘male’ and the bride on the ‘female’ stone.

[This is where we come to the deeply patriarchal aspects of an ancient Indo-European culture. The Dardic peoples are an very ancient branch of the Indo-Iranian family, who appear to have been pushed far up into the mountains a very long time ago by their distant relatives. Remnants of the original inhabitants survive in the remote valleys of Hunza, Nagar, Ghizer, Gilgit-Baltistan, and part of Jammu-Kashmir. They speak Burushaski, an isolate language (no known relatives), which would have previously been more widespread in the region taken over by Indo-Europeans in ancient times.

The Dards are independent tribes, but prone to blood-feuds. Originally they had no state structure but feudal and caste orders were imposed by foreign conquerors. The Dards (this branch usually called Shina (though this is complicated by caste elements) are firmly patrilineal, often polygynous, and with a strong sexual double standard, very much like the Kalasha to their west in Chitral. Girls cannot inherit land. Husbands have the right to kill adulterous couples, but of course wives can do nothing about cheating husbands. There was a preoccupation with female purity, both in terms of sexual restraint and strict observance of menstual taboos. It was so great, as this next paragraph describes, as to prompt ceremonial recognition of women who comply with it:]

In honor of a woman who lived a pure life without fault (adultery), observing certain taboos (such as not to step over crossroads directly) [potentially contaminating a powerful place with female ‘impurity’], a platform was erected by her paternal family. The walls were built a big stones, the centerfield with gravel. A chair was put on this ‘tali’, and she had to sit down on it, richly ornament. A goat, also decorated, was led towards her and was exhorted by the elders to pay honored to this ‘sili’ (=holy) woman. When the animal bent its neck, this sign was accepted as a proof of her dignity, and a big feast would start. The monument of that ordeal was called ‘síli-táli.” [p. 88. At what age this female-fidelity-rewarding ceremony was carried out is not mentioned.]

The belief in the great owner-goddess of the animals exists in Caucasia in many variants. The idea is quite common there that the hunter can capture his prey only by her consent. Sometimes her favor even go so far as to accept him as her lover. But the lucky hunter has to observe certain taboos; otherwise he must die. Sometimes the goddess appears in the shape of a pure animal. Precise idea that a slaughtered animal may be revived from his bones occurs in both areas. Even the detail that a missing bone can be replaced by a rod is identical. Here as there, the belief is connected with wild goats, and this must be a very old affinity, because Thor, the Germanic god, plays the same trick on his bucks. [Meaning, reviving them from their bones after a feast.]

That goat worship existed among the mountain tribes of Iran can hardly be doubted in view of the Luristan bronzes. Many seals of western Asia depict goats beside a tree. [Not to mention the ibex being a primary theme in neolithic ceramic painting.]…

It is quite evident that there are similarities with institutions of the Kafirs [meaning the pagans in Afghanistan]… we know that they had ‘feasts of merit’ and went head-hunting. They were acquainted with altars in the shape of mountains and fumigated with burning juniper. Moreover, the Kafirs of the Hindukush [i.e. the Kalasha of Chitral] venerated a goddess who appeared as a wild girl and her residence on the highest summit—the Tirikh Mir. I am in no linguist, but I think that even her name, Krumai, indicates a connection with the Murkum of the Gilgit Agency. [The same goddess he’s been talking about, in the Haramosh Valley]

[It’s quite remarkable that veneration of a goddess has persisted through millennia of a markedly patriarchal social order, upon which foreign domination has overlain Hindu and then Islamic conversion, and forms of serfdom that sometimes amounted to slavery. Islamicization has changed the culture in marked ways, but was unable to preventing people from migrating goddesses into an "acceptable" form as Muslim saints. However, the Dardic society has not taken up the Muslim prescription that girls should inherit half of what their brothers get; women still can't inherit land.

[Still, some very archaic survivals of matriculture persist. One is the sacred milk bond in rituals of adoption:]

Only one method is possible: the foster-son must have the mother of the new family as a wet-nurse. [In other words, the rite of adoption requires that he be breastfed by a woman of the family.] Even a full grown man must undergo the symbolic action. After that he will never dream of approaching his new milk-mother sexually. Therefore, if any suspicion of adultery arises, such a ceremony will be forced by the husband on the suspected partners. [Thus, a matricultural rite is turned to the purpose of male control over female sexuality.]

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Last week, I found a source which has pictures of a similar rock shrine where people make offerings of ibex horns! I'll be quoting extensively from this article on the daiyal (shamans) of this same Karakoram region. Here's the wide view of the rock altar:

This is the Lha-tho (shrine) of Gang-si Lha-mo in Garkone (lha-mo is a Tibetan title of female trance healers, but I read that here it refers to goddesses).


Note the spring of juniper attached to the horns. Juniper is used across the Himalayas and in Tibet as a purifying incense, and as the article above described, women leave it as an offering at the stone altars.