Book of Veles

The only known contour copy of a plank; the book is named after this plank, as it begins with "To Veles this book we devote..."

The Book of Veles (also: Veles Book, Vles book, Vles kniga, Vlesbook, Isenbeck's Planks, Велесова книга, Велесова књига, Велес книга, Книга Велеса, Дощечки Изенбека, Дощьки Изенбека) is a literary forgery[1][2][3] purporting to be a text of ancient Slavic religion and history supposedly written on wooden planks.

It contains what purport to be historical accounts interspersed with religious passages - some of a didactic, moralising character. The book refers to supposed events, the earliest of which would, if real, be datable to around the 7th century BC while the latest would have occurred around the 9th century AD.

The book was allegedly discovered in 1919 and lost in 1941. It is widely believed by scholars to be a forgery made in the 1940s–1950s, or less likely, in the early 19th century. The most decisive evidence for this is the language of the text, which is a mixture of different modern Slavic languages, with erroneous and invented linguistic forms and no regular grammar. Moreover, different modern editions of the book have different versions of the text. Regardless, some Slavic neopagans use it as a sacred text.

  1. ^ Sichinava, Dmitry. "Почему "Велесова книга" — это фейк" [Why "Veles Book" is a fake] (in Russian). Arzamas. Retrieved 7 May 2016.
  2. ^ Suslov, Mikhail; Kotkina, Irina (2020). "Civilizational discourses in doctoral dissertations in post-Soviet Russia". Russia as Civilization. Routledge. p. 171. doi:10.4324/9781003045977-8. ISBN 9781003045977. S2CID 219456430.
  3. ^ Oleh, Kotsyuba (2015). "Rules of Disengagement: Author, Audience, and Experimentation in Ukrainian and Russian Literature of the 1970s and 1980s". Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Science: 22.