Slavic Pantheon
Khors
Хърсъ(Xъrsŭ)
- uncertain; possibly the sun or moon
One of the most obscure of Vladimir's 980 idols; his name is probably an Iranian loanword, but scholars still dispute whether he was a sun god, a moon god, or something else, especially since Dazhbog already covers the sun.
About Khors
Attestation
Khors is named second among Vladimir's six idols in the Russian Primary Chronicle's entry for 980, and appears again in a few later manuscript variants of the Tale of Igor's Campaign, where a prince is said to cross Khors's path by night, read by some scholars as implying a lunar association, since crossing the sun's path would make less sense at night.
An unresolved problem
Most specialists in Slavic philology (following Max Vasmer and later Ivanov and Toporov) treat "Khors" as a borrowing from an Iranian language current among steppe neighbors of the early Rus', related to words for "sun." That creates a puzzle: Dazhbog, standing right next to him in the same 980 list, is also solar. Proposed solutions include Khors as a moon god complementing solar Dazhbog, as a separate solar epithet borrowed through Iranian or Khazar contact, or as a more abstract personification of the sun-disc distinct from Dazhbog's role as "giver." None of these has become a scholarly consensus, and this site does not assign Khors a confident domain beyond what the idol list itself supports.
Worship and cult
Temples, festivals, and practices recorded for Khors
No medieval source records a rite, temple, or festival for Khors; he is known only from his place in the 980 idol list and a disputed nocturnal reference in some Tale of Igor's Campaign manuscripts, and his function remains an open scholarly question.
Family
Family tree
Khors's parents, consorts, children and rivals, as recorded in the atlas.
In the atlas
Where Khors appears
Sources and further reading
Source notes
These references are recorded in the catalog. Their passage wording and translation have not been checked, so quotations are not displayed here.
- Russian Primary Chronicle, s.a. 980 (paraphrase)
Cite this page
No publication date is recorded for this page, so each citation uses n.d. and today's date as the access date.
About this entry
By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. About the author. Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.
Parallels are editorial comparisons across traditions: a shared role does not, by itself, establish a shared origin.
Family relationships come from the atlas's kinship records. Ancient sources often disagree on divine genealogy.
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