Bak Hyeokgeose and the Egg at Najeong

Six villages without a king

Iryeon's Samguk Yusa tells that in the year the Chinese reckoned as the first year of the Dijie era of the Former Han (69 BCE), on the first day of the third month, the chiefs of the six villages of Jinhan gathered with their sons on the bank of the Al River. They said: we have no ruler over the people, and they do as they please; let us find a man of virtue, make him king, and found a state.

The white horse

They climbed to a high place and looked south. At the Najeong well below Mount Yang they saw a strange light like lightning touching the ground, and a white horse kneeling there as if bowing. Going down to look, they found a purple egg (some say a large blue egg). When the horse saw them, it neighed long and rose up into the sky.

The radiant boy

They broke open the egg and found a boy of beautiful form. They were astonished, and bathed him in the Eastern Spring. His body gave off light; birds and beasts danced together; heaven and earth shook; and the sun and moon shone clear. So they named him Hyeokgeose, 'one who brightens the world'. Because the egg was like a gourd, called bak, they gave him the surname Bak.

The queen from the dragon

People congratulated each other, saying that the Son of Heaven had come down and now a virtuous queen must be found for him. That same day, at the Aryeong well in Saryang village, a chicken-dragon appeared, and from its left side a girl was born. Her face was lovely, but her lips were like a chicken's beak. When she was bathed in the northern stream of Wolseong, the beak fell away. She was named after the well, Aryeong.

King and queen

The two children were raised in a palace built at the foot of Mount Namsan. When they were thirteen, the boy was made king and the girl queen, and the state was called Seorabeol. After sixty-one years of rule, the king ascended to heaven; seven days later his body fell back to the earth in five parts, and the queen too died. When the people tried to bury them together, a great serpent drove them off, so they buried the five parts in five tombs, called the Five Tombs or the Serpent Tombs.

Another version

Kim Busik's Samguk Sagi tells a shorter version: the chief of Goheo village, Sobeolgong, saw a horse kneeling and neighing in the forest by the Najeong well; when he went there, the horse vanished and there was only a large egg, from which the child came. The two accounts agree on the well, the horse, and the egg, the three emblems of Silla's heavenly origin.