Erlik (Erlig, Erlik Khan; Mongolian Erleg)

Region/Culture: Turkic and Mongolic peoples of the Altai and Siberia
Mythos: Turkish Mythology, Mongolian Mythology, Siberian/Arctic Peoples’ Mythologies
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: Lord of death, disease, and the underworld who looses plague and evil spirits upon the living and judges the souls of the dead.
Role in Mythos: The dark counterpart to the sky god and the creator, ruler of the lowest layer of the earth and of the wicked dead condemned to it.
Relation to Humans: Erlik sends sickness and death and demands animal sacrifice to be appeased, claiming the souls of the guilty for his copper palace far below. He is also blamed for teaching humankind sin and for bringing mortality into a world that had once been deathless.

Nine layers down, past nine black rivers, the light gives out for good. There is a house of iron ringed with slag, and beside it a single fir tree with nine roots where a horse can be hitched. Inside, in a hall of copper furnished with gold, an old man sits with a wrestler’s build and eyes like wet soot. His face is a boar’s, tusks and all, fixed to a human body, and it glows a dull red in the dark. This is the floor of the world. The old man is the reason most travellers ever come this far.

His name is Erlik, and the name is the ground itself. Er, or yer, means earth, and it was into the earth’s lowest depth that he was shut away. The Turkic and Mongolic peoples of the Altai and the Siberian forests knew him as the lord of death, of plague, of darkness, the judge who decides what becomes of a soul once the body is finished with it. He has other names in other mouths. The Mongols call him Erleg. The Khakas set his copper palace at the very bottom of everything. To the Hungarians he survives, faintly, as Ördög.

The stories disagree about how he got there, which suits a god of a faith that was never written down. In one telling he and the creator Ülgen were both shaped from Kayra, the high god, and were brothers before they were enemies. Erlik wanted to be Ülgen’s equal. He set about making a land of his own, and for that ambition he was driven to the ninth layer of the earth and set against everything above it. Another account hands him a hammer and an anvil and a god’s leave to create, until he began forging evil with the tools and the leave was taken back.

The oldest and strangest version puts him at the start of the world, in the water. In the legend Vasily Radlov collected, there was only the primordial sea, and the high god ordered the first man to dive and bring up a handful of soil from the bottom. The man dove. He came up with the soil, but he had hidden a second mouthful, meaning to keep it and raise a private world of his own later. The stolen soil began to swell between his teeth until he had to spit it out, and the god, seeing the theft, cast him from the heavenly realm and gave him his name. Erlik. Pride, in every version, is the thing that sends him down.

What he does from the bottom is send things up. Sickness, mostly, and the spirits that carry it. He fathered nine sons, the dark boys, and nine daughters whose only recorded work is to wait along a shaman’s road and try to turn him back with their beauty before he can reach the upper world. When a person dies, Erlik dispatches a kormos, a kind of ghost, to fetch the soul, and at that same moment heaven sends down a spirit of its own to claim it. The two of them struggle over the body, and the life that was lived decides who wins. He brings death because someone has to.

There is a story about why death exists at all. Once people did not die, and they bred until the world was crowded past bearing, and a crow suggested the obvious remedy: summon Death. So death was summoned, and it came, and it had Erlik’s hand in it. At first everyone knew the day they would die and lived stiff with the knowledge, counting down, until Tengri took pity and hid the date away. That mercy belongs to the sky. The arithmetic is Erlik’s.

To picture him you have to trust the shamans, because his appearance survives mostly in their prayers. They describe a thickset old man, black of eye and brow and moustache, with the face and teeth of a pig grafted onto the human frame. Other singers give him a forked beard to his knees, a moustache curled back behind his ears like boar tusks, a chin like a hammerhead, horns like twisted roots, and that red-lit face. He is not subtle. He is meant to frighten, and the people of the Altai were genuinely frightened of him; when sickness came they slaughtered animals at his name, because not sacrificing was understood to be worse.

His reach has limits, and the limits are the whole point of him. He cannot take every soul, only the guilty, the ones who hide their sins. The black shamans, the kara kam, are the only people who deal with him face to face, and even they are looked at sideways for it. He answers to the powers above, who made him, named him, armed him and then disarmed him, and who keep him pinned to the ninth layer. The Dolgans say he once dragged the mammoths down into his country, and that when the great beasts try to climb back toward daylight they freeze solid before they reach it. The cold is his too. So is the long way up that no soul of his ever quite finishes.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Erlik?

Erlik is the god of death and the underworld in Turkic and Mongolic mythology, worshipped among the Altai, Khakas, Buryat, and other Siberian peoples. He rules the lowest layer of the earth, judges the dead, and is set in cosmic opposition to the sky god Tengri and the creator Ülgen. The Mongols call him Erleg, and in Hungarian folklore he survives as Ördög.

What is Erlik the god of?

Erlik governs death, disease, darkness, and the underworld, often called Tamag. From below he sends plague and evil spirits to torment the living and takes the souls of the wicked into his realm. He is also remembered as a teacher of sin and the figure who brought mortality into a world that had once known no death.

How did Erlik become ruler of the underworld?

In most versions Erlik was cast down for pride. One tradition makes him the brother of the creator Ülgen, banished to the ninth layer of the earth after trying to make a rival world of his own. In a legend recorded by Vasily Radlov, he was the first man, sent to dive for soil from the primordial sea, who hid a stolen mouthful to build a private world and was renamed Erlik and exiled when the theft was discovered.

Can Erlik claim any soul he wants?

No. Erlik can only take the souls of the guilty, the people who conceal their sins, not the pure. When someone dies he sends a ghost called a kormos to seize the soul while heaven sends a spirit to defend it, and the moral weight of the life that was lived decides which spirit prevails.

What does Erlik look like?

Erlik’s appearance survives mainly in shamans’ prayers, which describe a heavily built old man with black eyes, brows, and moustache, bearing the face and tusked teeth of a boar on a human body. Some accounts add a forked beard reaching his knees, horns like twisted tree roots, and a face that glows blood-red, seating him on gold furniture in a palace of copper at the bottom of the underworld.