The mysterious ancient Balkarian village of El-Tyubu is the focus of the history of the entire Balkaria. Ancient watchtowers, remains of Greek temples and anomalous phenomena attract adventure seekers and connoisseurs of beauty here.
The ancient Balkar village of El-Tyubu in the upper reaches of the Chegem gorge on the left bank of the Chegem river. This is the birthplace of the great Balkarian poet and sage Kaisyn Kuliev.
The Balkarukov Tower in El-Tyubu is also called the Tower of Love. The legend says that Akhtugan Balkarukov built it to defend against the relatives of the beautiful Kerime, stolen by him in Dagestan.
Not far from the village, two ancient defensive Greek stairs go up the rocky wall. They rise to a height of about 30 meters and lead to a small area surrounded by walls up to two meters high and about half a meter thick. According to the legends, the path could be continued further, along a narrow path leading to a mysterious cave where Christian relics - books and utensils - were hidden. Nobody has been able to find the hidden yet. In ancient times, the stairs went to the mountains from enemies, and above the stairs, soldiers took positions for defense.
A little higher than the Greek stairs are the ancient Balkar mausoleums, in which the local nobility was buried in the VIII-XVIII centuries.
City of the dead
The nature of the Verkhnechegemskaya depression is extraordinarily beautiful. In the south, the peaks of the Side Ridge (Kurmytau and others), more than four kilometers high, sparkle with eternal snows. Magnificent and impregnable as a citadel, Mount Karakaya ("black rock" - bulk; 3646 meters), the highest in the Rocky Range, rises in the east. In its spur, in the Kyzla-Kuygenkaya mountain range (from the Balkarian "Rock of burnt girls"), there is the Kala-Tyubu grotto - an ancient human site (13-15 thousand years old). Not far from the grotto there is the ancient settlement "Lygyt", which belongs to the VIII-X centuries. AD, with an underground wooden plumbing.
Promotional video:
The Chegem gorge in some miraculous way combines the beauty of nature and the mysteries of history. This is probably what inspired the filmmakers to shoot the feature film "Sannikov Land" here (directed by A. Mkrtchyan, L. Popov; 1973). In the upper reaches of Chegem - near the village of El-Tyubu, Chegem waterfalls, Andai-Su waterfall, a significant part of the action of the film takes place. In the gorge, including near the waterfalls, episodes of S. Rostotsky's film "A Hero of Our Time" (1965-1966) were filmed. In 1975, in the village of El-Tyubu, the film "Rider with a lightning in his hand" was filmed.
The village of El-Tyubu resembles an open-air museum. When this village appeared, now no one knows. In literal translation "El-Tyubu" means "the foundation of the village". Its name suggests that it was founded on the site of an even older settlement. When the present village was founded, there were already ruined foundations of some more ancient buildings. The spirit of antiquity reigns here everywhere. Preserved stone houses are several hundred years old. In the center of the village we can see an old tower, which was built by invited Svan masters in the late 17th - early 18th centuries. This tower belonged to the local princes Balkarukovs, who were related to the Tarkov shamkhals in the 18th century. This tower is also called the "Tower of Love". According to legend, Akhtugan Balkarukov built it in order to defend against relatives,the beauty he stole in Dagestan - the kumyk Kerim. One of the family's sacred relics was the 14th century Koran brought from Dagestan. At the end of the XIX century. a mosque with a minaret was built in the village (unfortunately, it has not survived), and there was a school with it, where local children studied the Koran.
At the beginning of the twentieth century. The Balkarukovs owned the only cheese factory in the gorge.
Right there, near the bridge, there is a "stone of shame" with a hole made in it (according to legend, criminals were tied to it in the Middle Ages). There is also the stone Avsoltu, which was previously worshiped, seeing in it the patron saint of hunting Afsati; and the "sacred" stone Bayram-tashi, and the stone of the strongmen weighing three hundred kilograms (the winner in the competition was the one who tore it off the ground) …
Near the village, along a rocky wall, two ancient defensive Greek stairs go up, leading to a cave, in which, according to legend, ancient Christian relics were buried, which are still being searched.
In ancient times, when the enemy was advancing, people went up the stairs to the mountains, and the warriors took up defenses above the stairs in order to bring down stones and arrows at the enemy. Climbing the stairs today, in peacetime, you understand how hard it was for the attackers.
In the center of the village, near the bridge, there is a monument to K. Kuliev in the form of a bust. Not far from here you can see ancient stone sakli with flat turf roofs. Due to the lack of arable land on these roofs, barley and oats were formerly grown, and after harvesting a meager harvest, goats were allowed to graze. These old buildings of the village became natural scenery when A. Balabanov's feature film "War" (2002) was filmed here.
At the foot of another interesting natural object - the volcanic massif Kum-Tyube ("sandy hill" - balk.) With a height of more than 3500 m, there is the "Town of the Dead". This massif was included in the list of anomalous places in Russia as anomalous zone "Alpha". Above its summit in the 1980s, mysterious night lights were observed.
So the "Town of the Dead" - a monument of history and culture - is located a few hundred meters from the village of El-Tyubu. Here are preserved "houses of the dead" or "keshene" of the early Middle Ages (X-XII centuries) and later - Muslim mausoleums of the late XVII-early XVIII centuries. The ancient "keshenes" are called "Christian", although they are undoubtedly the result of the layering of various cultural influences. Similar tetrahedral houses of the dead with gable roofs and a small window from the front facade are found in the mountains of Ossetia, Ingushetia, in the Cherek gorge of Kabardino-Balkaria and even in the upper reaches of the Kuban River near the Karachaev village of Kart-Dzhurt. There is an opinion that the custom of burying the dead in such "houses of the dead" is one of the vestiges of Zoroastrianism,which gained some distribution among the population of Caucasian Alania in the early Middle Ages. According to Zoroastrian rites, a dead body was not supposed to desecrate the sacred element of the earth, so it was forbidden to bury it in the ground. Cremation was also ruled out, since fire is also sacred. It's the same with water. So I had to isolate the body with the help of special structures. In Persia, these were “towers of silence”, and in the Caucasus, there were dry caves, burials in ossuaries (special vessels for collecting bones) and “houses of the dead”. When Zoroastrianism was supplanted by Christianity, and then paganism revived with renewed vigor (due to the decrease in the influence of Byzantium), traditions continued to persist for a long time.therefore, it was forbidden to bury it in the ground. Cremation was also ruled out, since fire is also sacred. It's the same with water. So I had to isolate the body with the help of special structures. In Persia, these were “towers of silence”, and in the Caucasus, there were dry caves, burials in ossuaries (special vessels for collecting bones) and “houses of the dead”. When Zoroastrianism was supplanted by Christianity, and then paganism revived with renewed vigor (due to the decrease in the influence of Byzantium), traditions continued to persist for a long time.therefore, it was forbidden to bury it in the ground. Cremation was also ruled out, since fire is also sacred. It's the same with water. So I had to isolate the body with the help of special structures. In Persia, these were “towers of silence”, and in the Caucasus, there were dry caves, burials in ossuaries (special vessels for collecting bones) and “houses of the dead”. When Zoroastrianism was supplanted by Christianity, and then paganism revived with renewed vigor (due to the decrease in the influence of Byzantium), traditions continued to persist for a long time. When Zoroastrianism was supplanted by Christianity, and then paganism revived with renewed vigor (due to the decrease in the influence of Byzantium), traditions continued to persist for a long time. When Zoroastrianism was supplanted by Christianity, and then paganism revived with renewed vigor (due to the decrease in the influence of Byzantium), traditions continued to persist for a long time.
On one of the mausoleums of El-Tyubu, a stone "lump" has been preserved, which suggests that the men of the family to which this mausoleum belongs are still alive, although no one has been buried in this mausoleum for a long time.
Here is what, in particular, L. I. Lavrov writes: “An external examination of the Verkhnechegemsky burial ground makes it possible to distinguish seven types of graves in it:
1) an earthen embankment lined with stones at the edges;
2) stone embankment;
3) a stone box made of smoothly fitted stones and covered with stones inside. That is, the same stone embankment, but with fortified walls;
4) a stone cemented box with a steep gable roof; the inside of the box is filled with stones; this grave differs from the previous one only in that it is better protected from destruction;
5) a grave with the same box as the previous one, differing from it in that, firstly, it is empty inside and, secondly, “has a small square window on the east side. That is, it is a small crypt, as if repeating the external forms of a stone cemented embankment;
6) a large quadrangular crypt (keshene) with a high gable roof and a window on the east side;
7) a large octagonal crypt with a pyramidal (also octahedral) high roof, turning into a cone at the top.
further: “Already one simple list of seven types encountered suggests that the crypts of the North Caucasus do not repeat the architectural tradition of one or another, in the past, more cultured peoples who influenced the mountaineers. The crypts are organically linked with the local "architecture" of mountain graves. We see how each type is only a complication of the previous one.
On the way from the village to the "town of the dead", you can see an irrigation canal - a channel of a mountain stream diverted to the side. This canal was created more than one century ago and, apparently, served for irrigation of fields in the lower part of the slope. As soon as a damper was installed in the canal, the water began to overflow over the low earthen rim and irrigate the crops below.