In the very heart of the mountains of the Northern Urals there is a mysterious place - the Man-Pupu-Ner (Manpupuner) ridge. The Mansi reindeer breeders who roam here call it the Mountain of Lesser Gods.
And this name is not accidental. Seven bizarre stone figures rise on the flat surface of the ridge. One resembles a petrified woman, the other a lion, the third a wise old man with a raised hand.
Tourists from different cities of Russia hurry to see the famous Pechora "boobies" and hurry past the lonely high conical peak of Mount Koyp. In Vogul, Coyp is a drum. One of the legends of the Mansi people connects this peak with its famous neighbors.
Once seven giants-Samoyeds went through the mountains and Siberia to destroy the Vogul people. When they climbed the Man-Pupu-Ner ridge, their shaman-leader saw in front of him the sacred Yura of the Voguls, Yalpingner. In horror, the shaman threw his drum, which turned into Mount Koyp, while he and his companions froze in fear and became stone morons.
But there is another legend that can also be heard from the Mansi, but much less often. The Koype looks like a conical mountain from the side of stone blockheads. But if you look at her from a small, unnamed ridge located to the west, you can clearly see a woman with sharp features lying on her back.
This is a petrified shaman, punished for trying to insult one of the most ancient idols, once revered by all peoples of the north - the Golden Baba. When the golden idol was climbing over the stone belt of the Ural Mountains, the shaman, who considered herself his mistress, wanted to detain the Golden Baba. The idol cried out in a terrible voice, and all living things died of fear for many miles around, and the arrogant shaman fell on her back and turned to stone.
The screams that the Golden Woman publishes are evidenced not only by the Mansi legends, but also by the memories of foreigners who have visited Russia. Here, for example, what the Italian Alexander Gvagnini wrote in 1578: “They even say that in the mountains next to this idol they heard a sound and a loud roar like a trumpet”.
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We will return to her screams closer to the end of the story, but for now about something else. It is generally accepted that the Golden Baba is a pagan idol of the peoples who inhabited a vast territory from the Northern Dvina to the northwestern slopes of the Ural Mountains. This territory at different times was called differently - Biarmia, Ugra land, Great Perm.
The first mentions of the so-called Golden Baba in historical documents appeared more than a thousand years ago in Icelandic and Scandinavian sagas, telling about the Viking campaigns for the Golden Baba in 820, 918 and 1023.
For a thousand years, the Golden Woman "made a journey" from the banks of the Northern Dvina to the banks of the Ob. According to researchers, she made such a fantastic route because she had to be saved all the time - either from the Norman robbers or from the militant Christian preachers. But where the idol's homeland, where it came from in ancient Biarmia, Ugra and Perm, and where it disappeared at the end of the 16th century, is unknown.
As he writes in the article "Where is she, Golden Woman?" Boris Vorobyov, all available descriptions of the idol lead to the conclusion that it “is not the work of the masters of ancient Perm, because, firstly, in its appearance it differs sharply from the pagan deities of the northern peoples, to which the Yugra, the Voguls, and the Ostyaks belonged; and secondly, the creation of such a metal sculpture was impossible due to the lack of the appropriate technology among the Ugra tribes”(“Technics for Youth”, 1997, No. 11).
Many articles and books have been written about the Golden Baba. The main sources to which those who are trying to solve its secrets turn are the following documents: the composition of the founder. Roman Academy Julius Pomponius Leta (1428-1497) "Commentaries on Flora", "Treatise on the Two Sarmatians" by the Polish historian and geographer Matthew Mekhovsky (1457-1523), "Notes on Muscovite Affairs" by the Austrian Baron Sigmund von Herberstein (1486-1566) … In Russian documents, the first evidence of the Golden Baba is contained in the Novgorod Sophia Chronicle, and it refers to 1398.
It turns out that the golden idol had many names: Yumala, Golden Baba, Golden Old Woman, Kaltas, Guanyin, Copper Statue, Golden Lady, Golden Woman, Zlata Maya.
The external appearance of the Golden Woman is also, according to the descriptions, very different: now a standing female statue, now a woman with a cornucopia, now Minerva with a spear in her hands, now a seated woman, very reminiscent of Madonna, with a child in her arms, now a sitting naked woman and also with child.
In Russia, another written mention of it is the Novgorod Chronicle of 1538. The chronicle speaks of the missionary activity of Stephen of Perm. Stephen walked the Perm land, destroyed ancient sanctuaries and erected Christian churches in their place. The chronicle says that Stephen sowed the faith of Christ in the Perm land among the peoples who had previously worshiped animals, trees, water, fire and the Golden Baba.
At the end of the 15th century. the Moscow governors Semyon Kurbsky and Peter Ushaty tried to find the Golden Woman. When it became known that the idol was transferred to the Asian part of the continent, Kurbsky and Ushaty, at the head of the four-thousandth army, crossed the Urals and began to search for his temple. Many Ugra villages were captured and many secret places were searched, but neither the idol, nor the temple treasures were found.
In 1582, almost 100 years after the campaign of Kurbsky and Ushaty, the trail of the main deity of the Permyak-Yugorsk land was finally found. In the autumn of the same year, the Cossacks unsuccessfully stormed the so-called Demyansk town in the lower reaches of the Irtysh for three days.
When they had already decided to postpone the offensive, a defector appeared, who announced that there was an idol made of pure gold in the town. Hearing about this, the leader of the Cossacks Bogdan Bryazga ordered to continue the assault. The town was taken, but the trophy was not there: the idol's servants managed to get out of the encirclement and take it with them. Bryazga with the detachment rushed in the footsteps of the disappeared idol. In May 1583, the Cossacks were already on the Ob, in the area called Belogorie.
There was a sacred prayer for the Ostyak natives of the Golden Woman, protected by a kind of spell, according to which everyone who disturbed the peace of the great goddess had to die. Despite all the prohibitions, the Cossacks thoroughly searched the prayer site, but the Golden Woman was never found. Somehow mysteriously, she disappeared again. Returning from the campaign, the Cossacks were ambushed and all died. Perhaps the spell came true ?!
After some time, the idol that disappeared from Belogorie appeared in the basin of the Konda River, the left tributary of the Irtysh. All neighboring tribes were drawn to his temple, as it happened before. The deity was given rich offerings in the form of sable skins and overseas fabrics purchased at the auction of the vast Permyak-Yugorsk land.
At the beginning of the XVII century. missionary Grigory Novitsky tried to find the Golden Woman. He collected interesting information about the sanctuary where the idol was secretly kept and where only the leader of the tribe and the shaman had the right to enter. In addition to this information, Novitsky did not manage to find out anything else.
A hundred years later, the traces of the Golden Baba seemed to be found on the Northern Sosva River, which flows into the Ob on the left side. According to the assumption of modern researchers, the location of the idol has been pushed even further - to Taimyr, to the Putorana mountains.
At the end of the XX century. attempts were still made to find the Golden Baba. The latest information about it dates back to the summer of 1990. They were brought by an ethnographic expedition of the Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, which visited the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug. A small number of northern Khanty still live there, who, according to legend, were responsible for the integrity of the Golden Baba.
In 1933, dispossession of kulaks began in these parts. The NKVD authorities arrested the shaman and found out the way to the sanctuary from him. However, the Khanty, defending the shrine, put up armed resistance to the Chekists. As a result, four NKVD officers died, which led to immediate reprisals: almost all adult men of the clan were killed, and many children, old people and women died out over the winter, since they practically could not hunt and get food - the guns were confiscated. Even now, after so many years, the surviving Khanty are reluctant to talk about past events and ask not to be named.
As for the Golden Woman kept in the sanctuary, she disappeared. There is an assumption that it was melted down. However, the members of the expedition told about one interesting fact: the local history museum of Khanty-Mansiysk contains many exhibits for which there was no museum passport before. As the members of the expedition found out, these things came from the storage of the local KGB administration. This raises another question: if the Golden Baba was not golden, is she not currently in some special storage?
As for the question of where the golden statue came from on the Perm land, opinions differed. The researcher of the history of Biarmia Leonid Teploe suggests that the golden statue could have been carried away from the burning plundered Rome in 410. AD during the attack of the Ugrians and Goths. Some of them returned to their homeland to the Arctic Ocean, and an antique statue brought from a distant southern city became the idol of the northern people.
The supreme goddess of the Ugrians was known under different names. This progenitor of the human race endowed newborns with souls. The Ugrians believed that souls sometimes take the form of a beetle or a lizard. Their divine mistress herself could turn into a lizard-like creature. And this is a very remarkable fact of her "biography".
Bazhov's wonderful tales describe the Mistress of the Copper Mountain. The mistress of the underground storerooms of the Urals often appeared before the eyes of people in the form of a huge lizard with a retinue of multi-colored lizards.
The hostess appears before us primarily as the owner of copper ores and malachite. She herself wore a malachite dress, and her name was Malachitnitsa. The idol of the Golden Woman, from which the fabulous Mistress of the Copper Mountain descended, was copper. The green dress appeared because from time to time copper is covered with a green oxide film. In a short line
The ancient goddess of Belogorie was a copper statue that had turned green with age. It becomes clear why the chronicler kept silent about the material of the idol and did not call him the Golden Baba. In fairy tales we find a memory of the golden Russian God. In the Urals, they knew the golden Great Snake, that is, the Great Snake. He already lived underground and could take the form of both a snake and a man. This creature had power over gold.
Today, among the inhabitants of the Urals, there is a legend about Yalpyn-Ue, a giant snake that still sometimes appears "in public", a sort of Mansi anaconda. Maybe this is due to the legend of the Golden Baba?
Bazhov's tales provide a clue to the mysterious appearance. In them, the Golden Snake is a golden man with a beard entwined in such tight rings that "you can't bend it." He has green eyes and a hat with "red gaps" on his head. But this is almost exactly the image of the green-eyed Osiris!
The Egyptian god's beard was pulled back into a tight, tight bun. The pharaohs who imitated him had the same beard. It is enough to remember the famous faces of Tutankhamun from his golden sarcophagi to understand how the rings on the beard of the golden man looked like. Hat with "red gaps" "pschent" - the white-red crown of the united Egypt.
The wife and sister of Osiris was the green-eyed Isis - the goddess of fertility, water, magic, marital fidelity and love. She patronized lovers. Likewise, the Uralic goddess is the goddess of waters, closely associated with the theme of love and marital fidelity.
So, the image of the green-eyed Mistress of the Copper Mountain goes back to Isis? Today you can tell what a copper statue of an Egyptian woman looked like. Let's remember that the Golden Woman was portrayed as Madonna. The image of the Virgin with the baby Jesus arose under the influence of the sculptures of Isis with the baby Horus. One of these idols is kept in the Hermitage. Naked Isis sits and breastfeeds her son. On the head of the goddess there is a crown of snakes, a solar disk and cow's horns.
Egyptian myths help to understand a lot in our tales. For example, here is the magic green button. Mining Tanyusha was given it by the Mistress of the Copper Mountain, through the gift the girl communicated with her patroness. The Egyptian gods had the wonderful eye of Wadget ("green eye"). It also provided protection and patronage to the owner. Isis-Hathor was the keeper of the Eye and its incarnation.
The Egyptians themselves called Isis Iset. Near Gumeshki is the source of the Iset - "the river of Isis"? Through this river, the Ural copper entered the forest Trans-Urals. The name of the town Sysert may have come from the sistra, an ancient Egyptian musical instrument.
There are a great many such parallels here …
The fact that the Golden Woman is Isis was said by the old author Petrie (1620). But no one believed him. The appearance of Egyptian trends in Siberia seemed too surprising … But this is a separate big problem.
According to legend, the metal Golden Woman seemed to have fallen from the sky. Or maybe she really fell? This version of the origin of the golden idol was put forward several years ago by the ufologist Stanislav Ermakov. He believes that Golden Baba is an alien robot, for some reason, maybe due to a partial malfunction, left on Earth by its masters.
For some time the Golden Woman could move, and it is with this property that the Mansi legends about the “living” golden idol are connected. Then, it seems, the robot began to gradually fail. At first, he could still emit infrasounds, and then finally turned into a golden statue.
Where is the idol or the broken robot now? Three remote, inaccessible corners of Russia are traditionally called the last refuge of the Golden Baba: the lower reaches of the Ob river, the upper reaches of the Irtysh in the Kalbinsky ridge region and the impassable gorges of the Putoran mountains on the Taimyr Peninsula.
Mount Otorten.
But, perhaps, an idol with a terrible, killing voice is much closer. And hides somewhere in the triangle between the mountains Koip, Otorten and Manya Tump. This assumption is more logical, if you believe the legend that the Golden Baba "shouted" on Otorten.
One way or another, the hunt for the Golden Baba continues: some are looking for a priceless historical relic, others for gold, and still others for a treasure trove of alien technology.
From the book "100 Great Disappearances"
