The endless monotonous Great Steppe stretches from the Danube to the Irtysh. Desht-i-Kipchak - the Polovtsians called their land, and themselves - the Kipchaks. Both before them and after them, the steppe gave shelter to many peoples, absorbed the most diverse and vibrant cultures, absorbed the blood and swords of the conquerors. In the XI century, the Polovtsians ousted the Pechenegs, and in the XIII century they ceded to the Mongol-Tatars.
Polovtsian stone woman, XI century (Rtischevsky Museum of History and Local Lore)
Nomads came and went, and freedom never changed for gold and power. What kind of mysterious power raised the peoples and led them into the endless distance? Did you help to endure hardships and inconveniences, tempered, made you stronger? Hope for the best, greed or just a road? The steppe went into the sky to make it easier for the gods to descend, and for the dead to ascend.
The Azerbaijani poet Nizami treated the Polovtsian culture with great respect and attention, after all, and his wife was a Polovtsian. It was he who, once again crossing the Great Steppe and watching the sacrifices of the Polovtsians to stone idols, immortalized them in poetic lines:
Sculpture mysterious, in the old years,
The cover was lowered on the steppe beauties.
And now in those steppes, behind their gray fog, Promotional video:
You will meet with the undefeated talisman.
Around him your astonishing gaze will see
Arrow shafts are like grasses by sleepy lakes.
But even though the arrows hitting the eagles are not counted -
Here you will see eagles, you will hear the noise of their take-off.
And the tribes of Kypchaks come here, And the back of the Kypchaks bends before the idol.
A traveler on foot will come, or an equestrian will come -
Conquers any idol of their primordial.
The rider hesitates before him and, holding his horse, He bends an arrow into the middle of the grasses.
Every shepherd who drives the flock knows
That you have to leave the sheep in front of the idol.
From afar, the stone idol seemed like a big stone, but, approaching, Nizami always involuntarily felt awe. The formidable, stern warrior gazed at him intently. Fortunately, his stone sword in a sheath was not dangerous at all. The sun was slowly sliding over the edge of the earth. The steppe turned purple, and the mounds with idols seemed otherworldly.
As if nature erased the colors, wanting to enhance the mystery, to confirm their mystical power. And the formidable warriors in the twilight of the sunset smiled broadly. Are they … alive ?! The unexpected discovery did not frighten Nizami, he felt that there was no evil in the idols. Many centuries later, the Russian poet Khlebnikov will experience a similar shock and in the poem "The Stone Woman" he will leave a mysterious line: "Stands with a mobile smile."
Stone women from the Luhansk park-museum of Polovtsian women
The poet Nizami wanted to tell his descendants about his delight, mystical discovery, strange rites of the Polovtsians. It was the XII century - the time of the highest flowering of Polovtsian art and stone sculpture. Having inhabited many lands, the Polovtsians always left behind mounds and stone women. The most valuable thing that this mysterious people owned was a mystical testament to others that after them they would live in the Great Steppe.
It is not entirely true that the Polovtsians have disappeared forever from the arena of history. Frequent forays into Russia and military conflicts gave impetus to interpenetration. In our culture, they left vivid characters - the Serpent Gorynych and the woman-hero. Remember Vasilisa Nikitichna? Here she is the real Polovtsian!
And not only in Russia, but also in Europe, they left their mark. When the time came to cede the steppe, the Polovtsians left for Transcaucasia, Egypt, Macedonia, Thrace, but the most prominent position was in Hungary - there they held government posts, became related to princely families.
The Kipchak language formed the basis of the Kazakh, Tatar, Bashkir, Karachai-Balkar, Kumyk and Nogai languages. But as long as the language is alive, so are its people. So some of us are descendants of the Polovtsy, which means that the memory of what the stone women were intended for lives in the genes, and they still carry out their mission.
By the way, why exactly "stone women"? After all, the statues depict men, although sometimes women are also found. According to sources that have come down to us, it is known that the Polovtsians called stone statues "balbal", which means "idol". Well, those who came to the steppe after them, for the sake of simplicity, all idols, regardless of gender, were nicknamed "women", and sometimes "blockheads." Some scholars suggest that "baba" is associated with the Turkic word "vava" - ancestor, grandfather. These are the funny nicknamed "balbals", they went down in history.
Balbal in the steppes of Kazakhstan
In the Russian Empire, stone idols began to be collected since the 18th century, as if anticipating their difficult fate. According to scientists, by the 20th century, about two thousand stone women were found in the steppe zone of Russia, southern Siberia, eastern Ukraine, Germany, Central Asia and Mongolia. By the 21st century, their number has decreased several times.
This not only raises the question of a disrespectful, consumerist attitude towards ancestors, our history and culture, but also worries that with the disappearance of the "balbals" we lose the opportunity to unravel their secret.
The material from which the "balbal" was made is gray, white and yellow sandstone, white limestone and shell limestone, occasionally granite. The height is from one to four meters, and the weight sometimes reaches several tons. The first Polovtsian "balbals" are clumsy and primitive - a simple stone pillar with a rough image of a human face. Apparently, the Polovtsians were just learning, learning the basics.
Then something happened and the skill of the sculptures began to improve rapidly. Men and women were depicted standing or sitting (it is still not known why this is exactly so and what is connected with a given position of the body), always with the same position of the hands and bowls. Thanks to accurate and complete images, we can present costumes, jewelry, weapons, material and spiritual life of the Polovtsians. Stone faces are always flat, but cheekbones, often oval, with Turkic or Mongolian features. Men - with mustaches and beards; women's faces are round, full.
On the men's neck there is a metal ring, on the women - a necklace and beads. On arms, wrists and shoulders - rings and bracelets. Male warriors - with sabers, bows, quivers for arrows; women - in rich clothes, in dresses with ornamental embroidery, in fashionable hats, with mirrors and purses at the waist. Hair is always braided or styled in complex hairstyles. Men sometimes have three braids protruding from under the helmet.
Stone women of the Dnepropetrovsk Historical Museum
There is very little variety in them, sometimes it slips into the expression on the face. There are menacing, sullen, harsh men - they are suppressive and intimidating, but there are also good-natured, with an open wide smile. It seems a little more - and the "balbal" will invite you to the banquet table. Majestic women with a developed sense of self-esteem sometimes have oppressed, tortured expressions on their faces. What did they experience if they were forever frozen in pain and melancholy?
In these strange sculptures, peace and indomitability, strength and weakness, faith in something beyond and in the most ordinary human are combined in an amazing way.
Here is the little that we know for sure about the "balbals". The mystery begins with a bowl held firmly by stone hands. It is believed that the bowl was intended for the ashes of the deceased or ashes from a ritual sacrifice. But then why do some "balbals" instead of bowls hold children or birds on their right hand?
Some scholars are sure that "balbals" depict ancestors (a kind of ancient photographs) and they were placed on mounds or in sanctuaries. Through special rituals, the soul of the deceased passed into a stone idol. Maybe that's why, if you look or spend time among stone women for a long time, you get the feeling that they are living, watching you, studying? Did the poets, separated by centuries, Nizami and Khlebnikov really want to say this too?
There is a version that the developed funeral cult, as well as the cult of ancestors, gradually grew into the cult of the heroic leaders. The worldly "balbal" symbolized the supreme deity Tengri (Blue Sky). He gave the soldiers strength and personified the father - the patron saint of the clan. As a rule, his face was turned to the east. And the female - Umai, the wife-land, was responsible for fertility. It is possible that stone women performed the function of mystical guardians, protectors of the tribe from enemies.
And here is another incredible version - "balbal" portrayed an enemy who fell from the hands of a warrior-hero and was buried according to a certain rite in order to bring a cup to his master in the afterlife. That is why "balbals" are standing in the steppe with bowls for eternal service to the warriors-heroes.
The abundance of speculation suggests that the true purpose of the "balbal" is still inexplicable. The Great Steppe keeps a secret. It is reliably known about their mystical influence on people. Whoever lived in the steppe after the Polovtsians, stone women were revered and worshiped. Sometimes, next to the "balbals" scientists find skeletons, which does not exclude human sacrifice. And in folklore collections the rite of worship has been preserved.
"Balbalu" put a piece of bread on his shoulder, scattered grain at his feet, bowed and said: "Have mercy on us, babo. Let's bow even lower, just save us from trouble! " Even in the 18th-19th centuries, when the peasants found a stone woman, they dragged her into the courtyard, worshiped her, whitewashed and decorated with ribbons on holidays.
What kind of power attracted Christian Slavs to the Polovtsian pagans "Balbals"? But this attitude was not met everywhere. Often stone women were used as boundary marks, corner supports in residential and utility buildings. They were sharpened with scythes, axes and knives. To end the inappropriate attitude towards historical monuments, the tsarist government had to intervene.
Stone statues from Chiragli (Shamakhi region). 3rd century BC - 2nd century AD Azerbaijan History Museum, Baku
Thanks to the historian Dmitry Yavornitsky, the legends about the "balbals" have been preserved, which he carefully wrote down. According to ancient beliefs, 'stone women were once giant heroes. Once, angry at the sun, they began to spit at it, for which they were turned into stone by some mystical power. But in difficult times, they come to life and punish their offenders (poor peasants who sharpened knives about them!).
And according to another legend, stone women, taken from the mounds, return to their place on their own. Strange, but even in the legends there is an idea of some kind of vital force contained in a stone idol. And over the centuries this force only grows.
The largest collection of stone Polovtsian women is in the lapidarium of the Felitsyn Krasnodar Museum. Sixty-nine "balbal" stand under a canopy in the courtyard of the museum among Arab and Scythian tombstones. And for some reason their loneliness is especially felt in this “crowdedness”. They are like rare animals, torn from their native element and placed in a cage, which, dying, do not stop thinking about freedom.
"Stone women" in the Felitsyn Museum
The second largest collection of Polovtsian women - sixty-eight "balbal" - is in the Dnepropetrovsk Historical Museum (Ukraine). Warriors-men, smart, proud women, they stand without any canopy in the rain and snow, in the heat and cold. And what time could not cope with, people do. Factories, cars, bad ecology … This is a man, not respecting himself, ready to put up with everything and accept everything, but the stone idol refuses.
"Balbals" are destroyed, slowly and painfully die. Like aliens, they gaze with unshakable calmness at the change of eras, revolution, war. What do they hear under the open starry sky? The call of the Great Steppe, preserved in stone memory? Or songs of nomads who have gone into oblivion? Everything is incomprehensible both in their appearance, and in the masters that they have created and dreamed of, and in their purpose.
But in the Dnepropetrovsk Historical Museum there is another masterpiece of stone sculpture, which has no analogues in the world. The Kernos Idol is an anthropomorphic stele of the Eneolithic era (III millennium BC). It is unique in all respects: the antiquity of origin, and the perfection of manufacturing techniques, and amazing outlines, and proportionality, and, finally, the extraordinary richness of images on the surface.
Kernos Idol
Some scholars believe that the stone idol is a proto-Aryan deity - the creator of the world, the giver of life and prosperity. Some of the images on it echoes the myths of the Indian literary monument "Rigveda".
It got its name from the place of discovery. In 1973, five schoolchildren from the village of Kernosovka, Novomoskovsk district (Ukraine), accidentally discovered him in a silo trench. So the ancient god (if it is a god) received a name - the Kernos idol. Then, as always, there were twists and turns with the delivery, but everything was resolved safely.
In this small statue of gray sandstone (1.20x0.36x0.24 cm, weight 238.5 kg), harmony and nobility are felt. The right side is seriously deformed (there is a deep dent) by a bulldozer. The idol is a rectangular, rather voluminous slab (or rather even a block) with a slight protrusion from above - the head. All four sides of the block are covered with numerous drawings, images made in the technique of low relief.
They depict weapons, metal tools, subjects of hunting and ritual dances, horses, dogs, coded calendars, meander patterns, various mysterious signs and magic symbols. Small ears protrude on the sides of the head with a depression in the center. The face is elongated, with a protruding chin, which is lowered to the chest.
Deep-set eyes, a small nose, a tightly closed mouth, a drooping mustache, hands - either he presses them to his right chest, or he wants to bring them to his face. A sharp, piercing look. Depending on the incident light, he is either indifferently dead or attentively studying. Like "balbals", he instills a strange feeling of his own, separate life, flowing in his stone body, regardless of time and epochs.
Of great scientific interest is the fact that it combines all the previously known elements into a single composition: the phallic scene, the hunting scene, cosmogonic representations, symbols of power. Who is its creator? What idea did you put into your creation? What did you want to convey to descendants?
The Kernos idol was exhibited with great success in Moscow (an attempt was even made to leave it there), in Italy and in other countries. He was given a separate room, special lighting was made, visitors showed awe and respect.
And a strange idol with a changeable expression on his face and unsolved drawings watched the descendants of those who created it. It came from the era of the Neolithic revolution, when humanity made a giant leap forward in its development. He is one of the few witnesses of the birth of animal husbandry, agriculture, weaving, pottery, metallurgy, and weapons production.
But apparently there was something else. After all, the stone body, in addition to the well-known images, has preserved mysterious drawings, the meaning and meaning of which have not yet been unraveled. It is like a time machine that concentrated the mysterious era of the first revolutionaries. But in the historical museum, the feeling of time travel is completely absent.
The Kernos Idol is lost among many other exhibits, huddling together in a small hall, where people do not always have enough space. There is no special lighting for it, emphasizing the ancient stone beauty, a separate hall, veneration and awe.
He is gloomy and gloomy. He lacks light and freedom. The same confusion of feelings and in stone women. Not of this world, strangers and strange, they attract to themselves like a magnet. Smiling broadly or grimly looking from under their brows, they probably fulfill their most important purpose - they keep the secrets of the Great Steppe.
