The legend of the "Golden Baba" - a pagan idol cast from pure gold and hidden somewhere in the North in Hyperbaray, among endless rivers, swamps and forests, goes back to ancient times.
"Golden Woman" Hyperboreans
For a thousand years, there have been legends about the untold treasures of Hyperborea, about the inaccessible Ripean Mountains (Ural Mountains), where a colossal statue of the Golden Woman is hidden in the snowy northern abyss - an idol made of pure gold, and the Arimasps guarding it, living next to the Hyperboreans.
In the "History" of Herodotus, you can read that behind the distant Ripean (Ural) mountains, there is "the damned part of the world where it constantly snows", nerves that can turn into wolves, warlike Amazons, "one-eyed men - Arimasps" (Greek. Αριμασποι), possessing innumerable treasures and "vultures guarding gold, and even higher behind them, by the very sea - Hyperboreans", who do not know death.
The ancient Greek historian Herodotus learned about the Arimasp tribe from the Scythian Aristeus (IV, 27), who composed "his epic poem, which is now called by the Hellenes" The Epic of the Arimasps. "(Herodotus IV 13, 14, 27;)
Perhaps the Arimasps, which Herodotus spoke about 2500 years ago, were the keepers of the Golden Woman. In Scythian, the word “arimasp” is translated as: “arima” is a unit, and “spu” is an eye. It can be assumed that the ancient Greeks called this tribe the Arimasps (one-eyed) because the Arimasps "slept with their eyes open," that is, they were always on the alert, guarding their golden treasures.
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The search for the "Golden Woman" continued in the Middle Ages. For the first time, the Golden Woman is directly mentioned in the Russian chronicle of 1398.
The first bishop who managed to somehow root Christianity in the northern lands was Stephen of Perm, who baptized Komi in 1379. Baptism was accompanied by rather aggressive actions of Christian missionaries: pagan temples were destroyed, wooden idols, which were widespread everywhere, were mercilessly burned. Confirmation of this is the iconic image of Stephen with an ax raised above the “sacred birch”, hung with animal furs, the icon symbolized the struggle with the faith of “wild peoples”.
After the rooting of Christianity in the administrative centers of the region, Stephen decided to strengthen Christianity in the hinterland, but this was hampered by the legend about the existence of an ancient shrine - the idol of the "Golden Woman", but all attempts to get to the pagan shrine were in vain, the guardians reliably hid their shrine in the taiga, away from the eyes of aggressive Christian missionaries.
In the XIV century, Christians fought with the idol as one of the main shrines of the pagans. And in the 18th century, stories about the mysterious "Golden Woman" acted in Europe as a kind of visiting card of unknown Russia.
The golden woman on the map of 1562.
The existence of the idol is mentioned in a number of medieval publications, and its location was mentioned by the Austrian baron Sigismund von Herberstein in the 1549 edition of the "Notes on Muscovite Affairs".
The golden woman on the map of 1562.
Baptism of idolaters
The baptism of the north took place with battles - the pagans did not want to give up the worship of idols, not accepting the Christian faith. The process of converting the northerners to Christianity was extremely long and, it cannot be said that it was absolutely successful, since in our time in the northern expanses there are whole peoples who worship idols and reject Christianity. It so happened that the "Golden Woman" became a serious obstacle on the way of the church - the natives considered the golden idol their main shrine, about which they composed legends and myths.
Serpentine of Prince Vladimir Monomakh.
In the Peter the Great era, the Christian missionary Grigory Novitsky, a true believer, an educated person, the author of the first ethnographic monograph "A Brief Description of the Ostyak People", went to the Northern Urals. The missionary decided to complete the work started by Stephen - to find and destroy the Golden Idol. However, the hunt for the idol cost the life of Grigory Novitsky, under unknown circumstances he died. What caused his death is unknown, perhaps he achieved his goal and found what he was looking for, but the keepers of the idol did not allow his plan to be realized, or perhaps he simply fell victim to natural disasters. After Grigory Novitsky did not return, no one was officially sent “for the idol”, however, attempts to find the “golden woman” did not stop, but the search for purely religious purposes went into the category of “gold rush”. The idol became the object of desire of adventurers and treasure seekers, of which there were already quite a few in Russia at that time.
"Eldorado" of the Russian north
The world's largest gold nugget was found in Russia on October 26, 1842. A serf of peasants, a 17-year-old orphan Nikifor Syutkin, who worked in the depths of the Tsarsko-Alexandrovsky mine near Miass, found a huge gold nugget at a depth of three meters, in the form of a "Big Triangle" weighing 36 kilograms 16 grams. It is known that Nikifor Syutkin received a prize of 4 390 rubles for his discovery, which at that time was a gigantic sum, in addition to this money he was given a “free” one, which ensured his freedom. Unfortunately, Nikifor did not become a landowner, and he did not start a new life, but drank himself to death, losing his mind from unexpected wealth. The world's largest gold nugget "Big Triangle" is kept in Moscow, in the Russian diamond fund.
With the beginning of the mass colonization of the territories of the Urals and Siberia by the Cossack detachments, the stories of the golden idol became a symbol of easy wealth, similar to the legend of the “Golden Man” from Eldorado, which was popular among the Spanish conquistadors who conquered South America. Ermak Timofeevich himself, the great conqueror of Siberia, having once heard the legend about the golden god of dense Mansi, became seriously interested in the idol. Once one of his main associates, the Cossack ataman Bogdan Bryazga, said that he had seen the treasured statue with his own eyes, storming the Samara prison, located at the confluence of the Irtysh into the Ob.
However, as the army of Ermak did not try to get to the treasured treasure, nothing happened, when the ill-wishers approached, the idol mysteriously disappeared, literally dissolved in the air. By the way, the failures of the idol hunters, according to some sources, are explained by the mystical ability of the Golden Woman to escape from the hands of the pursuers.
In the book of the traveler, naturalist Sigismund von Herberstein, one of the collectors of information about the golden idol, "Notes on Muscovite Affairs", several lines are devoted to the mysterious abilities of the Golden Woman: "Sensing strangers, the idol can either disappear from under the nose of anyone who wants to take it, or make some sounds, compared with a wild roar, which discourages the desire to approach him, or it can completely throw itself off the cliff into the Ob."
These romantic and mystical characteristics of the golden idol testify to nothing more than the existence of a certain circle of guardian priests who protect the golden idol, but remain in its shadow. Was it not from their hands that the Christian missionary Novitsky perished? Did they not help the statue disappear during the storming of the sanctuary by Ataman Bogdan Bryazga? And didn't the NKVD officers later engage in battle with them …?
Nakhodki-Arkaim.
At the beginning of the last century, the hunter, researcher, writer Konstantin Nosilov found out from the old Mansi a previously unknown story about the Golden Baba, which radically changes the idea of the situation around the idol. According to the stories of the old Mansi, in his youth, who was engaged in hunting, in the deaf, inaccessible taiga heaps of the taiga, he saw a "golden woman". The old Mansi described the idol exactly as his image was conveyed in the chronicles. All the small details converged in the story, except for one - the idol that the old Mansi saw was not made of gold, but of silver! Apparently, the Mansi had several copies of the idol, in case the hunters nevertheless get to the goal and, having taken possession of the precious copy, finally leave the golden idol alone - the real one.
After the collapse of the USSR, inquisitive minds had the opportunity to work in archives with previously secret documents. In one of these documents, the writer, historian V. N. discovered an extremely curious note. It turned out that in the thirties of the twentieth century, the legend of the innumerable treasure - the Golden Baba, became interested in the Lubyanka. The country needed money, and the chance to replenish the treasury with free gold was not to be missed. A special detachment of the NKVD was sent to the Northern Urals in order to find the golden idol and hand it over to the state. And the hunt began: soon in the hands of the officers of the special squad were the data obtained during the interrogation of local residents that in the area of the Kyzym Khanty, in a forest sanctuary, a local shaman was hiding a certain golden statue. The Chekists rushed to the indicated place, but when they appeared they were offered armed resistance,but the forces were not equal and the "guards" behind the "golden woman" were killed every last one.
But what happened next: whether there was a statue in the sanctuary or not, the researcher could not get an unambiguous answer - the documents about the fate of that operation were not completely preserved, and the thread was cut off at the “most interesting place”. However, Demin believes that the special detachment nevertheless took possession of the cherished statue and took it to Moscow.
Is it worth putting an end to your search for an idol?
Most likely, the Chekists took only a copy of it, while the real Golden Woman was hidden in another, more reliable place. The presence of the second idol is also confirmed by the fact that quite recently information about the "golden woman" has appeared again, this time journalists of one of the central newspapers went to hunt for the relic. But the expedition was not crowned with success, and the team had to return to Moscow. The taiga off-road of the north has become an insurmountable obstacle on the path of searches. Nevertheless, if information about the idol comes again, then most likely the idol is still hidden somewhere.
Golden woman - made in China?
The question of who created the Golden Baba has been facing historians for a long time. A lot of hypotheses on this matter have already been expressed, someone believes that the "golden woman" was cast by the Vogul tribe, by the way, the film of the same name, filmed at the Sverdlovsk film studio in 1986, plays out this version in detail and is quite convincing.
Someone adheres to the version that the golden idol was inherited by the northerners from the proto-civilization of the Hyperboreans. Hyperborea ceased to exist, and the people who inhabited it left the inhabited lands, the northerners found a statue in one of the abandoned temples and have been worshiping the shrine ever since. Based on the version of Hyperborean roots, many historians conclude that the deity cast in gold was extremely revered, and therefore the image was immortalized not in a single copy, but, as befits a cult, in the plural. Hence the copies of the idol, which eyewitnesses speak of.
A similar image of the Golden Woman can be found in the culture of China. The Chinese goddess Guan Yin is the patroness of the family hearth, women and childbirth. She was portrayed sitting on a chair surrounded by children. Poet and prose writer Sergei Makarov was the first to suggest a possible relationship of Kuan-yin with the Golden Baba in a book devoted to the history of the exploration of the north, "The Earth Circle".
How could a Chinese goddess end up in the northern Urals? Everything is quite simple, according to the supporters of the Chinese trail: the golden idol was brought to Siberia by traders from the Middle Kingdom, where it was exchanged for furs. And since the image of the goddess was close in spirit to the local tribes, who honored the divine essence of women, forgetting about Buddhism, the northerners adapted the idol to their own spiritual needs.
But, despite the brevity, this version is not ideal and needs a serious evidence base, like the whole story of the golden idol itself, which rests only on legends and testimonies of individual eyewitnesses. In the meantime, the history of the Golden Woman remains only a beautiful legend of the mysterious North, exciting the minds of adventurers who want to get rich easily and quickly on an ancient treasure, to find the Russian Eldorado, where the “golden man” is hidden ….
