Since the time of Yermak's campaigns, there are legends about treasures buried in the harsh and endless expanses of Siberia. Already in the 17th century, the minds of the brave settlers who came to the snow-covered and unfriendly land from the European part of the Russian state were occupied with legends about the untold treasures of Khan Kuchum, allegedly buried along the Tavda and Tobol rivers, in the Babasan tract and in the mounds at the mouth of the Irtysh.
According to the surviving archival data, silver armor, gold jewelry, precious stones and pagan idols cast from noble metal have been found more than once in these and a number of other places. Treasure hunting was a fairly common occupation among the inhabitants of the Trans-Urals, although it was considered very risky. There was a persistent belief that the one who hides his treasures from prying eyes performs all sorts of charm spells over them. So there was a belief about burying a treasure for a certain number of heads.
This meant that, for example, a treasure hidden on thirty heads brings death to thirty treasure hunters and opens only to the thirty-first.
In the Tobolsk province in the 17-19th centuries, legends were spread among residents that treasures were shown underfoot in the form of lights above the place where they were buried. Old-timers of the south of Western Siberia believe that the treasures appear in the form of a burning (sometimes in front of an icon) candle. In this case, it is recommended to hit the candle with your hand and say: "Amen, amen, break up!" After that, the treasure should appear immediately as a chest, cauldron or barrel filled with coins or jewels.
It was believed that the treasures of one treasure are shown only once, while the other can be used several times. So in the newspaper "Irkutsk Vedomosti", published in the early 20th century, an article was published about how one fisherman found a treasure of gold coins on the banks of the Angara. Taking as much as he could carry at one time, he promised the treasure to return the borrowed money by a certain date. At the appointed time, he kept his word, and soon again used the treasures of the treasure.
This went on for several years. The fisherman became rich, engaged in trade and became a highly respected merchant in Irkutsk. But one day, either out of forgetfulness or out of greed, he did not return the coins taken from the hoard. As a result, the treasure disappeared and was no longer revealed to him. Soon the merchant went bankrupt, lost all the property he had acquired over the years of dealing with the treasure, got caught stealing and ended his days in the Ilimsky prison.
In Siberia, the belief that many treasures are hidden in old cemeteries is still alive today. The dead and all evil spirits vigilantly guard the riches created by blood and tears, and woe to those who dare to disturb their peace. The Tomsk Museum of Local Lore contains the "Witch's Notebook" - a shabby handwritten book in black leather binding, dated to the nineties of the 19th century - which, in addition to conspiracies, witchcraft rituals and witchcraft recipes, describes the ritual "burying the treasure for repose."
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The unnamed author of The Witch's Notebook advises to take a handful of earth from the nine-day grave of a drowned man or a suicide, mix it with jewelry, put it all in a vessel and seal it with a wax seal with an inverted cross. Then it is recommended to catch a black cat, kill it, strip the skin from the animal and wrap it in a sealed vessel.
After that, on the full moon, you should come to the cemetery, find the freshest grave, dig it up and put the jewels there, saying three times: “Disperse the river, disperse the heavens, and the old cat rise from the dust. My seal is strong, my word is true. Amen! . Having buried the grave, you need to spit on it three times and leave the cemetery with your back forward.
Some treasures are revealed only to those people for whom they are intended. For example, relatives, friends, relatives, descendants. It happens that the treasures find their new owners after decades and centuries.
This story happened at the end of the 60s of the last century with Irina Nikolaevna K., a resident of the ancient Siberian town of Biysk. In those years, a young woman began to have a dream almost every night in which a huge man with a black beard appeared to her. He entered the sun-drenched room in a businesslike manner and sat down on a chair next to the stove …
This went on for several months. Irina went around all her acquaintances, trying to find out what this could mean, but no one could interpret her strange dream. Soon Irina began to dream about her father, who died in the forty-first near Rzhev. He took the frightened woman by the hand and led her to a bearded man sitting on a chair. In a dream, Irina clearly saw the decoration of the room, icons in the corner, green tiles on the bleached stove. Irina began to cry and woke up. Once she was taken to a very ancient old woman-medicine woman who lived on the outskirts of the city in a rickety house.
She listened carefully to the agitated woman and said that the bearded man is one of Irina's deceased relatives, and he is trying to show her something. Arriving home, Irina began to carefully examine old family photographs, in one of which she recognized the bearded man who had dreamed about her almost every night.
Beneath the faded and cracked photograph, the date of the photograph and the name of the stranger were written in beautiful calligraphic handwriting. It turned out to be Irina's great-grandfather, dispossessed and executed in 1921. She recalled the stories of her mother about how they lived in Matveyevka, a small village near Biysk, and how in the early thirties they moved to the city where Irina was born.
Taking a vacation, the woman came to Matveevka and with difficulty, but still found the street and the house in which her ancestors once lived. Or rather, not a house, but what was left of it - a crumbling foundation overgrown with weeds, fallen floor boards, a dilapidated oven. From the surviving fragment of the tile, Irina recognized the stove from her strange dream. Obeying some kind of force, she began to feel the oven wall, pulled the protruding brick towards herself, and suddenly a small, rusty metal box fell out of the hole at her feet.
Pulling back the wire that fastened the thin bows instead of the lock, she opened it and was stunned. The box was filled to the brim with gold pieces of gold. Most likely, Irina's cunning great-grandfather managed, shortly before his arrest, to hide the accumulated wealth, thereby preserving it for future generations.
Many legends and stories are associated with the famous gold reserve of Admiral Kolchak, which was hidden during the retreat of his army across Siberia to the east. For eight decades, government agencies, archaeologists, history researchers and adventurers have searched in vain for ten and a half tons of precious ingots, Tsarist coins and jewelry created by the best Russian, Italian and English craftsmen of the 16-19 centuries.
Various places of possible burial of the treasure were named - Omsk, Novosibirsk, Tobol, Irkutsk. The archives of the NKVD preserved the protocols of interrogations of dozens of officers of the Kolchak army. Among other questions, the Chekists were interested in information about the disappeared gold reserve. However, none of those arrested knew the burial place of the largest treasure in Siberia. Over time, the belief was formed that Admiral Kolchak took the secret of the location of the gold reserve with him to the clear waters of the Angara. However, some facts cast doubt on this theory.
In Listvyanka, a small village on the shore of Lake Baikal, old-timers remember the legend about an unsociable old man who lived in their area. It was argued that he was the last orderly under Kolchak and it was to him that the admiral revealed the secret of the treasure. This orderly managed to avoid arrest by a miracle. He changed his name and surname, went to a remote village, where until his death in about the mid-fifties and lived quietly and modestly, earning his daily bread by laying ovens and shoemaking.
An uncommunicative old man raised an adopted daughter, to whom, most likely, he told about his secret. This is indirectly confirmed by the fact that a woman who was well known in Listvyanka, after the death of her father, unexpectedly leaves for Sverdlovsk, and from there, during the thaw in the mid-sixties, emigrates to the United States and opens her own profitable business.
The burials of Scythian burial mounds in Altai are shrouded in a mystical halo. Dozens of man-made hills are scattered across its foothills. A small part of them have already been studied by archaeologists. So ten years ago, the "Golden Man" was discovered in one of the mounds. The well-preserved mummy received this name due to the fact that it was dressed in armor of high standard gold. Radiocarbon analysis showed its age to be 6500 years.
Gold jewelry was found next to the mummy, the total weight of which was more than seven kilograms. A black stone plate of unknown origin with a strange cuneiform inscription was also found in the burial mound. It has not yet been possible to decipher what was written word for word, but scientists came to the conclusion that a curse was inscribed on it, which, apparently, is coming true. So five of those who took part in the excavations are already dead by now.
At the end of the nineties, a Mongolian expedition of eleven scientists conducted research into caves located in the Altai Mountains in the area of the Seminsky Pass. Dozens of ritual burials were discovered in the caves, many bronze weapons, armor, gold and silver jewelry.
Three months after the start of work, a powerful mudflow washed away the camp of the researchers. Three scientists died, after which the excavation was interrupted. In early 2003, in the Ukok plateau area, a perfectly preserved mummy of a woman was discovered, named after the site of the excavation - "Princess Ukok".
The richly decorated mummy was taken to Novosibirsk to one of the research institutes, which caused a wave of discontent among the inhabitants of Altai, who considered the deceased the progenitor of the Altai people. Local shamans warned of the possible serious consequences of such a disrespectful attitude towards the princess and the sacred burial.
The scientists ignored the protests. As a result, in September 2003, a wave of strong earthquakes swept across Altai with an epicenter located seventy kilometers from the excavation site. A number of villages were destroyed. The tremors were felt even in the Kemerovo and Novosibirsk regions, in Tuva and Khakassia …
Back in the 18th century, Lomonosov said: "The wealth of Russia will grow with Siberia." Of course, first of all, he meant its countless natural resources. However, listening attentively to the deep meaning of the statement of the great Russian scientist and remembering his amazing perspicacity, it can be assumed that he was talking about the untold riches hidden in the harsh lands of the boundless country of Siberia by a human hand.
Sergey Kozhushko