Stone sculptures on the hills have long been a characteristic feature of the southern steppe. These silent idols were called "blockheads", "balbals", "mamai", "lighthouses", but more often - "stone women". Where and how did they come from? What people do they belong to? In whose honor are they installed, and what do they symbolize?
According to legends, it was not when Velikdons lived in the steppes beyond the Dnieper rapids - gigantic creatures, under whose heavy steps even the rocky slopes of the mountains groaned. Their life passed in thick as tar, darkness, because the light in the sky had not yet shone. When the sun suddenly appeared, the greats were alarmed and, having risen to the tops of the steppe mounds, began to spit on the fireball over their heads. But the gods cursed the greats for this and turned them into stone idols, who remained standing on the mounds.
Scythian sculptures usually date back to the 6th-3rd century BC. e. The area of their distribution is quite significant - from Romania to the Caucasus. Mostly all the images of the Scythians convey bearded men. In terms of composition and art, they are made primitively.
The style of the Scythian statues is surprisingly diverse. Among them there are archaic steles and more perfect statues, almost examples of round sculpture. Despite the variety of styles, they have one thing in common: they all depict warriors with weapons: swords, daggers, bows. Moreover, not just warriors as such, but, given the stylish nature of the statues, the progenitor of all Scythian warriors, the "Scythian Adam" - Targitai.
Three or four objects are usually depicted on the stele-like bodies of Scythian statues: a horn, a burner, a dagger or a sword. The horn is placed in the right hand at chest level, burns - on the left side, a dagger or sword - in the left hand at belt level. Similar attributes are found in the Turkic stone statues found in Siberia. They are holding a cup in their right hand and a dagger in their left. The absence of a beard and, on the contrary, the image of a mustache also emphasizes the similarity of the Scythian statues with the Turkic ones.
For example, the Polovtsian statues depict both women and male warriors in a sitting and standing position. An obligatory attribute of every statue is a cup with a sacred drink in hand, pressed to the stomach. The statues are carefully depicted with all the details of hair, clothing, jewelry and weapons. The sacred character of the Polovtsian women is beyond doubt. They stood in groups of two or three or more on mounds and heights that served as temples.
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The collection of ancient stone statues, or "stone women", as they are popularly called, is undoubtedly one of the most striking and unique collections of the Dnepropetrovsk Historical Museum. This is one of the largest collections of ancient stone sculpture in Ukraine - 80 statues! Not only the number of statues is striking, but also their chronological and cultural diversity.
The collection contains anthropomorphic steles of the Eneolithic era (III millennium BC), both simple and unique, which have no analogies in any European museum - the Natalievskoe and Kernosovskoe statues. Original Scythian statues of the 6th - 4th centuries BC.
But, of course, medieval Polovtsian statues dominate the collection - 67! It is their appearance, peculiar features that, first of all, remain in the memory of museum visitors, it is to them that all stone statues of the southern Ukrainian steppes owe their name - "women" (from the Turkic "vava" - ancestor, grandfather).
The most unique monument in the museum's collection of stone sculptures is the Kernos Statue, or the Kernos Idol - an anthropomorphic stele of the Eneolithic era (mid-III millennium BC). It is unique in all respects: the antiquity of its origin, and the perfection of the manufacturing technique, and the amazing grace of the outlines, and the proportionality, and, finally, the extraordinary richness of images on the surface. The Kernos Idol deserves not even a separate article, but a whole book that has yet to be written by future researchers.
If you try to tell about him briefly, then, most likely, this is an image of a proto-Aryan deity imprinted in stone - the creator of the world, the giver of life and prosperity. The face of the deity, strict and ascetic, is indicated, hands raised up with the attributes of supreme power are shown. On the edges of the stele, in individual drawings and whole compositions, most likely scenes from myths are depicted, dedicated to the times of the creation and development of the world. Zoomorphic features can be traced in the appearance of the Kernos Idol: a tail on the back, a frequently occurring image of a bull on the surface of the statue itself.
In the pantheon of ancient Aryan gods, the features of the image of a bull, furious, strong, were most often endowed with Indra - a formidable warrior, keeper and multiplier of herds, the god of thunder.
Scythian statues are surprisingly diverse in style. There are archaic steles and more perfect statues, almost examples of round sculpture.
Despite the variety of styles, they have one thing in common: they all depict warriors with weapons: swords, daggers, bows. Moreover, not just warriors as such, but, given the stylish nature of the statues, the progenitor of all Scythian warriors, the "Scythian Adam" - Targitai.
But nevertheless, “the tone is set”, as mentioned above, by the medieval Türkic Polovtsian statues. All of them, except for one statue, date from the XII - the first half of the XIII centuries, the time of the highest heyday of Polovtsian monumental art.
The number of Polovtsian statues is explained very simply - in the Middle Ages, in the XI-XIV centuries, the steppes of the Dnieper overhead became a refuge for the Polovtsian (or Kipchak) nomadic tribes who came to Eastern Europe from across the Volga from Asia. In the area of the rapids along the banks of the Dnieper, there was the largest association of the Polovtsians - the Dnieper horde. It was here, in the tall grasses of Desht-i-Kipchak - Polovtsian Land (the so-called Polovtsian-Kipchaks called their new homeland), where nomadic smoke smoked, rounded, like the backs of turtles, stone hills of ancestral burial mounds, on the tops of which they set stone statues of ancestors …
Among the Turkic tribes, the existing and now names of stone sculptures arose - women, blockheads (from the Iranian "palvan" - bogatyr, athlete), balbals ("ball-bal" - a stone with an inscription).
DI Yavornitsky in the article "Stone women", published in the "Historical Bulletin" in 1890, reported that in Ukraine for a long time, up to the XVIII century, there were such names of stone statues as "mamai", "Mary's stones" …
He retells the legend about the origin of stone women: “Once upon a time there lived giant heroes on earth. They got angry at the sun, they began to spit on him. The sun got angry and turned the giants into stones."
Indeed, many Polovtsian statues represent male warriors in helmets, armor, with weapons: sabers, bows, quivers. The same expressive female statues are in hats, ornate costumes, with mirrors and handbags at the waist. All the Polovtsian statues have a vessel in their hands, apparently intended for ritual libations.
The faces of the statues are very expressive - all men with mustaches, there are stern, gloomy faces, some of them have a dazzling smile. Women's faces, too, do not leave indifferent: an expression of timidity, humility and immediately faces of proud greatness.
The Polovtsian statues, like all the stone statues of the “Kurgan peoples” that preceded them, are dedicated to the ancestors, progenitors, givers of life, prosperity, and fertility. Despite the clearly portrait features, the statues do not depict specific people, but legendary personalities with features of gods and heroes, and, perhaps, in some cases, directly, gods and heroes.
Statues were erected on the mounds or not far from them, that is, in sacred places, such as ancestral burial grounds, where the ashes of ancestors rested and the cycle of life and death took place.
The stone women did not stand in an empty place, they were an organic part of the memorial and burial sanctuaries, the architecture of which, from the Eneolithic era (the time of their appearance on the mounds) to the Middle Ages, was distinguished by simplicity and expressiveness.
It was a system of rectangular stone enclosures (squares, trapeziums, etc.), often surrounded by a ditch, with sacrificial pits and pavements inside. Here sacrifices, ritual libations and incense were performed - the aroma of sacred herbs mixed with the aroma of sacrificial food and rose up into the sky, to the gods and ancestors along the trunks of sacred trees through stone statues (the latter were equivalents of cosmic trees). The idea of a link between the worlds of people and gods is clearly traced in the semantics of stone statues of all times and peoples.
Not only the history of the origin and purpose of the stone statues in the museum's collection deserves attention, but also the biography, the history of the origin of the entire collection as a whole. Its age, like the age of the Dnepropetrovsk Historical Museum, is 150 years old!
Stone women began to enter the museum from the middle of the 19th century. Even then, in the first years of the museum's existence, the collection was quite large. At least the Yekaterinoslav Museum allowed itself to make a generous gift to the Odessa Archaeological Museum - 13 Polovtsian statues.
The collection of stone women experienced a special heyday under D. I. Yavornitsky, the former director of the Yekaterinoslav Museum in the first half of the 20th century (1902 - 1933). A photograph has survived in which D. I. Yavornitsky is captured in his office surrounded by stone women.
The growth of the collection, its replenishment with new statues continues to this day. In recent years, the museum has received more than 10 new statues of various times and peoples, but the serious difficulties that have arisen with the storage of the collection have suspended its growth. The harsh environmental situation in the city turned out to be equally destructive for both people and the creations of their hands: the statues began to collapse catastrophically quickly. There was an urgent need for their restoration (this began in the 80s, but was suspended due to lack of funds), and in the construction of a special pavilion for storing stone women - a lapidarium. Unfortunately, at present, the museum is not yet able to solve any of these problems for well-known reasons. Now we can only state that the largest collection of stone women in Ukraine is under threat of death,she needs emergency help - said L. N. Churilova, senior researcher at the Dnepropetrovsk Historical Museum, back in 1999.
There are other legends explaining the appearance of stone idols in the southern steppes. The most common version is that they are a kind of steppe lighthouses.
“We passed seven lighthouses - more than twenty images carved from stone, which stood on mounds or graves …” - these are lines from the travel diary of the Ambassador of the Austrian Emperor Erich Lyasota, who in 1594 drove along the Dnieper.
Other travelers of the past also mentioned stone sculptures on the steppe mounds as a kind of road storytellers and landmarks. Perhaps, in fact, in ancient times, people specially installed stone sculptures in the most noticeable and remarkable steppe places, so that it would be easier to navigate in the desert, boundless space? The statues, as it were, mapped the monotony of the steppe plane and marked the places of camps and settlements …
It is possible that the giant stone statues were a kind of steppe lighthouses, past which roads later ran. In this regard, the obelisk steles of the Cimmerians are remarkable. There are almost no sculptural and ornamental details in them. Actually, these are just pillars that can be called memorable, milestones. One of these Cimmerian obelisks (only about a dozen of them were found in Ukraine) was found near the village of Verkhnyaya Khortytsya (the city of Zaporozhye). At the top of the stele there are beads with large rhomboid and oval beads. Perhaps the beads symbolize the steppe stretches, and the beads denote notable and memorable tracts or, say, the number of days required to move from one locality to another …
These are, so to speak, "earthly" versions of the origin of stone women. But along with them, there are also legends that the giant stone idols, which were worshiped by the steppe peoples, before which even powerful leaders and shamans trembled, are deified statues of space aliens.
From generation to generation, among the steppe inhabitants, legends about strange creatures that descended from the sky in a large closed boat were passed down. And supposedly ancient sculptors left us images of space aliens in stone. Indeed, some of the sculptures are surprisingly reminiscent of an astronaut packed in a spacesuit - a massive straight body, a large head - a helmet without a neck.
Archaeologists identify a whole group of such specific large-headed neckless sculptures. One of them (perhaps the most characteristic) was found on a small mound in the Dnieper region, not far from the village of Georgievka, Zaporozhye region, Zaporozhye region.
The face is elongated with a serpentine expression, the skull is an egg, the occiput is strongly pulled back. The capacity of this skull is one and a half times more than that of ordinary people. The fingers are like spider paws. Feet like flippers. Huge fat ass. And women's breasts.
It is curious that the flat face of the head does not show the ears, nose, mouth, eyes - facial features that are usually difficult to see behind the glass of a helmet. The arms dropped down and merged with the body are highlighted by two slightly rounded lines. It seems that not the hands themselves are shown, but a detail (sleeves) of some unusual costume. The sculpture belongs to the Sarmatian time. There are also "cosmic" statues of an earlier period. For example, researchers distinguish a separate group of copper age stele statues of the so-called non-standard type. A large head is not clearly distinguished in them, the shoulders are not shown. It seems that there is some kind of protective shell over the body. It is not surprising that the steppe people saw in these sculptures the heavenly gods who once visited the Earth.
The most mysterious are the most ancient stone statues dating back to 4 - 3 thousand BC. The legs were almost never carved on them. Instead, foot prints are clearly visible in the lower part (sometimes they are tucked into the belt). But what meaning the ancient sculptors of the Eneolithic (Copper Age) put into their image, we can only guess.
As well as why there are so many stone statues on the steppe mounds, similar to a phallus carved out of stone.
On the first map of the Russian Empire - "The Book of the Big Drawing" - when marking roads in the southern steppes, ancient stone idols are marked as "stone girls". There was really something feminine in the guises of stone sculptures, so first travelers, itinerant traders, Cossacks, and then scientists began to call them "women".
The most preserved stone women of the Polovtsy (some medieval authors called them Comans or Kipchaks). “The Comanas build a large hill over the deceased and erect a statue to him, facing the east and holding a bowl in front of the navel,” noted the Dutch monk Wilhelm Rubruk, who visited the Ukrainian steppes in 1250 on his way to Mongolia.
They found the largest number of Polovtsian statues - more than two hundred. These are well-formed, standing or seated sculptures made of sandstone, limestone, granite or chalk. Almost all of them have expensive clothes, jewelry, weapons, household items. The arms of most of the statues are folded under a large, sagging belly.
It seems that they leave no doubt that these are women and embossed convex breasts and braids, and some other details. But since the same female "elements" are also indicated on the male statues, researchers are inclined to think that the majority of Polovtsian "women" still belong to the "muzhik" clan-tribe. They were established in honor of the leaders of the nobility of the great warriors. By the way, in the Turkic dialects the word "baba" means father.
However, the special, far from secondary role of women in the life of wild nomads can not be denied either. No wonder the proud warlike tribe of the Amazons also hails from the southern steppes.