The press service of the Institute of Archeology and Ethnography of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences informs that the treasure with unique objects, found near the mouth of the Kazym River in 2014, belonged to carriers of a previously unknown archaeological culture of the 1st century BC.
The treasure, on the basis of which the discovery was made, was found by the Yamal fisherman Andrei Cheremin when he was digging up worms in the summer of 2014. Found unique bronze mirrors, rattles, two bowls and several silver discs - only twenty-five items - he handed over to the regional museum of local lore.
Over the past years, researchers from the Siberian Branch of the Academy of Sciences managed to restore and study in detail all items of the treasure. It turned out that several round cast bronze discs with a pointed pommel are of the greatest interest for science. Archaeologists believe that these discs are the backs of famous Indian rattle mirrors of a similar shape. Earlier, archaeologists found six such mirrors in female burials of the 5th – 3rd centuries BC in Altai and in the south of the Novosibirsk region.
Several discs are ornamented. One of them depicts scenes involving mythical horned horses with forked tails, among which the battle of stallions for the mare and the reunion of the mare and stallion at the flower altar are identified.
In the center of the discs from Southern Siberia, as well as on the discs from the Kazym hoard, there was a hollow cone. According to the reconstruction of archaeologists, this is the top of the World, and around it are scenes significant for the cult: priestesses surrounded by lotuses, scenes from the life of sacred animals: the Indian elephant, fallow deer and antelopes.
However, unlike the previously discovered six mirrors, which are believed to have been made in India, these objects turned out to be cast, not forged, and the pattern on them was engraved, not minted. According to Petr Shulga, the author of the study, these discs could have been produced starting from the middle of the 3rd century BC in the Central Asian craft centers that copied Indian rattle mirrors, but in their own tradition. And in the II – I centuries BC, the peculiar relief of discs with cones and rollers was adopted by the culture of the population of the Lower Ob and then for several centuries it was reproduced on various plates and buckles. This is also evidenced by the rest of the discs of the same Kazym hoard - they are practically devoid of ornamentation, repeating only the original shape of their prototypes, but with a bias in the Siberian animal style.
Previously, archaeologists have not seen artifacts with drawings made in this technique. It is assumed that they were made by the bearers of a previously unknown culture.
According to TASS, now the artifacts from the Kazym treasure are in a private collection, which is why access to them is limited, but one of the similar mirrors can be seen in the Altai hall of the Hermitage.
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Elizaveta Vlasova