How reliable is the information provided by written and other historical sources? After all, they were created by living people who, like us, also had many weaknesses - a desire to embellish reality, forgetfulness and a whole set of various superstitions characteristic of the time when the creator of the evidence of the era lived.
What is history for a person? A weapon that helps him understand his social opponent and successfully resist him ?! The object of aesthetic pleasure - "oh, there were people in their time, heroes - not us!"
Or maybe this is just something akin to a myth, and this or that historical concept entirely depends on the skill of its "storyteller"? Or is there still some objective data about certain events of the past, according to which we can create a fairly consistent picture of it?
All of Akhenaten's images are more like … female
Photo: archivarium.ru
Akhenaten and his wife Nefertiti. Both with well-defined female breasts
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Photo: dopotopa.com
In short, can we trust one or another historical source, or is their reliability to a certain extent also a myth? Let's understand this with specific examples …
Here, for example, a statue, the inscription on which says that this is Pharaoh … "number so and so". Can we assume that we see a portrait of him in front of us? It seems to be "yes", but only to a certain extent. Why? Yes, simply because until a certain time, Egyptian sculptors worked strictly according to the established canon, and it was in this canon that they entered the portrait features of the original!
That is, he had to be like himself, but at the same time, it was also impossible to break the rules. Pharaoh-reformer Akhenaten commanded to portray himself as he is, that is, he violated the ancient canons, and after him the images of people in Egypt became more realistic. But how much? We do not know for sure, and we can judge about it only by comparing the sculptural images of the same faces that have come down to us.
The same thing happened in Ancient Greece, but in Rome sculptors, on the contrary, even depicted emperors so accurately that … if, say, one of them had a wart on their face (and this even applied to emperors!), Then they he was portrayed like that with her. Their sculptural portraits were distinguished by extremely accurate reproduction of the individual features of the face. But does this mean that the same Roman sculptors never "lied" and their work can be considered as a reliable historical source? Unfortunately no!
Take, for example, the famous Trajan's Column, erected at the beginning of the 2nd century AD. e. over the tomb of this emperor in honor of his conquest of Dacia. The trunk of the column from bottom to top spirals 23 times around a 190 m long ribbon with reliefs depicting episodes of the war between Rome and Dacia.
It is believed that the relief of the column serves as a valuable source for the study of weapons, armor, costumes - both Romans and Dacians of that time. However, if we turn to the little things, it turns out that its value as a source is by no means unambiguous. For example, all the Romans depicted shields very small, while, judging by the finds of their fragments, they were much larger.
Why is that? Most likely, because the author of their reliefs wanted in this way to emphasize the courage of the Roman soldiers and show them "in all their glory." And how to do this if you are covered by a large rectangular or oval shield above the waist? Then some shields will have to be depicted, and the sculptors clearly did not want this. But they could not sin against the truth and decided to compromise: they made the shields, but … small!
However, this is not all. If we look at the relief scenes on the column of Emperor Marcus Aurelius, also erected in Rome in honor of his victory over the Germans and Sarmatians in 175 AD, then we will see on them Sarmatian horsemen covered like lizards with scales literally from head to foot, as if they were dressed in scaly overalls! It is clear that this simply could not be and, therefore, we have an unreliable source.
Their horses are also covered with scales from head to hooves, which is already contrary to all common sense. That is, most likely, it was so that the author himself did not see these images of the Sarmatians. He was simply told that they and their horses were "covered with scaly armor from head to toe," and he literally reproduced this on the bas-relief.
Well, now let's look at the texts of the Old Russian chronicles, for some reason, for example, describing the Battle of the Neva in great detail, but the much more famous Battle of the Ice, very sparingly. Why you can argue like this for a very, very long time, so let's better pay attention to what is more clearly, and most importantly, has already been proven. It has been proved, for example, that the authors of many chronicle sources arbitrarily introduced whole pieces or descriptions into them, focusing not on the reality of events, but on … connection with the spiritual world of people of their day.
Thus, the perception of not only the "geographical" world as a whole, but also of individual cardinal points at that time was associated with value characteristics. In particular, the south in Russia was considered the chosen part of the world. Therefore, in the Old Russian translation of the "Jewish War" by Josephus, a fragrant south wind blows over the place of the afterlife of blessed souls; and in the Russian Church there has long been a refrain to the stichera called "God from the South."
It would seem, what does this have to do with the annals? It turns out to be the most direct. Remember "The Legend of the Mamaev Massacre." For the medieval author and reader, it primarily had a symbolic meaning, whereas we regard it as a true source!
According to the "Legend", at the height of the battle, the Tatar regiments strongly pushed the Russian troops. Prince Vladimir Andreevich Serpukhovskoy, with pain in his heart, watching the death of the Orthodox army, invited the voivode Bobrok to immediately join the battle. However, Bobrok dissuaded the prince from hasty actions, urging him to wait "like time", "to have the grace of God." It is interesting that Bobrok accurately names the hour when “the time is similar” - “the eighth hour” (the eighth hour of the day, according to the Old Russian system of notation of hours). And just then, as Volynets predicted, the south wind blew: "The spirit of the south pulling them behind them." It was then and "praise (that is, cried out!) Volynets: … The hour has come, and the time is approaching … the power of the Holy Spirit helps us""
From this, according to the historian V. N. Rudakov, it follows that the entry of the ambush regiment into battle was not connected with the real events of the Kulikovo battle. Bobrok Volynsky, if we follow the logic of the author of The Legend of the Mamayev Massacre, did not choose the moment when the Tatars would expose their flank to the attack of the Russians (as N. G. Beskrovny assumed), or when the sun ceases to shine in the eyes of the Russian regiments famous A. N. Kirpichnikov). The opinion, most widespread in our historical literature, that an experienced voivode expected a change in the direction of the wind from a headwind to a tailwind, so that, they say, "the wind carried dust into the eyes of the Tatars" is not confirmed either.
The fact is that the “southern spirit” which the “Legend” mentions, under no circumstances could be incidental for Dmitry Donskoy's comrades-in-arms (and, therefore, help them). After all, the Russian regiments on the Kulikovo field were advancing from north to south. This means that the south wind could only blow in their faces and interfere with the offensive. At the same time, any confusion in the use of geographical terms by the author is completely excluded.
The creator of the "Tale" was completely free to navigate in the geographic space. He pointed out exactly: Mamai is moving to Russia from the east, the Danube River is in the west, etc. That is, according to the historian I. N. Danilevsky, the author of the “legend” just wanted to say that … “our cause is right and God is for us and with us! " But after all, how long seemingly clever people did not notice this at all and came up with ingenious hypotheses instead of just carefully reading the Bible and comparing the biblical texts with the text from this "Tale"!
In the same chronicles, some days of the week are not “happy”, others are not, because at that time it was so! Because of this, for example, all battles in them usually fall on Friday, which in reality simply could not be. The mention of battles is associated with the word "heels" because of which one of the researchers of the last century, as the same IN Danilevsky reports, even decided that it was such a battle formation among the Russians, reminiscent of the Roman numeral "V". The error was found out, but managed to penetrate into fiction and even into the film "Primordial Russia".
That is, the historical value of almost most of the manuscripts of that time is a relative thing, because most often we simply do not know what is true and what is fiction. That is, we can read ancient texts and admire ancient statues and even hold artifacts in our hands, but we can only rarely say with absolute accuracy what actually happened then, and in the overwhelming majority of cases, the truth will always remain “somewhere there !
Yes, but if historians undertake to report only facts, then … such a story will be very boring to read and study.