In the Museum of the History of Moscow, in addition to all spoon-ladders, there is an exposition, which presents the reconstruction of the so-called "house of the dead" of Dyakov's culture.
It is known that a long time ago, in the territories of the upper Volga, Ob and Moskva rivers, there lived the Finno-Ugric tribes - the ancestors of the annalistic Mary and Vesi. Their culture is named after the settlement near the village. Dyakovo, located near Kolomenskoye (a manor in Moscow), which was investigated in 1864 by D. Ya. Samokvasov and in 1889-90. IN AND. Sizov.
For a long time, the funeral rite of the Dyakovites remained unknown. Scientists have studied dozens of monuments, but among them there was not a single burial ground. Funeral rites are known to science, after which practically nothing remains of the ashes, or the burials have no external signs. The chances of finding traces of such burials are almost zero or largely depend on chance.
In 1934 in the Yaroslavl Volga region during the excavations of the Dyakovsky settlement of Bereznyaki, an unusual structure was found. Once it was a small log house, which contained the cremated remains of 5-6 people, men, women and children. For a long time, this monument remained one of a kind. More than thirty years passed, and in 1966 another "house of the dead" was found, and not on the Upper Volga, but in the Moscow region, near Zvenigorod, during the excavation of a settlement near the Savvino-Storozhevsky monastery.
According to researchers, it was once a rectangular log building about 2 m high with a gable roof. An entrance was made on the south side, inside there was a hearth at the entrance. In the "house of the dead" were found the remains of at least 24 cremations and, like at the Bereznyaki settlement, fragments of vessels, jewelry and weights of the "clerk's type". In several cases, the ashes were placed in urn vessels. Some of the urns were badly burned on one side, it is possible that during the funeral ceremony they were near the fire.
The custom of building log grave structures is not unique. It is widely known for numerous archaeological and ethnographic data in the north of Eastern Europe and Asia, and in some areas this tradition existed until the 18th century. and even later. The funeral rite most likely looked like this: the body of the deceased was burned at the stake somewhere outside the settlement. This rite is called by archaeologists cremation on the side. After the ceremony, the cremated remains were placed in the "house of the dead", a kind of ancestral tomb, usually located in a place remote from housing.
As in the previous case, the "house of the dead" was discovered right on the territory of the settlement, which is rather strange for a burial structure. However, according to the researchers, the collective tomb could have been built there when the settlement was no longer used as a settlement.
But the most interesting thing is that Russians have known these "houses of the dead" since childhood …
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BABA YAGA SUPPLY
"House of the Dead" - this is the very hut of Baba Yaga, on those very chicken legs! True, they are actually TICK. The ancient burial rite included the smoking of the legs of a "hut" without windows and doors, into which a corpse or what was left of it was placed.
The hut on chicken legs, in the folk fantasy of the Muscovites, was modeled after the pre-Slavic (Finnish) churchyard - a small “house of the dead”. The house was placed on pillars. The Muscovites put the incinerated ashes of the deceased in the "house of the dead" (like the owner of the hut Baba Yaga always wants to put Ivan in the oven and roast him there). The coffin itself, the domina or the graveyard-cemetery from such houses were presented as a window, an opening into the world of the dead, a means of passage to the underworld. That is why the fabulous hero of the Muscovites constantly comes to the hut on chicken legs in order to get into another dimension of time and into the reality of not living people, but wizards. There is no other way there.
Chicken legs are just a "translation mistake". The Muscovites (Slavicized Finno-Ugrians) called the stumps on which the hut was placed, that is, the house of Baba Yaga originally stood only on smoked stumps. Most likely, these stumps were fumigated to prevent insects and rodents from penetrating into the "house of the dead".
One of the two surviving novellas "On the Beginning of Moscow" tells that one of the princes, fleeing in the forest from the sons of the boyar Kuchka, took refuge in a "log house" where "some dead man" was buried.
The description of how the old woman is placed in the hut is also significant: “Teeth are on the shelf, and her nose has grown into the ceiling”, “Baba Yaga is lying on the stove with a bone leg, from corner to corner, put her teeth on the shelf”, “Head in front, in the corner leg, in the other another. All descriptions and behavior of the evil old woman are canonically given. This cannot but suggest that the mythological character is somehow inspired by reality.
Is this not similar to the impressions of a person who peeped through the crack into the small "house of the dead" described above, where the remains of the deceased lie? But why, then, is Baba Yaga a female image? This becomes clear if we assume that the funeral rituals were performed by the clergy's women priestesses.
RUSSIANS ARE NOT SLAVS
Russian scientists with enviable stubbornness defend fantasies about the allegedly "Slavic" origin of Russians, and therefore they call "Slavic" both the tales of Baba Yaga and the rite of the "house of the dead". For example, the well-known expert in the field of mythology A. Barkova writes in the encyclopedia "Slavic mythology and epic" (article "Beliefs of the ancient Slavs"):
“Her hut“on chicken legs”is depicted standing either in the thicket of the forest (the center of another world), or at the edge, but then the entrance to it is from the side of the forest, that is, from the world of death. The name "chicken legs" most likely came from "chicken legs", that is, fumigated with smoke, pillars on which the Slavs put a "hut of death" - a small log house with the ashes of the deceased inside (such a funeral rite existed among the ancient Slavs in the VI-IX centuries). Baba Yaga inside such a hut seemed like a living corpse - she lay motionless and did not see a person who came from the world of the living (the living do not see the dead, the dead do not see the living).
She learned about his arrival by the smell - "it smells of the Russian spirit" (the smell of the living is unpleasant for the dead). A person who meets Baba Yaga's hut on the border of the world of life and death, as a rule, goes to another world to free the captive princess. For this, he must join the world of the dead. Usually he asks Yaga to feed him, and she gives him the food of the dead.
There is another option - to be eaten by Yaga and thus end up in the world of the dead. Having passed the tests in Baba Yaga's hut, a person turns out to belong simultaneously to both worlds, is endowed with many magical qualities, subjugates various inhabitants of the world of the dead, overcomes the terrible monsters inhabiting it, wins the magic beauty from them and becomes a king."
These are fictions, the Slavs have nothing to do with Baba Yaga and her "house of the dead".
I. P. Shaskolsky wrote in the essay “Towards the Study of the Primitive Beliefs of Karelians (Funeral Cult) (Yearbook of the Museum of the History of Religion and Atheism, 1957. M.-L.):
“For the study of primitive beliefs, the most interesting are the Karelians' ideas about the burial structure as a“house for the dead”. Many peoples had such ideas in ancient times, but they can be traced especially clearly on the Karelian material.
As already mentioned, in the Karelian burial grounds, a frame of one or several crowns was usually placed in each burial pit; the frame was usually about 2 m long and (if the grave was intended for one deceased) 0.6 m wide. In some cases, a plank roof was installed over the log house. At the same time, the entire structure, together with the roof, remained below the surface of the earth. In the discovered V. I. Ravdonikas burial grounds of the XI-XIII centuries. on the rivers Vidlitsa and Tuloksa (near the northeastern shore of Lake Ladoga), which apparently belonged to the Livvik Karelians, there was also a burial ceremony in a log house, with the only difference that the log house with burial was not lowered into the grave pit, but was placed on surface of the earth, and a low mound was poured over it (VI Ravdonikas. Monuments of the era of the emergence of feudalism in Karelia and southeastern Ladoga L., 1934, p. 5.)
In its most developed form (found in several graves), this structure had not only a roof, but also a floor of planks; instead of a floor at the bottom of a log house, sometimes an animal skin was spread or a layer of clay was laid (imitation of an adobe floor). This building was a direct resemblance to an ordinary peasant house; in such a "house" the afterlife of the deceased was supposed to have flowed.
Similar ideas can be traced in Karelia and ethnographic data.
In remote areas of northern Karelia at the end of the 19th century. one could see in the old cemeteries small log houses for the dead, brought to the surface of the earth; these houses were a blank frame of several crowns and were equipped with a gable roof. A carved wooden post was often attached to the ridge of the roof, which in turn had a small gable roof. In some cases, this structure was located over the graves of two or more relatives; then the number of ridge posts indicated the number of burials.
Sometimes this post was placed next to the log house. Over time, the ceremony, apparently, became somewhat simpler. Instead of a log house with a post, only one post was erected over the grave, which became the symbol of the "house of the dead."
Such grave pillars with gable roofs and rich ornamentation were widespread in Karelia back in the 19th century. In many places, under pressure from the Orthodox clergy, the pillars were replaced by a new form of tombstones - crosses with gable roofs (V. I. Ravdonikas, uk. Cit., P. 20, figs. 24 and 25).
Another line of development of the same rite can be traced. Already in the XII-XIII centuries, instead of arranging a whole "house for the dead", for the most part, they were limited to a symbolic image of this house in the form of a log house from one crown. The custom of lowering a log house from one crown into the grave remained in certain regions of Karelia until the end of the 19th century. The only difference was that the log house surrounded not one burial, but all the burials of one family. In other areas, instead of a grave frame, the grave was surrounded by a crown of logs lying on the surface of the earth. The grave of the legendary Karelian hero Rokach, located at the Tik cemetery, is surrounded on the surface of the earth by a fence of nine logs, that is, a real log house.
Karelian old cemetery
As you can see, these are the traditions not of the “ancient Slavs”, but of the Karelians and other Finns. The ancestors of the Russians - the Finno-Ugrians of Muscovy - buried their dead in the "houses of the dead", which seemed wild for the Kiev princes who had captured Zalesye. The Bulgarian priests, who came with the Kiev princes, fought this rite, but still the Russians still erect funerary crosses with gable roofs. This Russian tradition clearly reflects the Finnish origin of the Russian ethnos.
"Analytical newspaper" Secret Research ", No. 9, 2012