In early 1964, a student at the Yugoslav Academy of Painting, Aleksandr Paunovich, while visiting the Orthodox monastery of Decani, using a powerful telephoto lens, took several photographs of wall frescoes, including the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ. On the printed photographs, he was able to see something that no one had paid attention to before, since the frescoes are located at a height of more than 15 meters, it is almost impossible to see them without special equipment. The photographs were published by the Yugoslav magazine Svet, and then numerous readers were exposed to the details that Paunovich was the first to notice. The publication was published under the title "Satellites in our frescoes".
The very plot of people traveling through the air is one of the mysteries of ancient history. Perhaps a person has a craving for flying in his genes, so he, dreaming of the sky, composed a lot of fables about this. There is another version: someone really took people with them "to heaven" more than once.
The earth is like a millstone
Even the peoples of Mesopotamia had a very realistic myth about the journey to heaven of the king of the city of Kish - Etana. In the III millennium BC, the story of his adventures was recorded on a clay tablet. According to legend, the powerful hero had serious problems - women could not conceive from him. Etana turned to the sun god Shamash for help in obtaining the "herb of fertility." God advised him to go to heaven and find what he needed there. Without a second thought, Etana sat on the eagle and headed for the stars. The myth describes interesting observations that this first "cosmonaut" made during the flight. In particular, changes in the picture of the Earth spread out under it. At first, “The earth looked like a mountain, the sea looked like a well”; then "The earth became like a millstone for grinding grain, and the sea - like a gardener's ditch." Later, rising even higher, Etana noticedthat our planet "looks like a lunar disk", and, finally, it "completely disappeared" …
Such myths and legends about man's flight to heaven existed at different times among many peoples. For example, in the Indian epic, the ability to overcome space with the power of spirit alone seems to be something inaccessible to an ordinary mortal, a completely different thing is flying in the sky with the help of aircraft. For the heroes of the epic, this is a rather ordinary event.
Among the "first balloonists" is Alexander the Great. His air travel is reflected in medieval painting and literature. One of the works tells how the Greek king took to the air in an iron chamber. He safely flew through the area of rain, snow and winds, but under the sun's rays the walls of the chamber became so hot that the king was forced to descend to the ground.
It is curious that in the Christian era, the plot with the flight of Alexander the Great into heaven was interpreted as a parallel with the ascension of the Savior. So, for example, on the southern facade of St. George's Cathedral in Yuryev-Polsky, the relief depicting Alexander's flight is located in the side zakomar, and the relief with the ascension of Christ is in the central one. Both compositions are distinguished not only by plot, but also by formal similarities.
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Creation of masters
The Decani Orthodox monastery is located on the long-suffering land, in Kosovo Metohija, between the towns of Pecs and Dzhakovitsa. It was founded in the XIV century under King Stephen III. The construction of the monastery lasted from 1327 to 1335. On one of the portals there is an inscription stating that the monastery was built by “Fra Vita, monk of the Order of the Little Brothers, Protomaster from Kotor, the royal city”. It is also known that the monk-builder had assistants - proto-master George with brothers Dobroslav and Nikola. All of these were experienced craftsmen who had already erected several Serbian churches by that time. By 1350, the interior of the Dečani church was painted with numerous frescoes. There are over a thousand of them here!
In 1389, on the Kosovo field, Turkish troops defeated the army of Serbs and Bosnians, and for almost five centuries the night of Turkish slavery came for Serbia. Nevertheless, even under the Turks, the ancient monastery remained the center of Orthodoxy and Serbian unity, arousing the wrath of the oppressors. The Turks cruelly dealt with the Dechan monks: they persecuted them, tortured them, and executed them.
It is known that in the 16th century, work was carried out to restore the monastery. Serbian painters renewed the frescoes of the monastery church, but did not change their content. They are traditional in their themes, that is, they cover scenes from the Old and New Testaments. In addition, representatives of the Serbian clergy are depicted here, portraits of the first Serbian kings from the Nemanjic dynasty. Among them is an image of the founder of the monastery - King Stephen III of Decansky.
Angels on satellites
After the triumphant launches of the first artificial earth satellites and the flights of the first cosmonauts in the early 1960s, individual images on the Dechan frescoes involuntarily evoked associations with them. The pictures clearly show some characters flying in "spaceships". For comparison, the magazine even published drawings of the first Soviet earth satellites.
In fact, on the frescoes, you can easily see two "satellites", and both fly one after the other - from west to east! In the first one sits a man, not an angel, he has no halo over his head. He holds on to the invisible "control lever" with one hand and looks back. One gets the impression that the first "cosmonaut" is following the flight of the next comrade, who is also not an angel, whose hand also rests on the "control system".
Both "ships" are streamlined. "Jet jets" are clearly visible, further emphasizing the swiftness of the flight. Below, below them, there are groups of people watching the flight. They covered their eyes and ears with their hands and recoiled from what was happening in horror, as if afraid that they might be blinded and deafened. The figures standing on the ground are painted with great realism and expressiveness. Their faces reflect bewilderment, fear, confusion.
However, in the center of the composition is the figure of the crucified Jesus Christ. Under the Crucifixion there is a fresco of the Resurrection. Svet magazine explains: "At the moment of the Resurrection, the Messiah is as if in a rocket that has not yet been launched." Indeed, the resemblance to the contour of the rocket is almost complete; moreover, two stabilizers are depicted in the upper part of the "ship". Jesus with his right hand with an effort drags one of the people standing on earth into the “ship” for the journey to the “Kingdom of Heaven”. However, similar images are known, and researchers have long come to the conclusion that along with the traditional "canonical" images, there are others - apocryphal, that is, different from the officially accepted norms.
Decani monks, when they were asked for explanations on this matter, only noticed that, in their opinion, the images under discussion are fully consistent with the canon, and the so-called "satellites" are images of the Sun and the Moon. Indeed, according to the New Testament, a solar eclipse occurred during the crucifixion of Christ. When asked why the Sun rises from the west, the monks could not answer.
Many parallels can be drawn with the mysterious frescoes of the Decan Monastery. For example, in Sergiev Posad, in the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, in the church-archeological office of the Moscow Theological Academy, there is an icon "The Resurrection of Jesus Christ" dating back to the 17th century. Everything in it repeats the Decan fresco, and the defenders of the hypothesis of alien intervention will be quite satisfied, since in this icon Jesus Christ is depicted as being in a kind of streamlined container, standing on the ground. Smoke emanates from the bottom of the container in both directions, covering the legs of the angels on the sides. As in the Decan fresco, Jesus Christ with his right hand carries a person with him (according to the canon, this is Adam; Eve, on the other hand, is waiting for her turn).
Some researchers suggest that there was a written apocryphal that interpreted the Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus Christ in an unusual way. However, the fate of this apocrypha, which apparently inspired the Dechan painters, is not known to science. Perhaps he is inaccessible due to church censorship, or maybe he simply died under the influence of inexorable time.
Irina STREKALOVA