“Meter by meter I climbed up the steep slope. It was pouring rain, lightning flashed, mud sticking to his boots. The ascent was incredibly hard, I clung to the branches and roots of trees, but I still walked. How I got to the site - I don't know. I only remember that I felt a gaze on me, direct and calm. A look that I won't confuse with anything and I will never forget …"
The narrator fell silent. None of us dared to break the silence. We, as if spellbound, looked at Sergei Vasilyevich, the base guard, who entered our cottage "for a minute" - to give away the heater and blankets, and stayed for the whole evening. To be honest, we didn't want this person to leave. We sipped our wine, watched the flames eat the logs in the fireplace and listened to the incredible story with bated breath. Sergei Vasilievich talked about the icon painted here, in Karachay-Cherkessia, on one of the rocks. And we looked at him incredulously and wondered: where did the Orthodox icon come from? Then I read about the ancient Alanian temples and the spread of Christianity in the Caucasus. And now, in front of us, sat the one who was one of the first to rise to the face of Christ and met his gaze.
… In early spring 1999, a rumor spread in the small Circassian village of Nizhniy Arkhyz: a rock image of Christ was found in the mountains. It was discovered by brothers Sergey and Anatoly Varchenko, who were hunting in those places. The news of the amazing find spread quickly and was hotly debated. The old people said that yes, there really is an icon, and several centuries ago it was already revealed to someone. She was last seen during the First World War. Then it was as if they had forgotten about the icon, and now, on the eve of the 2000th anniversary of Christianity, they found it again.
Local scholars could not ignore the story of the face of Christ, which is "hiding" somewhere in the mountains. In May 1999, employees of the Nizhne-Arkhyz Museum-Reserve, the Research Institute of Cultural and Natural Heritage and the State Hermitage carefully examined the wooded Mitsiesht ridge - somewhere here the Varchenko brothers saw an icon. The search took a long time: it was very difficult to move along the steep slope among the age-old trees. Or maybe the hunters fancied that nothing interesting could be found here? Researchers carefully combed the ridge and, when there was practically no hope at all, they still found the icon: on a rock in a small stone grotto the face of Christ was gleaming white. People and God looked at each other. He is on them - calmly and clearly, they are on him - with fear and surprise. Then the members of the expedition did not yet understand what discovery they made.
The Work of the Master
When and who came up here and painted the icon on the rock? Was it a man, or maybe nature or some higher power created it? There is a legend that several centuries ago a strong lightning struck a rock, a stone layer came off it, and an icon appeared on the formed sheer wall. Historians, of course, are inclined towards a more plausible version: the face is drawn by a person. It is believed that the icon was painted here to protect the village from the plague, which raged in these places in the XIV century.
Although according to another version, the image was created long before the epidemic - in the X century.
The size of the icon is approximately 140x80 centimeters, it is located at a height of 150 meters. It is not surprising that people freeze in front of their faces, stunned - the icon is truly amazing. A stern face looks at you from a small rock grotto. It looks like the world famous face of Christ, which appeared on the Turin shroud. Researchers have found more than 45 coincidences between the Arkhyz Christ and the Sinai icon of Christ Pantocrator, painted in the 6th century directly from the face on the shroud. The letters 1C were found above the rock art. They are identical to the letters that were placed on Byzantine icons: the letter I is not straight here, but curved, similar to a poker.
The Arkhyz image was created by an unknown artist on a flat surface of light ocher rock, in three layers of paint. Colors used: dark red, brown and white. The researcher of the icon V. A. Kuznetsov says about the image as follows: “The face is written in a sparse color scheme - the contours and shadows are made with dark brown red lead, the volumes are highlighted in whitewash, the painting is subject to the canon characterizing the iconographic art of Byzantium in the 9th-11th centuries: a strictly frontal position of the head, huge eyes with piercing gaze, subtle black-and-white modeling, outlining the volume of the face. There is no doubt that the Master painted the icon on the rock.
Credit unknown / paranormal-news.ru
During the day, the face of Christ is almost invisible. It clearly appears in the early morning or evening, at sunset. The icon looks especially majestic and mysterious in cloudy weather. The bad weather and the bright sun have not spoiled the images for many centuries - the face is in a stone grotto, and a huge stone canopy protects it from rains and rays.
One more icon in the mountains
Similar examples of rock icon painting were not known before the discovery of the Arkhyz image - it became a world sensation. Scientists have thoroughly investigated the mysterious face - science did not allow doubting that the icon was painted by a man. But only when was it written?
The experimenters took paint samples from three locations and analyzed them.
He showed that the icon was created using the egg tempera technique, which was common in Byzantium in the 10th century. A feature of the technique is the use of an emulsion made from water and egg yolk. Icons made in this way last much longer than those painted in oils. But are these paints really so reliable that they can not lose their qualities for a thousand years in the open air?
The likely period of writing the icon, as we have already said, is the X century. In addition to the ancient technique in which the face was created, there is also a detail indicating its age: Christ's beard is not divided in the middle - this is typical for icons painted before the end of the 10th century.
And despite a lot of evidence that the author of the image is a man, there are people who are confident in the miraculous ™ of the icon: the image so perfectly matches the color of the rock that it seems just a good cut of the stone. Nature helped the artist (whoever he was) to complete the picture: a winding crack in the stone, similar to a crown of thorns, crosses his forehead.
And yet: if the face of Christ was created by an icon painter, why climb so high on the rock?
The icon remained invisible for a long time. Perhaps people simply did not notice her, or did she hide herself to appear to them on the appointed day?
The Arkhyz face is not the only hidden image painted on the rock in Arkhyz. There is one more - the icon of the Most Holy Theotokos. As the locals say, it is located on the other side of the Mitsesht ridge at the same level as the face of Christ. The image was accidentally seen from a helicopter: it can only be approached from the air. Apparently, the mountains of the North Caucasus still keep many secrets and mysteries.
Christian shrines in the Caucasus
How, after all, the image of Christ could appear in the mountains of Karachay-Cherkessia? Now it seems surprising, but the North Caucasus is one of the oldest cradles of Christianity: religion came here already in the 1st century A. D. In the IX-Xill centuries, on the territory of modern Karachay-Cherkessia, Kabardino-Balkaria, North Ossetia and some regions of Chechnya and Ingushetia, the state of Alania was located, the capital of which was in the present Nizhny Arkhyz. Christianity came to Alania much earlier than to Kievan Rus.
Today, in the Nizhne-Arkhyz settlement, three ancient Christian temples have been preserved almost in their original form. And in one of them, the Northern, in 916, a mass baptism of the bulk of the population of western Alanya took place.
The most famous Alanian shrines are Zelenchuk temples: North, Middle and South. The northern one was built in the X century, it was the largest Christian church, the cathedral of all Alanya. It was painted by masters who came from Byzantium. Not far from the North is the Middle Temple, erected at the end of the 9th century. Historians believe that the population of the Nizhne-Arkhyz settlement gathered in the more modest Middle Church. Of all the Christian Alanian temples that have survived on the territory of Karachay-Cherkessia, the only one currently in operation is the Southern Temple. This church, when built in the X century, was dedicated to the holy prophet Elijah. The building most likely was part of the estate of a wealthy Alanian family and served as a house church.
Who knows, perhaps one of the Byzantine masters who painted the Northern Temple created the icon on the stone. One detail is striking: the rock on which the face is applied, its plane faces almost strictly to the east. And if you mentally follow the gaze of Christ, it turns out that he is looking at the Middle Temple - it was there that the Alans passed the historical rite of baptism. So, both the temples and the icon were created at the same time? So, perhaps, the rock and the height on which the face is written were not chosen by chance?