The fate of ancient legends is curious and varied: some of them are confirmed by scientific data, while others, on the contrary, are refuted and become only the property of mythology. But some legends, repeatedly and seemingly convincingly refuted, live to this day.
For hundreds of years, researchers have been looking for the Golden Woman, the legendary idol of the Ural-Siberian peoples. Many puzzled over her riddle (See “Around the World” No. 1 for 1960, article by L. Livshits and L. Teplov “The Golden Woman of the Arimaspians”.).
I had a chance to travel a lot in northern places by the nature of my profession as an ethnographer, to study the material culture, customs, and former beliefs of the Khanty, Mansi, Komi, and Nenets. And, of course, I couldn’t help but worry about the question: did the Golden Woman really exist or is it just someone’s speculation that has become a legend? I had to dig into old books, and these are the conclusions my search led me to.
The legend of the Golden Woman, apparently, was born in Rus' in the XIV-XV centuries - at the time when the growing Muscovite state began to actively expand its possessions to the northeast. Moscow service people then assigned lands to Russia along the rivers Vychegda, Pechora, Kama; crossed the Urals, penetrated into the basin of the great Ob and imposed a tribute to the “sovereign” on the multilingual population there.
Following the military and trading people Orthodox priests also reached out to these lands, diligently planting Christianity among the local "idolaters". For the first time, the Golden Woman was mentioned in the Sofia Chronicle under 1398, talking about the activities of one of the Orthodox missionaries, Stephen of Perm.
There is no reason to suspect the chronicler that he invented the Golden Woman. Apparently, vague stories about this idol of "unknown people in the eastern side" were already circulating in Rus'. But at the same time, the writer of the late XIV century, Epiphanius the Wise, who described in detail and with knowledge of the matter the pre-Christian beliefs of the Komi-Permians, did not say a word about such a “miracle” as the Golden Woman. According to him, the Permian idols were made of wood, while offerings were made to them with various items, mainly furs (but sometimes things made of precious metals).
It is very important that in the future, not a single Russian document, with the exception of the message of Metropolitan Simon of 1501, who repeated the message of the Sofia Chronicle, contains direct evidence of the Golden Woman. But, it would seem, to whom, if not Russian, to tell about this outlandish figure. At the same time, the story about her gained great fame over time. Western European literature XVI-XVII centuries; a rare author, speaking of Muscovy, does not mention the "woman of gold."
The foundation was laid in 1517 by the Polish writer M. Mechovsky, who, according to Russian prisoners of war in Krakow, told Europe that “beyond the land called Vyatka, there is a large idol of Zlota Baba ... a golden woman or an old woman, the surrounding peoples honor her and worship her."
In 1516-1518, S. Herberstein, a diplomat and author of the famous book Note on Moscow Affairs, visited Russia. In it, in particular, referring to some Russian manuscript, he reported new information about the Golden Woman ... It turns out that this deity was not located beyond the Vyatka, but "at the mouth of the Ob, in the Obdor region, on the farther shore."
According to Herberstein, “this idol of the Golden Old Woman is a statue in the form of a certain old woman who holds her son in her womb, and as if there is already seen a child again, about whom they say that he is her grandson. In addition, as if she had placed some instruments there that make a constant sound like pipes.
This is where it all really started! The authority of the great cunning Herberstein was so high, and the belief of Europeans in all sorts of miracles in Russia is so strong that almost no one in the West doubted the authenticity of the description of the Golden Woman. And she made a truly triumphant procession through the books of many foreign authors.
But let us turn to a much more modest report from the Siberian (Kungur) chronicle, relating to the period of Yermak's campaigns in the basin of the middle reaches of the Ob River.
The greatest accuracy and reliability in this narrative is the story of the campaign in 1582 by Bohdan Bryazga "with his comrades" down. along the Irtysh to the Ob. Researchers believe that the original record of this campaign was made by one of its participants.
For our topic, the passage that speaks of the appearance of the Bryazga detachment in Belogorye, the most important religious center of the Khanty on the left bank of the Ob, is important. Here it is in full: “Because they have a prayer place greater than the ancient goddess, naked with her son on a chair, sitting, accepting gifts from her own, and giving her statues in every providence; and whoever does not give a vow, torments and torments; and whoever brings pity to her, he will die before her, the name of God is zhrenie (prayers with sacrifices) and a great congress. Whenever they heard rumors of the arrival of Bogdan, she ordered them to hide and everyone to run, and many idol collections have been hidden to this day.
Further, the Belogorsk deity is mentioned twice. After the death of Yermak, one of his Khanty shells was “given to the butt of the Belogorsk shaitan.” And when the Khanty laid siege to the town built by the Russians at the mouth of the Irtysh, they brought with them a “larger Belogorsk blockhead”, hoping for his help. The Cossacks fired from a cannon, "and their idol with a tree was shattered into many parts."
Apparently, the Belogorsk idol-woman "helped" the Sredneobsky Khanty in all cases of life; therefore, he was entitled to rich offerings, including the shell of the formidable Yermak. This deity was carefully guarded, and when the Cossacks of Bryazga appeared, the “many collection of idols” - apparently, the image itself and everything that was sacrificed to him - turned out to be hidden.
The description of the “ancient goddess with her son” is extremely reminiscent of what foreigners, according to Russian people who have been in Siberia, reported about the Golden Woman. However, the Russian chronicler did not say a word that the Belogorsk deity was golden.
At the end of the 16th century, the essay “On the Russian State” appeared, written by the English ambassador at the Moscow court by D. Fletcher. It also contains information about Siberia, all the more valuable because it was compiled from eyewitness accounts. And Fletcher completely rejected the version of the Golden Woman as an "empty fable."
The objections were serious: “Only in the Obdorskaya region, from the side of the sea, near the mouth of the large Ob River, is there a rock that by nature (though partly with the help of imagination) has the appearance of a woman in tatters, with a child; on hands". Further, he reports that Obdorsk Nenets usually gather at this place because of its convenience for fishing, and indeed sometimes (according to their custom) conjure and guess about the good or bad success of their travels, fishing, hunting, etc. ”
The information reported by Fletcher largely coincides with later and completely reliable facts collected in 1771 in the Obdorsk region by the remarkable Russian traveler and scientist V.F. Zuev. According to him, the Ob Khanty and Nenets have the most important place for idolatry near the Voksarsky yurts, 70 versts below Obdorsk ... “There are two blockheads, one in a man's dress, the other dressed in a woman's dress. Both, in the Ostyak (Khant) manner, are decorated with different materials with special splendor and decorated with fur coats; the dress is covered with various copper and iron figures from plaques, depicting all kinds of animals, and on the head they have a silver crown.
A hundred years earlier, in 1675, N. Spafariy, the head of the Russian embassy in China, traveled through Siberia. For him, the Siberian administration specially collected various information about local peoples. And here is what Spafari wrote later:
“And near Berezov there are Ostyak idol temples, and earth writers write about them that there is an idol of Golden Women, but they don’t say de gold, but that there are a lot of silver, painted wooden and copper ones.”
So, most of the most conscientious researchers argue that the idols of the northern peoples were not gold.
What, after all, served as the basis for such a firmly held legend?
It is interesting that the sacred place of the Khanty, indicated by Spafari, geographically coincides with those Kyltysyan yurts, where Kaltash, the most important female deity of the Khanty and Mansi, was located.
But maybe this is the real name of the Golden Woman? No matter how various authors paint it, they all agreed on one thing - this deity was a great mother, mentor and patroness of the Ob hunters and fishermen.
But such a deity of the Khanty and Mansi was called by the name of Kaltash, Kaltash equa (Kaltash's woman), Kaltash xian (Kaltash's mother). She was presented as the "mother of the earth" and the progenitor of many genera of the Khanty and Mansi. The birth, the whole life and death of any person seemed to depend on her will.
The ethnographer K. D. Nosilov, one of the defenders of the existence of the Golden Woman, who traveled at the beginning of the 20th century, recorded the story of an old Mansi man about a silver figurine of a Mansi deity.
So, according to him, “a silver woman helps women a lot; and also helps crafts; whoever donates to it, he is the best hunter. This description completely coincides with what was said about Kaltash.
The simple-minded Khanty and Mansi believed that Kaltash gave children a soul in the womb, and at birth, each child was inscribed with notches on a special wooden stick - a fetish of his subsequent life path.
Kaltash had a son known as different names: Mir susne khum (a person looking after the people), Ekva pyrishch (mother's son), Un-urt (great hero).
How did the Khanty and Mansi represent their Kaltash? According to K.D. Nosilov, the Kondinsky old man painted her as a golden or silver woman, but according to other records, say V.N. Chernetsova, “the old people say that she has only three guises (hare, goose and birch).” Here is the Golden Woman! In one of the songs-spells addressed to Kaltash, she is characterized as “a summer hare, a gentle woman; autumn hare, tender woman...” The Ob Ugrians carved the head of a hare on the handles of women's oars, on the ends of the hooks that supported the roof, and on household items.
Often Kaltashch was also represented in the form of a goose sitting in a nest: “In good manner golden (!) goose sits”, “He sits in a happy nest of fine silk, sits in a rich nest of fine cloth”.
Kaltashch could also be a birch, more precisely, a wooden - necessarily birch - image. How can one not recall the evidence of the Kungur Chronicle that during the siege of the Cossack town at the mouth of the Irtysh, “the Ostyaks in the utria brought with them a larger Belogorsk blockhead, and put a birch tree under the tree, and praying and zhryakh”!
It is no coincidence that the birch idol shattered into pieces, being struck from a small Cossack cannon.
But why was she still called the "Golden Woman"? The explanation may be twofold. Although no gold was mined in the country of the Khanty and Mansi, they received some gold and silver items from the southern neighbors of the Scythian-Sarmatians, who, in turn, were associated with Central Asia and Iran. It is not surprising that the Ob-Ugric name for gold "sarni" is of Iranian origin.
Archaeologists discover objects made of precious metals, usually in ancient sacrificial places where idols once stood.
The decoration of many of our museums are gold and silver jugs, dishes, plates, often with images of real and outlandish animals, brought from the ancient temples of the Khanty and Mansi. All these things were not made in Western Siberia, but in Central Asia, Iran, the Caucasus and have a solid age - from several hundred to one and a half to two thousand years.
Judging by archaeological finds, expensive things made of silver and gold as sacrifices were accumulated near especially revered deities made of wood or sewn from skins and fabrics in the form of dolls. Over time, precious vessels themselves became the subject of veneration as attributes of the gods.
It was precisely this, in the words of the Kungur Chronicle, "butt" that apparently gave rise to the legend of the Golden Woman.
On the other hand, in the Ob-Ugric mythology, gold constantly appears as a sign of extraordinaryness, nobility, happiness and good luck. Kaltash was sitting like a “golden goose” in the nest, the heroic armor of the Mir susne khum was “golden”; the expression "I will grow a golden horn" in the epic epic of the Irtysh Khanty meant: "I will be happy."
That's all that can be said about the Golden Woman. With some sadness I part with my "heroine". The search led to the collapse of the myth. Well, the truth is more precious than error, no matter how bright clothes they may be dressed.
L. Lashuk
Drawings by A. Zefirov
In the very heart of the mountains of the Northern Urals there is a mysterious place - the Man-Pupu-Ner ridge. The mountain of the Small Gods is called by the Mansi reindeer herders wandering here. And this name is not accidental. Seven bizarre stone figures rise on the flat surface of the ridge. One resembles a petrified woman, the other resembles a lion, the third resembles a wise old man with a raised hand.
Seven Frozen Giants
Tourists from different cities of Russia rush to see the famous Pechora "doodles" and hurriedly pass by the lonely high conical peak of Mount Koip. Coyp in Vogul means drum. One of the legends of the Mansi people connects this peak with its famous neighbors. Once upon a time, seven Samoyed giants went through the mountains to Siberia to destroy the Vogul people. When they climbed the Man-Pupu-Ner ridge, their leader-shaman saw in front of him sacred mountain Vogulov Yalpingner. In horror, the shaman threw his drum, which turned into Mount Koyp, and he and his companions froze in fear and became stone blockheads.
But there is another legend that can also be heard from the Mansi, but much less often. Coyp looks like a conical mountain from the side of stone blockheads. But if you look at her from a small nameless ridge located to the west, you will clearly see a woman with sharp features lying on her back. This is a petrified shaman punished for trying to offend one of ancient idols, once revered by all the peoples of the north - the Golden Woman. When the golden idol was crossing the stone belt of the Ural Mountains, the shaman, who considered herself his mistress, wanted to detain the Golden Woman. scary voice the idol screamed, and all living things died of fear for many miles around, and the arrogant shaman fell back and turned to stone.
The screams emitted by the Golden Woman are evidenced not only by Mansi legends, but also by the memories of foreigners who visited Rus'. Here, for example, is what the Italian Alexander Gvagnini wrote in 1578: “They even say that in the mountains next to this idol they heard a sound and a loud roar like a trumpet”.
What is this golden idol, the appearance of which is accompanied by a terrible scream and roar? Where did he come from and where did he disappear to?
Great Biarmia
Legends about the Golden Woman hiding somewhere in the North appeared a very long time ago. They are associated with the legendary, vast country, which spread in the 9th-12th centuries in the forests covering the valleys of the Northern Dvina, Vychegda and the upper reaches of the Kama. In the Scandinavian sagas, this country was called the powerful state Biarmia or Biarmalandia. The peoples inhabiting it worshiped a huge golden idol - the Golden Woman. Her sanctuary, located somewhere near the mouth of the Northern Dvina, according to the Scandinavian sagas, was guarded by six shamans day and night. Many treasures were accumulated by the servants of the idol, who bore the name of Yumal in the sagas. Great Perm was rich in skins of valuable fur-bearing animals. Merchants from Khazaria lying in the lower reaches of the Volga and Vikings from distant Scandinavia paid for them without stint.
On the old maps of Muscovy near the mouth of the Ob, the inscription "Golden Baba" is often found. Sometimes the inscription accompanies the drawing beautiful woman. She was worshiped by the inhabitants of the North. The Siberian golden idol teased the imagination, and foreigners traveling around Rus' willingly put stories about him in their books.
Russian chroniclers described it like this:
“They worship idols, they bring sacrifices to them ... they come from afar, bringing gifts ... or sables, or martens, or ermines ... or foxes, or bears, or a lynx, or a squirrel ... gold, or silver, or copper , or iron, or tin".
Gold northern lands rich. But what about diamonds? After the recent discovery of a deposit of these precious stones near Arkhangelsk, doubts have disappeared.
But time passed and the strengthened neighbors extended their tenacious hands to this rich, but sparsely populated region.
First, the Novgorod ushkuyniki, then the squads of the Moscow Grand Duke, increasingly began to make their way into the once reserved northern forests. Fleeing from Christianity, the admirers of the Golden Woman hid their idol either in caves on the Ural Range, or in the impenetrable forest-tundra of the Ob River, or in the inaccessible gorges of the Putoran Mountains in Taimyr.
Where did such a strange deity come from in Mansi? It is so uncharacteristic of the customs of this people that it seems to have fallen to them directly from the sky. Most scientists believe that the Golden Woman is the Mansi goddess Sorni-Ekva, whose name is translated into Russian as "golden woman".
Regarding the question of where the golden statue came from on the Perm land, opinions differed. Leonid Teplov, a researcher of the history of Biarmia, suggests that the golden statue could have been carried away from the burning sacked Rome in 410 AD during the attack of the Ugrians and the Goths. Some of them returned to their homeland to the Arctic Ocean, and the antique statue, brought from a distant southern city, became an idol of the northern people.
Other scholars lead the path of the mysterious goddess from China, believing that this is a Buddha statue, which in Chinese Buddhism merges with the image of the goddess Guanyi. There are defenders of the "Christian" origin of the Golden Woman. They suggest that this statue of the Madonna was stolen during a raid on one of the Christian temples.
Hunt for the Golden Woman
They tried to take possession of the Golden Woman for a long time.
In search of treasure, the Vikings ransacked the most remote corners of Eastern Europe. Usually they acted under the guise of merchants. Once the Vikings managed to attack the trail of the Biarmian sanctuary and rob it. It contained a wooden copy of the Golden Baba. The original remained inaccessible to the Scandinavians.
In the XI century, Biarmia was conquered by the Rus. The Rus, unlike the Germans, did not destroy other people's sanctuaries. They were satisfied with the usual tribute. The Golden Baba continued to be the main protector of the Biarms. The more Christianity grew stronger, the more intolerant it became towards foreign gods and customs.
But the idol, the Golden Woman, disappeared. Only later did it become clear that he had been taken over the Ural Mountains. In the middle of the 15th century, Moscow governors began to conquer the Northern Trans-Urals. They made the most outstanding campaign in 1499-1501. At that time, a large army of 4 thousand people, led by Semyon Kurbsky and Pyotr Ushaty, crossed winter time through the Subpolar Urals. Skiers went to the Northern Sosva basin and fought the entire Yugra land. They captured 42 fortresses and colonized 58 local princes. But main value Ostyaks, the idol of the Golden Baba with temple treasures, could not be found.
The borders of Muscovite Rus' moved farther and farther to the east and southeast. The Golden Baba had the same path. The later the message about it, the further from the ancient Biarmia we find it. Later, the trace of the idol was lost. Explorers in the 17th century traveled all over Siberia far and wide, but the mysterious idol is not mentioned in Russian documents of that era. At the very time when foreigners placed the Golden Baba on the shores of the Arctic Ocean, she was known much further south.
At the end of the 16th century, the Volga robbers plundered the sovereign's ship sailing to Astrakhan with "a treasury of money and gunpowder." In the battle, the royal ambassador was killed. The patience of Ivan the Terrible came to an end. The Cossacks, saving their heads, fled to the Ural outskirts of the state. They were willingly accepted by Kama merchants and salt producers, the Stroganovs. Behind the Stone Belt lay the Siberian kingdom of Khan Kuchum. This descendant of Genghis Khan kept ruining the Kama villages, taking the inhabitants into slavery. The arriving Cossacks were given the task of discouraging Kuchum from attacking.
The campaign for the Stone was led by Ermak Timofeevich Alenin. Maxim Stroganov added 300 of his warriors to his Cossack detachment of 540 soldiers. The army of the Siberian Khan many times outnumbered the aliens and even had cannons brought from Kazan. But nothing saved her from destruction. After several victories in the fall of 1582, the Russians settled in the capital city of Siberia. To the north of the city they encountered Ostyak idols. Yermak dispatched Yesaul Bogdan Bryazga to capture the Demyansk and Nazym towns. These towns lay in the lower reaches of the Irtysh and near its confluence with the Ob. The defenders of one of the fortresses put up fierce resistance. For three days the Cossacks stormed its walls and already wanted to turn back. But then they heard a story about the deposition from a local Chuvash, who had once been brought by the soldiers of Kuchum from Rus':
“They pray to the Russian God, and that Russian God of cast gold sits in the thicket”.
The news of the Russian golden idol impressed the Cossacks so much that they forgot about the retreat. The Chuvash volunteered to steal the statue and entered the fortress. We were looking forward to his return. But the scout returned empty-handed. Strong security prevented the fulfillment of his plan. When the town was captured, the idol disappeared. Having reached the Ob, Bogdan and his companions approached Belogorye, sacred to the Ostyaks. Here was "the prayer of the great goddess of the ancient." A few years before the conquest of Siberia, Poland already knew that the Golden Baba was a woman with a child in her arms. The Belogorsk idol looked the same: “naga, sitting on a chair with her son.” Later sources call him the Golden Baba.
Terrible was the Belogorsk goddess. Here's what the hikers had to say about her:
“And they give her a share of every providence. And if anyone breaks this law, he is tormented and tormented. And whoever brings it not from the heart and regretting it, he, having fallen before her, will die. It has many priests and a great community".
Bogdan was not afraid to disturb the sacred rest, he entered Belogorye. Then the mistress of the Ugrians ordered to hide her idol, and covered the huge prayer place so that the aliens could not find it. Soon after returning from the campaign, the Cossacks, along with Bryazga, were ambushed and were exterminated.
A year later, a well-armed detachment of Ivan Mansurov came out to Belogorye. At the mouth of the Irtysh, the soldiers cut down the fortress and wintered. A large Ostyak army surrounded the fortification and went on the attack all day. The next day, the besiegers brought the goddess, placed her under a tree and began a prayer service for victory. The Russians did not wait for the end of the prayer service, after which the Golden Baba was supposed to show her strength. In order not to tempt fate, they hit the assembled with cannons. One of the cores has reached the target. From the annals we learn:
“It is a tree, under it stood a Besurmen idol, broken into many parts, and crushing their idol”.
Despite the assurances of the chroniclers about the destruction of the idol, reports of the Golden Baba appeared later. At the beginning of the 18th century, Filofey and Grigory Novitsky unsuccessfully pursued her, exterminating the remnants of paganism among the Trans-Ural Ugric peoples.
In the 20th century, the struggle against paganism continued. It was 1933. The competent authorities received a signal. It turned out that the Khanty, who lived along the Kazym River (the right tributary of the Lower Ob), hide the Golden Baba and worship her. The battle with the "religious dope" was in full swing. The Kazym shaman was seized and thrown into the dungeon. After some time, experts have achieved the necessary information. It was necessary to kill two birds with one stone - to strike at religious remnants and replenish the country's budget with a product made of precious metal. A group of Chekists went to the secret temple. But then the taiga hunters rebelled and shot the uninvited guests. The massacre was fast. A new detachment of atheists destroyed almost all the men of the taiga tribe. The guns were taken away from the rest, which condemned them to starvation. The sanctuary was destroyed. What happened to the Kazym idol of the Golden Baba is still a mystery.
Mistress of Copper Mountain
The supreme goddess of the Ugrians was known under different names: Golden Baba, Sorni-Ekva (literally "golden woman"), Kaltash-Ekva, Yoli and others. The supreme god Numi-Torum was her brother and husband. This progenitor of the human race endowed newborns with souls. The Ugrians believed that souls sometimes take the form of a beetle or a lizard. Their divine mistress herself could also turn into a lizard-like creature.
Bazhov's wonderful tales describe the Mistress of the Copper Mountain. The folklore of the Ural miners knows another name for her, Golden Baba. The mistress of the underground pantries of the Urals often appeared before the eyes of people in the form of a huge lizard with a retinue of multi-colored lizards. The miner's Golden Baba, like the Belogorsk goddess, did not like the greedy and crooked.
The hostess appears before us primarily as the owner of copper ores and malachite. She herself wore a malachite dress and was called Malachitnitsa. But all this means that the idol of the Golden Baba, from which the fabulous Mistress of the Copper Mountain descended, was copper. The green dress appeared because from time to time copper is covered with a green oxide film.
The ancient goddess Belogorye was a copper statue that had turned green with time. It becomes clear why the chronicler kept silent about the material of the idol and did not call him the Golden Baba.
In fairy tales we find memories of the golden Russian God. In the Urals they knew the golden Great Poloz, that is, the Great Uzh. Already lived underground and could take the form of both a snake and a man. This being had power over gold.
Among the Ugric antiquities there are many copper items. In the Urals, traces of ancient mining and metallurgical production are often found. They, for example, were dotted with the Gumeshevskoye copper deposit. Gumeshki are located near the sources of the Chusovaya River. The first miners appeared here 35 centuries ago. It was in the Gumeshek region that the main events of the Bazhov tales took place.
Russian miners associated their underground patrons with the era of the "old people", among whom were the same Ugric peoples. Therefore, there is nothing surprising in the identity of the underground rulers of tales and the Ugric gods.
The fact that we are on the right track is evidenced by the testimony of Julius Leta. This 15th-century Italian historian knew about the copper statues of the Ugrians who lived near the Arctic Ocean. Leth believed that the Ugrians were part of the barbarian army of Alaric and captured the sculptures during the sack of Rome. Russian tales have given us a guiding thread that leads to another mistress of the copper mountains. Strange as it may seem, but at the same time we find ourselves in places thousands of kilometers away from the Urals.
The Yakuts living on the Lena have myths - olonkho. They speak of many gods. But Des Emeget (“copper woman”) is endowed with special power. The copper idol was the goddess of the Adyarai tribe. The epic Yakuts either fought with the Adyarais, or conducted peaceful trade with them.
The Adyarai country lay on the shores of the Arctic Ocean at the extreme western limits known to the Yakuts peace. It was ruled by Des Emeget and the blacksmith Cuettenni. Geographical landmarks and the name of the blacksmith lead us to the Kets. The Kets were famous for blacksmithing skills rare in the North. Blacksmiths in ancient times were both miners and metallurgists. There are very few kites left now. They live in the lower reaches of the Yenisei. Previously, Ket-speaking tribes were known over vast areas.
Of all the groups of Yakuts, only one lives off the coast of the Arctic Ocean. These are the so-called Dolgans, occupying a significant part of the Taimyr Peninsula. In the past, Dolgans and Kets coexisted. It was from the Dolgans that information about the tribe of the copper idol came to the rest of the Yakuts. The Kets speak a language not similar to Ugric. But before the revolution, they were called Ostyaks, like the Ugrians. Consequently, despite the linguistic differences, the culture of both of them had a lot in common.
Judging by the names of the Norilsk rivers and lakes, both Kets and Khanty lived on their banks. The Yakuts called them all Adyarais. The interest of Adyarai blacksmiths in this area is not accidental. The richest copper-nickel deposits are concentrated here, and next to them are the reserves of coal necessary for smelting ore. Moreover, in some places, ores and coal come to the surface.
The cult of the Golden Baba was accompanied musical instruments. The Ural Mansi Sambindalov conveyed local legends in this way: “It was scary to walk close to the mountain. Baba screamed loudly ". Mansi did not read historical works. Meanwhile, long before him, Alexander Guagnini (1578) wrote:
“They even say that in the mountains, next to this golden idol, they heard some kind of sound and a loud roar, like a trumpet”.
Sigismund Herberstein, who twice visited Muscovy at the beginning of the 16th century, knew about these same trumpet sounds. In the Yakut olonkho, the copper idol looks like this:
spinning on your back,
twisting obsessively,
crying out
bouncing
Like a cricket, it began to ring.
Researchers of the olonkho noted that the bell ringing is clearly heard in the songs of the idol. They even identified it with a bell.
Travelers of the early 17th century saw fires in the Norilsk region and smelled sulfur, which usually accompanies the smelting of sulfide ores. At the same time, they heard the bell ringing. Consequently, there really were bells in the realm of the copper idol, and the data of the olonkho are accurate. In the Urals, the Golden Baba was accompanied by horn music, and in the Yenisei - bell chimes and the sound of a rattle.
The Kets in the North were aliens. Their ancestral home lay in southern Siberia. But the Ugrians also moved to the Ob and Eastern Europe from southern Siberia. Once both peoples were neighbors, which explains their common features. The main center of copper production in Southern Siberia lay in the Minusinsk Basin. From here the Mistress of the Copper Mountain was supposed to start her journey to the North.
Egyptian
Herberstein's story about the Golden Baba puzzled scientists for a long time. Here it is: "The idol of the Golden Baba is a statue representing an old woman who holds her son in her womb, and that another child is already visible there, who, they say, is her grandson."
It turns out that inside the unborn child there is another child. Such an unlikely situation was clarified after the discovery in the Urals of a bronze figurine of the Ugrian goddess. An image of a man emerges from the body of the goddess, and another face peeps out of his womb. Before us is a mythological image.
It seems that the secrets of the Golden Baba have been exhausted. It was not difficult for ancient metallurgists to make a copper idol. Figurines of the Golden Baba of local production, of course, existed. But the famous idol itself was made in completely different times, far from Russia.
Several drawings and verbal portraits of the Golden Baba have been preserved. She either stands holding a spear in her hand, or sits in an armchair with a staff or a child in her arms. Sometimes, along with the baby, an older child appears near the chair. The goddess appears sometimes in clothes, sometimes without it.
The Golden Baba is the supreme Ugric deity. But historians suggest that the statue originally depicted some other goddess. There are very different opinions on this matter: the Mother of God, the Slavic Golden Maya, Buddha, Guanyin, etc.
The key to unraveling the mysterious appearance is given by Bazhov's tales. In them, the Golden Snake is a golden man with a beard twisted into such tight rings that “you can’t straighten it.” He has green eyes and a cap with "red gaps" on his head. But this is an image of the green-eyed Osiris.
The beard of the Egyptian god was removed in a narrow, tight bun. The pharaohs who imitated him had the same beard. It is enough to recall the famous faces of Tutankhamun from his golden sarcophagi to understand what the rings on the beard of a golden man looked like. Hat with "red gaps" "pshent" - white and red crown united Egypt.
The wife and sister of Osiris was the green-eyed Isis - the goddess of fertility, water, magic, marital fidelity and love. She patronized lovers. In the same way, the Ural goddess is the goddess of the waters, closely associated with the theme of love and marital fidelity.
The image of the green-eyed Mistress of the Copper Mountain goes back to Isis. Today we can say what the copper statue of an Egyptian woman looked like.
Recall that the Golden Baba was depicted as the Madonna. The image of the Mother of God with the baby Jesus arose under the influence of the sculptures of Isis with the baby Horus. One of these idols is kept in the Hermitage. Nude Isis sits and breastfeeds her son. On the head of the goddess is a crown of snakes, a solar disk and cow horns.
Egyptian myths help to understand a lot in our tales. Here, for example, is the magic green button. The Mistress of the Copper Mountain presented it to Tanyusha Mining Plant, through the gift the girl communicated with her patroness. The Egyptian gods had a miraculous eye Wadjet ("green eye"). It also provided the owner with protection and patronage. Isis-Hathor was the keeper of the Eye and its incarnation.
Isis was known as the goddess of music. Because of this, her cult in the North was so resonant. At one time, the goddess invented the ratchet-sistrum, with which she was often depicted. The base of the sistrum was usually the figure of a cat with a human head.
Talking earthen cats were in the retinue of the Mistress of the Copper Mountain. IN Ural tales the cat of Isis appears either in the form of the cat Fiery Ears, protecting the brave Dunyasha, or the domestic Murenka, who persuaded the goat Silver Hoof to amuse the girl Darenka with gems.
In one of the tales we meet ants running along the treasured path. On their feet are golden shoes. Lapotochki increased in size as their owners moved. Before us are echoes of the Egyptian myth of the scarab beetle rolling the sun across the sky.
The Egyptians themselves called Isis Iset. Near Gumeshki, the Iset, the “river of Isis”, takes its source. Through this river, the Ural copper entered the forest Trans-Urals. The earthen cat was known in Sysert, whose name comes from the sistra. Once there was a temple in which the musical animal of the goddess was kept.
Osiris, who is also the Golden Man, in the stories of Western Europeans looks like a child standing near the Golden Baba. Consequently, his golden idol was miniature. Bazhov's tales know another miniature golden character - a female one. The Golden Goddess takes on them the appearance of Fire-Running, a red-haired factory girl, a blue snake, an old woman Sinyushka. This mistress of gold veins lived in the water, protected the girls and miners who were pure in soul.
Before us is Isis again, but now golden. This means that the name Golden Baba was not born in an empty place. At first, this was the name of the golden figurine, and later - the copper statue of Isis and all her other images.
The fact that the Golden Baba is Isis was known by Petria (1620). But no one believed him. The appearance of Egyptian sculptures in Siberia seemed too surprising.
Siberian Slavs
The most burning secret of the Golden Baba turned out to be her Russian-sounding name. Among the Ob Ugrians there was another, and again Slavic - the Old Woman. The Belogorskaya Golden Baba was called by the Ostyaks Slovutes, that is, "Slav". Her Irtysh husband Golden Osiris was directly called the Russian God. In addition, the country of worshipers of Russian gods was called Siberia. This name was associated by medieval authors with the Slavic word "north". But then this correct explanation was considered unbelievable and others came up with it.
The key to the appearance of Slavic names is contained in the news of Muslim writers of the early Middle Ages. Al-Masudi (X century) describes three temples of the Slavs. The transcript of his story shows that one temple with the idol of "Saturn" stood in the Minusinsk Basin. The second, with a golden idol and a statue of a girl, is in the Taimyr region, the third is in the Urals.
About the veneration in the Minusinsk basin of "Saturn and Venus" wrote Abu Dulef, who visited here (X century). Ibn-Mukaffa (VIII century) called the inhabitants of this place Slavs. Under the Saturn of the Eastern authors, a god is hidden underworld Veles - Osiris, and under Venus - the goddess of love Morena - Isis.
The Slavs have lived in the Minusinsk Basin since the Cimmerian era. They owned the so-called Tagar archaeological culture. The Tagars were talented miners, metallurgists and blacksmiths. Under the pressure of nomadic hordes, mixed streams of Slavs, Ugric peoples and Kets left the region of the upper reaches of the Yenisei to the east and north. The divided people also divided the shrines. Golden Osiris and Copper Isis ended up in Taimyr, from there they got to the Kama region, then to Western Siberia. Golden Isis was transferred to the Urals. Copper Osiris remained in place.
The Minusinsk Slavs settled in the Irtysh basin and in the southern part of the Urals, which at that time was called the Slavic Mountains. With time brutal wars and mixed marriages led to the fact that Slavic speech ceased to sound in these places. Only the Golden Baba kept the secret of the disappeared people.
Traces of the presence of the Slavs on Siberian soil were felt for a very long time. Back in the 14th century, Elomari knew light and blue-eyed Siberians. He wrote: “The figures are their perfection of creation in beauty, whiteness and amazing charm; their eyes are blue."
Yermak's Cossacks, who broke through the Stone Belt, among the short and Mongoloid natives, to their surprise, sometimes met real giants, and among the natives - indescribable beauties.
Legacy of the Mother of the Gods
Travelers of the 19th century noted that in their time the Ob Ugrians no longer had ancient idols, and later copies were kept in temples. They made them very easy. The idol was buried in a mixture of sand and clay, and molten metal was poured into the resulting mold. One such Silver Baba seems to have been acquired by the Finnish scientist Karjalainen and taken to his homeland. Apparently, another similar idol fell into the hands of the Soviet Chekists and died. Are the chroniclers really right, and the cannonball destroyed Copper Isis in the 16th century? No. The core did no harm to her.
The crushing of the idol is reported only by later sources. From earlier and reliable ones, it is known that the core crushed only one nearby tree. Later, this story was somewhat embellished.
Copper Isis and Golden Osiris after the fall of the kingdom of Kuchum were transferred to an ancient temple near modern Norilsk. Somewhere in the Taimyr mountains of Putorana they are hidden to this day. The trail of Golden Isis is lost near the sources of Chusovaya and Iset. The tales point to the Azov-mountain near the modern city of Polevskoy. Copper Osiris never left the Yenisei. Someday the archaeologist's spade will stumble upon sculptures made in Egypt almost 30 centuries ago.
The Golden Woman sits among her priceless treasury. Over the centuries, expensive sable and overseas fabrics have turned into dust. But the main thing survived - the memory of the Great Slav, who gave life to the family of people and gods. In her renewed appearance of the Mother of God, she affectionately looks at us from the walls of Orthodox churches.
alien footprint
Ufologists did not pass by the amazing Golden Woman, completely unlike the other idols roughly carved from wood by shamans. They knew that the Khanty and Mansi peoples worshiped the amazing idol, and even now they worship. The metal golden woman seemed to have fallen from the sky. Or maybe it really fell?
This version of the origin of the golden idol was put forward several years ago by ufologist Stanislav Ermakov. He believes that the Golden Woman is an alien robot, for some reason, maybe due to a partial malfunction, left on Earth by its owners. For some time, the Golden Woman could move, and it is with this property that the Mansi legends about the “living” golden idol are associated. Then, it seems, the robot began to gradually fail. At first he could still make sounds, and then finally turned into a golden statue.
Several stories from Mansi reindeer herders unknown to S. Ermakov confirm his hypothesis.
In the Northern Urals, there is a domed mountain Manya-Tump covered with dense forest. Until very recently, reindeer herders, driving their herds along the Ural Range in the summer, did not even come close to the mountain. Here is what the Mansi guide Peter told about her to the cameraman M. Zaplatkin, who was filming a film about the stone idols of Man-Pupu-Nera: “For a long time it was impossible to go up the mountain. Whoever walks, be ill for a long time and die. Old people say - there stood navels, Sony Ekva, Golden woman. It was scary to walk close to the mountain. Baba screamed loudly. People speak a scary voice".
A little north of Mount Manya-Tump rises another mountain, which is also associated with legends about the terrible cry of the Golden Woman - Koyp. I already talked about it at the beginning of the article. The surroundings of this mountain are surprisingly suitable for the origin of the legend of the temple of the Golden Woman. At the foot of the mountain lies a perfectly round lake. This is no longer in the Northern Urals. On its shore you can see blocks covered with lichens, in which, with a little imagination, you can guess the remains of the sanctuary.
The Mansi reindeer herders who drive their herds in the summer always visit this sanctuary to leave their gifts on a quadrangular granite block, as if carved by human hands.
Between the mountains Manya-Tump and Koip, near which, according to legend, the Mansi heard the cry of the Golden Woman, there is another place, also, perhaps, associated with terrible screams. It just happened last event already in our time. This place is Mount Otorten, the highest point of the Northern Urals.
Rescuers who went in search of tourists found a tent with a rugged back wall and the bodies of 9 hikers lying in deep snow. On the faces of all the dead, an expression of mortal horror froze. According to the commission that conducted the investigation of this tragedy, one of the reasons that led to such terrible death, could be the impact of infrasound of high intensity.
Stanislav Ermakov made the assumption that the Golden woman-robot, abandoned by aliens, could not only speak, but also move. What and when made the robot motionless? One curious episode contained in the description of the campaign of the Viking Thorir Khund to Biarmia can answer this question: “The Vikings happily sailed at the mouth of the Dvina to the trading city of Biarmia. Everyone who had gold and goods for barter got a good profit. At the end of the bargaining with a full load of expensive fur goods, the Vikings went down the Dvina and, going out to the open sea, began to hold a council.
The temple of the highest deity of the Biarms, as the Vikings reliably knew, was located in a dense forest, not far from the mouth of the Vin (Dvina) River. It was there that they planned to make their way and, if they were lucky, take possession of the treasures collected there. Thorir Hund, thrusting his ax into the gate, with his help climbed over it. Carly did the same, and they let the comrades inside the fenced area. Approaching the mound, the Vikings collected as much money as they could carry. Put them in your dress.
They also reached the very image of Yumala, which towered among the sacred fence. A precious golden chain hung around the neck of the Biarmian god. Karli was seduced by the chain and struck with an ax so hard on the neck of the idol that the head rolled off his shoulders with a terrifying crack.
Perhaps a Viking could not cut off the head of a cast statue. Another thing is if a robot stood in front of him, consisting of a metal frame covered with a thin layer of metal. The watchmen of the sanctuary came to the rescue and drove the Vikings away. Those miraculously managed to break through to the ships, leaving the treasures collected near the Golden Woman.
Where is the idol or broken robot now? As the last refuge of the Golden Woman, three remote, hard-to-reach corners of Russia are traditionally called: the lower reaches of the Ob River, the upper reaches of the Irtysh in the region. Kalbinsky Range and impassable gorges of the Putoran Mountains on the Taimyr Peninsula. But, perhaps, the idol with a terrible, deadly voice is much closer. And it hides somewhere in the triangle between the mountains Koyp, Otorten and Manya-Tump. Such an assumption is more logical if we consider that the Golden Woman "shouted" on Otorten. The hunt for her continues: some are looking for a priceless historical relic, others - gold, others - a storehouse of alien technology.
Golden Baba, Zarni An, Kaltas, Diez Emiget, Sorni Nai, Sorni Ekva, Golden Mother of God - this is only a part of the many names that were called the golden idol, which appeared from nowhere on the temples of ancient Biarmia, Yugra and Perm and who knows where disappeared.
This idol has been worshiped for centuries by the peoples living on both sides of the Ural Mountains. Everyone longed to meet her, trying to touch the mystery. In the impenetrable taiga wilds, Ivan the Terrible's messengers, white atamans and red commissars, secret service agents, scientists and thousands of unknown fortune hunters were looking for her. But she didn't give in to anyone. The Golden Baba is on the list of the "Hundred Great Treasures" of the history of mankind, and is still mysterious and incomprehensible. The face of Zarni An shines on the coat of arms Republic of Komi.
The most ancient written information about the Golden Baba is found in the Novgorod Sophia Chronicle for 1398. Reporting on the death of St. Stephen of Perm, it was noted that he lived “among unfaithful people, neither knowing God, nor knowing the law, praying to an idol, fire and water, and a stone, and a Golden woman, and an elkhv, and an old one.”
The first news about the Golden Baba appeared in the books of Western European travelers and writers in the 15th century. Until the middle of the 19th century, the totem appears in the works of dozens of authors.
But, at the same time, none of them personally saw the idol. This is one of the phenomena of the Golden Baba - only those who have not seen her write and talk about her. And those who saw, he is silent.
It is interesting that in the Komi folklore there is not a single, even indirect, mention of a female deity that once existed. Maybe it was just not customary to talk about it in vain. Nevertheless, famous writer M. Lebedev in essays on Perm the Great pointed out that “some researchers religious life Komi people give the cult of the Golden Baba special meaning, and on her behalf they tend to produce even the very name of the Zyrians as people who revere the Golden Woman, or, in Komi, Zarni An.
The Orthodox missionary G. Novitsky, who preached the Christian doctrine to the Ostyaks at the beginning of the 18th century, tried to find the hidden statue and destroy it. He failed to do this.
But he collected information both about the idol itself and about the secret sanctuary in which it was kept. Russian historians V. Tatishchev and N. Karamzin wrote about the idol. The Englishmen E. Jenkinson and A. Vid placed the Golden Baba on their maps of Muscovy.
It is also surprising that the descriptions of the Golden Baba are different for all authors. In some sources, this is a statue in the form of an old woman, in the womb of which there is a son, and through him another child is visible - a grandson (the principle of a matryoshka doll). For others, it is just a statue of a standing woman, for others it is the same, but with a cornucopia, or in the form of the goddess Minerva with a spear in her hand. There are drawings where the Golden Baba resembles a Madonna already sitting with a child in her arms. In some sources, she is described as dressed in loose clothes, in others - naked.
In 1904, the old Mansi Savva told the traveler K. Nosilov: “A naked woman - and nothing more. Is sitting. There is a nose, there are eyes, everything is done, as a woman should be. The dimensions are also different: 30 centimeters, "an average woman" in full size and "one arshin higher than the most healthy man." By the way, scientists have calculated that with such growth, if the golden statue is cast in one piece, its weight will reach three tons.
There are several versions of the origin of the Golden Baba. Some say that it was brought from China, others consider it to be Iran or India, others - Ancient Rome. True, some scientists are still in favor of the fact that the Golden Baba is a work of local masters.
Probably the most original version of the appearance of the idol was put forward by ufologist S. Ermakov. He believes it is an alien robot left behind on Earth. For some time he was still able to move, and it is with this property that the legends about the "living" deity are associated. Then, it seems, the device began to gradually fail, until it finally froze.
The later the story about the Golden Baba is dated, the further to the east her location is moved. At first, it is placed on the territory of Vyatka or Perm, a little later it is already in Obdoriya to the west of the Ob; finally, it is located even to the east.
The movement of the totem from west to east is an undoubted fact associated with Christianization. And already in the middle of the 16th century, the Golden Baba was beyond the Urals. By the way, the legendary country of Biarmia “wandered” to the east from century to century also on sarin maps.
The secret of finding an ancient idol could well have been kept even before the 1930s in the Komi village of Pomozdino. The author of the book “Treasures of the Gulag” A. Martynenko pointed out the unexpected relationship of this village with the Golden Baba. His book was written on the basis of the diaries and notes of a real person - the doctor Alexander Afanasyevich, who political repression Stalin era brought to the infirmaries of the Soviet camps. In these places, patients ended up in a hospital bed most often in a hopeless state and, dying, shared the most intimate and secret with the doctor.
For the first time, the hero of the book heard about the Golden Baba in the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp in 1928 from a prisoner, a professor at St. Petersburg University, an archaeologist and an expert on the North. He said that in a secret place on the territory of the Komi region was the main temple of all the northern peoples.
The main idol was made of pure gold and was called Zarni An. When the time for Christianity came, the shamans gathered for advice and hid the golden goddess. And so that the place would not be lost, it was decided that ten shamanic clans would immediately become the keepers of the secret. They had to pass the secret from generation to generation. Centuries passed. Zarni An was visited from time to time by the chief shamans, and information about her was passed on among the people, becoming a source of inspiration. Under Soviet rule, almost all the guardians were arrested and shot, their houses were destroyed, and their families were dispersed. The fate of the golden goddess has become a legend.
Soon after the war, the doctor ended up in one of the camp hospitals in Sverdlovsk. A boy who was dying from severe pneumonia was brought to him, who was disturbed by only one thought: he, the son of a shaman, owns the secret of the location of Zarni An and swore an oath to his father to pass this secret on to his son, and now he is dying, and the place where the ancient idol is kept will be lost forever.
The boy said that his name was Mikhail Ignatov. And that he comes from the village of Pomozdino. He indicated the place where the idol is kept. But most of the story was in the Komi language, and the entire coordinate system was based on the terms of folk astronomy. Alexander Afanasyevich nodded his head, but he couldn't really understand or remember anything. In addition, he was constantly distracted by other patients. The doctor decided to continue the conversation the next day, but he himself was transferred to another hospital. The boy's trail was lost. There was almost no chance for him to live.
In 1961, a statue, reminiscent of the descriptions of the Golden Baba, was found in one of the storehouses near the village of Yuilsk. The chairman of the local collective farm ordered to transfer the find to the Khanty-Mansiysk Museum of Local Lore. A team of seven people arrived from the city. They entered the storehouse, but found there not a golden idol, but a wooden one trimmed with silver. It is believed that before the arrival of museum workers it was replaced. The golden statue was hidden in a safe place on an island among the swamps. And then, allegedly after the construction of a hydroelectric station on the Ob, the water level rose, and the island disappeared under water.
The head of the Russian public research association "Cosmopoisk" V. Chernobrov believes that the Golden Baba is both a mysterious place and a miraculous statue. It contains the secret knowledge of ancient civilizations. In 1987, Kosmopoisk activists made the first attempt to check several versions of the location of the relic in the Tyumen region. Alas, even then the old men who could tell something about the Golden Baba could not be found.
In September 1999, the researchers of Kosmopoisk, finding themselves near the Golden Gate in a remote taiga in the very north of the Sverdlovsk region, remembered the famous "namesake" of this place, - recalls V. Chernobrov. - We managed to descend in several vertical passages of the cave. However, a sudden multi-day downpour and flood prevented us from exploring the dungeons in detail. So, the Golden Baba is more and more overgrown with rumors and legends, taking its place on a par with Atlantis and Hyperborea, but rather as some part of the global version of the "golden period" of human history.
Artur Arteev
In the very heart of the mountains of the Northern Urals there is a mysterious place - the Manpupuner Plateau. " small mountain idols” is called by the reindeer herders of the local Mansi people. And the name is not accidental. Like frozen giants, seven bizarre stone figures rise. An ancient Mansi legend says that once the stone pillars were seven Samoyed giants who went through the mountains to Siberia to destroy the Vogul people. But when they climbed Manpupuner, their leader-shaman saw Yalpingner in front of him - the sacred mountain of the Voguls. Terrified, he threw his drum, which fell on high peak Koip, rising south of Manpupuner, and all his companions were petrified with fear.
scary idol
But there is another legend, which, however, is rarely heard from the Mansi, who every summer drive herds of deer along the Ural Range. If you look at Mount Koip from the side of a small nameless hill located to the west of the Ural Range, you can clearly see a woman lying on her back with sharp, frightening features.
According to a legend that I heard from reindeer herders, this is a petrified shaman, punished for trying to offend one of the most ancient idols, once revered by all the peoples of the North - the Golden Woman. When the idol was crossing the Stone Belt - the Ural Mountains, the shaman, who considered herself the mistress of the mountains, tried to detain the Golden Woman. The idol screamed in a terrible voice, and from the sound of this voice, all living things died for many miles around, and the shaman fell back and turned to stone.
The screams that the Golden Woman made are evidenced not only by the Mansi legends, but also by the memories of foreigners who visited Rus'. So, the Italian Alexander Gvagnini wrote in 1578: “They even said that in the mountains next to this idol they heard a sound and a loud roar like a trumpet.”
What is this mysterious idol that instilled fear in the locals with a terrible roar? Where did he come from and where did he disappear to?
Deity of Perm the Great
In Russia, the oldest written mention of the Golden Woman is the Novgorod Chronicle of 1538. The chronicle speaks of the missionary activity of Stephen of Perm. He walked around the Permian land and erected temples on the site of ancient sanctuaries. The annals record that Stefan sowed the faith of Christ in those lands where animals, trees, water, fire and ... the Golden Woman were previously worshiped.
Legends about the Golden Woman hiding somewhere in the North appeared a very long time ago. They are associated with the legendary vast country, which spread in the 9th-12th centuries in the forests covering the valleys of the Northern Dvina, Vychegda and the upper reaches of the Kama. In Rus', these lands were called Great Perm, and in Scandinavian countries- the powerful state of Biarmia or Bjarmaland. The peoples inhabiting this territory worshiped a huge idol - the Golden Woman. Her sanctuary, which, according to the Scandinavian sagas, was somewhere at the mouth of the Northern Dvina, was guarded day and night by six shamans. Many treasures were accumulated by the servants of the idol, who bore the name of Yumal in the sagas. Great Perm was rich in skins of valuable fur-bearing animals. Merchants from Khazaria, which lay in the lower reaches of the Volga, and Vikings from distant Scandinavia paid for them without stint.
However, time passed. The fortified neighbors of Perm the Great extended their tenacious hands to this rich but sparsely populated region. At first it was the Novgorod ushkuyniki, then the squads of the Moscow Grand Duke. Fleeing from Christianity, the worshipers of the idol hid the Golden Baba either in the Ural caves, or in the impenetrable forests along the banks of the Ob, or in the inaccessible gorges of the Putoran Mountains in Taimyr.
In search of a shrine
Where did the Mansi people come from such a strange deity? Most scientists believe that the Golden Woman is the Mansi goddess Sorni-Ekva. This name is translated into Russian as "golden woman".
Opinions differed about the origin of the idol itself. Biarmia history researcher Leonid Teplov suggests that the golden statue could have been taken away from the sacked Rome in 410 during the attack of the Ugrians and the Goths. Some of them returned to their homeland to the Arctic Ocean, and the ancient statue became a symbol of the northern people.
Other scientists lead the path of the mysterious goddess from China, believing that this is a statue of Buddha, which merges with the image of the goddess Guanyin in the Celestial Empire. There are also supporters of the Christian origin of the Golden Woman. They suggest that this is a statue of the Madonna, which was stolen during a raid on one of the Christian churches.
They tried to take possession of the Golden Woman for a long time. During their campaigns against Yugra, Novgorodians willingly plundered pagan sanctuaries. They also tried to get to the golden idol hiding in the dense forests, but in vain. Yermak's remote detachments were also interested in the statue. They heard about the Golden Woman from a Chuvash who fled to their camp during the siege of the Tatar settlement. The Chuvash told that in the besieged settlement, the Ostyaks pray to "the golden god that sits in the bowl." Hearing about the gold, the Cossacks rushed to attack the settlement with renewed vigor. After a bloody battle, they took the walls, but they did not find the precious idol. On the eve of the assault, they managed to take him out of the besieged settlement through secret underground passages.
The second time the Cossacks heard about the Golden Woman when they reached Belgorodye on the Ob. Here was the temple most revered by the Ostyaks. It was here, according to rumors, that the shrine of the Siberian peoples was brought. But this time too, Yermak failed to get to the Golden Woman. When his detachments approached, the inhabitants managed to hide the idol. The Cossacks asked the Ostyaks about the Golden Woman, and they confirmed that they really had "a great prayer to the ancient goddess."
Robot worship?
The researchers of our time did not deprive the attention of the Golden Woman. Big interest showed to the idol ufologists. Ufologists say that this deity is not at all like other shrines of the northern peoples, as if it fell from the sky.
It was this version of the origin of the golden idol that was once put forward by ufologist Stanislav Ermakov. He believes that the Golden Woman is an alien robot, which for some reason, maybe due to a partial malfunction, was left on Earth by its owners. For some time, the Golden Woman could move, and it is with this that the Mansi legends about the “living” idol are connected. Then, according to Ermakov, the robot began to gradually fail. At first, he could still make some sounds, and then finally turned into a golden statue.
I happened to work for several years in the Northern Urals, in places where, according to researchers, the golden idol passed, hiding from the persecutors of Christians. In the Urals, I heard from the Mansi reindeer herders several stories related to the Golden Woman.
In the Northern Urals there is a domed mountain Manya-Tump covered with dense forest. Until very recently, reindeer herders, driving their herds along the Ural Range in the summer, did not even come close to the mountain. “For a long time, you can’t go up the mountain. Whoever walks, be ill for a long time and die. Old people say - there were navels, Sony Ekva, Golden Baba. It was scary to walk close. Baba shouted widely. People speak a terrible voice.
A little north of Manya-Tump rises another mountain, with which legends about the terrible cry of the Golden Woman are also associated - Coip. The surroundings of this mountain are surprisingly suitable for the origin of the legend of the temple of the idol. At the foot of the mountain lies an almost round lake. On its shore you can see boulders covered with lichen, in which, with a little fantasy, you can guess the remains of an ancient sanctuary.
The Mansi, driving herds in summer, definitely visit this sanctuary to leave their gifts on a quadrangular granite slab, as if carved by people.
There is another place between the Manya Tump and Koip mountains, which can also be associated with the terrible cries of the Golden Woman. This is Mount Otorten, the highest point in the Urals. In the winter of 1959, a well-trained group of skiers from the Ural Polytechnic Institute died here. Rescuers who went in search of tourists found a tent with a rugged back wall and bodies lying in deep snow. On the faces of all the dead, an expression of mortal horror froze.
Some members of the commission that investigated the causes of the tragedy believed that the cause that led to such a terrible death could be exposure to infrasound of great intensity.
What could make such deadly sounds? Let's return to Stanislav Ermakov's version of the extraterrestrial origin of the Golden Woman. Why, then, did the space robot, created by a civilization far ahead of the earthly one, unexpectedly partially fail?
One episode in the description of the campaign of the Viking Thorir Hund to Biarmia can help answer this question: “The Vikings happily sailed at the mouth of the Dvina to the trading city in Biarmia ... The temple of the supreme deity of the Biarms, as the Vikings knew for sure, was in a dense forest, not far from the mouth of the Vin River (Dvina). That's where they planned to go...
Thorir Hund, thrusting his ax into the gate, with his help climbed over it. Carly did the same, and they let the comrades inside the fenced area. Approaching the mound, the Vikings collected as much money as they could carry ...
They got to the very image of Yumala, which towered among the sacred fence. A precious chain hung around the neck of the Burmese god. Karli was seduced by the chain and slashed with an ax so hard on the neck of the idol that the head fell off his shoulders with a terrifying crack.
It is unlikely that a Viking could cut off the head of a cast statue. Another thing is if a robot stood in front of him, consisting of a metal frame covered with a thin layer of gold. The watchmen of the sanctuary came to the rescue and drove the Vikings away. They miraculously managed to get to the ships, leaving the collected treasures.
Where is the golden idol now? Three hard-to-reach corners of Russia are called as the last refuge of the Golden Woman: the lower reaches of the Ob, the upper reaches of the Irtysh in the region of the Kalbinsky Range and the impenetrable gorges of the Putorana Plateau.
At the end of the fourteenth century AD, the baptists of all Rus', in their uncompromising struggle against paganism, encountered a strange phenomenon. It turned out that many representatives of the "wild" Volga and Ural tribes worship not only wooden gods, but also some mysterious idol made of pure gold.
The annals of that time mention a mysterious sculpture of a woman, which the "infidels" revered more life. But what is this statue? What are its roots? Where is her home? These questions still trouble the minds of many scientists and amateur researchers. To this day, the most incredible versions are being built.
All researchers who tried to unravel the mystery of the pagan deity note that the idol was that other traveler. The wandering routes of the statue sometimes take on the most fantastic outlines. One thing is for sure, a certain sculpture, cast in gold, was located in the north of the modern Perm Territory in the 14th century, somewhere in the Cherdyn region. We learn about this from the Nikon Chronicle with a reference to Stefan of Great Perm, the bishop who arrived in those parts to baptize the Permians and Zyryans.
Historians have some doubts about the exact presentation of reality in this document. The fact is that the chronicle was compiled much later than the events themselves. These include the mention of Stefan. In ancient papers, he is called a saint, but he was canonized only in 1549.
But the Golden Woman is also mentioned in the earlier Sophia and Novgorod Chronicles, which tells about the death of St. Stephen.
“Living among the unfaithful people, neither knowing God, nor knowing the law, praying to idols, fire and water, and stone, and the Golden Woman, and wise men, and wood”, - ancient sources mention in 1398.
Later references to the idol take us either to the stone belt of the Ural Mountains, or even further beyond the Ob. But where did the noble metal sculpture in Verkhnekamye come from?
And the woman is not golden!
There is an assumption that somewhere in the vicinity of ancient Cherdyn ( Perm region) or Ust-Vyma (Komi Republic) the idol was cast by Perm and Zyryansk (Komi) pagans. But then no one seemed to have heard of gold deposits there.
Most of the archaeological artifacts found in those parts of gold and silver, according to scientists, have oriental origin. Many sources say that Great Perm was actively trading with Iran. And again, some finds (plaques depicting animals outlandish for the north) confirm the fact of cooperation with the east.
Or maybe the statue was not gold at all? Some authors of articles about the Golden Woman refer to the Old Norse sagas. In the latter one can indeed find descriptions of campaigns against Biarmia ( ancient country stretching presumably from Arkhangelsk to the Ural Mountains). And in these legends a certain temple with an idol is indeed mentioned. The idol in the sagas was wooden.
One of these campaigns is described in the Saga of Olaf the Holy, written by the Icelandic hevding Snorri Sturluson in 1220-1230. The Viking voyage of Carly, Gunnstein and Thorer the Dog took place around 1020-1030s.
“When they sailed to the Land of Bjarms, they landed at the marketplace, and began to bargain. All those who had something to pay, bought plenty of goods. Thorir bought a lot of squirrel, beaver and sable fur. When the bargaining was over, they went down the Vina River..
But already when they went to sea along the Northern Dvina, Thorer told his comrades that he knew one more place where you could get some good money. The Viking began to talk in colors about some mounds that hold countless treasures. Unfortunately, the saga describes their route very poorly. One can only guess that they went by sea either to the Mezen River or to Pechora (Komi Republic), having sailed through which they soon landed on the shores and went on foot.
“At first they walked along the plain, then large forests began. ... They came to a large clearing. The middle of the clearing was fenced with a high palisade. The gates in it were locked ... Thorir went up to the palisade, planted his ax higher, pulled himself up, climbed over the palisade and found himself on one side of the gate, and Karli also climbed over the palisade and ended up on the other side of the gate. Thorir and Karli went up to the gate at the same time, took out the bolt and opened it. Everyone rushed inside. Thorir said:
- There is a mound inside the fence. In it, gold and silver are mixed with earth. The god of the Bjarmians, who is called Yomali, also stands in the fence. Let no one dare to rob him.".
Having robbed the temple, the Norwegians hurried back. But Thorer did not return. Carly returned for him and saw that he had taken away the silver bowl with coins from Yomali. Then he also decided to remove a huge necklace from the idol.
“Carly picked up the ax and cut the thread that held it. But the blow was so strong that Yomali's head flew off his shoulders. At the same time, such a roar was heard that it seemed to everyone a miracle. Carly took the necklace and they started to run.".
And nowhere does it say that the idol was golden. On the contrary, the fact that the head easily flew off the body indicates that the sculpture was carved from wood. And the Vikings would not leave an idol of pure gold. In other Scandinavian sagas, the idol is generally described as "an old man carved out of wood."
It is also unknown whether the goddess, named in the Finnish manner, was identical with the Permian Zarni-An or the Vogulian Sorni-Nai. But many researchers, speaking of the Golden Woman, for some reason refer to Scandinavian sources, among others.
Roman Juno
If, nevertheless, we assume that the Zyryans, Permyaks and Vogulichi worshiped an idol made of yellow metal, but there was nothing to cast it from, then where and how did the statue end up in these parts? There is a version that the Golden Woman is a statue of Juno, taken out of Rome during its fall.
This hypothesis was held by Julius Pomponius Let (1428 - 1497) - a researcher of ancient chronicles and a traveler. In his "Comments on Florus", written by him around 1480, he says that in the capture of Rome in 410, along with the Goths, the Ugric troops (ancestors of the Magyars, Mansi and Khanty), who lived at that time in the Yugra land, probably participated: “The Ugrians came to Rome together with the Goths and participated in the defeat of it by Alaric ... On the way back, part of them settled in Pannonia (in the region of modern Hungary, Yugoslavia, Austria) and formed a powerful state there, part returned to their homeland, to the Arctic Ocean, and still has some copper statues brought from Rome, which are worshiped as deities ".
And which is quite plausible. And if we take into account the fact that modern Hungarians are indeed officially considered descendants of the Ugric peoples, then it is more than plausible. Historians, however, are of the opinion that the Ugrians did not fight with anyone, but came to Europe along the Central Russian Plain through Ukraine at the end of the 9th century. But why did some of them have to go west, while others lived well in the Urals? Did they not meet resistance in their campaign and almost immediately successfully form a new Hungarian state? Wasn't Europe already divided by that time?
Roman and Byzantine chronicles of the 4th and 5th centuries, by Ammianus Marcellinus and Priscus of Panius, also mention the tribes of the Huns, who from time to time raided Rome. References to the leader of the Huns, Attila, date back to the 5th century. And the people of the Huns were formed, according to scientists, as a result of mixing Ugric and Turkic tribes in the Urals. In 452, the Huns were defeated, after which they disappeared into the water. Maybe they went back to the Urals? And couldn't they, 40 years earlier, bring the riches obtained in battles together with some golden statue there?
Tibetan Guanyin
Along with the version of the western origin of the idol, there is a version about eastern roots goddesses. Allegedly, the golden woman is Guanyin, who came to Perm the Great and beyond the Urals from Tibet. Supporters of this version, in order to prove their theory, for some reason lay possible routes to the lower reaches of the Ob and to Yamal, forgetting that they began to look for an idol in those parts already at the end of the 15th-16th centuries.
The main arguments of the adherents of this hypothesis are simple and unsophisticated. First, the Golden Baba comes from Tibet, because researchers have found several possible routes from Tibet to Yamal. This justification appeared more than a hundred years ago, thanks to the researcher M.K. Sidorov. Secondly, the description of the Golden Baba by Russian and Western historians and travelers of the XIV-XIX centuries coincides with the appearance of the Tibetan goddess of mercy ( Alekseev A. "Siberia in the news of foreign travelers and writers." Irkutsk, 1941). The fact that none of the idol hunters saw her does not bother the supporters of the Eastern theory.
Maybe, we are talking just about different sculptures. Like, the Permians had one - the Roman one. The Khanty from the Yakuts have Tibetan. But the representatives of the Eastern theory are based on the testimonies of adventurers inspired to exploits just from the submission of chronicle information about Stephen of Perm.
Even as evidence, some allegedly similar properties of Tibetan sculpture with a golden woman are given. Baron Sigismund Herberstein, the ambassador of the German emperor to Moscow, wrote in the 16th century that some pipes may have been installed inside the Golden Woman, and when the wind hits them, the statue makes various sounds.
The "singing" statue is mentioned in some Yakut legends. And the divine service with the participation of the Guanyin sculpture was also supposedly connected with the playing of a certain trumpet.
golden virgin
There is another fantastic version. The statue of the Golden Mother of God or the Madonna served as an idol for the Perm, Zyryansk, and Mansi pagans. If it was Madonna, then where is her homeland? Probably in Europe. But why would the Voguls worship a Christian symbol? It seems that by the XIV-XV century they still had at least a vague idea of the essence of the enemy religion, which they opposed in every possible way.
If this is the Mother of God, then why in the form of a sculpture of gold, and not in the form of an icon. And why in the Siberian Chronicle, to which M. Kosarev refers, the goddess of the Khanty and Mansi - although with a baby, is naked? And most importantly, what did this "Mother of God" in Perm the Great. According to the same Kosarev, the sculpture was brought there by the first baptists and installed in one of the built churches. And the sanctuary was later destroyed by the Voguls, who made frequent raids on the Permians.
But the first baptist was Stefan, thanks to whom all this mess was brewed, because he mentioned an idol unfamiliar to him. Why would the Mansi begin to worship what, according to their logic, should be destroyed? However, contradictions overwhelm each of the hypotheses. Maybe there was no woman?
