The Distaff and the phallic cult

The image of a "wonderful tree with three lands" is present in Russian, Ukrainian and South Slavic wedding songs, carols, vyunishny and other ritual songs 34. The researchers associate the motif of the three "lands" in the roots, middle and top of the tree with the most ancient Indo-European ideas about the "world tree" as a model of the Universe 35. The idea of the “world tree” as an initial concept in the ornament of spinning wheels, according to B.A. Rybakov, is due to the real purpose of spinning wheels in the life of peasants since ancient times. The spinning wheel and the spindle became indispensable tools of labor already in the Neolithic: they caught forest animals and birds with nets made of spun threads. Long strands of yarn have become associated with the "threads of life"36. Many Indo-European peoples have developed an image of heavenly spinners spinning the golden threads of human destinies. These are antique moira (parks), Scandinavian norns spinning threads at the roots of Ash-Igrassil. According to Germanic legends, the goddess Freya, known as a hunter, is engaged in spinning in secluded places; the heroine of other legends - Golda, dressed in a long white dress and a veil, sitting in a grotto or forest thicket, turns a golden spinning wheel to the sound of melodious songs. The golden spindle is one of the attributes of Artemis. The southern Slavs had the image of the goddess of Fate-Sreche, spinning a golden thread. The Eastern Slavs had an idea of a wonderful self-spinning wheel spinning pure gold, of gold and silver threads descending from the sky 37. The kikimora of Russian byliches, spinning yarn at night, appearing in a long white robe, in all likelihood, is also related to the goddesses of Fate. The image of a spinner spinning thread for tying (stitching) wounds is found in Russian conspiracies. For example, in conspiracies for blood, it is said that on the sea-okiyan, on the island of Buyan, on an iron or gold chair, a girl (sometimes three) weaves an unusual thread: “three girls spun, torn off a thread and tied blood to a slave (name) 38.

The fact that the spinning wheel was perceived as a tree is evidenced by the design of the spinning wheels itself. The Mezen spinning wheel was called by the local “kokoritsy spinning wheel” or “root-eater”. The name emphasized the design feature of the spinning wheel: its bottom was made from the root, while the blade was cut from the tree trunk. The spinning wheels here were not composite, as in many other Russian regions, but monolithic, as if repeating the structure of the tree from which they were made.

In addition, a close connection in the popular representation of spinning wheels and spinning with family life, that is, with procreation and fate, is known. The spinning wheel was an indispensable gift from the groom to the bride. An interesting story testifying to the role of the spinning wheel in family life was recorded by Y. Arbat in one of the North Russian villages. “We had such an incident with a spinning wheel. The girl got married two yards from me. They live well. Brought her husband a daughter. The neighbors laugh: "Your woman has stepped bast shoes." This is a saying. A husband, of course, desires a son. She ordered: a spinning wheel with a value. The master drew a boy in a red shirt, and black boots. Do you dare to what? Strands, they say, but look. When the son is born, they say here: "The wife stepped in with her boot." And believe it or not - this woman another time brought her son to her husband. 39 In the Mezen villages, we heard stories that at gatherings where girls came with spinning wheels, it happened that the guys, as a sign of a special relationship to the girls they liked, broke off (“knocked off”) the figures crowning the spinning wheels.

Figures completing the Mezen spinning wheels in their upper part deserve special attention (Fig. 1). Art historians call them chapters, meaning their resemblance to the heads of churches. N. I. Tolstoy pointed out the connection of these figurines with anthropomorphic images on tombstones among some East Slavic and South Slavic peoples 40. The validity of such a comparison is confirmed, in our opinion, by the similarity of the shape of the figures under consideration with images of deceased ancestors among the eastern neighbors of the Slavic peoples 41. The connection between the spinning wheels and family life and rituals, which we have indicated, indirectly indicates that the figures on the Mezen spinning wheels are related to the images of ancestors.

It is important to note that the main images of the Mezen spinning wheels (birds, horses, deer, boats) do not leave the circle of the most ancient images of Russian folklore, which are most reflected in ritual poetry and fairy tales. All these images connected people with the other world. According to linguistic analysis, the oldest of these images is a bird, later replaced by a deer, a horse42. The study of folklore material showed that this replacement took place gradually, as evidenced by transitional (hybrid) images like winged horses and flying boats43. These include the images of horses on the Mezen spinning wheels: their legs, as already mentioned, were painted in the same way as the wings of birds depicted on the same spinning wheels. In addition, boats and ships on Mezen spinning wheels were often depicted surrounded by flying birds.

Hybridity (diversity) of images, a combination of zoomorphic, anthropomorphic and ornithomorphic features in them is a characteristic feature of folk art, and the further into the depths of time, the more vividly it manifests itself. In North Russian art, we especially often see a horse-bird, a horse-deer-bird, etc. As an example, we can cite the decoration of the roof of a house with a "ridge" characteristic of the Mezen and other regions of the North. In the configuration of the latter, the features of a waterfowl, and sometimes a deer, often appear. This feature connects the zoomorphic and anthropomorphic images of the Mezen folk art with similar images on ancient monuments of art, known to us from archaeological and ethnographic materials. First of all, this concerns the art of the so-called Scythian-Siberian animal style, which is reflected, as you know, in the culture of many peoples of Eurasia 44. The presence of motives and images of the Scythian style in the art of the Eastern Slavs is due to the participation in their ethnogenesis of the creators of this style - steppe, including Scythian, tribes. The more ancient contacts of the Slavs with the Iranian and Turkic-speaking tribes of the Black Sea and Caspian regions also played a significant role. So, for example, the influence of the Dacian-Sarmatian and Scythian elements is found in one of the most common motives in North Russian art - a three-part composition with a female figure (tree) in the center 45. One of the variants of this composition became widespread on the Mezen - lions on the sides of the tree. Some researchers associate its appearance in the North with the lively trade with England, which took place before the era of Peter I through the Northern Dvina and contributed to the spread in the North in the 16-17 century of magnificently ornamented household items, often painted with paintings with lions 46. However, another, eastern way of the spread of the considered composition in the North is also possible, as evidenced by one of their characteristic features. Lions in the Mezen paintings are depicted with a raised right paw, climbing the side of a hill with a tree at the top. A similar composition with lions, as was first pointed out by I. V. Makovetsky, is found in paintings and woodcarving in the Upper Volga regions of the Yaroslavl, Kostroma, Vladimir and Gorky regions 47. The following argument can be made in favor of the eastern route of distribution. On the pediments of some houses of Ancient Khorezm, as evidenced by archaeological excavations, there are relief images of a three-part composition with lions, very similar to the Mezen one. They have the same characteristic: lions are depicted with a raised paw, climbing the side of a hill. 48

The connection with Khorezm is not accidental. As shown by the fundamental research of S. P. Tolstov, this region from ancient times had trade and cultural relations with the peoples of Siberia and Eastern Europe, including the Russian people. Going back to the Neolithic and Bronze Age, these ties stretch back to the formation of the main ethnic complexes of Asia and Europe. "The Hittite-Hurrian, Thracian, Tocharian, Scythian-Sarmatian problems are equally at the sources of Central Asian and East European ethnogenesis"49. The influence of the Khorezm culture on these tribes, according to the researcher, was especially strong in the period between the 4th century BC and 1 AD, having affected, in particular, the history of the development of the surviving complexes of folk clothing in Eastern Europe. These ties stretch over the next centuries, "manifested either in Slavic carols among the Khorezm Christians of the 11th century, then in the existence of the Russian-Khazar-Alan colony in Urgench in the 13th century, or in Russian tales about the Khvalyn kingdom." 50

In turn, S. P. Tolstov and other researchers noted the undoubted connection between the culture of the Danube, Black Sea, Caspian and Aralian tribes with more eastern, in particular the Baikal, tribes. A. P. Okladnikov, who studied the culture of the latter from rock paintings, noted the undoubted similarities with culture of Neolithic and Eneolithic farmers of Central Asia, Iran and neighboring countries 51. Moreover, the researcher sees a common stylistic style in the Neolithic art of the forest tribes of hunters and fishermen of the European Subarctic, as well as the Baltic States and Finland. The similarity of the rock carvings found in such distant spaces from each other is so great that it suggests not only close contacts of the western and eastern tribes, but also the penetration of representatives of western tribes from west to east at the end of the Neolithic, apparently, the ancestors of the later Samoyed tribes Sayan region 52.

The petroglyphs of the Baikal region of the Bronze and Early Iron Age show no less similarity with the rock carvings of Europe 53. Attributed to an even later time (6-10 centuries), the so-called Kurykan scribes left by the Turkic tribes of the Kurykans, have undoubted analogies in the culture of the Sayan-Altai Turks and the Turkic tribes of Eastern Europe, who settled in the 1st millennium AD. e. steppe regions of Siberia and Eastern Europe from the Yenisei and Altai to the Danube and the Black Sea 54. Of particular interest for our research are the Kurykan scribble-drawings on the Shishkinsky rocks of the Baikal region. The Kurykans, who roamed the northern side of Lake Baikal, were among the Uighur tribes, which, according to written sources of their time, were descendants of the Huns 55. Their main occupation was horse breeding, hence the predominance of horses and riders in the above drawings). “At the same time, the horses of the Shishkin writings have a special, peculiar appearance, which testifies to the fact that before the eyes of the ancient artist there was a certain model with sharply outlined characteristic features. The artist strove to convey the peculiarities of the horse breed: a tall horse with a narrow long body, a small hunchbacked head set on a sharply arched swan neck; horse with a strong muscular chest and thin dry legs".56 According to A. P. Okladnikov, the horses depicted by the kurykans correspond to a specific type of southern Central Asian breeds, which have long been valued in the East and West. A similar horse is reflected in the art of ancient Khorezm. S. P. Tolstov wrote about the sharply expressed difference between these tall and thin-legged, "stream" horses from the undersized Scythian horses 57. The Kurykan horses described by A. P. Okladnikov are very similar, in our opinion, to the Mezen horses: the same long body, tall thin legs and a small head. It should be noted that, according to the testimony of the same author, in the late Baikal scribes, the figure of a horse acquires geometrized outlines, approaching a rectangle: the legs become straight, elongated and thin, like sticks 58. Such geometrization, as we have already noted, is also characteristic of the Mezen paintings. The fact that this similarity is not accidental is evidenced by the following fact: the horses on the Mezen paintings are fundamentally different from the short and stocky horses of the local Mezen breed.

The question arises of how the image of the Kurykan, or Central Asian, horse in question got to the far Russian North. Above, it was said about the Dacian-Sarmatian and Scythian elements in the folk art of the North, explained by the participation of the Scythians and Sarmatians in the ethnogenesis of the Slavic, including the North Russian, population. In the first half of the 1st millennium AD the mentioned tribes came into contact with the Turkic tribes. A. P. Okladnikov, noting the similarity of the Kurykan scribbles with the drawings of the Turkic tribes of the Caucasus, the Don Steppes and Bulgaria of the 9-10 centuries, expressed an opinion about the possibility of the penetration of the Turks of the Baikal region from east to west - to the Don, the Caucasus and Danube Bulgaria.59

S. P. Tolstoy wrote about the Türkization of the ancient Saka-Massaget population of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya deltas in the 4th-7th centuries, noting a particularly strong admixture of Hunno-Türkic elements. The descendants of these Turkicized tribes appeared in the 7-9th century under the collective name of the Oguzes 60. The name "Oguzes", according to the same researcher, has another form - "Ogor", attested by the Byzantine sources of the 7th century, which suggests the presence of the Ugrians in the Oguzes - tribes of the eastern branch of the Finno-Ugric group, whose modern representatives are in the Urals and in Trans-Urals are Khanty and Mansi (Ostyaks and Voguls) 61. The origin of the other northeastern neighbors of the Russian Mezen, the Nenets, is associated with the Altai Turks. The cultural and economic contacts of these peoples with the Komi and the Russians were recorded by a considerable number of historical documents, as well as anthropological and ethnographic research 62. Obviously, thanks to these ethnic ties, it is in the folklore of the Russians of Mezen that Turkic elements can be traced, which have analogies in the culture of the Altai Turks63.

In this regard, the similarity of some plot paintings on Mezen spinning wheels with drawings on shaman tambourines among Altai peoples will not seem so surprising 64. Two-horned hats on men in compositions on the Mezen spinning wheels deserve special attention. Let me remind you that two-horned headdresses are characteristic of shamanic clothing. A similar headdress can be seen on many male figures depicted on the Mezen spinning wheels. There is nothing of the kind on any other Russian spinning wheels, which, in our opinion, only confirms the influence of Eastern cultures on the creation of the Mezen painting.

The art of Mezen allows us to trace ethnocultural ties not only with the eastern regions. We paid special attention to eastern ties because they turned out to be the least studied in the culture of the northeastern regions of the European part of Russia, which includes the Mezen basin of interest to us. In the Mezen painting, there are many elements connecting it with the culture of the western regions, primarily with the Severodvinsk regions of the Arkhangelsk region, as well as with the regions of the former Olonets province. Thus, the S-shaped figures of birds, characteristic of the Mezen painting, are often found on the products of masters from Belozerye and Podvina. In the paintings of the Severodvinsk spinning wheels, there is a motive similar to the Mezen motive of riding in a sleigh on two horses, one of the horses being dark and the other light in color. Some of the motives of the Mezen painting, for example, a characteristic ornamental motive defined by N. I. Tolstoy as the image of the "eyes of the dead"65, connects the painting we are considering not only with the West Russian, but also with the West Finnish population. It is especially often found in the art of the Vepsians and the Russian regions adjacent to the area of their settlement 66. This motive is not uncommon in the art of the population of the Dnieper region, as well as among the southern Slavs. Similar parallels are found in other areas of the material and spiritual life of the Russian Mezen. For example, in the Leshukonsky region, where the Mezen painting of interest to us is especially widespread, women wore original warriors decorated with beads; the ornament on them has undoubted analogies in the applied art of the Vepsians 67. In the same villages, a complex of dwellings with winter ground huts is widespread, in many ways similar to peasant buildings in the southwestern regions of the Russian North (in villages along the Vaga, in the adjacent parts of the former Totemsk, Velsk and Shenkursk districts 68). The same connections are found in the distribution of the characteristic decoration - the ridge on the roofs of houses, as well as some types of applied art: wood chips, figured cookies, some ornamental motifs on woven and embroidered items. The researchers associate the appearance of a sundress in the form of a skirt with a bodice on Vaga, Northern Dvina and Pinega, as well as on Vashka and Mezen, with the movement of the population from Western Russian regions. In the clothing of the Baltic Finns, such an unusual element of women's clothing in some villages of Leshukonya, as the "sleeves" that existed on sweaters, has analogies 69. The antiquity of the Leshukonya's ties with Vaga, Kokshenga and Belozerie is evidenced by historical documents indicating the colonization routes from Kargopol district to the east, to the banks of the Northern Dvina and its tributaries Vaga, Sia, Emtsa, Vaimuga, and Pinega. Pinega was connected with the middle Mezen by a system of drags. The data of Toponymy testify to the antiquity of these paths. In this regard, the similarity in many elements of the geometric ornament of the Mezen painting with the paintings on the objects of folk art of Kargopol becomes clear. 70. In all likelihood, the Polkan-bogatyr mentioned by us, depicted on one of the Mezen spinning wheels, is associated with the eponymous character of clay toys by the famous craftswoman from Kargopol U. I. Babkina. Researchers see in Polkan a once revered local pagan hero - a deity like Yarila 71.

It is important to emphasize that the similarity we have noted concerns mainly the ancient elements of the culture of the compared regions. This gives reason to associate them not so much with later cultural and trade relations, but with the genetic relationship of the population of these areas. According to anthropological and ethnographic studies, the Russian population of the European North was formed as a result of the advance of Slovenes and Krivichi to the North from the Middle Dnieper region and their introduction into the environment of the Letto-Lithuanians and Baltic Finns, who belonged to the Atlantic-Baltic group of anthropological types.72 In turn, the data of craniological and archaeological studies indicate that the basis for the formation of the Atlanto-Baltic types was the Indo-European tribes that penetrated the European North from more southern regions. 73

Mezen

Thus, the analysis of images on the Mezen spinning wheels allows us to speak about the broad ties with other regions of Asia and Europe reflected in the art of Mezen, which, in all likelihood, determined those features of the Mezen painting, which researchers often identified as unusual and "mysterious". In the light of the considered ethnic ties, the similarity of the Mezen paintings with the oldest paintings in Eurasia becomes clear. We have already talked about the ancient Greek and Azeline cultures. In addition, I will point out the similarities with the art of other ancient cultures - the Cretan-Mycenaean, Etruscan, Thracian, Koban, Urartian, as well as with the Central Asian archaeological culture of Anau. On the decorated household and religious objects of the listed cultures, we see the same ornamental elements repeating in similar combinations: shaded triangles, crossed rhombuses and squares, swastika figures, various kinds of crosses, etc. The similarity is sometimes striking, especially if we bear in mind the considerable distances space and time, separating these cultures from the Mezen culture we are studying.

The geography of archaeological cultures testifies that related tribes took part in their creation, occupying vast territories in the northern steppes from the Black Sea region to southern Siberia and Central Asia. Within these limits, as most scientists believe, was the homeland of the Indo-Europeans. Archaeological sites related to them in this territory can be traced from 3-2 thousand BC until the next time, including the Scythian era. Various Scythian tribes are known to have taken part in the ethnogenesis of not only the Slavic, but also the Finno-Ugric peoples. Therefore, some of the elements of the Mezen painting, which we consider as a result of the interrelationships of the Russian population of Mezen with the neighboring Finno-Ugric population, in their deep origins may refer to Indo-European antiquity. Thus, images of men in two-horned headdresses have analogies in the petroglyphs of Lake Onega and the White Sea, in the sculpture of Tripoli and in the ceramics of the Komarov culture. The horse, so often depicted on the Mezen spinning wheels, was, as is well known, a typical chthonic animal of the Indo-Europeans. Among the characteristic subjects in the art of the latter include the image of a horse harnessed to a cart (chariot).

In the worldview of the Indo-Europeans, the opposition of the dark and light principles (black and red horses on spinning wheels) is explained. The roots of these views, according to researchers, go back to the Proto-Indo-Iranians, in whose mythology good and evil forces were personified, respectively, by white and black horses. 74 A comparative study of mythology has shown that a number of ritual representations associated with a horse (horse sacrifice, a horse near the "world tree", etc.) coincide among the ancient Indo-Europeans and some Asian peoples who spoke Altai, in particular Turkic, languages, which, according to researchers, reflects ancient contacts between these peoples 75.

The Indo-European community can explain the similarity of the Mezen painting with the Dipylon style and other varieties of the ancient Greek, the so-called geometric style, which we mentioned. In this regard, the resemblance of lions on the pediments of houses in the Mezen painting with the relief figures of lions on the "lion gates" in Mycenae, discovered in due time by G. Schliemann, will not seem so surprising. However, the situation is complicated by the fact that in many elements the culture of the Indo-Europeans goes back to an older, substratum population in relation to them. It is known, for example, that the cart was borrowed from the ancient Sumerians; compositions with lions, as well as some elements of the Greek geometric style, are found in the art of ancient Crete, and such an element characteristic of Indo-European art as the swastika (not uncommon, by the way, in the Mezen painting), goes back to the pre-Aryan population of India. It is possible that the Mezen painting reflects precisely these more ancient forms of the considered elements of Indo-European art. Hence the originality of the Mezen painting, its similarity with the art of the Finno-Ugric and Siberian peoples, neighbors with the Russians Mezen, as well as the Siberian peoples, who have preserved stages of more ancient elements in everyday life and culture. However, these questions require further research.