Журнал «История: факты и символы»

FRAGMENT OF CERAMIC OSSUARIUM FROM DALVERSINTEP (SURKHANDARYA)

Author: Soloviev Victor Stepanovich

An ossuary is a special urn or a well, a place for storing skeletonized remains. The ossuaries were common among the Zoroastrians and the Jews, and later among the early Christians. In general, the tradition of storing bone remains is known from Neolithic times and was associated with the development of a funeral cult and the need to preserve ashes to ensure the afterlife of the deceased. The article is devoted to a fragment of the ceramic ossuary found during the excavations of the early medieval settlement on the citadel of the Hellenistic city of Dalverzintep in southern Uzbekistan in 1996. The author considers the surviving images - the head of a female character and bucranias (an ornament depicting the head of a bull). Particular attention is paid to the analysis of the image of a bull. Honoring the bull, according to the author, was associated with Zoroastrianism. In Iran, images of a bull were traditionally adorned with precious ritual objects. The bull was a symbol of luck, fertility, happiness. Often the bull was depicted on the royal objects. It was believed that the power of the bull strengthens power and grants victory in military battles. Some Sassanid kings included images of a bull in their crowns. The image of bull is also found in the works of Sasanian glyptics. At the end of the article the author draws conclusions that the plot on the ossu-ria is close to the image on the fragment of another ossuary - from Dalverzintep, found during the excavation of the country estate No. 4 of Penjikent. It also shows a stylized female figure holding a curved scarf in her arms above her head. On both sides of it are symmetrically arranged relief figures of two birds. Probably, these birds are called to protect the person buried in the ossuaries.