Сидящие «по-восточному» фигуры в наскальном искусстве Минусинской котловины (атрибуция, аналогии)

СибСкрипт. 2024. Т. 26. № 6. С. 904–918.

Советова О. С., Ермоленко Л. Н., Zinchenko S.

The rock art of the Minusinsk Basin has a long academic history; however, it still brings about new
fascinating discoveries. Some petroglyphs of the Tesin period show people sitting cross-legged on the floor
in the so-called Oriental fashion. These images have not yet received special scientific attention. Such images
are most often single; they are to be found on such petroglyph sites and mound stones of the Minusinsk Basin
as Oglakhty, Kamenka, Togr-Tag, Abakan-Perevoz, Tepsei, etc. The present analysis of their legs made it possible
to describe the variability of the sitting posture. Their arms are symmetrically arranged, the hands being devoid
of any attributes but for one exception: the cross-legged sitter on a mound stone in Tepsei is holding a snake.
Ancient Oriental art has no iconographic patterns for the Snake-Holder. In some cases, the Snake-Holder is depicted
kneeling. The Early Iron Age art renders a certain analogy to the Snake-Holder from Tepsei, i.e., the horned deity
from the Gundestrup cauldron. The earliest images of an anthropomorphic creature sitting cross-legged on the floor
belong to the Neolithic Age (Crete) and Bronze Age (Harappan civilization). The archaeological and ethnographic
analysis revealed the polyvariant character of the cross-legged sitter. The images from the Minusinsk petroglyphs
demonstrate obvious similarities with the art of the Early Iron Age and the early Middle Ages. Multiple variants
of the cross-legged sitter appeared in ancient art of different peoples across the world. However, the similarity
hardly indicates borrowing: the universal conditions of human routine and religious practices rendered similar
body postures captured in art.

Keywords: Евразия, Eurasia, петроглифы, ранний железный век, petroglyphs, Early Iron Age archaeology, figures sitting cross-legged in oriental fashion, Tesin culture, Snake-Holder, Minusinsk Basin, сидящие «по-восточному» фигуры, тесинская культура, образ Змеедержца, Минусинская котловина