Origo gentis в древнерусском и грузинском летописании

С. 7–40.

Vinogradov A.

The article compares two versions of origo gentis, ancient Russian and Georgian. The first one is represented by two variants: the earlier one, dating back to the reconstructed “Nachalny svod” of the 1090s and reflected in the Novgorod first Chronicle (younger version), and the variant in the Tale of Bygone Years of the 1110s that possibly dates back to the text of the 1060s and that became the basic for most Russian chronicles. The Georgian tradition of origo gentis is represented by the first two chapters of the Life of the Georgian Kings by Leonti Mroveli, written somewhere in the third quarter of the 11th century, as the initial part of the large corpus of Georgian history called Kartlis Tskhovreba. Their comparison shows an unusually close similarity, including in unique elements (the story of the sons of Japhet and the Tower of Babel, invasions of the Khazars). The study of these similarities shows that the Old Russian and Georgian versions of origo gentis are standard European narratives about the origin of the people (but with different individual plots), only placed in the frame of the Eastern Christian tradition of Biblical and Apostolic history and slightly seasoned with the current ‘Eurasian’ context. Thus, such a striking coincidence of these narratives is explained not by a genetic connection, but by the common conditions and time of their creation: about a century after the creation of the unified Christian state.

Keywords: Повесть временных лет, Картлис цховреба

In book

ByzantinoCaucasica

Вып. 2. , Институт востоковедения РАН, 2022.