On July 26, 1951, at the Nerevsky excavation site in Veliky Novgorod, a unique birch bark was discovered. It was a welcome find! The head of the expedition Artemy Vladimirovich Artsikhovsky dreamed about it for almost 20 years (excavations have been carried out since 1932). Messages on birch bark have not yet been met, but they knew for sure that in Russia they wrote on birch bark.

In particular, the church leader Joseph Volotsky wrote about Sergius of Radonezh: "In the monastery of blessed Sergius, even the books themselves are not written on charters, but on birch bark."

On July 26, during excavations at a depth of 2.4 meters, a member of the expedition, Nina Akulova, drew attention to a piece of birch bark measuring 13 by 38 centimeters. Observation helped the girl find a needle in a haystack - she took a closer look and made out the scratched letters on the scroll!

Expedition leader A.V. Artsikhovsky: "During excavations, several hundred empty birch bark scrolls accounted for one inscribed one. Empty scrolls did not differ in appearance from letters in any or almost nothing, apparently served as floats or were simply thrown away when finishing logs."

The scroll was carefully washed in hot water with soda, straightened and pressed between the panes. Subsequently, historians began to decipher the text. The entry consisted of 13 lines. Scientists analyzed every word and fragment of a phrase and found out that the speech in the manuscript (it is assumed that the XIV century) was about feudal duties - issues of land and gift (income and dues).

From birch bark No. 1, found by Artsikhovsky's expedition: "20 Bel gift (y) came from Shadrin (a) village", "20 Bel gift (y) went from Mokhova village."

The very next day, archaeologists will be lucky to find two more letters - about the fur trade and the preparation of beer. In total, during the expeditionary season of 1951, scientists discovered nine letters. In addition, they also found a tool for writing - a curved and pointed bone rod.

It is the scratched letters that have an outstanding historical value. Expedition leader A.V. Artsikhovsky: “Before these excavations, only Russian birch bark manuscripts of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries were known. But during this period, birch bark was written with ink. Meanwhile, birch bark ... is preserved in the ground in two cases: if it is very dry and if it is very damp. , and the ink should be poorly preserved there. That is why, by the way, discoveries are unlikely during the excavation of parchment letters, also common in ancient Russia. Although parchment (ed. note: the author's spelling) is well preserved in the ground, they wrote on it only with ink " .

Artsikhovsky's expedition opened a new page in the study of national history. According to experts, the Novgorod cultural layers still store about 20 thousand ancient Russian birch bark letters.

Did they know about birch bark letters before the finds of archaeologists?

They knew. Some ancient Russian authors reported about books written “not on charati (pieces of specially dressed sheep skins), but on birch bark”. In addition, the Old Believer tradition of the 17th-19th centuries was known to rewrite entire books on stratified birch bark.

When was the first charter found?

The Novgorod archaeological expedition led by Artemy Artsikhovsky has been working in Novgorod since the 1930s and has found, among other things, writings - sharp metal or bone rods with which letters were scratched on birch bark. True, at first the writings were taken for nails.

During the Nazi occupation, archaeological excavations in Novgorod had to be curtailed; they were resumed only by the end of the 1940s.

Who found the first letter?

Novgorodka Nina Okulova who came to work on an archaeological expedition during her maternity leave. For her discovery, she received a prize of one hundred rubles.

Is finding a letter a unique event or are they found often?

Relatively often. Already in the summer of 1951, in addition to letter No. 1, nine more letters were found. Further, their number varied from zero to more than a hundred per year, depending on which archaeological layers were studied.

Is it true that birch bark letters are found only in Veliky Novgorod?

No. In addition to Veliky Novgorod, where 1064 letters have already been found, birch bark letters were found in Staraya Russa (45), Torzhok (19), Smolensk (16), Pskov (8), Tver (5), Moscow (3) and other cities.

There are more diplomas in Novgorod. Did Novgorodians know how to write more often than others?

Completely optional. It’s just that in Novgorod the preservation of letters is favored by the peculiarities of life and soil.

In order for fragile birch bark to survive for several centuries, it must fall into conditions where it would not be destroyed by water and air. It is no coincidence that most of the letters found are private letters or drafts of documents - bills of sale, receipts, wills (sometimes previously destroyed - cut into pieces). Apparently, the records that had become unnecessary were simply thrown out into the street, where they fell under a fresh layer of soil and debris.

An important role in the discovery of letters is played by the preservation of the archaeological layer of the 11th-13th centuries in Novgorod. Unfortunately, after numerous reconstructions of different centuries, not many cities have the same feature.

Who is excavating?

Novgorod archaeological expedition of Moscow State University, as well as expeditions of scientific institutes. Students and schoolchildren are widely involved in excavations.

What are the most famous scientists involved in literacy?

Academician Artemy Vladimirovich Artsikhovsky(1902-1978) - the first head of the Department of Archeology renewed at Moscow University (1939), later (1952-1957) - Dean of the Faculty of History, founder and head of the Novgorod archaeological expedition (1932-1962), the first publisher of birch bark letters. He introduced a general course of archeology into the university program, developed a general methodology for analyzing the cultural layer.

Academician Valentin Lavrentievich Yanin(1929) - head of the Novgorod archaeological expedition (since 1963), head of the Department of Archeology of Moscow State University (since 1978), specialist in ancient Russian numismatics. For the first time he used birch bark letters as a historical source.

He developed a method of complex source study, in which the analysis is done simultaneously on the basis of written sources, archaeological finds, found coins and seals, and art monuments.

He developed in detail the topography, the history of veche relations and the monetary system of ancient Novgorod.

Academician Andrey Anatolievich Zaliznyak(1935) is a linguist, since 1982 he has been studying the language of Novgorod letters. He established the features of the Old Novgorod dialect and, in general, the features of the Old Russian language. Known for his lectures on birch bark at Moscow State University.

What does the excavation look like?

An excavation is a small area of ​​several hundred square meters, on which the expedition must study the cultural layer in one summer or over several archaeological seasons.

The main work of the expedition is that gradually, layer by layer, soil is lifted from the place of work and everything that is in different layers is studied: the foundations of houses, ancient pavements, various objects lost or thrown away by residents in different years.

The peculiarity of the work of archaeologists is based on the fact that in ancient times large-scale earthworks - excavation or vice versa backfilling - were not carried out, so all traces of life and activity remained right there, under people's feet.

For example, a new house could be built on crowns from a burned-out one, having dismantled the top charred logs. Once every thirty or forty years, wooden pavements were rebuilt in Novgorod - right on top of the old boards. Now that the dating of these works has been well studied, it is easy to date them by the layer of the pavement above which an object or letter was found.

The thickness of the cultural layer in some places in Novgorod reaches seven meters. Therefore, a fully developed excavation is a pit of the appropriate depth; in it, archaeologists removed, sifted and studied all the upper layers and reached the mainland - a layer in which there are no traces of human life and activity. The Novgorod mainland corresponds to the twenties and thirties of the 10th century.

What was written in letters?

Diplomas are current business and everyday correspondence. Unlike official papers - princely decrees, annals, spiritual literature - the authors of which assumed that their works would live for a long time, letters tell about the everyday and unofficial life of the ancient Rus.

Thanks to the letters, it was possible to study in detail the genealogy of the boyar families of ancient Novgorod (there are many wills among the documents), to understand the geography of its trade relations (there are bills of sale and receipts). We learned from letters that women in Ancient Russia knew how to write and were quite independent (there are letters in which husbands are given instructions about the household). Children in Ancient Russia usually learned to write at the age of ten or thirteen, but sometimes earlier (there are copybooks and just scribbles).

Spiritual writings and prayers occupy a much smaller place in letters - apparently, it was believed that they had a place in church books, but there are conspiracies.

The most interesting diplomas

Letters 199-210 and 331 - copybooks and drawings of the Novgorod boy Onfim, who lived in the XIII century.

It is known from letters that Onfim was about seven years old, and he was just learning to write. Some of the letters are the writings of Onfim, who studied according to the traditional old Russian method - first he wrote out syllables, then - small pieces of prayers from the Psalter, separate formulas of business documents. In his free time during the lessons, Onfim drew - for example, he portrayed himself as a warrior.

Diploma 752. A love letter from a girl of the 11th century:

“I sent to you three times. What kind of evil do you have against me that you did not come to me this week? And I treated you like a brother! Have I offended you by what I sent to you? And I see you don't like it. If you liked it, then you would have escaped from under people's eyes and rushed ... do you want me to leave you? Even if I offended you by my own ignorance, if you start mocking me, then let God and I judge you.”

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It somehow happened that in Russia for several centuries there has been an opinion that all the most interesting, stunning and mysterious from ancient times is outside our country. The ancient pyramids are Egypt, the Parthenon-Greece, the castles of the Templars-France. One has only to say the word "Ireland", as you immediately imagine: in the dim moonlight, from the fog of green hills, the mysterious "Riders of the Seeds" menacingly leave.

And Russia? Well, seven hundred years ago, mossy bearded men sat over tubs with sauerkraut, blinked their cornflower-blue eyes, built wooden towns, from which barely noticeable ramparts and mounds remained, and that’s all.

But in fact, the medieval material heritage of our ancestors is so striking that sometimes it seems that our almost thousand-year history is growing right out of the grass.

One of the main events that completely turned our understanding of the world of the Russian Middle Ages happened on June 26, 1951 in Veliky Novgorod. There, at the Nerevsky archaeological site, birch bark was first discovered. Today it bears the proud name "Novgorodskaya No. 1".

Draw birch-bark charter No. 1. It is highly fragmented, but it consists of long and completely standard phrases: “So much manure and a gift came from such and such a village,” so it is easily restored.

On a fairly large, but severely torn, as archaeologists say, fragmented piece of birch bark, despite the damage, the text was quite confidently read about what kind of income from a number of villages certain Timothy and Thomas should receive.

Strange as it may seem, the first birch bark letters did not cause a sensation either in domestic or in world science. On the one hand, this has its own explanation: the content of the first letters found is very boring. These are business notes, who owes what to whom and from whom what is owed.

On the other hand, it is difficult, almost impossible, to explain the low interest on the part of science in these documents. In addition to the fact that in the same year, 1951, the Novgorod archaeological expedition found nine more such documents, and in the next year, 1952, the first birch bark was found already in Smolensk. This fact alone testified that domestic archaeologists are on the verge of a grandiose discovery, the scale of which cannot be estimated.

To date, almost 1070 birch bark letters have been found in Novgorod alone. As already mentioned, these documents were found in Smolensk, now their number has reached 16 pieces. The next, after Novgorod, the record holder was Staraya Russa, in which archaeologists found 45 letters.

Birch bark letter No. 419. Prayer book

19 of them were found in Torzhok, 8 in Pskov, and 5 in Tver. This year, the archaeological expedition of the Institute of Archeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences during excavations in Zaryadye, one of the oldest districts of the capital, discovered the fourth Moscow birch bark letter.

In total, letters were found in 12 ancient Russian cities, two of which are located on the territory of Belarus, and one - in Ukraine.

In addition to the fourth Moscow charter, this year the first birch bark charter was found in Vologda. The manner of presentation in it is fundamentally different from Novgorod. This suggests that Vologda had its own, original tradition of the epistolary genre of birch bark messages.

The accumulated experience and knowledge helped scientists to parse this document, but some points in the note are still a mystery even for the best specialists in Old Russian epigraphy.

“I have been waiting for this discovery for 20 years!”

Almost every letter is a mystery. And for the fact that gradually their secrets are revealed to us, the inhabitants of the 21st century, for the fact that we hear the living voices of our ancestors, we should be grateful to several generations of scientists who have been systematizing and deciphering birch bark letters.

And, first of all, here it is necessary to say about Artemy Vladimirovich Artsikhovsky, a historian and archaeologist who organized the Novgorod expedition in 1929. Since 1925, he has been purposefully engaged in archaeological excavations of the monuments of Ancient Russia, starting with the Vyatichi barrows of the Podolsk district of the Moscow province and ending with the grandiose excavations of Novgorod and the discovery of birch bark letters, for which he received universal recognition.

Birch bark No. 497 (second half of the 14th century). Gavrila Postnya invites her son-in-law Grigory and sister Ulita to visit Novgorod.

A colorful description has been preserved of the moment when one of the civilian workers who participated in the excavations, seeing letters on a scroll of birch bark taken out of the wet soil, took them to the head of the site, who was simply speechless from surprise. Seeing this, Artsikhovsky ran up, looked at the find, and, overcoming his excitement, exclaimed: “The premium is one hundred rubles! I have been waiting for this discovery for twenty years!”

Besides the fact that Artemy Artsikhovsky was a consistent and principled researcher, he also had a pedagogical talent. And here it is enough to say one thing: Academician Valentin Yanin was a student of Artsikhovsky. Valentin Lavrentievich was the first to introduce birch bark letters into scientific circulation as a historical source.

This allowed him to systematize the monetary and weight system of pre-Mongol Rus, to trace its evolution and relationship with the same systems in other medieval states. Also, Academician Yanin, relying on a set of sources, including birch bark, identified the key principles of governing the feudal republic, the features of the veche system and the institute of posadniks, senior officials of the Novgorod principality.

But a real revolution in understanding what birch bark writing really is, was made not by historians, but by philologists. The name of Academician Andrey Anatolyevich Zaliznyak stands here in the most honorable place.

Novgorod charter No. 109 (c. 1100) on the purchase of a stolen slave by a combatant. Content: "A letter from Zhiznomir to Mikula. You bought a slave in Pskov, and now the princess grabbed me for this [implied: convicting of the theft]. And then the squad vouched for me. So send a letter to that husband if the slave has him. But I want to, having bought horses and put [on a horse] a princely husband, [to go] to vaults [confrontations]. And you, if [yet] have not taken that money, do not take anything from him. "

In order to understand the importance of Zaliznyak's discovery, one must take into account that before the discovery of birch bark letters in the philological science dealing with ancient Russian texts, there was an idea that all the sources from which we can learn something about the literary language of that time are already known and are unlikely whether they can be supplemented with something.

And documents written in a language close to the spoken one have survived in general. For example, only two such documents of the 12th century are known. And suddenly a whole layer of texts is revealed, generally going beyond what scientists knew about the language of the Russian Middle Ages.

And when researchers in the 50-60s of the last century began to decipher, reconstruct and translate the first birch-bark letters, they were completely convinced that these documents were written at random. That is, their authors confused letters, made all sorts of mistakes and had no idea about spelling. The language of birch-bark letters differed so much from the well-studied, at that time, high, literary and liturgical style of Ancient Russia.

Andrey Anatolyevich proved that birch bark letters were written according to strict grammatical rules. In other words, he discovered the everyday language of medieval Novgorod. And, oddly enough, the level of literacy was so high that finding a letter with a spelling error becomes a real gift for linguists.

And the value of such errors lies in the fact that modern techniques allow us to reconstruct the features of a silent language.

The most trivial example. Let's say our culture disappeared overnight. A thousand years later, archaeologists find miraculously preserved books in Russian. Philologists manage to read and translate these texts.

But the written source does not make it possible to hear the disappeared speech. And suddenly, there is a student's notebook, in which the word "karova", "derivo", "sun", "che" is written. And scientists immediately understand how we spoke and how our spelling differed from phonetics.

Drawings of the boy Onfim

Before the discovery of Andrei Zaliznyak, we did not represent the level of literacy in Russia. We do not yet have the right to say that it was universal, but the fact that it was widespread in much wider sections of the population than previously thought is already a proven fact.

And this is very eloquently evidenced by the letter number 687. It dates from the 60-80s of the XIV century. This is a small piece of a letter, and, judging by the fact that specialists managed to read it, this is a letter of instruction from a husband to his wife. In decryption, it reads as follows: “... buy yourself oil, and [buy] clothes for children, [so-and-so - obviously, a son or daughter] give to teach reading and writing, and horses ... "

From this laconic text, we see that teaching children to read and write in those days was a rather ordinary thing, standing on a par with ordinary household tasks.

Letters and drawings of Onfim

Thanks to birch bark letters, we know how the children of medieval Novgorod learned to write. So, at the disposal of scientists there are two dozen birch bark letters and drawings of the boy Onfim, whose childhood fell on the middle of the 13th century.

Onfim knows how to read, knows how letters are written, knows how to write down liturgical texts by ear. There is a fairly well-reasoned assumption that in Ancient Russia, a child who was learning to read and write first began to write on ceres, thin wooden boards covered with a thin layer of wax. It was easier for the unsteady child's hand, and after the student mastered this science, he was taught to scratch out letters on birch bark with a stylus.

It is these first lessons of Onfim that have come down to us.

This boy from the 13th century, apparently, was a big varmint, since his copybooks are richly seasoned with various kinds of drawings. In particular, the self-portrait of Onfim in the image of a horseman piercing a defeated enemy with a spear is incomparable. We know that the boy depicted himself in the image of a fighting daring man by the word “Onfime” traced to the right of the rider.

Having finished the artistic composition, the mischievous one seemed to catch himself and remembered that, in fact, he received this piece of birch bark not to glorify his upcoming exploits, but to teach him to read and write. And on the remaining undrawn area at the top, he rather clumsily and with gaps displays the alphabet from A to K.

In general, it is precisely due to the fact that Onfim was a reckless naughty that such a number of his prescriptions have come down to us. Apparently, this boy once lost a whole stack of his copybooks on the street, just as some of us, returning home from school, lost notebooks, textbooks, and sometimes entire portfolios.

chronology

If we return to the discoveries of academician Zaliznyak in the field of birch bark letters, then it is worth mentioning one more thing. Andrey Anatolyevich developed a unique method for dating birch bark letters. The fact is that most of the letters are dated stratigraphically. Its principle is quite simple: everything that settles on the ground as a result of human activity is stacked in layers.

And if in a certain layer there is a letter mentioning some Novgorod official, say a posadnik, or an archbishop, and their years of life, or at least reign, are well known from the annals, then we can confidently say that this layer belongs to such a time interval.

This method is supported by the method of dendrochronological dating. Everyone knows that the age of a cut tree can be easily calculated by the number of annual rings. But these rings have different thicknesses, the smaller it is, the more unfavorable the year was for growth. By the sequence of alternating rings, you can find out in which years this tree grew, and often, if the last ring is preserved, and in what year this tree was cut down.

Dendrochronological scales for the Veliky Novgorod region were developed for 1200 years ago. This technique was developed by the domestic archaeologist and historian Boris Aleksandrovich Kolchin, who devoted his scientific activity to excavations in Novgorod.

During archaeological research, it turned out that Novgorod stands on very marshy soil. The streets in Russia were paved with logs split along the fibers, turning them flat side up. Over time, this pavement sank into the marshy soil, and a new flooring had to be made.

During excavations, it turned out that their number can reach up to twenty-eight. Moreover, subsequent discoveries showed that the streets of Novgorod, laid in the 10th century, remained in their places until the 18th century.

Noticing obvious patterns in the sequence of the thickness of the rings on these pavements, Boris Kolchin compiled the world's first dendrochronological scale. And today, any find made in the north-west of Russia, anywhere from Vologda to Pskov, can be dated with an accuracy of almost one year.

But what if a birch bark is found by accident? And there are neither more nor less, but a little less than thirty pieces. As a rule, they are found in the already worked-out soil from excavations, which is taken out for the improvement of various flower beds, lawns and squares. But there were also funny cases. So, one Novgorodian transplanted an indoor flower from one pot to another and found a small birch bark scroll in the ground.

The number of letters found by chance is close to 3% of the total. This is a considerable amount, and, of course, it would be nice to date all of them.

Academician Zaliznyak developed the so-called non-stratigraphic dating method. The age of a literacy is determined by the properties of its language. This is the form of letters, which are known to change over time, and the forms of address, and the forms of the language, as the language develops and changes slightly with each generation.

In total, about five hundred parameters can be used to date an inscription on birch bark by a non-stratigraphic method. In this way, it is possible to date letters with an accuracy of about a quarter of a century. For documents seven hundred years old, this is an excellent result.

"300 children to teach books"

Extremely interesting researches concerning birch-bark writings belong to the Doctor of Philology, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Aleksey Alekseevich Gippius. He came up with a very reasoned hypothesis about who, and why, began to write the first birch bark letters. First of all, Aleksey Alekseevich pointed out that before the official date of the Baptism of Russia, we do not have any data confirming the use of the Cyrillic alphabet in this period.

But after the Epiphany, such artifacts begin to appear. For example, the seal of Yaroslav the Wise and the Novgorod Code is the oldest Russian book. It was found relatively recently, in 2000. These are three thin lime boards, interconnected in the same way as modern books.

The board placed in the middle was covered with a thin layer of wax on both sides, the outer boards were covered with wax only from the inside. On the pages of this "book" are written two psalms and the beginning of the third.

Tools for writing on birch bark and wax. Novgorod. XII-XIV centuries

By itself, this monument is very interesting and hid many secrets, some of which have already been unraveled. But in the context of letters, it is interesting in that it dates from the very beginning of the 11th century, while the earliest birch bark texts were written in the 30s of the same century.

According to Professor Gippius, this means that after the Baptism of Russia and before the appearance of the first charters, there was a rather long period when the book tradition already existed, the state power used inscriptions in its attributes, and the tradition of everyday writing has not yet appeared. In order for this tradition to appear, a social environment must first have been formed that would be ready and able to use this method of communication.

And information about how this environment could have appeared was brought to us by the first Sophian Chronicle. Under 1030, the following message is read: “The same summer the idea of ​​​​Yaroslav on chyud, and I will win, and put up the city of Yuryev. And I came to Novugrad and taught children 300 books from elders and priests. And reposed Archbishop Akim; and his disciple was Ephraim, who taught us more.

In Russian, this passage sounds like this: “In the same year, Yaroslav went to the Chud and defeated it and set up the city of Yuryev (now Tartu). And he gathered 300 children from priests and elders to teach books. And Archbishop Joachim reposed, and his disciple Ephraim, who taught us, was.

And in this dispassionate chronicle segment, we, apparently, hear the voice of one of those first Novgorod schoolchildren who, after graduating from their studies, laid down the everyday tradition of exchanging messages scrawled on birch bark.

"From Rozhnet to Kosnyatin"

The collection of birch bark letters is replenished by an average of a dozen and a half a year. About a quarter of them are whole documents. The rest are more or less complete fragments of notes. As a rule, Novgorodians, having received the news and read it, immediately tried to destroy the message. This explains the number of damaged birch bark notes. The smaller the letter in size, the more likely it is not to be torn apart and that it will reach us in complete safety.

The only complete letter found in Novgorod this year contains the following text: "I am a puppy." A hole was made at the top of this small piece of birch bark, measuring five by five centimeters. It is not difficult to guess that some child scrawled this phrase in order to hang it on the collar of his pet.

However, it is wrong to think that our ancestors wrote messages with or without reason. Novgorodians were pragmatists and wrote letters only when it was necessary.

A huge layer of documents-letters that have come down to us. The father writes to his son, the husband to his wife, the landlord to the clerk, and in the overwhelming majority of cases the content is exclusively business. In second place in terms of quantity are business records, who owes how much to whom, from whom what dues are due. There is even a small body of incantations and spells.

The vast majority of letters of the epistolary genre begin with a phrase that indicates from whom the message is addressed to whom, for example, "from Rozhnet to Kosnyatin." Unsigned birch bark letters are found only in two cases: if they are military orders or reports, and if they are love letters.

Every year, scientists replenish the complex of accumulated knowledge about birch bark writings. Some decipherings made earlier turn out to be erroneous, and seemingly thoroughly studied inscriptions appear before researchers in a completely new light. There is no doubt that the birch bark documents will surprise us many times over in the coming years and reveal many hitherto unknown features of the ancient Novgorodians.

Birch bark letter R24 ​​(Moscow)

“Let’s go, sir, to Kostroma, Yura and his mother, sir, turned us into the back. And he took for himself with his mother 15 bela, tiun took 3 bela, then, sir, he took 20 bela and half a ruble.

Despite the fact that three birch bark letters had already been found in Moscow, it was the fourth one that turned out to be “real” - a birch bark letter of the type that was classic in Novgorod. The fact is that the first two Moscow letters are very small fragments, according to which it is impossible to reconstruct the text.

The third, rather voluminous, but it was written in ink. This way of writing in Novgorod occurs only once. All the rest are scratched on the birch bark with a writing device that most of all resembles a stylus.

It is noteworthy that the writing has long been known to archaeologists involved in the Russian Middle Ages, but only with the discovery of the first writings did it become clear the purpose of this item, which was previously considered a hairpin or a pin, and sometimes even called a thing of indeterminate purpose.

Moscow birch bark document No. 3, preserved in the form of several strips of birch bark.

The fourth Moscow charter was written precisely in writing; it contains, like most classical charters, a financial report on a certain enterprise, in this case, a trip to Kostroma.

A certain person writes to his master: “We went, sir, to Kostroma, and Yuri and his mother turned us back, and took 15 bela, tiun took 3 bela, then sir, he took 20 bela and a half.”

So, someone went on some business to Kostroma, and for the period of writing the letter, these regions were considered the quietest and most peaceful possession of the Moscow princes because of their remoteness from the Horde. And Yuri with a certain mother turned them back.

Moreover, travelers who write about themselves in the plural had to part with a rather considerable amount of money. In total, they gave both Yuri and his mother and the tiuna (as the princely governors were called in Moscow Russia) 28 bela and half a ruble. Is it a lot or a little?

Bela is a small monetary unit, it is named so because once this coin was an analogue of the price of a squirrel skin. From the same row, another monetary unit, the kuna, which was equal in price to the skin of a marten.

Academician Valentin Lavrentievich Yanin for Novgorod of a slightly earlier era defines the dignity of white as 1.87 g of silver, that is, 28 bels is equal to 52.36 grams of silver.

Poltina in ancient times meant half a ruble, and the ruble in those days was not a coin, but a silver bar weighing 170 grams.

Thus, the authors of the Moscow Charter No. 4 parted with money, the total face value of which can be estimated at 137 grams of silver! If we translate this into modern prices in investment coins, it turns out that the loss amounted to 23.4 thousand rubles. The amount is quite tangible for a modern traveler, if he has to part with it just like that.

Dmitry Rudnev

In 1951, apparently, in payment for the war won, they found ancient birch bark letters, instead of those already found and destroyed during the revolution. New letters non-Russian scientists did not dare to destroy or hide in storage. So the Russian researchers got a strong trump card.

Despite the summer heat of 2014 and the disturbing reports that come from Ukraine, the editors of the President newspaper do not miss interesting moments regarding ancient Russian history and the history of the Russian language.

July 26 marks 63 years since the discovery of ancient Russian birch bark letters - a great monument of Russian linguistic history. In connection with this date, we interviewed a well-known linguist, researcher of the ancient period of the Russian language .

– Andrei Alexandrovich, do we know that you have published another monograph? Tell about her.

- It is called " ". On the site a small fragment of the text is given, and in the publishing house . It is dedicated, as the name implies, to the study of the issue of the appearance of letters, numbers and symbols. I have been working on this book since 2005. Understanding the meaning of ancient symbols is not an easy task. Giving them the correct interpretation is an even more difficult task.

– Then how can the researcher understand that he is on the right path?

- You can understand only by the result of the work. I'll give you an example. In The Book of Ra, I realized that I had achieved the correct decoding of ancient meanings when the whole picture of ancient semantics was completely revealed. And this picture was included in the book.

- What is this picture?

- It is very simple and therefore, with a high probability, correct. All letters are formed from an acrostic, which describes the ancient astral myth about the origin of the world and man.

– So your book should also touch on the Bible?

- Naturally! She touches. The "Book of Ra" shows that the Bible is just an alphabet or alphabet, the plot of which has been developed very widely by talented authors.

- And this means that in Russia and in other countries there should be analogues?

- Of course! And they are. I included them in the book. In Russia, this is a fairy tale called the ABC, among the Scandinavians it is a fairy tale called Futhark, among the Turks it is a fairy tale called Altai-Buchay, etc., and among the Semites it is a fairy tale called the Bible. There are similar tales among the ancient Egyptians and many other peoples.

- I wonder how we can study the Russian language of antiquity if we do not have books?

- There are books, only for them you need to go to church. Of course, today the priests will not give Russian books, but soon, perhaps, the country's leadership will understand that the culture of the Russian people cannot be cut off by Christianity, and then we will receive these books.

Why are you so sure that they are?

- Because they are. This can be seen from the works of medieval authors and modern researchers. And, besides, this follows from the fact of the discovery of birch bark letters. After all, letters testify that the entire Russian people were literate already at the very beginning of the 11th century. This is when, for example, the French did not know either forks, or spoons, or cuisine, or writing, or reading - this is how the Queen of France, Anna Yaroslavna, described them in her letter.

- It turns out that ill-wishers missed the publication of birch bark letters?

- It turns out that way. For the first time, traces were destroyed. I'm talking about the time of the revolution, when the kids on the streets played football with birch bark letters from ruined museums. Then everything was destroyed. And in 1951, when under Stalin there was a sharp and rare rise in everything Russian - apparently in payment for the war won - then new ancient birch bark letters were found that non-Russian scientists did not dare to destroy or hide in storage. Now it turns out that Russian researchers have received such a strong trump card.

- Now tell us about the article posted in the Presidential Library and in which you were mentioned?

– Yes, this is really important for my and for Russian studies of the Russian language in general, which, among other things, is based on my work Presidential Library. B.N. Yeltsin published a dictionary entry "The first birch bark manuscript was found in Veliky Novgorod" (link to the article - ). Among the small list of used literature is my report "Birch bark documents as a document", which I made back in 2009. This happened at the Sixth All-Russian Scientific Conference "Archive and Source Studies of Russian History: Problems of Interaction at the Present Stage". The conference took place on June 16-17 at the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History, in Moscow.

Maria Vetrova

Birch bark letters as a document

A.A. Tyunyaev, President of the Academy of Fundamental Sciences, Academician of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences

From the second half of the 20th century, researchers began to receive new written sources - birch bark letters. The first birch bark letters were found in 1951 during archaeological excavations in Novgorod. About 1000 letters have already been discovered. Most of them were found in Novgorod, which allows us to consider this ancient Russian city as a kind of center for the distribution of this type of writing. The total volume of the birch bark dictionary is more than 3200 lexical units, which makes it possible to conduct comparative studies of the language of birch bark letters with any language remaining in the written sources of the same period.

1. Russian birch bark letters of the 11th century

Novgorod was first mentioned in the Novgorod I chronicle under 859, and from the end of the 10th century. became the second most important center of Kievan Rus.

The geography of the finds shows that on the territory of Russia now there are already 11 cities in which birch bark letters were found: Novgorod, Staraya Russa, Torzhok, Pskov, Smolensk, Vitebsk, Mstislavl, Tver, Moscow, Staraya Ryazan, Zvenigorod Galitsky.

Here is a list of charters dating back to the 11th century. Novgorod - No. 89 (1075-1100), No. 90 (1050-1075), No. 123 (1050-1075), No. 181 (1050-1075), No. 245 (1075-1100), No. 246 (1025-1050), No. 247 (1025-1050), No. 427 (1075-1100), No. 428 (1075-1100), No. 526 (1050-1075), No. 527 (1050-1075), No. 590 (1075-1100), No. 591 (1025-1050), #593 (1050-1075), #613 (1050-1075), #733 (1075-1100), #753 (1050-1075), #789 (1075-1100), #903 (1075) -1100), #905 (1075-1100), #906 (1075-1100), #908 (1075-1100), #909 (1075-1100), #910 (1075-1100), #911 (1075-1100) ), No. 912 (1050-1075), No. 913 (1050-1075), No. 914 (1050-1075), No. 915 (1050-1075), No. 915-I (1025-1050). Staraya Russa - No. Art. R. 13 (1075-1100).

From the above list, we see that letters of the 11th century were found only in two cities - in Novgorod and in Staraya Russa. In total - 31 letters. The earliest date is 1025. The latest is 1100.

It can be seen from the text of the letters that 95 percent of the birch bark letters have economic content. So, in charter No. 245 it says: “My cloth is for you: red, very good - 7 arshins, [such and such - so much, such and such - so much]”. And in the charter No. 246 it says: “From Zhirovit to Stoyan. It has been the ninth year since you borrowed from me and did not send me any money. If you don’t send me four and a half hryvnias, then I’m going to confiscate the goods from the noblest Novgorodian for your fault. Let's go good."

The names of people found in the charters of the 11th century are pagan (that is, Russian), and not Christian. Although it is known that at baptism people were given Christian names. There are almost no charters with religious texts (see Diagram 1), neither Christian nor pagan.

By the beginning of the 11th century, the population of Novgorod corresponded not only with addressees located inside the city, but also with those who were far beyond its borders - in villages, in other cities. Villagers from the most remote villages also wrote household assignments and simple letters on birch bark.

Graph 1. The number of birch bark letters found in Novgorod:
of all - in red, of which church texts - in blue. The horizontal axis is years.
Vertical - the number of letters found.
Black color indicates the trend line of Novgorod charters.

Graph 1 shows that the writing of texts on birch bark for the Rus, the inhabitants of Novgorod, was a common thing, at least starting from 1025. Church texts, on the other hand, are rare.

An outstanding linguist and researcher of Novgorod letters, Academician, laureate of the State Prize of the Russian Federation A.A. Zaliznyak claims that " this ancient writing system was very common ... This writing was common throughout Russia» . As early as the beginning of the 11th century all Russian people freely wrote and read – « the reading of birch-bark letters refuted the existing opinion that in Ancient Russia only noble people and the clergy were literate. Among the authors and addressees of letters there are many representatives of the lower strata of the population, in the texts found there is evidence of the practice of teaching writing - the alphabet, copybooks, numerical tables, "pen trials"» . Written by six year old children there is one letter, where, it seems, a certain year is indicated. Written by a six year old boy» . Almost all Russian women wrote - “ now we know for sure that a significant part of women could read and write. 12th century letters in general, in a variety of respects, they reflect a freer society, with a greater development, in particular, of female participation, than a society closer to our time. This fact follows from the birch bark letters quite clearly.» . Literacy in Russia is eloquently evidenced by the fact that “ painting of Novgorod 14th century. and Florence in the 14th century. according to the degree of female literacy - in favor of Novgorod» .

Counts, " Cyrillic was used by Orthodox Slavs; in Russia was introduced in the 10th - 11th centuries. in connection with Christianization» . However, in the "Tale of Bygone Years", a monument from the beginning of the 12th century, there is no information about the baptism of Novgorod. The Novgorod Varvarin Monastery was first mentioned in the annals under 1138. Consequently, the Novgorodians and the inhabitants of the surrounding villages wrote 100 years before the baptism of this city, and the Novgorodians did not get writing from Christians.

2. Writing in Russia before the 11th century

The situation with the existence of writing in Russia has not yet been studied, but many facts testify in favor of the existence of a developed writing system among the Rus before the baptism of Russia. These facts are not denied by modern researchers of this era. Using this script, the Russian people wrote, read, considered, guessed.

So, in the treatise “On Letters”, the Slav Brave, who lived at the end of the 9th - beginning of the 10th centuries, wrote: “ Indeed, before the Slavs did not have books (letters), but, being pagans, they counted and guessed with features and rows". This is also evidenced by V.I. Buganov, linguist L.P. Zhukovskaya and Academician B.A. Rybakov. Information about pre-Christian Russian writing was also included in the encyclopedia: “ Some kind of letter, perhaps, was used by the Slavs already before» .

3. The development of writing in the 9th - 11th centuries

Modern science believes that the Cyrillic alphabet was created in 855-863. brothers Cyril and Methodius. “Cyrillic is the Byzantine uncial (charter) alphabet of the 9th century, supplemented by several letters in relation to the sounds of Slavic speech”, while “most of the additions are variants or modifications of the letters of the same Byzantine charter ...” .

Meanwhile, even I.I. Sreznevsky argued that the Cyrillic alphabet in the form in which it is found in the oldest manuscripts of the 11th century, and even more so, the Cyrillic charter, which usually refers to the 9th century, cannot be considered a modification of the then Greek alphabet. Because the Greeks in the time of Cyril and Methodius no longer used the charter (uncials), but cursive. From which it follows that "Cyril took the Greek alphabet of former times as a model, or that the Cyrillic alphabet was known on Slavic soil long before the adoption of Christianity." Cyril's appeal to a type of writing that has long been out of use in Greece defies explanation, unless Cyril created the "Cyrillic alphabet".

The Life of Cyril testifies in favor of the latest version. Arriving in Chersonese, Cyril “found here the gospel and the psalter, written in Russian letters, and found a man speaking that language, and talked with him, and understood the meaning of this speech, and, comparing it with his own language, distinguished between vowels and consonants , and, praying to God, he soon began to read and expound (them), and many marveled at him, praising God.

From this quote we understand that:

1. The gospel and the psalter before Cyril were written in Russian characters;
2. Kirill did not speak Russian;
3. A certain person taught Cyril to read and write in Russian.

As you know, from the end of the 6th century, the Slavs, supported by the Avar Khaganate and the Bulgarian Khaganate, began to gain a foothold on the Balkan Peninsula, “which in the 7th century. almost entirely inhabited by Slavic tribes who formed their principalities here - the so-called Slavinia (in the Peloponnese, Macedonia), the union of the Seven Slavic tribes, the Slavic-Bulgarian state; part of the Slavs settled within the Byzantine Empire in Asia Minor.

Thus, by the 9th century, the same Slavic tribes lived in both Byzantium and Macedonia. Their language was part of one areal-linguistic community called "satom", including Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbo-Croatian, Romanian, Albanian and Modern Greek. These languages ​​have developed a number of similarities in phonetics, morphology, and syntax. The languages ​​included in the language union have significant commonality in vocabulary and phraseology. Such languages ​​did not require mutual translation.

Nevertheless, Cyril for some reason needed a translation, moreover, from Russian, which he himself saw, or from Greek into a certain “Thessalonica dialect of the Macedonian language”, presented as a “Slavic language”.

We find the answer to this question in the following. In Greece, in addition to traditionally and historically Greek (Slavic) dialects, there was another independent dialect - Alexandrian - formed "under the influence of Egyptian and Jewish elements." It was on it that "the Bible was translated, and many church writers wrote."

4. Analysis of the situation

Russian writing existed before Cyril. As members of the same linguistic community (satom), Russian and Greek were similar and did not require translation.

Christianity was founded in the 2nd century. in Rome. The gospels were written in the Roman language (Latin). In 395, the Roman Empire collapsed as a result of the invasion of nomadic tribes (Bulgarians, Avars, etc.). In the Byzantine Empire during the 6th - 8th centuries. Greek became the official language, and Christian books were translated into it.

Thus, due to the so-called. "Great Migration of Peoples" the population of the Northern Black Sea region and the Balkans began to consist of two unrelated ethnic groups:

1. autochthonous Caucasoid Christian peoples (Greeks, Romans, Russes, etc.);
2. alien Mongoloid Turkic-speaking peoples (Bulgarians, Avars and other descendants of the Khazar, Turkic and other Khaganates who professed Judaism).

Due to the belonging of languages ​​to different language families, there were difficulties in communication between the newcomers and the autochthons, which required the translation of texts. It was for these Turkic-speaking Slavs that Cyril created a Church Slavonic letter different from Greek, Roman, and Russian, “... some of the letters of which were taken from the Hebrew square alphabet.” Borrowed letters are not found in birch bark letters of the 11th century, but are found in all Church Slavonic texts. It was these letters that, as a result of reforms in Russia, were completely excluded from the Russian alphabet.

In this regard, the position of the German church (Latin) in relation to Cyril is understandable - his books were banned. They were not written in Greek, not in Latin, and not in Russian; they were translated by Cyril into the Turkic language of the nomadic Slavs. " Both Byzantium and the West had little interest in preaching Christianity among the barbarian tribes of the Slavs.» .

Russia, however, was not a barbarian Slavic power, but was a full-fledged civilized member of the European hostel, had its own letter - birch bark letters are understandable without translation. And Church Slavonic texts require translation into Russian.

5. Conclusions

1. Between the Russian writing of birch bark letters of the 11th century and Church Slavonic texts of the same period, one cannot put an equal sign, since these two writing systems belong to different ethnic groups of people: the writing of birch bark letters was formed by the Russian people, and Church Slavonic - by the Slavic peoples of the Byzantine territories.
2. Researchers of Novgorod and other cities in which birch bark letters were found should study more carefully the issue related to the process of teaching Russian writing in these cities and adjacent villages.

Birch bark is an inscription made on birch bark. They are monuments of ancient Russian writing of the XI-XV centuries. Their greatest value lies in the fact that they themselves have become sources for the study of the history of medieval society, not only language, but also everyday life.

By the way, not only Russians used birch bark as a material for writing. In this capacity, she served for many other peoples of the world. Birch bark, in a word, is one of the most ancient types of writing.

A bit of history

When did birch bark become widespread in Ancient Russia as a material convenient for writing? Apparently, this happened no later than the 11th century. However, after five centuries, it began to lose its relevance and went out of use, since during this period in Russia such writing material as parchment, a special type of paper, was widely used. Nevertheless, some scribes continued to use the usual birch bark, but, as you understand, birch bark became extremely rare, because it was much more convenient to write on paper. Gradually, birch bark began to be used mainly for rough notes.

Today, each found birch bark letter is carefully studied by specialists and numbered. Two finds are simply amazing: huge birch-bark sheets on which literary works are recorded. One of them has number 17, it was found in Torzhok. Another, Novgorod, letter is known under the number 893.

Scientists have found them on the ground in an unfolded state. Perhaps they were once thrown away because they lost their relevance, but perhaps this place was once an archive or other institution in which they were kept.

Nevertheless, Novgorod birch bark letters were found in such a large number that this clearly indicates that some kind of office was once located at the site of the find, engaged in archiving various documents.

Description of finds

Usually searchers find writing imprinted on birch bark in the form of a folded scroll. And the text on them is usually scratched: either on the inside, or on both sides. However, there are cases when letters are located underground in an unfolded state. A feature of these letters is that the text in them is placed in a continuous line, that is, without division into separate words.

A typical example of this is birch-bark letter number 3, found in Moscow. Among the finds were pieces of birch bark with scratched letters. Historians believe that the owners of these letters, in order to keep the information contained in them secret, tore the birch bark into small pieces.

Opening of birch bark letters

By the way, the fact that in Russia there was such material for writing as birch bark letters was known long before they were discovered by archaeologists. After all, in some archives, entire books written on stratified birch bark have been preserved. However, all of them belonged to a later period than those found.

The first birch bark writing dates back to the 11th century, and those books that are stored in churches and archives date back to the 17th and even 19th centuries, that is, the period when parchment and paper were already actively used by scribes. So why were these manuscripts made on birch bark? The fact is that they all belong to the Old Believers, that is, conservative. In the Volga region, near Saratov, in 1930, archaeologists found a birch bark Golden Horde letter of the XIV century. Unlike the first, it was written in ink.

The nature of birch bark letters

Most of the found records on birch bark are both private and public in nature. These are promissory notes, household instructions, lists, petitions, wills, bills of sale, court records, etc.

However, among them there are also letters containing church texts, such as prayers, teachings, etc. Of particular interest are birch bark manuscripts, which are literary works and educational materials, such as alphabets, school exercises, homework with children's scribbles, etc. d.

Very interesting are the Novgorod birch bark letters discovered in the 50s, containing drawings of the boy Onfim. They belong to the 13th century. A distinctive feature of all letters, without exception, is brevity and pragmatism. Since they could not be large, the scribes wrote down only the most important things here. However, love lyrics were not alien to our ancestors, and among the manuscripts one can find love notes written by the hand of a woman or man in love. In a word, the discovery of birch-bark letters helped the lovers to some extent express their secret feelings.

Where were birch bark manuscripts found?

The environs of Veliky Novgorod are the places where Soviet archaeologists found a birch bark. Along with it, metal or bone pointed rods were also found, which were primitive writing tools - a kind of medieval pens. Rather, they were found before the discovery of birch bark writing. Only archaeologists initially believed that the pointed objects they found were either hairpins or nails.

However, their true purpose was established only after the discovery of letters, that is, after 15-20 years, in the 50s of the last century. After all, because of the Patriotic War, the expedition, begun in the middle of the 30s, was suspended. Thus, the first charter was discovered in July 1951 at the Nerevsky excavation site. It contained a "pozyom" and a "gift", that is, records of feudal duties in favor of Thomas, Iev and Timothy. This letter was found by archaeologist Nina Akulova from Novgorod. For which she received a prize of 100 rubles, and the day of the find, July 26, became the Day of birch bark writing.

After the death of the archaeologist, a monument was erected on her grave with an inscription testifying to this event. During that archaeological season, 9 more birch bark documents were found. And among them is the one that is more interested in scientists. A story was written on the letter. The birch-bark letters of that period were mainly of a business nature, but this one could be attributed to fiction.

As already noted above, the birch bark, adapted for writing, did not have large sizes, so everything contained in it was stated briefly and concisely. “About the unlucky kid” is a real story. Birch bark letters were used as the main material for writing, just like rocks or cave walls served for this among the mountain peoples.

List of cities where birch bark letters were found

Until 2014, about 1060 birch bark letters were found in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. We present to your attention a list of cities near which they were found:

• Smolensk;
• Torzhok;
• Nizhny Novgorod;
• Velikiy Novgorod;
• Pskov;
• Moscow;
• Tver;
• Vitebsk;
• Ryazan and others.

Such is the history of birch bark letters. They once served as material intended for writing. Since the birch grows only in certain areas, it is a real Russian, or rather, a Slavic tree, this type of writing was common among the Slavic peoples, including in Medieval Russia.