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 alarming 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 " ". Online 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?

- Certainly! 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 discovered in Veliky Novgorod" (link to the article - ). Among the small list of used literature is also my report “Birch bark documents as a document”, which I made back in 2009. This happened at the Sixth All-Russian Scientific Conference "Archives 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 documents 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 tests"» . 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 form 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", which included 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 migrant 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.

Even at the beginning of the 20th century, historians considered the population of the Old Russian principalities as almost completely illiterate. It was easy to believe this, since at the beginning of the 20th century the bulk of the Russian population could neither read nor write. It was absolutely impossible to imagine that in the "Dark Ages" someone other than the prince or the monastic class knew the letter. It is generally believed that monasteries were the centers of ancient Russian written culture, where sacred texts were copied and chronicles were kept - a kind of islands of light in the ocean of darkness and ignorance. "Nestor the chronicler", bent over a book in a monastic cell, became a symbol of medieval culture, firmly established in the public consciousness.

The wax was leveled with a spatula and letters were written on it. The oldest Russian book, the 11th-century Psalter, found in July 2000, was just that. A book of three tablets 20x16 cm, covered with wax, carried the texts of the three Psalms of David. During the restoration, it turned out that the tablets were used more than once and, when writing letters, they scratched the base tree. The tempting idea of ​​Academician Andrei Anatolyevich Zaliznyak to read texts previously written on the same wax and retaining traces of letters on the substrate, unfortunately, has not yet been crowned with success.

The uniqueness of Novgorod is that in almost no other medieval city in Europe there was either bark in commercial quantities, or high groundwater, or such a well-preserved cultural layer up to nine meters thick. A few years ago, when birch bark letters were exhibited in Sweden, one local newspaper wrote: "When our ancestors carved runes on stone, the Slavs were already writing letters to each other."

So what did the Slavs write to each other about? A complete set of found birch bark letters with texts and photographs was posted in 2006 on the Internet on the site "Old Russian birch bark letters".

“Bow from Peter Marya. I mowed the meadow, and the lakers (residents of the village of Ozera) took away my hay ... ".

What did Peter ask for? It could be assumed that the husband asked his wife to call the villagers to arm themselves with pitchforks and run to help in order to return by force what was taken away. Still, in the courtyard of the Middle Ages, it seems like Faust recht reigns, fist law. However, a medieval peasant asks his wife to do something completely unbelievable:

“... Write a copy of the bill of sale and come here so that it is clear how the border of my mowing goes”.

This one phrase reveals an unexpected picture. A literate peasant has a literate wife who can read and write. They have a bill of sale for the land. Economic disputes are resolved not by massacre, but by the analysis of documents. And a copy of the deed of sale (quite possibly - a copy on birch bark) is recognized by the parties as a decisive argument. All this somewhat turns our ideas about the "Dark Ages"...

Literacy was taught in Novgorod from childhood, and children's birch bark scripts are well known, where the study of writing in warehouses was interspersed with children's drawings. Diplomas bearing educational texts are quite common - Russian alphabets and even natural numbers ( charter 342, 1320s). A Russian-Karelian dictionary was also found ( charter 403, 1360s).

Letters reflect the parallel coexistence of Orthodoxy and other religions and beliefs. Along with Orthodox texts, liturgical records in Latin were found ( charter 488, 1380s), as well as pagan charms both in Karelian ( charter 292, 1240s), and in Russian: “... So let your heart and your body and your soul flare up with passion for me and for my body and for my face ...” (charter 521, 1400s).

Love notes were also found. From them it became clear that the woman in Novgorod was not a downtrodden domestic creature from the time of Domostroy, but a completely free equal partner. The wife often sent "orders" to her husband and handled money matters. In addition, women often chose their own husbands and even persistently solicited the objects of their passion. By the way, some Western historians declare such published birch bark letters to be fakes, because in Russia in the Middle Ages this could not have happened in principle ... But the letters continue to be found.

Love letter 1100-1120 ( letter 752): “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.

The reaction of the beloved who received this message was peculiar. The letter was cut in the hearts with a knife, the fragments were tied into a knot and thrown into a pile of dung.

Later letters were found at excavations in other cities. The largest charter, more than half a meter long, was found at the excavations of Torzhok, which was previously part of the Novgorod lands. It contained an excerpt from Cyril of Turov's "Word of Wisdom", where the entire list of sins was written out. Such letters were distributed before the Tatar invasion - church authorities declared the appearance of the Tatars the retribution of the Lord for our sins, and therefore all sins had to be remembered and diligently atone for. The sins were written out on a large sheet of birch bark, which is believed to have been kept under pressure to prevent warping. However, apparently, the owner did not have time to pray for all the listed sins - above the undamaged letter there was a two-meter layer of coal from the fire. Tatars came

When did they stop writing birch bark letters? When did the centuries-old folk tradition of teaching children to write, write notes and instructions, and keep business notes stop? When did the people of Novgorod cease to be literate? Here opinions differ.

Some historians argue that after the annexation of Novgorod to Moscow, writing letters did not stop at all. It's just that progress came with the Moscow authorities, and instead of free birch bark, which is always at hand, all the townspeople began to write on expensive purchased paper, which is no longer preserved in the ground.

There were statements that birch bark letters continued to be written even after the fall of the Novgorod Republic. However, during the reign of Catherine II, drainage work was carried out in the city, the upper layers of the cultural layer dried up, and letters later at the end of the 15th century decayed into dust evenly throughout the cultural layer.

There were also such opinions that after Ivan III took away their lands from the Novgorodians, the need for any correspondence disappeared altogether. It became pointless for city residents to correspond with the managers of their non-existent properties.

Although it is possible that those who believe that birch bark letters disappeared along with their authors are right. Here we must also recall the eviction of 2000 Novgorod residents by Ivan III from Novgorod. And church persecution of Novgorod "heresies" accompanied by the execution of heretics. And the defeat of Novgorod by the guardsmen of Ivan the Terrible with the destruction of the Novgorod archive. And the later Swedish occupation. And the food crisis, and severe famine. Other times and customs came, and the Novgorod lands quickly became empty. So, when compiling the "watch books", the population census, in 1614 it turned out that the Novgorod lands had practically died out. The population of the Bezhetskaya and Derevskaya Pyatinas accounted for 4% and 1.5% of the population in 1500.

Back in 1842, Alexander Ivanovich Herzen remarked: “How Novgorod lived from Ivan Vasilyevich to St. Petersburg, no one knows”. The historian Sergei Fedorovich Platonov believed that the time from the oprichnina to the Northern War was a "suffering period" in the history of Novgorod. Which, however, does not fully explain why the inhabitants of the Novgorod lands suddenly stopped writing on birch bark at once.

However, according to Academician Valentin Lavrentievich Yanin, less than 2% of the area of ​​the cultural layer has been excavated in Novgorod. This means that the work on the study of birch bark letters is at the very beginning. Perhaps new findings will be able to answer this question.

Partner news

On this day, everyone gathers at the monument erected to a simple Novgorod woman, Nina Akulova. Students of historical faculties of Novgorod State University and other universities of the country, schoolchildren, Novgorodians of various professions, who are regular participants in the archaeological seasons, come.

But this holiday is dear not only to archaeologists. It is increasingly celebrated by everyone who is somehow connected with this wonderful and irreplaceable natural material.

What do the letters say

Finds at the Nerevsky archaeological excavation speak not only of the existence of writing. Birch bark has long been used for a variety of purposes. Among the latest finds of archaeologists on the territory of Novgorod, there were also pieces of birch bark with painting, embossing and figured carving, dating back to the 11th-14th centuries.

Leonid Dzhepko, CC BY-SA 3.0

These finds indicate that birch bark art products have been common in the life of the Russian people since very ancient times. However, the legends, written sources and things that have come down to us make it possible to get a far from complete picture of how this peculiar art developed.

The excavation material at Beloozero, kept in the Vologda Museum of Local Lore, testifies to the existence of embossed birch bark in the 12th-13th centuries. It can be assumed that from Novgorod lands, through Rostov-Suzdal, for a number of historical reasons, Shemogoda birch bark carving turned into a craft.

The Vologda Museum holds an illustrated manuscript of the late 18th century, written in the Spaso-Kamenny Monastery. The illustrations of this most curious document are combinations of icon-painting and folklore motifs, with a clear predominance of the latter.

Secretary of Turabey, CC BY-SA 3.0

Three sheets of the manuscript have images of birch bark objects, decorated with carvings and embossing. On one of them is death with a scythe, behind her shoulders is a box with arrows. A birch bark box, judging by the drawing, decorated with embossing.

Also a craft

Writing on birch bark letters is a special skill that can perhaps be considered a craft.

Of course you need to know the letter, but this is not enough. The letters were squeezed out (scratched out) on birch bark with the tip of a metal or bone tool specially designed for this purpose - writing (stylus). Only a few letters are written in ink.

B222, CC BY-SA 3.0

Written letters were regularly found in archaeological excavations, but it was not clear why their reverse side was made in the form of a spatula. The answer was soon found: archaeologists began to find in the excavations well-preserved boards with a recess filled with wax - ceres, which also served to teach literacy.

The wax was leveled with a spatula and letters were written on it.

The oldest Russian book, the Psalter of the 11th century (c. 1010, more than half a century older than the Ostromirov Gospel), found in July 2000, was just such. A book of three tablets 20×16 cm, covered with wax, carried the texts of the three Psalms of David.

Opening of birch bark letters

The existence of birch bark writing in Russia was known even before the discovery of letters by archaeologists. In the monastery of St. Sergius of Radonezh "the very books are not written on charters, but on birch bark" (Joseph Volotsky).

Dmitry Nikishin, CC BY-SA 3.0

Veliky Novgorod became the place where the birch bark letters of medieval Russia were first discovered. The Novgorod archaeological expedition, which has been working since the 1930s under the leadership of A. V. Artsikhovsky, has repeatedly found cut sheets of birch bark.

However, the Great Patriotic War (during which Novgorod was occupied by the Germans) interrupted the work of archaeologists, and they resumed only in the late 1940s.

Significant find

On July 26, 1951, birch bark No. 1 was discovered at the Nerevsky excavation. It contained a list of feudal duties - “pozem” and “gift”, in favor of three landowners: Thomas, Iev and the third, who may have been named Timothy.

unknown , CC BY-SA 3.0

This certificate was found by Nina Akulova, a Novgorodian, who came to the excavation to earn extra money during her maternity leave. Noticing letters on a dirty birch bark scroll, she called the head of the section, Gaida Avdusina.

Realizing what was the matter, she was speechless. Artsikhovsky, who ran up, also could not utter anything for several minutes, and then exclaimed: “The bonus is one hundred rubles! I have been waiting for this discovery for twenty years!

The same archaeological season brought 9 more birch bark documents, published only in 1953. At first, the discovery of birch bark letters did not receive proper coverage in the press, which was due to ideological control in Soviet science.

Mitrius, CC BY-SA 3.0

The discovery showed that, contrary to fears, ink was almost never used when writing letters: only three such letters out of more than a thousand were found during excavations. The text was simply scratched on the bark and was easily read.

During the excavations, empty sheets of birch bark are also found - blanks for writing, showing the possibility of finding birch bark letters with text in the future.

In different cities

Since 1951, birch bark letters have been discovered by archaeological expeditions in Novgorod, and then in a number of other ancient Russian cities.

The largest expedition - Novgorod - works annually, but the number of letters in different seasons varies greatly - from more than a hundred to zero, depending on which layers are excavated.

Most birch bark letters are private letters of a business nature. This category is closely related to debt lists, which could serve not only as records for themselves, but also as instructions to “take so much from such and such” and collective petitions of peasants to the feudal lord (XIV-XV centuries).

In addition, there are drafts of official acts on birch bark: wills, receipts, bills of sale, court records, etc.

The following types of birch bark letters are relatively rare, but of particular interest: church texts (prayers, commemoration lists, orders for icons, teachings), literary and folklore works (spells, school jokes, riddles, housekeeping instructions), educational records (alphabets , warehouses, school exercises, children's drawings and doodles). The study notes and drawings of the Novgorod boy Onfim, discovered in 1956, gained immense fame.

The everyday and personal nature of many birch bark letters of Veliky Novgorod, for example, love letters from ignoble young people or housekeeping instructions from a wife to her husband, testify to the high spread of literacy among the population.

Photo gallery

Helpful information

Birch bark letters
Wrote

Letters on birch bark

Letters and records on birch bark - written monuments of Ancient Russia in the 11th-15th centuries. Birch bark documents are of paramount interest as sources on the history of society and everyday life of medieval people, as well as on the history of the East Slavic languages. Birch-bark writing is also known to a number of other cultures of the peoples of the world.

Many

Museums and archives have preserved many late, mostly Old Believer documents, even whole books written on specially processed (stratified) birch bark (XVII-XIX centuries). On the banks of the Volga near Saratov, peasants, digging a silo pit, in 1930 found a birch bark Golden Horde charter of the XIV century. All of these manuscripts are written in ink.

Wrote

Pisala - sharpened metal or bone rods, known as a tool for writing on wax. However, before the discovery of birch bark letters, the version that it was she who wrote it was not prevailing, and they were often described as nails, hairpins, or "unknown objects."

The oldest stylus-writing in Novgorod come from the layers of 953-989. Even then, Artsikhovsky had a hypothesis about the possibility of finding letters scratched on birch bark.

Monument to Nina Akulova

Nina Fedorovna Akulova is a resident of Veliky Novgorod. On July 26, 1951, at the Nerevsky archaeological excavation in Novgorod in the layers of the 14th-15th centuries, she was the first to find a birch bark document.

This finding became very important for all future research. The family of Nina Feodorovna put forward the initiative to perpetuate this event in a monument. The initiative was supported by the Novgorodians.

On the monument to Nina Akulova there is an image of the same birch bark number 1, which glorified Novgorod for centuries. In 13 lines in the Old Slavonic language, the villages were listed, from which duties came in favor of a certain Thomas. This letter from the distant past became a sensation for historians in the late 50s of the last century.

Every year, everyone gathers at this monument and the celebration of the Birch Bark Day begins with this.

Random but important

A lot of letters were found during the archaeological control of earthworks - construction, laying of communications, and also found just by accident.

Among the random finds, in particular, is letter No. 463, found by a student of the Novgorod Pedagogical Institute in the village of Pankovka in a pile of waste soil taken out from the excavations, which was supposed to be used for the improvement of the local square and a small fragment No. 612, found by a resident of Novgorod Chelnokov at home in a flower pot when transplanting flowers.

Perhaps birch bark is just a draft

There are suggestions that birch bark was considered as an ephemeral, non-prestigious material for writing, unsuitable for long-term storage.

It was used mainly as a material for private correspondence and personal records, and more responsible letters and official documents were written, as a rule, on parchment, only their drafts were trusted to birch bark.

For example, in letter No. 831, which is a draft of a complaint to an official, there is a direct instruction to rewrite it on parchment and only then send it to the addressee.

Modern man is interested in how his ancestors lived many centuries ago: what did they think about, what was their relationship like, what did they wear, what did they eat, what did they strive for? And chronicles report only about wars, the construction of new churches, the death of princes, the election of bishops, solar eclipses and epidemics. And here birch bark letters come to the rescue, which historians consider the most mysterious phenomenon in Russian history.

What is birch bark

Birch bark is notes, letters and documents made on birch bark. Today, historians are sure that birch bark served as a written material in Russia before the advent of parchment and paper. Traditionally, birch-bark letters date back to the period of the 11th-15th centuries, but Artsikhovsky and many of his supporters argued that the first letters appeared in Novgorod as early as the 9th-10th centuries. One way or another, this archaeological discovery turned the view of modern scientists on Ancient Russia and, more importantly, allowed us to look at it from the inside.

First birch bark

It is worth noting that scientists consider Novgorod letters to be the most interesting. And this is understandable. Novgorod is one of the largest centers of Ancient Russia, which at the same time was neither a monarchy (like Kyiv) nor a principality (like Vladimir). “The Great Russian Republic of the Middle Ages,” the socialist Marx called Novgorod so.

The first birch-bark letter was found on July 26, 1951 during archaeological excavations on Dmitrovskaya Street in Novgorod. The letter was found in the gap between the planks of the flooring on the pavement of the 14th century. Before the archaeologists was a dense birch bark scroll, which, if not for the letters, could be mistaken for a fishing float. Despite the fact that the letter was tattered by someone and thrown away on Kholopya Street (that's what it was called in the Middle Ages), it retained quite large parts of the associated text. There are 13 lines in the letter - a total of 38 cm. And although time did not spare them, it is not difficult to catch the content of the document. The letter listed the villages that paid a duty to some Roma. After the first discovery, others followed.

What did the ancient Novgorodians write about?

Birch bark letters have a very different content. So, for example, letter number 155 is a note on the court, which instructs the defendant to compensate the plaintiff for the damage caused in the amount of 12 hryvnia. Diploma number 419 - prayer book. But the letter number 497 was an invitation from the son-in-law Grigory to stay in Novgorod.

The birch bark letter sent by the clerk to the master says: A bow from Mikhail to Master Timothy. The land is ready, you need a seed. Come, sir, the whole man is simple, and we can have rye without your word».

Love notes and even an invitation to an intimate date were found among the letters. A note from a sister to her brother was found, in which she writes that her husband brought home a mistress, and they, drunk, beat her half to death. In the same note, the sister asks her brother to come and intercede for her as soon as possible.

As it turned out, birch-bark letters were used not only as letters, but also as announcements. So, for example, letter number 876 contains a warning that in the coming days, repair work will be carried out on the square.

The value of birch bark letters, according to historians, lies in the fact that the vast majority of these are everyday letters, from which you can learn a lot about the life of Novgorodians.

The language of birch bark

An interesting discovery in relation to birch bark letters was the fact that their language (written Old Slavonic) is somewhat different from what historians are used to seeing. The language of birch bark contains several cardinal differences in the spelling of some words and combinations of letters. There are differences in the placement of punctuation marks. All this led scientists to the conclusion that the Old Church Slavonic language was very heterogeneous and had many dialects, which sometimes differed greatly from each other. This theory was confirmed by further discoveries in the field of the history of Russia.

How many letters

To date, 1050 letters have been found in Novgorod, as well as one birch bark icon. Letters were also found in other ancient Russian cities. In Pskov, 8 letters were found. In Torzhok - 19. In Smolensk - 16 letters. In Tver - 3 letters, and in Moscow - five. In Staraya Ryazan and Nizhny Novgorod, one letter was found. Letters were also found in other Slavic territories. In Belarusian Vitebsk and Mstislavl - one letter each, and in Ukraine, in Zvenigorod Galitsky - three birch bark letters. This fact indicates that birch-bark letters were not the prerogative of the Novgorodians and dispels the popular myth of the total illiteracy of the common people.

Modern research

The search for birch bark letters is still going on today. Each of them is subjected to a thorough study and decoding. The last letters found did not contain letters, but drawings. Only in Novgorod, archaeologists discovered three charter-drawings, two of them were depicted, apparently, the prince's combatants, and on the third there is an image of female forms.

The mystery for scientists remains the fact how exactly the Novgorodians exchanged letters, and who delivered the letters to the addressees. Unfortunately, so far there are only theories on this score. It is possible that already in the 11th century Novgorod had its own post office, or at least a “courier delivery service” designed specifically for birch bark letters.

No less interesting historical topic, by which one can judge the traditions of the ancient Slavic women's costume.

Birchbark letters- letters, notes, documents of the 11th-15th centuries, written on the inside of a separated layer of birch bark (bark).

The possibility of using birch bark as a material for writing was known to many nations. Ancient historians Cassius Dio and Herodian mentioned notebooks made of birch bark. The American Indians of the Connecticut River Valley, who prepared birch bark for their letters, called the trees that grew in their land "paper birches." The Latin name of this species of birch - Betula papyrifera - includes a distorted Latin lexeme "paper" (papyr). In the famous Song of Hiawatha G. W. Longfellow (1807–1882), translated by I. A. Bunin, also provides data on the use of birch bark for writing by North American Indians:

He took paints out of the bag,
He took out paints of all colors
And on a smooth birch bark
Made a lot of secret signs
Marvelous and figures and signs…

Based on the folklore of the tribes he describes, the American writer James Oliver Carwood spoke about the birch bark letters of the Indians of Canada (his novel Wolf hunters published in Russian in 1926).

The first mention of writing on birch bark in Ancient Russia dates back to the 15th century: in Messages Joseph of Volotsky says that the founder of the Trinity-Sergius Monastery, Sergius of Radonezh, wrote on it because of poverty: parchment was saved for chronicles. On Estonian soil in the 14th century. there were birch bark letters (and one of them in 1570 with a German text was discovered in a museum depository before the Second World War). About birch bark letters in Sweden in the 15th century. wrote an author who lived in the 17th century; it is also known that they were later used by the Swedes in the 17th and 18th centuries. Siberia in the 18th century birch bark "books" were used to record yasak (state tax). Old Believers and in the 19th century. they kept birch bark liturgical books of the "Donikon era" (that is, before the church reform of Patriarch Nikon in the middle of the 17th century), they were written in ink.

However, until the early 1950s, Russian archaeologists failed to find ancient Russian birch bark writings in the early cultural layers of the 10th–15th centuries they excavated. The first accidental find was a 14th-century Golden Horde birch bark, discovered while digging a silo pit near Saratov in 1930. After that, archaeologists tried to find birch bark letters exactly where there was no moisture access to birch bark, as was the case in the Volga region. However, this path turned out to be a dead end: in most cases, the birch bark turned into dust, and it was not possible to detect traces of letters. Only the deep conviction of the Soviet archaeologist A.V. Artsikhovsky that birch bark writing should be sought in the north-west of Russia made it necessary to organize special excavations in the center of Novgorod. The soils there, in contrast to the Volga region, are very wet, but there is no air access to the deep layers, and therefore it is wood objects that are well preserved in them. Artsikhovsky based his hypotheses both on ancient Russian references in literary texts and on the message of the Arab writer Ibn al-Nedim, who quoted the words of “one Caucasian prince” in 987: “I was told by one, on the veracity of which I rely, that one of the kings of Mount Kabk sent him to the tsar of the Russians; he claimed that they had writing carved into wood. He showed me a piece of white wood on which there were images…” This “piece of white wood” is birch bark, plus information about the prevalence of letters on birch bark among the natives of the New World and forced him to look for birch bark letters in northwestern Russia.

Artsikhovsky's prediction about the inevitability of finds of birch bark letters in the Russian land, first expressed by him in the early 1930s, came true on June 26, 1951. The first Novgorod birch bark document was discovered at the Nerevsky excavation site of Veliky Novgorod by a handyman N. F. Akulova. Since then, the number of birch bark letters found has already exceeded a thousand, of which over 950 were found just in the Novgorod land. In addition to Novgorod, over 50 years of excavations, about 100 birch bark letters were found (one and a half dozen in Pskov, several letters each in Smolensk, Tver, Vitebsk, the only one, folded and laid in a closed vessel, was found in 1994 in Moscow). In total, about 10 cities of Russia are known where birch bark letters were found. Most of them are supposed to be found in Pskov, where soils are similar to those of Novgorod, but the cultural layer in it is located in the built-up city center, where excavations are practically impossible.

Birch bark scrolls were a common household item. Once used, they were not stored; that is why most of them were found on both sides of wooden pavements, in layers saturated with groundwater. Some texts, probably, accidentally fell out of the Novgorod patrimonial archives.

The chronology of letters on birch bark is established in various ways: stratigraphic (according to the tiers of excavations), paleographic (according to the inscription of letters), linguistic, historical (according to known historical facts, personalities, dates indicated in the text). The oldest of the birch bark documents dates back to the first half of the 11th century, the latest to the second half of the 15th century.

Historians suggest that poorly trained townspeople and children wrote mainly on waxed tablets; and those who mastered the graphics and filled their hands, were able to squeeze out letters on birch bark with a sharp bone or metal stick (“writing”). Similar sticks in tiny leather cases were found by archaeologists before, but they could not determine their purpose, calling either “pins” or “fragments of jewelry”. Letters on birch bark were usually squeezed out on the inner, softer side, on the exfoliated part, specially soaked, evaporated, unfolded and thus prepared for writing. Letters written in ink or other colors, apparently, cannot be found: the ink has faded and washed out over the centuries. Letters sent to the addressee on birch bark were folded into a tube. When the letters are found and deciphered, they are again soaked, unfolded, the upper dark layer is cleaned with a coarse brush, dried under pressure between two glasses. Subsequent photography and drawing (for many years M.N. Kislov was the head of these works, and after his death - V.I. Povetkin) is a special stage of reading, preparation for the hermeneutics (interpretation, interpretation) of the text. A certain percentage of letters remain traced, but not deciphered.

The language of most birch bark letters differs from the literary language of that time, it is rather colloquial, everyday, contains normative vocabulary (which indicates that there was no ban on its use). About a dozen letters were written in Church Slavonic (literary language), a few in Latin. According to the most conservative estimates, in the Novgorod land you can still find at least 20,000 "birch barks" (the Novgorod name for such letters)

The content is dominated by private letters of a domestic or economic nature. They are classified according to the preserved information: about land and landowners, about tributes and feudal rent; about craft, trade and merchants; about military events, etc., private correspondence (including alphabets, copybooks, drawings), literary and folklore texts in excerpts, voting lots, calendars, etc.

As a historical source of the period of early writing, birch bark documents are unique in terms of the information they contain about Russia in the 10th–15th centuries. The data available in them make it possible to judge the size of duties, the relationship of peasants with the patrimonial administration, the “refusals” of peasants from their owner, the life of “owners” (owners of land cultivated by the family and occasionally hiring someone to help). There you can also find information about the sale of peasants with land, their protests (collective petitions), which cannot be found in other sources of such an early time, since the annals preferred to remain silent about this. The certificates characterize the technique of buying and selling land and buildings, land use, collecting tribute to the city treasury.

Valuable information about the legal practice of that time, the activities of the judiciary - the princely and "street" (street) court, about the procedure for legal proceedings (dispute resolution on the "field" - a fist fight). Some of the letters themselves are court documents containing a statement of real incidents in matters of inheritance, guardianship, and credit. The significance of the discovery of birch bark letters lies in the ability to trace the personification of the historical process, the implementation of the legal and legislative norms of Russian Truth and other normative documents of criminal and civil law. The oldest ancient Russian marriage contract - 13th century. - also birch bark: “Come for me. I want you, and you want me. And for that, the rumor (witness) Ignat Moiseev.

Several charters contain new data on political events in the city, the attitude of the townspeople towards them.

The most striking evidence of the everyday life of the townspeople, preserved by birch bark letters, is the everyday correspondence of husbands, wives, children, other relatives, customers of goods and manufacturers, owners of workshops and artisans dependent on them. In them one can find records of jokes (“Ignorant wrote, unthinking [one] showed, and who read it ...” - the record is cut off), insults using abusive vocabulary (the latest finds of 2005). There is also the text of an ancient love note: “I sent to you three times this week. Why didn't you ever respond? I feel like you don't like it. If you were pleasing, you, having escaped from human eyes, would have run headlong to me. But if you [now] laugh at me, then God and my thinness (weakness) of a woman will be your judge.

Of exceptional importance are the evidence of confessional practices, including pre-Christian ones, found in letters. Some of them are associated with the “cattle god Veles” (pagan patron god of cattle breeding), others with the conspiracies of “sorcerers”, others are apocryphal (non-canonical) prayers to the Mother of God. “The sea was indignant, and seven simple-haired wives came out of it, cursed by their appearance ...”, says one of the letters with the text of the conspiracy from these “seven wives - seven fevers” and an appeal to the demon-fighters and “angels flying from heaven” to save from "shake".

In terms of significance, the discovery of birch bark letters is comparable to the deciphering of Egyptian hieroglyphs, the discovery of Troy described by Homer, and the discovery of the mysterious culture of the ancient Maya. 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 (including with the owner's designations, one of them, 13th century, belongs to the boy Onfim), copybooks, numerical tables, "probes of the pen ". A small number of letters with fragments of literary texts is explained by the fact that parchment was used for literary monuments, and from the 14th century. (occasionally) - paper.

Annual excavations in Novgorod after the death of the archaeologist Artsikhovsky are conducted under the guidance of Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences V.L. Yanin. He continued the academic publication of drawings of birch bark letters (the last of the volumes included letters found in 1995–2000). To facilitate the use of texts of diplomas by Internet users, since 2005, re-shooting of diplomas in digital format has been carried out.

Natalya Pushkareva