Noble ancestors

Speaking at the anniversary of one of his teachers, academician Boris Piotrovsky (Piotrovsky Sr.), I read the verses of my own compositions dedicated to the hero of the day. There were such lines:

As soon as we sat down at the desk ,
Already crammed about Urartu .

It was true. Since 1930, Piotrovsky, along with Armenian colleagues, began his research on monuments to Urartu. Urartu was the first state in the territory of the Soviet Union - our first state. Our noble ancestors who were to be proud of were written by Assyrian cuneiform signs, and the Urartians themselves owned writing, built impressive fortresses, fought with Assyria and Scythians.

But, in fact, who is proud of? Yes, of course, the whole country, but not in the first place. Everyone understands that first of all, the peoples of Transcaucasia living in the same territory were entitled to be proud of - Georgians or Armenians. These are their direct ancestors.

Biologically uraarts are similar to those and others. But their language was not related either by either Armenian or Georgian. There is even no question of Azerbaijan: it is generally Turkic. Between the Georgian and Armenian historians, a hidden confrontation flared up - to whom the exclusive right to the legacy of Urartian culture belongs. In 1937, a textbook of history of the USSR A.V. Shestakova, in which Urartu, the first state in the USSR, was defined as "the state of the ancestors of present Georgia." After all, we were ruled by the royal Georgian, how else! This was immediately picked up by A.S. Svanidze, then still a friend and Shurin Stalin, who did not have time to get into disgrace and under the execution, the creator of the magazine "Bulletin of Ancient History". And Piotrovsky married Armenian and was elected a corresponding member of the Armenian Academy of Sciences.

But Piotrovsky was a very cautious person, a great diplomat. He chose a neutral position: Urartu is a focus of several peoples, in particular Georgians and Armenians. In 1938, academician S.N. fell upon his report in the USSR Academy of Sciences Dzhanashia, who demanded to recognize in the resolution the priority of Georgians in the legacy of Urartu. Other academicians stood up for Piotrovsky, and the case was completed with a compromise: they did not accept any resolution.

In 1950, a discussion was held in Pravda, and Stalin personally spoke out against the teachings of Academician Marra, and Piotrovsky was his student, Piotrovsky’s position was shaken. The following year, an academic collection with his article on Urartu was published. The collection was requested by Stalin personally. The surname of Piotrovsky was circled by him in the table of contents - Stalin addressed his article. Every time Piotrovsky mentioned the cuneiform inscriptions found, the leader made notes in the fields with a blue pencil: “In what language?”, “What language?”, “Language?” “And so almost twenty times.” He feared whether the author was interpreting the culture of Urartu as Protoarmian. Stalin made ironic notes against his passages that he had not liked: “Ha!”, “Ha ha!”, “Ha ha ha!”.

But in the end, seeing the conclusion that both peoples - Armenians and Georgians arose from Urartu, Stalin put the sign “N” in the fields, and circulated the word “arose” with a pencil. The author of the modern review of the Stalinist reading B.S. Ilizarov exclaims: “Uf-f! It can be said to have carried. " It was not only carried: Piotrovsky was appointed director of the Leningrad branch of the Institute of Archeology of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

Meanwhile, the Urartian state was located on the territory of the Armenian Highlands, covering the present Armenia, Eastern Turkey, North-West Iran and the Nakhichevan region of Azerbaijan. Georgia here was not hurt in any way. The language is related to the Hurrita - the ancient language of Northern Mesopotamia. Further language ties of the Urarto-Hurrite family are not reliably traced. And the Armenian is Indo -European, in the Caucasus, a newcomer, from the Balkans. In culture, undoubtedly, the greatest share of the Urartian heritage went to the Armenians, as probably a significant part of Urartian vocabulary.

Does this give any special advantages over neighboring Armenian people? Yes, no, as it does not take away any rights. The rights to the territory are determined by the tradition of living for at least several generations, and most importantly, the system of international treaties. After all, the peoples changed their borders, moved, expanding or narrowing their areas. And you can always find the times when the people own neighboring land and has their fellow tribesmen on them. If it were not for the system of international treaties, all nations would have torn each other.

In recent decades, in our country and the environs, the status of noble ancestors of the Aria in a strange way has in a strange way. Not historical arias (Indo -Iranian peoples): Indo -Aryans (Hindi, Bengals, Singal, Gypsies, etc.) and Iranians (Persians, Pashtuns, Tajiks, Ossetians, Ancient Scythians, etc.). No, rather, the Aryans are a mythical Nordic race. The German variety of this idea went bankrupt along with the fall of the Hitler Reich, and the romantic halo around this image of the Aryan has survived and from time to time attracts to its ominous Standard of Ossetians, Russians, then Chechens, Uzbeks (and, of course, Tajiks-even the Aryan’s poor Kyrgyz had to be posted And in their own Aryan posters). Ariars are all the same noble ancestors, but their nobility is not based on historical documents, but on the anthropological myth - on the old "racial theory".

Thus, scientists of new states born on the periphery of Russia from the former union republics are engaged in the shameless adjustment of ethnogenetic concepts for the needs of regional nationalist policy. Akhmadali Askarov, a professional archaeologist who made a number of interesting archaeological discoveries in the field, took up this in Uzbekistan. Askarov’s quite competent articles were published in Soviet publications. Then he did not object to the magnificent books and articles E.E. Kuzmina, in which the Indo -Iranian nature of the Andronovsky culture was proved - as far as this can prove to a comparison of archeology with historical sources and linguistics.

Now, having become an academician of Uzbekistan, Askarov printed a series of articles in which he accuses everyone who adheres to the Indo -Iranian affiliation of the Andronovsky culture, “European -dersocentrism” (SIC! - L. ) and colonializing inflasis and not only insists that the Andronovsky culture is Turks, but also announces the Turks Aryans. All this is summarized in the article “Aryan problem: new approaches and views” in the collection “History of Uzbekistan in archaeological and written sources” (Tashkent, 2005). The article was written in a terrifyingly broken Russian language, and now it has become obvious that Academician Askarov always wrote in such a language, but Russian editors always ruled it, and now he has no good Russian secretaries and writes as he says. We heard the true Askarov.

Having listed the anecdotal signs of the Aryan, sought by archaeologists (a mound like Solokhi, a grave with “ violent but killed combat conges ” and a gold chariot, etc.), he believes that on the basis of these signs, archaeologists sought to substantiate the viability of linguists about the origin of the Aryans “ and determine their original homeland , t . e . They began to look for toponyms , under those who were faced that the Stepa of the North Black Sea region were the original homeland of the Indo -Iranian tribes ... ”

It is read as an anecdote, but this is a bad joke.

Noble ancestors were looking for the Russian people for a long time. At first these were Scythians. “Yes , we , the Scythians , with slanting and greedy eyes , ” said A. Blok, apparently, after his father, who worked for a long time with Professor Samokvasov at Warsaw University, and he put forward this patriotic hypothesis. But the hypothesis did not materialize. The Scythians turned out to be Iranian, which was confirmed by Academician V.I. Abaev, Ossetian, not just reading the Scythian words from the Ossetian language, but showing ancient Iranian etymology. From here, the Ossetian idea of ​​origin from the Scythians was leading from.

And the Russians found other noble ancestors - the Tripoli culture, the first farmers on our land. The author of this hypothesis was Academician B.A. Rybakov. But this thread broke off twice: firstly, archaeologists and linguists rejected the continuity between the Tripoli culture and the Slavs, and secondly, Ukraine separated together with the Tripoli culture. Now it is “the first civilization of Europe”, “civilization of Arata”, “the country of the first cities”, demonstrating the antiquity of the Ukrainian people. We must pay tribute to Ukrainian archaeologists, they do not participate in this nationalist PR campaign and even expose it.

And the Scythian origin of the Ossetians did not last long. The Ossetian language is not a continuation of Scythian - it continues the Sarmatian speech, which was, according to Herodotus, is related to Scythian, but still not Scythian. Among the post -Chief population of the Northern Black Sea region and the pre -Caucasia in the works of ancient authors, Alans are most often mentioned - these are their remnants, or rather, the direct descendants of these residues, are Ossetians.

Alans - arias in the exact historical sense of the word, according to the scientific linguistic classification, and the ethnonym Alan quite naturally comes from the Prairan * aryana - “Iranian”. Their warlike migrations are studied by historians, on the basis of their language some early options for the Nart epic developed. I happened to dig out the royal mound of the 1st century n. e. On the Don (Garden Kurgan), apparently belonging to them, with a lot of gold and silver. But the Ossetian people we respect not for this.

Alans created large but ephemeral associations. The Nart epos was borrowed and also developed by other Caucasian peoples. According to these contacts, Nart words penetrated into the speech of neighboring nationalities. On this basis, representatives of other Caucasian nationalities, not Iranian -speaking, also claim the origin of the Alans.

Recently, a conference was held in Moscow in the Karachai-Balkarian ethnogenesis, after which its Caucasian leaders “corrected” the resolution, making the origin of the Balkars and Karachais (and they are Turkic-speaking) from Iranian-speaking Alans and the “evidence” of this are references to separate words, to scattered and usually incorrectly interpreted facts. Well, they want to be alays. You might think that the origin from Alans guarantees them special rights or special dignity, a special moral advantage. No! I am not Alan and I do not feel any humiliation from this. I don't even notice it.

It can be remembered that the famous Russian scientist Nicodemus Pavlovich Kondakov, a specialist in the study of icons, in the moment of irritation of the then Russian reality stated that he was not Russian, but Alan (he had a black beard). But it was just an epathet. He studied Russian and Byzantine art and wrote his works in Russian-both in Russia and in emigration.

In my opinion, one who himself means nothing means or at least does not believe in his significance is fond of the search for “noble ancestors” before self -forgetfulness. This is one of the signs of an inferiority complex that has roots in a historical tradition, and most importantly - in the current situation.