Saimaly-Tash: A Monument of Rock Art and Mythological Representations of the Population of Central Asia

K. I. Tashbaeva

Petroglyphs, or rock paintings, present one of the most widespread, interesting and mysterious monuments of mankind’s cultural heritage. This is the most common type of monument prevailing in Central Asian countries, as well as Europe, America, Africa, and Australia. Large petroglyphic assemblages have been found in many locations, especially Mongolia, Siberia, the Altai, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Pakistan. The rock art is a significant historical resource. Apart from their aesthetic value, petroglyphs contain rich materials which comprise information about their age, and the technique and styles applied.As for the themes of rock drawings, they reflect the peculiarities of earlier fauna and provide information about the spiritual and material culture of the people who left the images, their religious conceptions, cults, myths and legends, and their historical and cultural links with the rest of the world. Such valuable information cannot be provided by other types of prehistoric archaeological monuments. At the same time, information collected from petroglyphs enriches data obtained from excavations at burial mounds, sites of ancient settlements, and other monuments.

There is a great number of rock art monuments in Central Asia, among which Saimaly-Tash is a preeminent complex. It is located on the territory of Kyrgyzstan in the alpine zone of the Fergana mountain ridge, in its middle part, at a height of 3,000-3,500 meters above sea level. This is the largest and the most interesting assemblage of rock drawings in the world, to say nothing of Central Asia. The site comprises about 10,000 rocks with drawings on them. The petroglyphs there were executed in different styles and present manifold motifs. The rock drawings of Saimaly-Tash mirror how the Central Asian population’s fine arts developed during more than three millennia, from the 3rd or 2nd millennium BCE up to the Middle Ages, or even to today. At the same time, the petroglyphs constitute a valuable source of information about the fauna and various aspects of the local population’s way of life, especially their spiritual culture, over a very long period before the written language appeared.

Saimaly-Tash is a rare monument, by virtue of the colossal number of rock drawings accumulated in one place. These present a huge quantity of clear-cut motifs, without any palimpsests. The distinctive feature of the site is that the main massif of rock drawings presents the earliest layer of petroglyphic art dating back to the 3rd and 2nd millennia BCE,i.e. the Eneolithic and Bronze Ages. These drawings were made in a so-called geometrical style. The rock drawings of Saimaly-Tash are located high in the mountains, in an absolutely secluded place difficult of access. This site is open only during one month a year and remains covered with a thick layer of snow the rest of time. These conditions also make it a unique archaeological site (Plate II-1 and 2).

There are numerous images of solitary animals, people, or certain geometrical signs,as well as large multi-figure compositions showing scenes of hunting, driving chariots or carts, ritual dance and ceremonial performances; many other images depict lines of walking animals, clusters of various animals, animals among mountains, and animals near mountain streams or paths. One can also see some mysterious images, not typical of Central Asia,which, however, can be found in some other historical and cultural zones.

Hunting scenes present the most popular motif everywhere. Hunting was the only source of nutrition for the area’s ancient inhabitants. The most common are scenes of hunting ibexes, sometimes deer and other animals. Such scenes show one, two, or several hunters equipped with drawn bows or clubs. Very often hunting scenes present large and complex compositions. Sometimes such drawings depict the pursuit of a wild animal, or scenes in which hunters and dogs surround a prey. Sometimes we can see one hunter with a bow; less frequent are drawings depicting a hunter and a dog, but without a prey. Riding hunters appear on more recent drawings. In many cases dogs are shown nearby.

An interesting masterpiece at Saimaly-Tash shows four hunters with bows who have surrounded an ibex. The figures of the hunters have assumed various poses that express the tension of this crucial moment of the hunt. Here we can see a dog of an unusually large size,which for some unknown reason resembles a beast of prey rather than a dog (Plate II-3).

No less interesting is a scene of three archers who are possibly performing a hunter’s dance. The archers’ figures are shown full face though they are rather sketchy and rough;their bows are raised. There are two uncertain images near them. (Pomaskina, 1976, p.18,Fig.44)

Above all, in the petroglyphs of Saimaly-Tash images of animals predominate, and there are iconographically near-identical images of horses, camels, bulls, deer, and especially goats.

Some researchers believe that the petroglyphs reflect scenes of the life of the people who lived at this or that time and they reproduce the images of animals these ancient people hunted. Other researchers think that the ancient art mirrors the tribal structures of the-then societies. As for the images of animals, in the view of the latter researchers, they stand for totems and the legendary ancestors of these tribes. It might be reasonable to presume that the consciousness of the ancient creators of these petroglyphs was mythological, not concrete or based on the conditions of their life. Most possibly, they sought to depict generalized images and notions.

It seems very likely that the petroglyphs showed images taken from ancient myths,since the deities in different nations’ mythic and epic conceptions were primarily regarded as certain animals, or depicted as zoomorphic images. Later such conceptions moved towards anthropomorphic personages, and a corresponding animal began to serve as the deity’s incarnation or temporarily embodied image. Very often such an animal accompanied the deity and was offered in sacrifice to the divinity during various festivities. The remnants of such notions remain even in developed religions. For instance, according to the Greeks, the Dioscuri twins, Zeus’ sons, were a white and a black horse. They accompanied Demeter,the deity of the land’s fertility, who took the appearance of a mare and whose name literally meant “l(fā)and-mother”. Cynthia, the goddess of the hunt, was accompanied by a beautiful fallow-deer; and wise Athena, by an owl. The heavenly God Zeus, the father of all deities and people, could assume the appearance of various animals and birds, such as a bull, an eagle,or a swan. (Mify…1980; Shakhnovich, 1971) This archaic zoomorphism can be even more clearly seen in Indo-Iranian myths, in which each animal had its own name and occupied a certain place.

The supposition that certain animals were linked with concrete myths can be probably confirmed with the fact that of the enormous number of animals and birds of the Central Asian steppe and mountains, only a few—the ibex, bull, horse, deer, camel, and argali—were chosen for depiction in rock “art”. These selected animals were reverently worshiped by people who lived in the Bronze Age period and by earlier nomads. They also served as sacrificial animals during religious rites or festive ceremonies, or when conducting a funeral,and the materials gathered from burial grounds and sites of ancient settlements confirm this.

The ibex is the prevailing image in rock drawings at all sites. Sometimes the manner of depicting this animal is extraordinary: the images are thoroughly and accurately carved, and the animals are shown with extraordinarily big horns. Sometimes the horns are twisted in a complicated manner and thrown far back, imparting to the animal a proud and an independent air (Fig. 1, 2b; Plate II-4). As is known, some Siberian nations considered the ibex the master of all beasts.

Worshiping the ibex is one of the most ancient cults. For instance, the burial-place of a Neanderthal boy dating back to the Mousterian era and found in Teshik-Tash Grotto, was surrounded with ibex horns. This is evidence that religious beliefs were connected with this animal. From subsequent periods, namely the Eneolithic, Bronze Age, and Early Iron Age,a number of interesting articles bearing the image of the ibex, have been found at various archaeological sites, further testifying to the cult character of this animal, whose image was connected with the idea of fertility, abundance, and well-being.

The ibex also occupied a place in the mythology of the Ancient Orient. In old Indian myths the God Daksha had an ibex’s head. In the Rigveda sacrificial columns representing the World Tree were compared with ibex’s horns. In the Avesta Veratragna, the Thunderer, took the appearance of a sharp-horned ibex. Rather often a female deity was compared with the image of an ibex or became its patroness. Iranian-speaking nations connected the image of the ibex with the cult of mountains, the cycle of “the Tree”, and fertility, and simultaneously considered it belonging to the chthonic world. (Rigveda, 1972; Avesta, 1990)

The image of the bull is also popular and very interesting and can be found in many petroglyphic assemblages. In most cases the images of bulls were carved very thoroughly,their specific signs–a strong body, a small head, straight or slightly bent horns–being distinctly depicted. Sometimes the horns were shown rather long and bent backward. The animals were depicted singly or in groups, which obviously shows how significant this animal was in the-then production-based economy practiced by Central Asian tribes, notably the beginnings of cattle-breeding during the Eneolithic and Bronze Ages. This was the time when the bull became a sacred animal.

In the petroglyphs of Saimaly-Tash bulls are often shown harnessed. Sometimes one can see the images of bulls bearing contour circles with a dot in center of their heads, instead of horns. These are so-called “sun-bulls”, whose tails end in bulges. Undoubtedly, these are mythological scenes involving bulls (Plate II-5).

The image of the bull occupied a special place in the mythology of Oriental nations, in which it was an earthly incarnation of a deity, or its attribute. Among cosmogonical myths,in a major myth treating the creation of the Universe the world was made of parts of the firstborn bull’s body sacrificed by Mithra, the god of the sun. In the Rigveda Mithra is sometimes compared to the bull and sometimes identified with it. Mithra is the most ancient god common to all Indo-Iranians. Many nations of the Orient, including the Indo-Aryans, Indians,and Iranians, worshiped Mithra and sang a hymn in his honor. Mithra’s main duty was to maintain the world’s harmony and keep watch over how agreements were observed. He used one thousand eyes of his own (and according to other texts, one eye–the sun) to observe from the sky how order was kept on the earth. In general, the cult of Mithra was very popular, and his image was (directly or indirectly) introduced into various ancient nations’ cultural and historical traditions and religious and mythological systems. (Mify…1980)

In general, the bull was considered the embodiment of many divinities, such as Indra,the god of thunder and victory; Surya, a sun deity; the divine Ashvin twins, who personified the glow of dawn and sunset; Ushas, goddess of the dawn; and Ahura Mazda, the supreme god in Zoroastrianism. The role of the bull in many nations’ rites meant that the bull’s role in fertility and in the cosmogony was widely known.

No less widespread or interesting are the images of the deer, whose horns were emphasized in many cases. Deer’s horns were depicted in the form of one or two straight lines with branches going out in one or several directions, or in the form of arches with branches going inside. Sometimes the horns were very beautifully branched, and depicted in the form of a tree or a herring-bone. Often the horns’ size exceeded that of the animal’s body or its whole figure (Plate II-6). A commonly accepted view is that the deer’s horns could symbolize the World Tree and its parallels–the Family Tree and the Tree of Life. Indo-European myths and legends glorified the image of the golden cosmic deer. As long ago as the Stone Age, the sun was imagined to be a living cosmic being, a deer with intensely shining golden horns. The deer was believed to run across the entire vault of heaven, from east to west, in the course of a day. It seems that this meaning of the image remained during later times–the Bronze Age and the period of the earlier nomads. Later, the deer became one of the ancient Turkic tribes’ main totems, one of their ancestors, and the subject of multiple legends and myths.

The images of the ibex, the argali, the bull, the deer, and some other animals were therefore semantically similar, which is why their images are so many among assemblages of petroglyphs, especially at Saimaly-Tash.

Various kinds of signs are widely represented in all rock drawings. These are crosses,swastikas, and circles with or without a dot in the center or with outgoing beams. Sometimes such beams are enclosed in one more circle; sometimes we can see solid disks. There are also so-called spectacle-like signs (Plate II-7). Scholars generally regard these as solar signs or symbols of the sun. (Devlet M., 1997; Tashbaeva, 2001, etc.) Among the rock drawings of Saimaly-Tash, there are even more complex symbols of the sun, such as a sun-man, a sunbull, and a sun-ibex, which testify to the local population’s long-standing sun cult.

Noteworthy are the well-known “sun-headed” beings of Saimaly-Tash. Firstly, these are “sun-headed” human figures, i.e. they have human bodies provided with a large disk with eyes and a mouth and out-going beams, rather than a head (Plate II-8). Such drawings sometimes depict solitary personages and sometimes personages in groups consisting of two, three, or more figures. Sometimes, the “sun-headed” figures are shown with their hands raised or moved apart. There are images of people who seem to be carrying the sun in their hands.

Worshiping the sun, a source of light, warmth, life, and the beginning of all beginnings,was one of the ancient population’s leading forms of religion. The cult of the sun was strongly developed in ancient societies, and was expressed in both primitive and more advanced forms; for instance, in Inca society, or in ancient Egypt during Akhenaten’s era when worshiping the sun was elevated to the state religion.

The solar essence of the God Mithra was considered his most ancient and original form, and so in the petroglyphs of Saimaly-Tash and Tamgaly it is possibly Mithra who is represented as the anthropomorphic creature whose head is surrounded with outgoing beams and who has only one eye in the center of his round face. When we see a lot of eyes gazing upon the world from Mithra’s sun-like face, it seems the images in these petroglyphs precisely illustrate the texts of the hymns.

Worshiping the sun among nations who predominantly practiced totemic and where the sun was considered one of the totems acquired a special character. In connection with the sun’s totem, religious rites analogous to ceremonies devoted to other totemic animals were performed. It is quite possible that scenes with the presence of a sun deity appear in a number of petroglyphs in Saimaly-Tash. In this respect, the most notable is a multi-figural composition with a sun deity shown above several pairs of people with raised hands and slightly bent legs. All the people have tails. There is a line, or what is better described as a spectacle-like sign, under them, and another sun deity is drawn below it. Undoubtedly, the scene vividly shows the performance of a ritual ceremony of worshiping the sun deity, as well as the sun’s eternal circulation, change of light and darkness, and, possibly, a vertical model of the world. There are several such scenes in Saimaly-Tash which most likely depict the worship of the sun-headed Mithra by people drawn below him. The people have assumed poses of adoration or perform a ritual dance.

The images of a round sun that appears to be standing on beams forked at the end present a peculiar solar symbol. There are many such drawings in Saimaly-Tash. We can also see carts and chariot shafts drawn in a similar fashion—in the form of forked lines, at Saimaly-Tash. Hymn #10 of Avesta says that Mithra is a chariot with only one wheel, the sun.

The drawings of carts and chariots at Saimaly-Tash are of particular interest: firstly,because sacred chariots are depicted on the rock surfaces, not ordinary carts or ploughs(Fig.2a). Very often we can see animals of different species driving carts in pairs, such as an ibex and a bull, a donkey and a bull, and less frequently a horse and a bull, which is absolutely impossible in real life. (Sher, 1978; Sher, 1980; Tashbaeva, 2001; Tashbaeva,2004; Tashbaeva, 2015; Tashbaeva, Khujanazarov, Ranov, Samashev, 2001; Novozhenov,1994) Second, these are the most interesting and complex, sometimes multi-figural,compositions at the site, and they often depict two or several pairs of such carts driven by tailed charioteers, who are often depicted with long hair. Without doubt, these images have a significant meaning and it is most likely that they represent sacred chariots.

As is known, all Indo-European and especially Indo-Iranian nations connected a whole complex of their mythological conceptions with the horse and the chariot. They believed that all superior gods rode through the sky in horse-drawn chariots. The Rigveda describes how Indra, the god of thunder and victory, flies across vast spaces in his chariot driven by racers and “fills the Universe with the sun-like nave of his wheel”. The God of fire, Agni, the second most popular divinity in the Rigveda hymns, also constantly rides in his chariot. As for the shining, fulgent, and glaring Ushas, goddess of the dawn, she rides out before sunrise in her dazzling chariot driven by scarlet horses or bulls, opens the sky gate, and fills the universe with light. The divine Asvin twins, who personify the dawn and dusk, when customarily awakened by Ushas, start rushing in their gold three-wheeled and wide, three-seat chariot driven by horses and birds. The sun deity Surya’s beams are like seven mares driving his chariot. There are words of address to Surya in the hymn devoted to him: “Seven mares are carrying you, the flame-like-haired god, in a chariot”. (Rigveda, 1972)

In the Avesta the chariot is also an attribute of various divinities, including Anahita,goddess of water and fertility, and especially Mithra, whose “redoubtable and impetuous horses drive his rapid chariot, straining the taught reins”. (Avesta, 1990) The ancient Indian epic poems Ramayana and Mahabharata mention a fairy chariot and repeatedly describe chariot fights which decide the outcome of a battle. These texts testify to the tremendous role played by chariots in ancient Indo-Iranian society. They even distinguished a special class of charioteers, to which even the king belonged. Maybe that is why we can see a great number of drawings of iconographically similar chariots in the petroglyphs of Saimaly-Tash.

The notion of a chariot driven by horses as a specific symbol of the god of the sun was already widespread in many Eurasian cultures during the 2nd millennium BCE. Most possibly, chariots were symbols of two gods of the sun–Mithra, the paramount sovereign of light, and Surya, the deity of the disk of the sun. Another mythological image connected with the chariot spread in the ancient world was the notion of Ursa Major as a chariot always pointing at the South. The petroglyphic images of chariots so interpreted are no less significant. (Kuzmina, 1986)

Researchers are clearly correct in emphasizing that petroglyphic chariots stand for different symbols, and this emblem is polysemantic. Undoubtedly, well-known scenes with chariots may be regarded as mythological and bearing a broader meaning. It is possible that their main idea is the conception of perpetual motion, of moving from this world to the other one, or of the universe expressed in the form of a wheel. It is not by chance that the images of the chariot and the wheel disappeared ousted when equestrian riding was mastered, ensuring faster travel. No less interesting and mysterious are the images at Saimaly-Tash of human beings having a tail who appear to be dancing, or standing in pairs and leaning against each other. Such beings were often depicted in pairs, facing each other, or standing side by side.They were in similar adoration poses: their hands raised and their legs slightly bent at the knees. All these figures look expressive and dynamic. As a rule, they have rather long tails ending in a bulge or a tuft. Very often their hair is braided (Fig. 3). Noteworthy is the fact that their arms gradually enlarge from elbows to hands and end in orbs, thus resembling a club.Sometimes their arms are exceedingly extended and resemble long loose sleeves. Maybe these are details of dancers’ ritual or ceremonial costumes. (Sher, 1980; Tashbaeva, 2001;Tashbaeva, Khujanazarov, Ranov, Samashev, 2001, ets.)

Even such a brief consideration of only some aspects of the interpretation of several subjects of the rock drawings clearly demonstrates the immense possibilities they present as a source of information for many issues. Firstly, these are the styles and the techniques of executing the drawings, which make it possible to determine the age of the petroglyphs.Secondly, there is the vast semantic significance which petroglyphs encompass and which is difficult to discover and perceive.

Rock drawings present a unique archaeological source being also fine art objects that demonstrate the creativity of ancient artists over millennia. Rock drawings are also important as they contain vast amount of information revealing aspects of the lives and world outlook of ancient societies, especially their spiritual culture. Therefore, rock art is a valuable monument of mankind’s historical and cultural heritage. Saimaly-Tash is one of the largest and most interesting rock art sites, containing rich information about the ancient cultures of Central Asia.

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