ANOTHER FIND OF THE EASTERN MIRROR WITH SPHINXES ON THE MIDDLE YENISEI
Abstract
The article is devoted to the publication of another metal button mirror with paired figures of sphinxes and a floral ornament with a Kufic inscription, recently discovered on the territory of the Middle Yenisei. In this region, similar items are not only rare (exhibits of the Minusinsk and Abakan museums), but are also markers of the northern border of the distribution of these items in the Mongolian time. The сlarity of the decoration details of the product gives every reason to consider it far from being the latest copy from the original. Sufficiently good preservation of the images on the mirror (epigraphics, fantastic animals and floral decorations) makes it possible to analyze in detail not only individual artistic details, but also to make a probable attribution of the origin and chronology of this object. The peculiarities of the style of the Kufic inscription and images of sphinxes make it possible to date the mirror no later than the 11th–12th centuries, and also to include it in the circle of objects produced in Iran or Central Asia. The absence of such imported items in the south of Western Siberia north of the middle reaches of the Yenisei River is probably due to the historical features of the cultural ties of the medieval population in the initial period of the 2nd millennium AD. Overall, the new find of a mirror with a Kufic inscription and a paired image of the sphinxes on the background of a floral ornament makes it possible to clarify the local and general features of the distribution of such items in Eurasia in the Middle Ages. This, in turn, provides certain grounds for reconstructing the dynamics of the changes in the external relations of Southern Siberia over the past millennium.
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