Abstract
The article deals with the pointed headed characters dressed in tall cone hats or in hats with spire-like tops. They are represented in monumental sculpture, on arrows, rocks and slabs from burial mounds and in mobile art. Represented characters belong to the Bronze Age and created by the Okunev, Karakol, Krokhalyevo, Samus and probably Bolshoy Mys cultures people. Based on comparative mythology and structural analysis of the compositions, an interpretation of the meanings of some Okunev and Krokhalyevo representations have been suggested. Iconographic parallels between the one of a kind representation from Tomskaya Pisanitsa and the anthropomorphic figurine from Turist-2. A parallel has been drown between the meanings of a couple of interrelated Okunev and Karakol cultures gods-spirits. The Okunevo and Krokhalevo cultures’ mythological characters have been compared with the characters presented in Early Vedic texts. Twin characters with tall cone and paraboloid hats are associated with Vedic dvandva and Mitra and Varuna, as well as with Avestan Mitra and Ahura. The conclusion is made about the interrelated couple of functionally similar supreme gods probably presented in the early Okunevo art. On the one hand, the group characters in tall cone hats can be associated with Ob-Ugrian representations of the same image of bad spirits and menkvs. On the other hand, such anthropological representations remind a group of the most ancient Vedic gods Ādityás emerging from the Indo-Iranian commonness, and its break-up runs in with the emergence of the Okunevo culture. The interpretation of a famous anthropomorphic character with a spire-like top on its head and “arms at hips” as a mythological character with wings instead of arms and “winged demon” has been reviewed.
Keywords
Bronze Age, pointed headed characters, Okunev Culture, Karakol Culture, Samus Culture, Krokhalyevo Culture, petroglyphs, semantics.
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