Where were birch bark letters found? Birch Archive of the Centuries. General characteristics of letters

Birch bark letters- pieces of birch bark with inscriptions, discovered by archaeologists during excavations, mainly in Novgorod on the Volkhov and its environs. The first charter with a documented origin was discovered by an expedition A.V. Artsikhovsky July 26, and was erroneously dated to the end of the 14th century. More than 1000 diplomas

“at the vigar:k: heri’s elbow without elbow at valit in kyulolakshi:id:heri’s elbows at vaivas at vayakshina:iv:heri’s elbows at melit in kurol:d:heri’s elbows”(diploma No. 130)

History of birch bark letters

Birch bark in northern and central Russia has long been a material for fishing - dishes and shoes were made from it, but it was especially used to make birch tar, which was used for dressing and impregnating leather, as well as in medicine, as an anti-inflammatory and disinfectant medicine.

Birch bark letters appeared in the field of view of historians at the very end of the 19th century. Until that time, there were several reports that birch bark was used for writing in the 15th-16th centuries, but no samples of this writing have survived, as it was believed - due to the extreme fragility of the material. There were several books and letters on birch bark of the 17th-18th centuries belonging to the northern peoples - so, according to the report A.I. Sobolevsky in his book on the paleography of the year, the Academy of Sciences owns the birch bark "book of the yasak collection of the Kamchatka people" of the year. The clerical relations of the Upper Kamchatka command hut, written by a Cossack centurion, have been preserved. Arkhip Shelkovnikov in and in years in ink on birch bark (stored in the gallery of various handwritten rarities of the Paris National Library).

Novgorod birch bark letters were discovered by an amateur archaeologist and collector Vasily Stepanovich Peredolsky(-), acquiring them either from local peasants or as a result of their own excavations. Peredolsky published the book "Novgorod Antiquities" (), in which he argued that Novgorod arose even before the birth of Christ and that these poorly readable inscriptions on birch bark are just as ancient. per year Peredolsky exhibited a collection of antiquities on the first floor of his house in his own museum, open for tours. For several years, more than three thousand people, adults and children, visited him, but historians did not trust him, considering the self-taught archaeologist an eccentric, and the letters he found were either fakes or writings of illiterate peasants of the 19th century.

per year V.L. Yanin wrote a popular science book "I sent you a birch bark ..." for which in the year he received the prize. M.V. Lomonosov first degree, later he received many other prizes, orders and awards for his work in the Novgorod expedition, and at present he is often called the "discoverer of the Novgorod Pompeii", although he himself indicates that he is a student A.V. Artsikhovsky.

By the end of the year found 962 diplomas in Novgorod; 40 - in Staraya Russa; 19 - in Torzhok; 15 - in Smolensk; 8 - in Pskov; 5 - in Tver; 3 - in Zvenigorod Galitsky; on 1 - in Vitebsk, Moscow, Mstislavl and Staraya Ryazan: total 1056 things. Historians date them to the period from the 11th to the 15th centuries, believing that later the birch bark was completely replaced by paper.

By arithmetic calculations V.L. Yanina, waiting for their discovery 20 thousand letters.

Reconstruction

According to the New Chronology, birch-bark writings are mostly not forgeries, but only incorrectly dated artifacts. The traditional assessment of their age by the 11th-15th centuries runs into serious questions, to which fabulous answers are offered:

• how in the marshy area of ​​Novgorod, with significant climate fluctuations, could wooden and birch bark items of almost a thousand years old be preserved, and sometimes even ink notes on them were preserved?- this happens, allegedly, due to the miraculous properties of the swampy slurry, which preserves organic matter in this place;
• Why is there no cultural layer of the 16th-19th centuries in Novgorod?- this, allegedly, came from the fact that at the end of the 18th century drainage work was finally carried out in Novgorod, which deprived the city of healing slurry and the entire cultural layer of this period and the neighboring ones collapsed.
• why, with a significant number of written finds, the messages on them do not at all echo the annalistic information about Veliky Novgorod?- this is due to the fact that a small area was excavated and too few birch bark letters were found;
• why the letter№915-I with a distinct date of 7282 (1774 AD) do historians date it to the 11th century?- this date is obtained stratigraphically, moreover, by sophisticated tricks, when part of the date is read in Latin, and part in Slavic, the date is composed 6537 , that is - that is 1029 year AD:

Official transcript of birch bark №915-I given by Academician A.A. Zaliznyak.

Traditional Novgorod dating is based on several erroneous conclusions:

1. on the incorrect dendrochronology of the Novgorod pavement, produced in the early 1990s and highly appreciated by the USSR State Prize, despite the lack of scientific justification for this result;
2. on the incorrect localization of Veliky Novgorod, which from the middle of the 18th century began to be identified with Novgorod on the Volkhov, instead of the correct position on the Volga.

The Novgorod finds belong to the period of the 17th-19th centuries and are not related to the annalistic Veliky Novgorod, which must be sought elsewhere - in Yaroslavl, where no archaeological research is being carried out, and the cultural historical layer is uncontrollably destroyed.

News

• The success of Russian archaeologists inspired the search for British scientists. During the excavations of the ancient Roman fort of Vindolanda on the border of England and Scotland, they discovered a large number of wooden tablets made of birch and oak with private letters of Roman soldiers, allegedly from the 1st-2nd centuries. AD. The first large study of these ancient written monuments of Great Britain was published by the British Museum in

In 1951, the archaeological expedition of Artemy Vladimirovich Artsikhovsky, who was excavating in Novgorod, discovered the first birch-bark writing. And since then they have been found in abundance, and not only in Veliky Novgorod. Birch bark letters became a historical sensation, as they made it possible to learn about the everyday life of the people of the Russian Middle Ages. How have our ideas about the life of our ancestors changed? Alexei Gippius, Doctor of Philology, who professionally specializes in the study of birch bark, tells the story.

Colorize the outlines

— Aleksey Alekseevich, how did the discovery of birch bark change the ideas of historians about the culture of Ancient Russia?

“It expanded them considerably. Thanks to the study of birch bark letters, the daily life of Ancient Russia was revealed to us. Prior to that, our knowledge of this era was based on chronicles, on such legal texts as Russkaya Pravda. Chronicles deal with the events and figures of the "great" history, its heroes are princes, nobility, higher clergy. And how did ordinary people live - townspeople, peasants, merchants, artisans? We could indirectly judge this only from legal texts, but after all, not specific people appear there, but simply certain social functions. The discovery of the birch bark papers made it possible to directly see the real actors in this "small" history. Those general contours that we had before are colored, taking on concrete outlines.

- And what aspects of the life of the people of that time can we judge from birch bark letters?

- Birch bark letters are a writing of a practical nature. Old Russian man, when he took up the "wrote" (this is such a pointed metal rod, with which letters on birch bark were scratched, the Greeks called it a stylus), proceeded from some kind of everyday necessity. For example, while on a trip, send a letter to relatives. Or file a lawsuit. Or make some memo for yourself. Therefore, birch-bark letters acquaint us, first of all, with the practical life of that era. From them we learn fundamentally new things about the structure of the ancient Russian financial system, about ancient Russian trade, about the judicial system - that is, about what we know very little from the annals, the annals do not touch on such “trifles”.

- Are there any contradictions between what we know from the annals and what is said in the birch bark documents?

- In theory, there should be no contradictions. But in order to correctly correlate the content of birch bark letters with other sources (primarily chronicles), they must be understood correctly. And here there is a problem. In birch-bark letters, people, as a rule, are indicated only by names, and one must figure out who they are - merchants, warriors, priests, boyars. That is, for example, when some Milyata turns to his brother, you need to understand that Milyata is a merchant. And when Miroslav writes to Olisey Grechin, to determine that the first is a mayor, and the second is a member of the court. That is, it is necessary to correlate the authors and characters of birch bark letters with their social status and function. And it's not always easy. In general, one can answer this way: there are no obvious contradictions, but our ideas about these aspects of life, gleaned from the annals, are extremely approximate, inaccurate - thanks to birch bark letters, they become not only more accurate, but filled with life. It's about like a pencil outline of a human figure - and the same figure, painted in paint, in all its details.

— Is it true that birch bark documents are found precisely in the Novgorod region, and therefore they provide new information only on the everyday life of Novgorodians?

- No, that's not true. Now birch bark letters have been found in 12 cities, including Pskov, Tver, and Torzhok. By the way, and Moscow - seven birch bark letters were found in Moscow. And the southernmost point is Zvenigorod-Galitsky in Ukraine. But the truth is that archaeologists found most of the birch bark letters in Veliky Novgorod. 1089 of them have been found there at the moment, and in all other cities combined - 100. The reason is not that the Novgorodians were more literate than others and wrote more - it's just that there is such soil in which birch bark is better preserved. Birch-bark writing was widespread throughout the territory of Russia.

By the way, similar (in content) letters were used not only in Russia - they were also among the Scandinavians. For example, in Norway there is the so-called "Bergen Archive" - ​​these are documents of approximately the same type: private notes, letters, notes for memory. But not on birch bark, but on wooden planks and chips.

“By the way, why not on birch bark?” Birch trees also grow in the Scandinavian countries.

I think it's just a matter of tradition. In Russia, writing arose along with the adoption of the Christian faith and culture. Therefore, the main type of Slavic written text is a book, sewn sheets of parchment. And in a sense, a birch bark leaf is like a parchment sheet. Especially if it is trimmed around the edges, as was often done. Among the Scandinavians, their writing - runes - arose much earlier than these peoples were baptized. And as they have long been accustomed to carving runes on chips and planks, they continued to carve.

School of Prince Yaroslav

Novgorod, 1180-1200
Contents: From Torchin to Gyurgiy (about squirrel skins)

— As far as I remember, the earliest birch-bark letters date back to the beginning of the 11th century. A logical question: where did so many literate people come from in ancient Russia, if writing arose after the Baptism of Russia?

- A small clarification: the earliest birch bark letters are dated to the 30s of the 11th century. That is, between the baptism of Russia in 988 and the appearance of everyday writing on birch bark - about half a century. Apparently, these half a century just took to form a generation for which writing is not something special, but quite an ordinary, everyday thing.

Where did this generation come from? Did it grow by itself or was it specially grown?

- It was specially grown, and we even know how. The appearance of the first birch-bark letters remarkably coincides with the testimony of the Novgorod chronicle, which tells how Prince Yaroslav came to Novgorod in 1030 and set up a school. "He gathered 300 children from priests and elders and gave them to book studies." Sometimes this chronicle record is questioned, but I consider it quite reliable. By the way, there is also confirmation from “independent sources”. In the Scandinavian saga about Olaf Trygvasson, it is written that he attended school in Novgorod under Yaroslav. How long this school operated, we, unfortunately, cannot judge, but it was, of course, a very important cultural enterprise.

So, these three hundred children learned to read and write and became, as they say now, the intellectual elite of Novgorod society, they formed the social base for the spread of literacy. That is, they corresponded with each other, and, very likely, taught their acquaintances to read and write, and, having matured, their children. Thus, the circle of literate people expanded rapidly.

In addition, merchants quickly appreciated the benefits of the letter. Now there are disputes whether there was any kind of “commercial” writing in Russia even before the official baptism. But this is unlikely. Novgorod archaeological data suggests that until the 30s of the 11th century there was nothing of the kind. That is, a lot of birch bark was found, but with drawings, and not with these or those letters.

By the way, there is the famous Novgorod wax Psalter, it is dated to about 1000. That is, the era when book writing had already appeared, but its domestic use had not yet been.

The codex of three linden tablets lay in the ground in complete safety. How he got there we do not know; perhaps the book was hidden under some tragic circumstances. But no one hid the birch bark letters. They were simply thrown away like ordinary garbage.

- So how?

- Yes, they were thrown out as unnecessary. A person read a letter or note, received information, and threw it away. Paradox: that is why these birch bark documents have survived to this day. That which was carefully guarded perished in fires (remember that all old Russian houses burned down sooner or later). And what was thrown out fell into the soil, into the so-called cultural layer, and in Novgorod soil all organic matter is perfectly preserved.

It is interesting that those birch bark letters that are found on the site of houses that once stood there survived only because they fell into the gap between the floorboards and ended up at the level of the lower crowns (they can be preserved during fires). By the way, during excavations of urban estates, birch bark letters are found unevenly: in some places their concentration per unit area is greater, in others less. So, where there are more - there, as we assume, there were garbage dumps, cesspools.

- What time period do birch bark letters cover? What are the latest?

- The latest - the middle of the 15th century, that is, birch bark letters were distributed for about 400 years, from the middle of the 11th century to the middle of the 15th.

Why did they stop then?

“It's a combination of two things. First, the spread of paper as a cheap material that has become an alternative to cheap birch bark. Secondly, by that time the Novgorod cultural layer was already changing, the soil became less moist, so the birch bark was no longer preserved in it. Maybe Novgorodians didn’t stop writing on birch bark, it’s just that these letters have not reached us.

Are there known cases of sending birch bark letters over long distances?

Yes, they are known. For example, five letters from the merchant Luka to his father were found. In one, he writes that he is coming from somewhere in the north, and complains that there, in Zavolochye, the expensive squirrel is not bought. He writes another letter from somewhere in the Dnieper, where he sits and waits for the Greek. And the Greek is a merchant caravan coming from Byzantium. Or here's another example, a son invites his mother: "Come here, to Smolensk or Kyiv, bread is cheap here."

By warehouse


Novgorod, 1100-1120
Contents: Love letter

- You said that birch bark letters were distributed throughout all the cities of Ancient Russia. Was their content the same everywhere, or are there regional differences?

- In principle, there are no special differences, everywhere it is everyday writing. The specificity of Novgorod could lie in the special intensity of correspondence that connected the city with its rural district, including a very remote one. This is how Novgorod land was arranged. There is a capital, Novgorod, and around it are the patrimonies of the Novgorod boyars. The boyars themselves live in the city, and the managers, elders, correspond with the capital, buy and sell all kinds of goods, supplies, pay taxes - and all this is reflected in birch bark letters.

– In school history textbooks, an example of birch bark letters is given – where the boy Onfim depicted himself as a horseman piercing a snake with a spear. Sometimes it is suggested that this letter is a sheet from his study book, that is, that already in those days schoolchildren had notebooks.

- Let's start with the fact that many letters of Onfim were found, and not just a drawing that ended up in school textbooks. But these are separate leaves of birch bark, which never constituted a physically unified whole. These are his various student notes, but not a notebook.

In general, there were birch bark notebooks. They have reached us. More precisely, separate sheets have come down, but it is clear that they were originally sewn into a notebook. For example, there is a record of evening prayers, this is such a small book that has all the signs of a real book. There is a splash screen, there is a line. Or here is a text of a magical nature, to which there are Greek, Coptic parallels, and indeed throughout the entire Mediterranean, this text, the so-called “Sisinian legend” * (FOOTNOTE: The Sisinian legend is a collection of magical texts that existed in the traditions of many nations. by the name of one of the characters, Sisinia. The main content is magical conspiracies that protect the woman in labor and the newborn from evil forces. - Approx. ed.). It was also written on birch bark sheets sewn into a book.

Novgorod, 1280-1300
birch bark book:
two prayers

- And among the birch bark letters, besides Onfim, were there other examples of student records?

— There were, of course. By the way, it is necessary to explain how elementary school education was arranged then. First, they studied the alphabet, taught letters. Then the student began to write the so-called warehouses, that is, combinations of vowels with consonants. "Ba", "va", "ga", "yes", "be", "ve", "ge", "de". In other words, syllables. And only then did it come to reading texts. The Old Russian primer was the Psalter and the Book of Hours* (The Psalter is a collection of psalms composed by King David, one of the books of the Old Testament. The Book of Hours is a book containing the texts of the unchanging prayers of the daily liturgical circle. - Approx. ed.), the texts were read from there. So, many birch bark sheets with recorded "warehouses" were found. By the way, the same Onfim has cases when he begins to write a coherent text, for example, some kind of prayer: “like…” - and then gets lost in writing syllables starting with the letter “e”: “like be-ve-ge -de.

— To what extent has the study of birch bark changed the ideas of historians about ancient Russian education?

We don't know much about him at all. Judging by the birch bark letters, this education was of the most elementary nature, the alphabet was assimilated along with the foundations of the Orthodox faith. But about the further stages, we, in general, do not know anything. There is, however, the testimony of Metropolitan Kliment Smolyatich (XII century), in one of his writings, the existence of the so-called “schedography” in Russia is mentioned - this is already a very advanced stage of Byzantine education. But the metropolitan mentions this as a kind of refinement, a great rarity.

Learn about the fate of the monastery cow

Novgorod, 1420-1430
Contents: From Koshchei and sharecroppers (please give horses)

—Did the birch bark writings expand our understanding of the church life of Ancient Russia?

— Yes, they expanded, although not immediately. At first, when excavations were carried out only at the Nerevsky excavation site in Novgorod, it seemed that birch bark letters were a purely secular phenomenon, there were no church texts found there at all. But at the Troitsky excavation site, where work has been carried out since the 1970s, the situation turned out to be completely different. More than five percent of the texts found there are church texts. For example, a record of church holidays that fall in the fall. Or, let's say, an outline of Easter matins. That is, these were, in modern terms, the working notes of the priests that they needed in their ministry.

Another example, not from Novgorod, is a letter from Torzhok, which is a lengthy quotation from a teaching that most likely belonged to the pen of St. Cyril of Turov. The charter was written either at the end of the 12th or at the beginning of the 13th century. In terms of content, this is just a long list of sins. Most likely, a preparation for a sermon that the priest was going to read.

I note that such letters are not spiritual treatises, not attempts at some kind of religious self-expression, but purely practical, applied church writing.

By the way, there is a wonderful example when both a fragment of the church calendar and a business letter from Ludslaw to Khoten were written in the same handwriting. It is logical to assume that the priest in the first case made a note for himself, and in the second he acted as a scribe.

- That is, they came to the priest and asked him to help write a letter?

- Exactly. And this, by the way, is the peculiarity of Novgorod church life - the clergy and monasticism did not live in isolation, but side by side with the laity, influenced their neighbors, and also influenced in the sense of epistolary culture. For example, ancient Russian birch bark letters often begin with the word "worship" and end with "I kiss you." The references to the apostolic epistles are obvious (“greet one another with a holy kiss” - words from the Epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Romans, 16:16), and this tradition clearly comes from a spiritual environment.

I have already mentioned the Trinity excavation. I will add that it is divided in the middle by Chernitsyna Street, and it is called so because from the 12th century there was the Varvarin Monastery, one of the most famous women's monasteries. It was located in the midst of urban development, was in no way separated from the neighboring merchant and boyar estates. Among the letters found at the Trinity excavation there are also those that were clearly written by the nuns of this monastery (I remind you that in the old days nuns were colloquially called blueberries). And these are household records. For example: “As for the fact that I sent you three cuts for the warrior, then they came as soon as possible”, “find out if Matthew is in the monastery?” (Matthew, judging by the context, a priest). Or, say, the nuns are concerned about the fate of the monastery cow: “Is St. Barbara’s heifer healthy?”

It must be said that the letters found in this part of the city are characterized by frequent references to God in stable expressions: “dividing God” (that is, for the sake of God), “God fighting” (that is, be afraid of God). It is possible that the reason for this is the influence of the monastery on its neighbors.

I note that at that time the clergy did not yet recognize themselves as some kind of special class, there were no class partitions yet. For example, I have already mentioned Olisei Grechin. This is an amazing figure! On the one hand, he is a priest, on the other, an artist and icon painter, and on the third, a major city administrator, one might say, an official. And he came from the Novgorod boyar environment, but went through the spiritual part.

Here is another very interesting example. This is a birch bark letter from the beginning of the 15th century, a letter to Archbishop Simeon is the rarest case when everything in the address formula is written in clear text. “Vladyka Simeon is beaten with a forehead from young to old by all the inhabitants of the Rzhevsky district, the Oshevsky churchyard.” The letter is a request to appoint Deacon Alexander as a local priest, arguing as follows: “Before, his father and his grandfather sang at the Holy Mother of God in Oshevo.” That is, it means that they had a priestly dynasty, first the grandfather of this deacon Alexander served in the local church, then his father, and now, after the death of his father, the church “stands without singing”, that is, without worship, and for their renewal it is necessary to make Alexander a priest.

- I read somewhere that the Novgorod clergy just didn’t approve very much that people write letters on birch bark - this was seen as some kind of profanity of the high art of writing, which has a sacred meaning ...

- This is greatly exaggerated. In fact, we are talking about only one person who lived in the 12th century, the famous Kirik of Novgorod, who recorded his conversations with Bishop Nifont. And he really asked him a question: “Isn’t it a sin, Vladyka, to walk on letters if they are abandoned, but the letters can be disassembled?” There is some concern about this issue. Moreover, given that the texts themselves, which lay in abundance on the Novgorod pavements, were 98% everyday, profane, this is not the same as the fear of desecrating a shrine. No, Kirik was disturbed by the very fact that letters were trampled under foot. Letters as a kind of sacred essence. But, importantly, the bishop did not give any answer to this. As it is said, "he said nothing." Apparently, as an enlightened hierarch with good Greek leaven, Nifont did not see anything sinful in the everyday use of writing.

About deeply personal


Novgorod, 1180-1200
Contents: On the intention to go on a pilgrimage

— Did the birch bark documents reflect any ethical moments, any human relations, the themes of justice, injustice? And if so, was the influence of Christianity felt?

- There was an impact. Turnovers "for God's sake", "be afraid of God" - in those days it was not just a figure of speech. Or, for example, in one letter there is a hidden threat: “if you don’t manage that (if you don’t do what I asked you), I’ll pass it on to the Holy Mother of God, if you came to her company.” That is, "I will betray you to the Holy Mother of God, to whom you took an oath." That is, a direct, very harsh and very rhetorically formulated threat, appealing, on the one hand, to church authority, and on the other, to the practice of oath (“company”), which is deeply pagan in origin. To a practice that has already fitted into the new Christian way of life. This is one example of grassroots Christian culture.

Another example is a remarkable 11th-century letter written by a young woman to her lover. Reproaching him, she writes in particular: “maybe I offended you by sending to you?”. A very subtle emotional tone, it sounds quite modern. And the letter ends with the words: "If you start to mock, then God and my thinness will judge you." This "my thinness" is a literary expression that has a well-known Greek source. It can be found, say, in the Kiev-Pechersk Patericon of the 13th century, where one of its authors, Bishop Simon, writes about himself. It means "my unworthiness". And the same expression is used in relation to herself by a Novgorod woman of the 11th century!

The addressee of this letter tore it up and, tying the strips of birch bark in a knot, threw it onto the pavement.

There are other examples of "relational" letters - for example, a letter where a father instructs his daughter: it would be better for you to live with your brother, but you somehow communicate with him through force. And all this clearly bears the imprint of Christian ethics.

But there are texts, so to speak, with the opposite sign - that is, magical content. These are conspiracies, about a dozen of them were found. Here, for example, is a conspiracy against fever: “Far away angels, far away archangels, deliver the servant of God Micah from the shaker with the prayers of the Holy Mother of God.” There are a little less than a dozen such texts, about the same number as canonical prayers and their fragments. But, of course, it must be taken into account that the Christian texts themselves, in principle, had less chance of being preserved on birch bark. No one would throw them away, they were protected - and everything that was carefully stored, as a result, died in fires. Conspiracies were perceived as something functional, not particularly valuable. They were used and thrown away.

That's the paradox: what was stored, then perished, and what was thrown away, then remained. There was birch bark writing, which was designed for long-term use, which was carefully preserved - and for this reason, which almost did not reach us. Here is the rarest exception - a large document, 60 cm long. This is a woman’s teaching, it retains the address formula “from Martha”, the form “having written” has been preserved (that is, it is emphasized that this is an extract from some source). And then there are practical instructions like “stay up late, get up early”, instructions for salting fish, and at the end about parents: if they are already incapacitated, then find a hired worker for them. That is, this is such a birch bark predecessor of Domostroy, and the author is a woman.

In general, it was only thanks to birch bark letters that we learned that in Ancient Russia women were not at all dark and illiterate. There are many of them among the authors of birch bark letters.

— Is it always easy to understand what is being said in a birch-bark document?

- This is generally a problem: what does it mean to understand the text correctly? It happens, and quite often, that we are confident in the letters, in dividing them into words (let me remind you that in ancient Russian texts words were far from always separated by spaces), but still we don’t really understand what it is about. Let's say this example: take 11 hryvnias from Timoshka for a horse, as well as a sleigh, and a collar, and a blanket. What does this request mean? The letter was found forty years ago, but only recently we realized what was the matter: the horse is no more, Timoshka ruined the horse, and we need to receive monetary compensation and the remaining property from him. That is, it is not enough to understand the text, one must also reconstruct the context, and this is a separate, very interesting area of ​​research.

— Are there any stereotypes about birch bark letters?

— Yes, there are. And this is, first of all, the opinion that in Novgorod (and indeed in Ancient Russia) everyone was literate without exception. Of course it isn't. Writing, and especially in the early times, still had an elitist character. If it was used not only by the upper classes, but also by ordinary people, it does not follow from this that all merchants or artisans were literate. I'm not talking about the fact that we find birch bark letters in the cities. Among the rural population, the literacy rate was much lower.

- And where does the conclusion come from that at least among the urban population literacy was not universal?

— When we study birch bark letters, we naturally try to compare their characters with the historical figures mentioned in the annals. So, there are quite a few cases when we can prove that the person about whom it is written in birch bark is exactly the person about whom it is written in the annals. Now imagine that everyone is literate, everyone writes birch bark letters. In such a case, the probability of such an identification would be negligible. So, such a high percentage of coincidences of "birch-bark" characters with chronicles can be explained only by the fact that the circle of literate people was limited. Another thing is that this circle was not closed, that it included people from different classes, and that it gradually expanded.

There is another important point: literate people did not always write letters personally, they could use the work of scribes (in the role of which often clergymen). For example, we have such a wonderful character in birch bark letters, his name is Peter, and we identify him with the well-known chronicle Peter Mikhalkovich, who married his daughter to Prince Mstislav Yuryevich, the son of Yuri Dolgoruky. So, from this Peter came a total of 17 texts ... written in different handwriting. Maybe he wrote some with his own hand, but in general a person of such a high social status has competent servants with him and dictates to them. Being himself, it is likely to be literate.

- Do you think that there are many birch bark letters that have not yet been excavated?

- I think that the oil will run out much earlier than the birch bark letters. If things continue at the same pace as now, then we will have enough work for 500 years. True, by that time we ourselves will already be figures of the distant past.

On the screen saver: Letter from the boy Onfim: fragments of liturgical texts, 13th century. (fragment)

Kaplan Vitaly

06.12.2015 0 13202

It somehow happened that in Russia for several centuries there has been an opinion that all the most interesting, stunning and mysterious from ancient times is outside our country. The ancient pyramids are Egypt, the Parthenon-Greece, the castles of the Templars-France. One has only to say the word "Ireland", as you immediately imagine: in the dim moonlight, from the fog of green hills, the mysterious "Riders of the Seeds" menacingly leave.

And Russia? Well, seven hundred years ago, mossy bearded men sat over tubs with sauerkraut, blinked their cornflower-blue eyes, built wooden towns, from which barely noticeable ramparts and mounds remained, and that’s it.

But in fact, the medieval material heritage of our ancestors is so striking that sometimes it seems that our almost thousand-year history is growing right out of the grass.

One of the main events that completely turned our understanding of the world of the Russian Middle Ages happened on June 26, 1951 in Veliky Novgorod. There, at the Nerevsky archaeological site, birch bark was first discovered. Today it bears the proud name "Novgorodskaya No. 1".

Draw birch-bark charter No. 1. It is highly fragmented, but it consists of long and completely standard phrases: “So much manure and a gift came from such and such a village,” so it is easily restored.

On a fairly large, but severely torn, as archaeologists say, fragmented piece of birch bark, despite the damage, the text was quite confidently read about what kind of income from a number of villages certain Timothy and Thomas should receive.

Strange as it may seem, the first birch bark letters did not cause a sensation either in domestic or in world science. On the one hand, this has its own explanation: the content of the first letters found is very boring. These are business notes, who owes what to whom and from whom what is owed.

On the other hand, it is difficult, almost impossible, to explain the low interest on the part of science in these documents. In addition to the fact that in the same year, 1951, the Novgorod archaeological expedition found nine more such documents, and in the next year, 1952, the first birch bark was found already in Smolensk. This fact alone testified that domestic archaeologists are on the verge of a grandiose discovery, the scale of which cannot be estimated.

To date, almost 1070 birch bark letters have been found in Novgorod alone. As already mentioned, these documents were found in Smolensk, now their number has reached 16 pieces. The next, after Novgorod, the record holder was Staraya Russa, in which archaeologists found 45 letters.

Birch bark letter No. 419. Prayer book

19 of them were found in Torzhok, 8 in Pskov, and 5 in Tver. This year, the archaeological expedition of the Institute of Archeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences during excavations in Zaryadye, one of the oldest districts of the capital, discovered the fourth Moscow birch bark letter.

In total, letters were found in 12 ancient Russian cities, two of which are located on the territory of Belarus, and one - in Ukraine.

In addition to the fourth Moscow charter, this year the first birch bark charter was found in Vologda. The manner of presentation in it is fundamentally different from Novgorod. This suggests that Vologda had its own, original tradition of the epistolary genre of birch bark messages.

The accumulated experience and knowledge helped scientists to parse this document, but some points in the note are still a mystery even for the best specialists in Old Russian epigraphy.

“I have been waiting for this discovery for 20 years!”

Almost every letter is a mystery. And for the fact that gradually their secrets are revealed to us, the inhabitants of the 21st century, for the fact that we hear the living voices of our ancestors, we should be grateful to several generations of scientists who have been systematizing and deciphering birch bark letters.

And, first of all, here it is necessary to say about Artemy Vladimirovich Artsikhovsky, a historian and archaeologist who organized the Novgorod expedition in 1929. Since 1925, he has been purposefully engaged in archaeological excavations of monuments of Ancient Russia, starting with the burial mounds of the Vyatichi district of the Podolsky district of the Moscow province and ending with the grandiose excavations of Novgorod and the discovery of birch bark letters, for which he received universal recognition.

Birch bark No. 497 (second half of the 14th century). Gavrila Postnya invites her son-in-law Grigory and sister Ulita to visit Novgorod.

A colorful description has been preserved of the moment when one of the civilian workers who participated in the excavations, seeing letters on a scroll of birch bark taken out of the wet soil, took them to the head of the site, who was simply speechless from surprise. Seeing this, Artsikhovsky ran up, looked at the find, and, overcoming his excitement, exclaimed: “The premium is one hundred rubles! I have been waiting for this discovery for twenty years!”

Besides the fact that Artemy Artsikhovsky was a consistent and principled researcher, he also had a pedagogical talent. And here it is enough to say one thing: Academician Valentin Yanin was a student of Artsikhovsky. Valentin Lavrentievich was the first to introduce birch bark letters into scientific circulation as a historical source.

This allowed him to systematize the monetary and weight system of pre-Mongol Rus, to trace its evolution and relationship with the same systems in other medieval states. Also, Academician Yanin, relying on a set of sources, including birch bark, identified the key principles of governing the feudal republic, the features of the veche system and the institute of posadniks, senior officials of the Novgorod principality.

But a real revolution in understanding what birch bark writing really is, was made not by historians, but by philologists. The name of Academician Andrey Anatolyevich Zaliznyak stands here in the most honorable place.

Novgorod charter No. 109 (c. 1100) on the purchase of a stolen slave by a combatant. Content: "A letter from Zhiznomir to Mikula. You bought a slave in Pskov, and now the princess grabbed me for this [implied: convicting of the theft]. And then the squad vouched for me. So send a letter to that husband if the slave has him. But I want to, having bought horses and put [on a horse] a princely husband, [to go] to vaults [confrontations]. And you, if [yet] have not taken that money, do not take anything from him. "

In order to understand the importance of Zaliznyak's discovery, one must take into account that before the discovery of birch bark letters in the philological science dealing with ancient Russian texts, there was an idea that all the sources from which we can learn something about the literary language of that time are already known and are unlikely whether they can be supplemented with something.

And documents written in a language close to the spoken one have survived in general. For example, only two such documents of the 12th century are known. And suddenly a whole layer of texts is revealed, generally going beyond what scientists knew about the language of the Russian Middle Ages.

And when researchers in the 50-60s of the last century began to decipher, reconstruct and translate the first birch-bark letters, they were completely convinced that these documents were written at random. That is, their authors confused letters, made all sorts of mistakes and had no idea about spelling. The language of birch-bark letters differed so much from the well-studied, at that time, high, literary and liturgical style of Ancient Russia.

Andrey Anatolyevich proved that birch bark letters were written according to strict grammatical rules. In other words, he discovered the everyday language of medieval Novgorod. And, oddly enough, the level of literacy was so high that finding a letter with a spelling error becomes a real gift for linguists.

And the value of such errors lies in the fact that modern techniques allow us to reconstruct the features of a silent language.

The most trivial example. Let's say our culture disappeared overnight. A thousand years later, archaeologists find miraculously preserved books in Russian. Philologists manage to read and translate these texts.

But the written source does not make it possible to hear the disappeared speech. And suddenly, there is a student's notebook, in which the word "karova", "derivo", "sun", "che" is written. And scientists immediately understand how we spoke and how our spelling differed from phonetics.

Drawings of the boy Onfim

Before the discovery of Andrei Zaliznyak, we did not represent the level of literacy in Russia. We do not yet have the right to say that it was universal, but the fact that it was widespread in much wider sections of the population than previously thought is already a proven fact.

And this is very eloquently evidenced by the letter number 687. It dates from the 60-80s of the XIV century. This is a small piece of a letter, and, judging by the fact that specialists managed to read it, this is a letter of instruction from a husband to his wife. In decryption, it reads as follows: “... buy yourself oil, and [buy] clothes for children, [so-and-so - obviously, a son or daughter] give to teach reading and writing, and horses ... "

From this laconic text, we see that teaching children to read and write in those days was a rather ordinary thing, standing on a par with ordinary household tasks.

Letters and drawings of Onfim

Thanks to birch bark letters, we know how the children of medieval Novgorod learned to write. So, at the disposal of scientists there are two dozen birch bark letters and drawings of the boy Onfim, whose childhood fell on the middle of the 13th century.

Onfim knows how to read, knows how letters are written, knows how to write down liturgical texts by ear. There is a fairly well-reasoned assumption that in Ancient Russia, a child who was learning to read and write first began to write on ceres, thin wooden boards covered with a thin layer of wax. It was easier for the unsteady child's hand, and after the student mastered this science, he was taught to scratch out letters on birch bark with a stylus.

It is these first lessons of Onfim that have come down to us.

This boy from the 13th century, apparently, was a big varmint, since his copybooks are richly seasoned with various kinds of drawings. In particular, the self-portrait of Onfim in the image of a horseman piercing a defeated enemy with a spear is incomparable. We know that the boy depicted himself in the image of a fighting daring man by the word “Onfime” traced to the right of the rider.

Having finished the artistic composition, the mischievous one seemed to catch himself and remembered that, in fact, he received this piece of birch bark not to glorify his upcoming exploits, but to teach him to read and write. And on the remaining undrawn area at the top, he rather clumsily and with gaps displays the alphabet from A to K.

In general, it is precisely due to the fact that Onfim was a reckless naughty that such a number of his prescriptions have come down to us. Apparently, this boy once lost a whole stack of his copybooks on the street, just as some of us, returning home from school, lost notebooks, textbooks, and sometimes entire portfolios.

chronology

If we return to the discoveries of academician Zaliznyak in the field of birch bark letters, then it is worth mentioning one more thing. Andrey Anatolyevich developed a unique method for dating birch bark letters. The fact is that most of the letters are dated stratigraphically. Its principle is quite simple: everything that settles on the ground as a result of human activity is stacked in layers.

And if in a certain layer there is a letter mentioning some Novgorod official, say a posadnik, or an archbishop, and their years of life, or at least reign, are well known from the annals, then we can confidently say that this layer belongs to such a time period.

This method is supported by the method of dendrochronological dating. Everyone knows that the age of a cut tree can be easily calculated by the number of annual rings. But these rings have different thicknesses, the smaller it is, the more unfavorable the year was for growth. By the sequence of alternating rings, you can find out in which years this tree grew, and often, if the last ring is preserved, in which year this tree was cut down.

Dendrochronological scales for the Veliky Novgorod region were developed for 1200 years ago. This technique was developed by the domestic archaeologist and historian Boris Aleksandrovich Kolchin, who devoted his scientific activity to excavations in Novgorod.

During archaeological research, it turned out that Novgorod stands on very marshy soil. The streets in Russia were paved with logs split along the fibers, turning them flat side up. Over time, this pavement sank into the marshy soil, and a new flooring had to be made.

During excavations, it turned out that their number can reach up to twenty-eight. Moreover, subsequent discoveries showed that the streets of Novgorod, laid in the 10th century, remained in their places until the 18th century.

Noticing obvious patterns in the sequence of the thickness of the rings on these pavements, Boris Kolchin compiled the world's first dendrochronological scale. And today, any find made in the north-west of Russia, anywhere from Vologda to Pskov, can be dated with an accuracy of almost one year.

But what if a birch bark is found by accident? And there are neither more nor less, but a little less than thirty pieces. As a rule, they are found in the already worked-out soil from excavations, which is taken out for the improvement of various flower beds, lawns and squares. But there were also funny cases. So, one Novgorodian transplanted an indoor flower from one pot to another and found a small birch bark scroll in the ground.

The number of letters found by chance is close to 3% of the total. This is a considerable amount, and, of course, it would be nice to date all of them.

Academician Zaliznyak developed the so-called non-stratigraphic dating method. The age of a literacy is determined by the properties of its language. This is the form of letters, which are known to change over time, and the forms of address, and the forms of the language, as the language develops and changes slightly with each generation.

In total, about five hundred parameters can be used to date an inscription on birch bark by a non-stratigraphic method. In this way, it is possible to date letters with an accuracy of about a quarter of a century. For documents seven hundred years old, this is an excellent result.

"300 children to teach books"

Extremely interesting researches concerning birch-bark writings belong to the Doctor of Philology, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Aleksey Alekseevich Gippius. He came up with a very reasoned hypothesis about who, and why, began to write the first birch bark letters. First of all, Aleksey Alekseevich pointed out that before the official date of the Baptism of Russia, we do not have any data confirming the use of the Cyrillic alphabet in this period.

But after the Epiphany, such artifacts begin to appear. For example, the seal of Yaroslav the Wise and the Novgorod Code is the oldest Russian book. It was found relatively recently, in 2000. These are three thin lime boards, interconnected in the same way as modern books.

The board placed in the middle was covered with a thin layer of wax on both sides, the outer boards were covered with wax only from the inside. On the pages of this "book" are written two psalms and the beginning of the third.

Tools for writing on birch bark and wax. Novgorod. XII-XIV centuries

By itself, this monument is very interesting and hid many secrets, some of which have already been unraveled. But in the context of letters, it is interesting in that it dates from the very beginning of the 11th century, while the earliest birch bark texts were written in the 30s of the same century.

According to Professor Gippius, this means that after the Baptism of Russia and before the appearance of the first charters, there was a rather long period when the book tradition already existed, the state power used inscriptions in its attributes, and the tradition of everyday writing has not yet appeared. In order for this tradition to appear, a social environment must first have been formed that would be ready and able to use this method of communication.

And information about how this environment could have appeared was brought to us by the first Sophian Chronicle. Under 1030, the following message is read: “The same summer the idea of ​​​​Yaroslav on chyud, and I will win, and put up the city of Yuryev. And I came to Novugrad and taught children 300 books from elders and priests. And reposed Archbishop Akim; and his disciple was Ephraim, who taught us more.

In Russian, this passage sounds like this: “In the same year, Yaroslav went to the Chud and defeated it and set up the city of Yuryev (now Tartu). And he gathered 300 children from priests and elders to teach books. And Archbishop Joachim reposed, and his disciple Ephraim, who taught us, was.

And in this dispassionate chronicle segment, we, apparently, hear the voice of one of those first Novgorod schoolchildren who, after graduating from their studies, laid down the everyday tradition of exchanging messages scrawled on birch bark.

"From Rozhnet to Kosnyatin"

The collection of birch bark letters is replenished by an average of a dozen and a half a year. About a quarter of them are whole documents. The rest are more or less complete fragments of notes. As a rule, Novgorodians, having received the news and read it, immediately tried to destroy the message. This explains the number of damaged birch bark notes. The smaller the letter in size, the more likely it is not to be torn apart and that it will reach us in complete safety.

The only complete letter found in Novgorod this year contains the following text: "I am a puppy." A hole was made at the top of this small piece of birch bark, measuring five by five centimeters. It is not difficult to guess that some child scrawled this phrase in order to hang it on the collar of his pet.

However, it is wrong to think that our ancestors wrote messages with or without reason. Novgorodians were pragmatists and wrote letters only when it was necessary.

A huge layer of documents-letters that have come down to us. The father writes to his son, the husband to his wife, the landlord to the clerk, and in the overwhelming majority of cases the content is exclusively business. In second place in terms of quantity are business records, who owes how much to whom, from whom what dues are due. There is even a small body of incantations and spells.

The vast majority of letters of the epistolary genre begin with a phrase that indicates from whom the message is addressed to whom, for example, "from Rozhnet to Kosnyatin." Unsigned birch bark letters are found only in two cases: if they are military orders or reports, and if they are love letters.

Every year, scientists replenish the complex of accumulated knowledge about birch bark writings. Some decipherings made earlier turn out to be erroneous, and seemingly thoroughly studied inscriptions appear before researchers in a completely new light. There is no doubt that the birch bark documents will surprise us many times over in the coming years and reveal many hitherto unknown features of the ancient Novgorodians.

Birch bark letter R24 ​​(Moscow)

“Let’s go, sir, to Kostroma, Yura and his mother, sir, turned us into the back. And he took for himself with his mother 15 bela, tiun took 3 bela, then, sir, he took 20 bela and half a ruble.

Despite the fact that three birch bark letters had already been found in Moscow, it was the fourth one that turned out to be “real” - a birch bark letter of the type that was classic in Novgorod. The fact is that the first two Moscow letters are very small fragments, according to which it is impossible to reconstruct the text.

The third, rather voluminous, but it was written in ink. This way of writing in Novgorod occurs only once. All the rest are scratched on the birch bark with a writing device that most of all resembles a stylus.

It is noteworthy that the writing has long been known to archaeologists involved in the Russian Middle Ages, but only with the discovery of the first writings it became clear the purpose of this item, which was previously considered a hairpin or a pin, and sometimes even called a thing of indeterminate purpose.

Moscow birch bark document No. 3, preserved in the form of several strips of birch bark.

The fourth Moscow charter was written precisely in writing, contains, like most classical charters, a financial report on a certain enterprise, in this case, a trip to Kostroma.

A certain person writes to his master: “We went, sir, to Kostroma, and Yuri and his mother turned us back, and took 15 bela, tiun took 3 beli, then sir, he took 20 bela and a half.”

So, someone went on some business to Kostroma, and for the period of writing the letter, these regions were considered the quietest and most peaceful possession of the Moscow princes because of their remoteness from the Horde. And Yuri with a certain mother turned them back.

Moreover, travelers who write about themselves in the plural had to part with a rather considerable amount of money. In total, they gave both Yuri and his mother and the tiuna (as the princely governors were called in Moscow Russia) 28 bela and half a ruble. Is it a lot or a little?

Bela is a small monetary unit, it is named so because once this coin was an analogue of the price of a squirrel skin. From the same row, another monetary unit, the kuna, which was equal in price to the skin of a marten.

Academician Valentin Lavrentievich Yanin for Novgorod of a slightly earlier era defines the dignity of white as 1.87 g of silver, that is, 28 bels is equal to 52.36 grams of silver.

Poltina in ancient times meant half a ruble, and the ruble in those days was not a coin, but a silver bar weighing 170 grams.

Thus, the authors of the Moscow Charter No. 4 parted with money, the total face value of which can be estimated at 137 grams of silver! If we translate this into modern prices in investment coins, it turns out that the loss amounted to 23.4 thousand rubles. The amount is quite tangible for a modern traveler, if he has to part with it just like that.

Dmitry Rudnev

Since the first birch bark was found in Novgorod, historians have collected a whole library of texts on birch bark, which told a lot about the life of medieval Russia. .

The first birch bark found by the expedition of Professor Artemy Artsikhovsky in Novgorod in 1951 / RIA Novosti

On that day, July 26, 1951, members of the Novgorod archaeological expedition were working at the new Nerevsky excavation site, which is in the very center of the city, north of the Kremlin. Layer by layer, they lifted the pavements of ancient Kholopya Street, hoping to find something under the blackened ends. A 30-year-old employee of the Novgorod Furniture Plant also worked here. Nina Akulova who decided to earn some money at the excavations. It was she who spotted a tightly folded piece of birch bark in the gap between the logs and was about to throw it aside like unnecessary garbage, but out of curiosity she unwrapped it.

One hundred rubles for birch bark

Letters were scratched on the dirty bark, and Nina, just in case, called the head of the section Gaidu Avdusin. Seeing the find, she was speechless, and coming to her senses, she ran after the head of the expedition, Professor Artsikhovsky. Artemy Vladimirovich also could not utter a word at first, and then shouted in a voice that was not his own: “The bonus is one hundred rubles! I have been waiting for this discovery for 20 years!”

Nina Fedorovna never exchanged a pink hundred-dollar bill with a portrait of Lenin: she carefully kept it all her life. And when she died, on her grave monument they depicted the same birch bark letter, which went down in history under No. 1. Artsikhovsky had actually been looking for birch bark with inscriptions since 1932, when he had just headed the excavations in Novgorod. He was inspired by these sources: for example, in the 12th century, a monk of the Novgorod Anthony Monastery, a medieval scientist and religious thinker Kirik Novgorodets reported that the townspeople threw written letters on the ground and walked on them, and indulged in reflections whether it was a sin. No one would throw away expensive parchment or the rarest paper at that time, which means that most likely it was about birch bark - cheap and accessible to everyone. And already in the 15th century, a church figure, an Orthodox theologian Joseph Volotsky directly pointed out that in the Trinity Monastery (now the Trinity-Sergius Lavra) "books are not written on charters, but on birch bark." Much later, at the end of the 19th century, a Novgorod lover of antiquity, an outstanding local historian Vasily Peredolsky I found several such charters and showed them to everyone in my home museum. But at that time, science did not appreciate these finds: when analyzing the collection after the death of the collector, the letters were simply thrown away. Participants of the first archaeological expeditions in Novgorod considered rolled pieces of birch bark to be floats, and wrote - pointed sticks with which letters were scratched - something like a shoe awl.

Artsikhovsky thought differently: from his point of view, in the days of Ancient Russia, birch bark was a common material for writing. Common, but very fragile: only in the swampy soil of Novgorod it could survive for centuries. True, even here the strips of bark were twisted in such a way that it was very difficult to unfold them without damage. The restorer of the expedition helped Alexey Kiryanov, who washed the letter found by Akulova with warm water and soda, and then squeezed it between two glasses.

In this form, she was taken to Moscow to the Academy of Sciences Mikhail Tikhomirov, a specialist in ancient Russian writing. He established that the text, written at the end of the 14th century, contains a list of taxes that the peasants paid to three landowners: Thomas, Iev and Timothy. Artsikhovsky was sure that there would be other letters, and he was not mistaken. By the end of the season, eight more were found at the Nerevsky excavation site: a quitrent list, correspondence from merchants about beer supplies, a complaint from a woman named Gostyata, who was driven away by her husband ... The tenth number was a birch bark salt shaker, on the rim of which a riddle was read:

“There is a city between heaven and earth, and an ambassador goes to him without a way, he is dumb, he is carrying an unwritten letter.”

I had to fight over the answer: apparently, we are talking about Noah's ark, where the dove brought an olive branch - a sign of the end of the flood. But there were still many mysteries hidden in the Novgorod land ...

Priceless treasure

Historians were happy: the chronicles and lives known until then told mainly about the top of ancient Russian society, and now they have discovered an invaluable source of information about the life of ordinary people. It has been suggested that Novgorod is only the beginning, that birch-bark letters are about to be found in other cities. Indeed, already in 1952, the expedition of Daniil Avdusin (husband of Gaida Avdusina and also a student of Artsikhovsky) discovered such a letter in the Gnezdovsky settlement near Smolensk. Later, birch bark scrolls were found in Pskov, Tver, Moscow, Staraya Ryazan, as well as in Staraya Russa, Torzhok and Vologda, once subordinate to Novgorod. In the late 1980s, they were also found far to the south - at the excavations of the annalistic Zvenigorod near Lvov. And… everything. Of the 1185 birch bark letters found, 1081 are of Novgorod origin. Of course, birch bark survived worse in other soils, but this does not explain the almost complete absence of letters in other lands. Rather, the matter is in the dissimilarity of rich and willful Novgorod to other Russian cities. From the 11th to the 15th century, he lived independently of the grand duke's power, and all letters that have come down to us date from this period. The reason is clear: before that, the Novgorodians were pagans and did not know how to write, but after that they submitted to Moscow and gradually lost their individuality.

Plan of medieval Novgorod. On the left is the Nerevsky excavation, where more than 400 birch bark letters were found, including letter No. 1 / RIA Novosti

Most of the letters date back to the 13th-14th centuries, which is also unusual. At that time, Russia was in decline as a result of the Horde invasion, its southern cities were almost completely depopulated. Novgorod, on the other hand, grew and prospered thanks to trade with Europe. Local merchants knew several languages, and they learned Russian from early childhood. Quite remarkable in this regard are the notes of perhaps the most famous author of birch bark writings - a boy named Onfim, presumably six or seven years old. In 1956, at the same Nerevsky excavation site, a whole scattering of letters, lost or thrown away by him, was found.

Here are school copybooks, copied passages from church books and numerous drawings with which Onfim decorated the “fields” of his birch bark “notebook”. The most famous was his touching image of a brave horseman, striking the enemy: probably, the boy dreamed of becoming the same. And on the bottom of a birch bark, which, apparently, was given to him for exercises in writing, he drew a strange beast with horns and a twisted tail (signed: "I am a beast") and next began the message: "Bow from Onfim to Danila."

Artemy Vladimirovich Artsikhovsky - the discoverer, the first publisher and commentator of birch bark letters

It is clear that this is a draft, like many birch bark documents. Some of what was written (primarily official documentary records) was then transferred to parchment, and practical Novgorodians threw out preliminary sketches and everything else. The range of this "other" is very wide: mostly business and economic letters, but there are also prayers, and conspiracies, and love notes, and even jokes. Letter No. 842 (10–40s of the 12th century) contains the first mention of sausage in the Slavic world, and letter No. 259 says: “I sent you a bucket of sturgeon.” The text of the letter No. 521 (the beginning of the 15th century) is in the nature of a love spell: “So let your heart and your body and your soul flare up [with passion] for me and for my body and for my face.” In the letter No. 566 - an invitation to a date: "Be on Saturday rye or give a message." Letter No. 752 (like the one above, from the turn of the 11th-12th centuries) is a letter from a girl: “What kind of evil do you have against me that you didn’t come to me this week?<…>If you were interested, then you would have escaped from under [human] 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.” It is interesting that the recipient cut this letter and threw it into the garbage pit: it seems that he did not want the message to catch the eye of his wife or new girlfriend.

Letter No. 377 (the last third of the 13th century) is the earliest marriage proposal known to us in Russia. It says: “From Mikita to ... Follow me - I want you, and you want me; but listen to that [witness. - V. E.] Ignat. The name of beloved Mikita was hidden between the folds of the bark, and for decades it was read as "Ulyanytsia" - albeit in a rather strange form of "Ouliaanits". The mysterious Ulyanitsa inspired romantics until, relatively recently, scientists returned to this mystery and came to the conclusion that the name should be read as "Anna", and a little later they saw "Malania" here, which, of course, does not sound so beautiful like in the first version.

The transcribers of letters are used to unusual words, because these records do not reflect bookish, but colloquial speech, unknown from other monuments. Their language is so peculiar that the chief specialist in it, academician Andrey Zaliznyak, singled it out as a special Old Novgorod dialect. The first sign of the dialect is a strong sound, when “o” replaced not only “a”, but also “e”. The second is a clatter: “hotsu” instead of “I want”, “what” instead of “what”. The third is the unusual pronunciation of consonants at the beginning of the word: “nail” instead of “star”, “kerky” instead of “church”, “head” instead of “sed”. The modern form of these words is the result of the second palatalization, which took place in the common Slavic language, apparently no later than the 6th century. If the Novgorod dialect did not experience it, then it separated from the Slavic tree earlier. It turns out that Novgorodians are not quite Russian, and maybe even a special people ...

Hello from Onfim

Zaliznyak's assumption was not supported by archaeologists, who do not find any special differences between the material culture of Novgorod and other ancient Russian lands. The general public did not notice this discussion at all, but they were very excited about two letters found in 2005 and containing the oldest (XII century) examples of the use of profanity. In the first of them (No. 954), a certain Shilets is condemned, who "knocks" other people's pigs. In northern dialects, this word means "to rape", but academician Valentin Yanin saved the honor of Shilts, pointing out that in ancient Novgorod it also had another meaning - "to induce damage." However, according to the concepts of that time, this crime was much more serious. The rumor about him was spread by a certain Nozdrka, who lived in the Nerevsky end, and the townspeople from the Lyudin end, where Shilets lived, went to take revenge on her. The result was serious riots, which had to be pacified by the Grand Duke himself. Vladimir Monomakh. Historians who knew about this event, after deciphering the found letters, were able to figure out the reasons for what happened.

Image of St. Barbara on birch bark (first third11th century). This find was made by archaeologists at the Troitsky excavation site in Novgorod in 2000 / TASS

The second “obscene” letter (under No. 955) is a letter from a certain Milusha to a wealthy townswoman Marena about assisting in the marriage of the Great Spit (obviously, the girl’s nickname). In the meantime, Milusha reminds Marena of yesterday's two hryvnias and immediately uses an indecent five-letter word. The journalists innocently decided that in a fit of feelings she was cursing her friend, but scientists made it clear: here the swear words are an ancient sacred spell from the wedding ceremony, with which Milusha brings the future marriage closer. At the same time, it is believed that Marena, mentioned in several more letters, was Marya, the wife of an influential boyar in the city Petr Mikhalkovich. True, there is another version, according to which Milusha refers to the Slavic goddess of death and at the same time fertility Morena. But even the most zealous pagan woman would hardly write letters to the goddess, let alone demand two hryvnias from her. So the option with the noblewoman is more plausible. By the way, obscene words were found in letters before, but they didn’t make sensations out of them, and were bashfully omitted in publications.

Of course, such letters are far from the main Novgorod discovery of the new millennium. So, in 2000, the oldest book of Russia that has come down to us, created at the turn of the 10th and 11th centuries, was found: biblical psalms are written on wooden tablets covered with wax. At the same time, the archives of the city court were unearthed in Lyudin End - more than a hundred drafts of legal documents fixed on birch bark. Wooden tags for sealing sacks of furs were also found there - excise stamps of the 11th century. By the way, the word "tag" (of Scandinavian origin, from birk- “birch”) recalls that they wrote on birch bark in other northern countries.

However, discoveries are being made not only in Novgorod: in 2007, during excavations in the Tainitsky Garden of the Moscow Kremlin, the third in the capital and the largest of all known (370 words) birch bark was found (another feature of it is that it is written in ink, and not scratched). This is an inventory of the property of a certain Turabey, apparently a Horde Baskak who owned a large part of the Kremlin in the 14th century (also a kind of sensation). The fourth Moscow birch bark document was discovered by archaeologists in 2015 in Zaryadye, and at the same time the first such document was found in Vologda. Today, the interest of researchers is connected both with the north of Ancient Russia, the settlements of Novgorodians, and with the south, where more and more traces of the existence of “birch” writing are being discovered there. For example, in Kyiv in 2010, they found a neatly cut birch bark sheet - a blank for a letter.

Photograph and drawing of the text of the Novgorod birch-bark document No. 8 (last quarter of the 12th century). Translation: “From Semnunova's wife to Iguchka. To the one whose cow [or: whose cow you have], say: “If you want a cow and go after a cow, then bring three hryvnias” / RIA Novosti

Nevertheless, Veliky Novgorod remains in the center of scientists' attention. Any construction within the city is allowed here only after archaeological work has been carried out. Finds are made not only by specialists, but also by ordinary citizens: let's say, letter No. 612 (actually a small fragment of text) Chelnokov from Novgorod found at home in a flower pot. Of course, the main work is still carried out by the Novgorod archaeological expedition, which since 1962 has been invariably led by Artsikhovsky’s student - Valentin Lavrentievich Yanin. In the same year, 1962, archaeologists left the Nerevsky excavation, where over 400 letters were found. Only recently this record was surpassed by the Troitsky excavation site at Lyudin End, which has been under construction for more than 40 years. And in 2015, a new excavation was laid near Nerevsky - Kozmodemyansky, where 15 letters, albeit small ones, have already been found. One of them, with a brief inscription “Ya schenya” (“I am a puppy”), has already been called “greetings from Onfim”: was it not written by that same young dreamer?

Literacy and literacy

With the help of birch bark "archives", scientists were able to restore in detail the appearance of ancient Novgorod and name hundreds, if not thousands of its inhabitants. As they are found, the certificates are published in academic publications (11 volumes have already been published), and recently their complete database has appeared on the Internet. But these results are not to everyone's satisfaction. Fans of the "conspiracy theory" have repeatedly accused historians of presenting fake letters to the public on the orders of Stalin himself in order to prove the high culture of Ancient Russia and the education of its inhabitants. This strange accusation is reinforced by the fact that until 1951 there was not a single such find, and then they suddenly began to pour in abundance, and only in Novgorod. In fact, as already mentioned, letters were found before, it’s just that for many years excavations were carried out from time to time, and only after the indicated year - precisely thanks to birch bark letters - they became regular.

Today, it is well known how letters were created: birch bark was cut from a tree, dried under pressure, and then the text was scratched on the inner, smoother side with bone or metal writing. The other end of the writing was rounded, since they also wrote on wax tablets and with its help it was possible to overwrite what was written. When did the first charters appear? Under the year 1030, the Novgorod chronicles report that the Grand Duke Yaroslav ordered the townspeople to give 300 children to "teach books." Probably, the first city scribe with the unusual name Ghoul Likhoy, the scribe of the Ostromir Gospel, deacon Gregory, came out of these children ... According to Andrey Zaliznyak, it was this generation, "having taken the letter within the walls of the temple, took it out into the street." After that, birch-bark writings have come a long way, on which scientists, not without difficulty, placed chronological milestones on the basis of paleography, as well as the archaeological distribution of finds by layers. Although most of the letters do not have marked dates, most of them can be dated in the range of 20–30 years.

Academician and head of the Novgorod archaeological expedition Valentin Yanin tells Russian President Vladimir Putin about the excavations in Novgorod. 2004 / TASS

Not so long ago, experiencing difficulties with deciphering, historians blamed the illiteracy of the ancient Novgorodians. New research has proven that people of the distant past were more literate than many of our contemporaries. 90% (!) of the texts are written without errors at all, and the difficulty in understanding them is caused by damage to the birch bark or peculiarities of the Novgorod dialect. There is another problem: the authors of some letters were clearly representatives of other peoples subordinate to the Novgorod Republic. This is all, Vod, Chud and especially Karelians: for example, charter No. 403 even contains a small Russian-Karelian dictionary of the tribute collector. Letters were also found, written in Latin, German, Greek - proof of the wide international relations of the city on the Volkhov.

Based on the population of medieval Novgorod and the "writing" activity of the townspeople, experts have calculated that up to 20,000 more birch bark letters can be found in the city. Considering that now from one to a hundred such finds are made a year, this process can stretch for centuries. But scientists, like today's citizens, are in no hurry. Annually celebrating the memorable July 26 as Birch Bark Day, they do not so much remember past expeditions as they look forward to future ones that will open new pages in the history of their native land.

Vadim Erlikhman

Birch bark letters are private messages and documents of the 10th-16th centuries, the text of which was applied to birch bark. The first such documents were found by Russian historians in Novgorod in 1951 during an archeological expedition led by the historian A.V. Artsikhovsky. Since then, in honor of this find, every year a holiday is celebrated in Novgorod - the Day of the birch bark letter. That expedition brought nine more such documents, and by 1970 they had already found 464 pieces. Novgorod birch bark letters were found by archaeologists in layers of soil, where the remains of plants and ancient debris were preserved.

Most of the letters on birch bark are personal letters. They touched upon various economic and domestic issues, gave instructions and described conflicts. Birch-bark letters of semi-joking and frivolous content were also found. In addition, Arkhipovsky found copies that contained peasant protests against the masters, complaints about their fate and lists of lordly faults.

The text on birch bark letters was written out by a simple and primitive method - it was scratched out with a sharply sharpened metal or bone writing (pin). Previously, the birch bark was processed so that the letters came out clear. At the same time, the text was placed on birch bark in a line, in most cases without division into words. When writing, fragile ink was almost never used. Birch bark is usually short and pragmatic, containing only the most important information. What the addressee and the author know is not mentioned in it.

Archives and museums hold many later documents and letters written on birch bark. Whole books have been found. Russian ethnographer and writer, said that he himself saw a birch bark book in Mezen among the Old Believers.

As a material for writing, it became widespread in the 11th century, but lost its importance by the 15th century. It was then that paper, which was cheaper, was widely used among the population of Russia. Since then, birch bark has been used as a secondary recording material. It was mainly used by commoners for personal records and private correspondence, and official letters and messages of national importance were written on parchment.

Gradually, birch bark also left everyday life. In one of the letters found, in which complaints were recorded to the official, the researchers found an instruction to rewrite the contents of the birch bark document on parchment and only then send it to the address.

The dating of letters is carried out mainly in a stratigraphic way - on the basis of the layer in which the thing was discovered. A number of letters on birch bark are dated due to the mention of historical events or important persons in them.

Birch bark letters are an important source on the history of our language. It is by them that one can establish the chronology or degree of fame of any linguistic phenomenon, as well as the time of appearance and etymology of a particular word. There are many words that are found in letters that are unknown from other ancient Russian sources. Basically, these are words of everyday meaning, which had practically no chance of getting into the works of writers of that time.