Igor’ Yur’evich Schaub Doctor in History, leading scientific researcher, Institute of History of Material culture of Russian Academy of Sciences (Dvortsovaya emb., 18, Letter A, Saint Petersburg, Russia, 191181)
schaubigor@mail.ru
Schaub I. Yu. On the Cult of Heroes in the Northern Black Sea Region, Religiya. Tserkov’. Obshchestvo. Issledovaniya i publikatsii po teologii i religii [Religion. Church. Society: Research and publications in the field of theology and religious studies], Saint-Petersburg, 2024, vol. 13, pp. 224–253.
doi: 10.24412/2308-0698-2024-13-224-253
Language: Russian
The article is devoted to the current state of the study of the cult of heroes in the Northern Black Sea region that was widespread and had a number of features that distinguished it from the heroic cult of Balkan Greece due to the influence of barbarian religious and mythological ideas. Hercules enjoyed the greatest popularity in the Northern Black Sea region. The Greek colonists, having encountered the ancient cult of the Great Female Deity and her companion in the Northern Black Sea region, who were worshiped by local tribes, associated this god primarily with Hercules. In turn, the Scythians saw their own god in the images of this hero. Another hero whom the Greeks recognized in another paredra of the Great Goddess was Achilles. The cult of both heroes shows barbarian features. To a lesser extent, the veneration of the Dioscuri is recorded in the northern Black Sea city-states. The presence of images of Europe, Io, and Helen on the sacred monuments of the Bosporus (ritual vessels, items of burial inventory, temple decorations) allows us to assume the important significance of these characters of the heroic epic in the religious and mythological ideas of its Grecobarbarian population. All these female heroines were clearly perceived as hypostases of the Great Goddess. As for Paris, depicted on the items of burial inventory, since the image of this epic hero shows features of the ancient god of the dead, it is quite possible that he also acted as such for the Bosporans. The analysis of the Northern Black Sea material related to the cult of heroes allows us to join the opinion of those researchers who believe that in cases where we are not talking about real people heroized after their death, heroes were deities who had lost their original status.
Key words: ancient religion, cult of heroes, Hercules, Achilles, Dioscuri, Paris, Great Goddess, Northern Black Sea region, Olbia, Tauric Chersonesos, Cimmerian Bosporus, Scythians
URL: https://rcs-almanac.ru/schaub-2024-en/
