Pravda reports that a 12th century amulet has been found in Moscow.
Posted on June 28, 2003 10:52 AM. Filed under: history & archaeology.A unique archaeological discovery, a silver amulet dating back to the 12th century was made at a building site in the Moscow region where the DON-Stroi construction company is building a new house for the Moscow regional administration. The rare amulet was found by workers of the Archaeology Institute.
The DON-Stroi press-service reported on Monday that a scene of Christ's baptizing in the Jordan River is coined on the face of a round plate of 4 centimeters in diameter. On the reverse side, there is a fantastic creature with woman's body and 11 snakes growing out of her legs.
As we know from the Slav legends, a woman with snakes instead of the hair is a modification of the antique Gorgon Meduse; a glance at her face inevitably entails death. One of the Magi, who managed to decapitate the Gorgon, acquired miraculous strength. Another transformation of the Gorgon image in the Slav apocryphal stories is the beast of Gorgonia that guards the Eden from humans after the Fall of man. Iconography of the Gorgon head is typical of popular Byzantine and Old Russian amulets.
Specialists say that amulets of this kind are rather rare. This combination of a canonical Christian topic and a pagan image may belong to the epoch of dual faith when pagan traditions were still very strong. It was rather typical of that period that images belonging to Christianity were depicted on one side of amulets and images with snakes and spells protecting from diseases on the other one. [continue]