Tsutsiev, Aslan A.
Kavkaz Forum. 2024. Issue 17.

Abstract:
The article describes a practically unknown version of an accidental find near
the village. Nar of the Alagir region of Ossetia and the appearance of a bronze
maskoid in the exhibition of the Museum of the Terek Region in 1913, recorded by
guide Elena Barakova from Vasily Kaloev in 1938. According to this version, the
bronze head was found by the sons of Abisal Khetagurov in the water near the
glacier of Mount Zikara in 1912. For some time, the find was kept in the Khetagurovs’
family, and then in the sanctuary of Tsyfydzuary Wastirgi in the Dzhinat Gorge
of North Ossetia. The version recorded by E. Barakova deserves attention as the
earliest written history of the discovery of a unique object, containing interesting
details of the event. In addition, some problems associated with this item are
identified, which have not yet found a final solution. In particular, this concerns
the dating of the bronze head, which varies from the VIIIth century BC until the
IVth-IIIrd centuries BC. The functional purpose of the maskoid also remains not
entirely clear. The idea that it represents the top of a wooden idol does not seem
convincingly argued to the author. Today there is no consensus about the gender
of the bronze head and the probable “prototype” of the sculpture. The attribution
of a bronze mask from Nar as belonging to the archaic Vainakh cult of the goddess
Tusholi, proposed by L.P. Semenov and supported by V.A. Kuznetsov, cannot be
considered justified. For the first time the previously unknown documents from
the scientific archive of the National Museum of the Republic of North Ossetia-
Alania are published.

Keywords: maskoid, bronze head, Koban culture, Nar village, anthropomorphic figurines, Ossetia.

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