Леонид Гаврилов
Moscow guide
Moscow – Arkaim
Another “living embodiment” of astrological principles in urban planning is, oddly enough, Moscow. The fact is that the existing radial-ring building structure was laid during the time of Jacob Bruce (an associate of Peter I), who, as you know, was an outstanding astrologer. Therefore, the layout of Moscow has not only practical, but also astrological significance, dividing the capital into 12 sectors, it associates each of which with a certain sign of the zodiac. So Moscow can be called both the successor of Arkaim and all the ancient Aryan clans. The high culture of the inhabitants of Arkaim is proved by numerous archaeological finds – works of art, weapons, ritual objects. They owned not only agricultural technologies, but also highly developed metallurgy and metalworking techniques. However, Arkaim, however, like other excavations of the “Country of Cities” – just the smallest part of the huge and mysterious culture of our ancestors, the ancient Aryans. She is still waiting for her researchers.
Modern Arkaim is visited by thousands of tourists and dozens of researchers a year. The density of research (primarily historical) is quite high. Excavations have been temporarily suspended here. In June 2000, Cosmopoisk researchers mapped several surrounding hills in the ancient city. In August 2004 in Arkaim, a regional collection “Ural-Cosmopoisk” (headed by M. Solomatin) was held…
Directions to Arkaim:
1) By train to Magnitogorsk in the Chelyabinsk region; by train through Kartaly to the Breda station; by bus or by car go west to the Amurskiy settlement, then to the confluence of the Utyaganka and B. Karaganka rivers, tributaries of the Ural river in the Bredinsky district.
2) From Magnitogorsk by bus or by car go south through Agapovka, Kizilskoe, then east through Obruchevka – before reaching Amurskoe. The sought-after place is located on the left bank of the B. Karaganka, not far (slightly to the north) from the Bredy – Amurskiy – Obruchevka road. There is a sign “Arkaim” on the road. A tourist camp and a hotel have been set up in the excavation area, there are shops, cafes, a video room and a museum.
You must go directly to the mothballed excavations of Arkaim with a local guide and with permission from archaeologists!The ancient city is protected, and the excavations themselves are mothballed, access for tourists is open to some parts of Arkaim and to buildings recreated and reconstructed according to ancient models. In summer, near the ancient city, there are usually tents of travelers who have come from all over the country, the atmosphere in the camp is quite complacent. A map of the area and advice can be obtained from Kosmopoisk.
On seven hills
Is it by chance or not that Moscow was erected on seven hills?
Indeed, in Russia the number seven has long been considered good, happy.
Mikhail Lomonosov noted that Moscow: “…It stands on many mountains and valleys, along which the lofty and humiliated sides and buildings represent many cities, which have united into one city… If we take three mountains as one hill, which split into three, then it together with the other main ones it will make seven hills, according to which Moscow is compared with seven-hill Rome and Constantinople.”
Today it is difficult to know where these hills are located. Time and people have changed Moscow beyond recognition. Hills and burial mounds were dug down, ponds, ravines and ditches were filled up, it cut forests and groves down. Only from the old descriptions can one find out where the hills were.
“…The first hill is the Kremlin and Kitai-gorod… The second contains the Myasnitskaya and Sretensky parts… The third hill is Tverskaya, stretching from Truba to Presnya; The fourth – three mountains (Trekhgorka); Fifth – Lousy slide; Sixth – Lefortovskaya; The seventh – unnamed – on the right bank of the Moskva River, where Neskuchnoye, of which Vorobyovy Gory is a continuation…”
The safe places in Moscow are those that are located on the hills. Low-lying areas have negative energy. Once there were swamps and swamps where harmful gases accumulated. Today in these places there is a large concentration of car exhaust, industrial gas emissions, and bad ecology.
Moscow treasures
Some of the scientists called the treasures a mirror of old events.
Money and products made of precious metals and stones can tell a lot about times gone by. They reflect historical events. Not only the jewels themselves, but also the reasons why they were buried, time, place – all this is the most valuable information.
Why, after all, according to ancient legends and rumors, the treasures found can bring trouble? There can be many versions.
For example, suppose somebody hid the treasure during a deadly epidemic. And although silver and gold have properties that kill bacteria and have lain in the ground for hundreds of years, some objects can still keep infectious diseases.
I can assume it that various things are carriers of wave energy not yet recognized by science at the moment.
Wars, troubles, bloody crimes, catastrophes, the unkind, dangerous events of the past are reflected in the products of those times. And it stores their evil spirit energy reflections in hidden treasures.
Sudden finds of rich treasures, unexpectedly quick enrichment – a powerful effect on the human psyche, on the model of his behavior, on his entire life program. Whether or not he wants it.
And any abrupt change, even if it is positive, can ultimately lead to sad consequences and even death.
The found treasures entail the envy of many others, often – violation of laws and punishment. And people who are not psychologically prepared for sudden wealth gain harmful and dangerous habits.
One ancient belief says that the treasures found must be divided among many people. And the more people receive jewelry, the better. Then the evil stored in them will not end up in one hand, but split and lose its strength.
Many treasure hunting conspiracies carry psychological protection to a person. According to many legends, they hid the treasures with a “vow”, with a witchcraft conspiracy.
I found one of the hiding places of the revolutionary period on Prechistenka. Two cartridges, cadets’ shoulder straps and a silver cigarette case were found under a large stone. In the cigarette case there was a note with a large bank account number and a password for the bearer when receiving money.
In November 1962, the newspaper Trud wrote: “In a trench for gas pipes at the construction of an experimental quarter near VDNKh, they found a casket in which 311 gold objects were lying…”.
In the summer of 1972, they found a treasure of precious platinum and gold items on Marksist Street. And it decorated one necklace with 131 diamonds.
There are many similar examples in Moscow.
According to experts, twenty-four treasures have been found on the territory of the Kremlin alone.
And how many have not been found yet? Or hidden by the finders?
One of the most impressive Moscow treasures was found in October 1939, when a trench was being laid near the Kremlin's Spassky Gate. The find consisted of 34,769 coins and several silver items.
The oldest Kremlin treasure, which was officially announced, is considered to be silver items hidden around the 12th century and found in 1844 when laying the foundation for the Armory.
Valuables are hidden in every second Moscow house that has survived after Napoleon's invasion. And in houses that have survived since 1917 – in every third one.
Not only the treasures themselves, but beliefs, rumors, legends, spells and curses are important echoes of ancient times, worthy of close study. They are a necessary link for understanding a particular era.
And let every person who has found the treasure always remember: one should not rush, make plans for a rich, carefree life. Together with the treasures, grief and curses, tragedies and misfortunes of past times can come to the finder.
But if you have already touched someone else's wealth, it is better to immediately think about how life's path can change and how to carry this heavy burden…
It is hardly possible to determine exactly which city on earth is the richest in treasures. But, if it carried such a study out, Moscow would be on the list of the richest.
The convenient geographical position facilitated this for trade, the age of the city, the wealth of the inhabitants. Wealth, as you know, not only must be saved up, collected, but also protected. Since ancient times, the most reliable way is to hide it in the ground or some secret places.
No wonder one ancient sage said: “It is calm in the country – riches are on display, dangerous changes in the country – riches are hidden deeper.”
Do not count how many troubles have befell Moscow in its entire history. How many events forced its inhabitants to hide treasures: invasions, wars, fires, epidemics, revolutions, drastic political and economic changes. Going on a long journey, Muscovites buried treasures – both from thieves and from the authorities. The thieves themselves and those who acquired it in an unrighteous way hid the good.
Probably, of all historical events, the most treasured time for Moscow was the invasion of Napoleon.
The Russians were hiding the treasures when they had to leave the capital in a hurry. The French also hid it when they realized that they could not take out all the loot from Moscow.
The poet Nikolai Shatrov, a contemporary of those events, recalled in 1813:
Unhappy Moscow is burning
Moscow burns for twelve days;
It decays under a noisy flame
Innumerable wealth in her;
All temple decorations,
Their treasures are age old,
The splendor of the palaces
Wonderful collection rarities,
All jewels are sculpting
Skillful brushes and incisors…
After the capture of Smolensk by Napoleon's army in July 1812, the inhabitants quickly left Moscow. There were not enough horses. The townspeople were forced to bury part of their goods in the ground, walled up in walls, and hide in basements. They left works of art, books, jewelry, silverware, icons in frames of precious metals.
Even government agencies, churches and monasteries were unable to take out all their expensive property, archives, valuable utensils.
On September 2, Napoleon's troops entered Moscow. Witnesses of those sad events noted:
“In these days, what a terrible spectacle the capital presented itself, shortly before its ruin, shining with luxury and splendor.
In the burnt palaces of kings the desert wind rustled; the splendor of the temples of God was hidden under the blackness of the fire; inside there were traces of the wicked presence of the enemies of faith and Russia. The audacious scolders made stalls for their horses where the Lord's altars were raised!..″
Moscow has not seen such a fire for a long time. The half-empty city was ablaze from all over. Almost the entire center and adjacent streets burned out, Zamoskvorechye burned down. Before the invasion of Napoleonic troops, there were more than 9 thousand houses in Moscow. For several weeks of the enemy's stay, almost 6.5 thousand buildings were burned down.
Both the Russians and the French were on fire. There was nothing to put out the fires with. Contemporaries noted that Emperor Napoleon himself took part in putting out the fire in the Kremlin. The retinue and close people begged him to move to the Petrovsky Palace.
Leaving the Kremlin on fire, the conqueror prophetically pronounced:
– This portends us great disasters…
The hungry Napoleonic army plundered everything that the Muscovites did not manage to take out and save. Silver and gilded frames were torn off the icons, and the icons themselves were burned in bonfires. The gilded cross was removed from the Ivan the Great Bell Tower in the Kremlin.
Although the main unique documents Muscovites managed to take out and save, during the invasion of Napoleon, books by Mikhail Lomonosov, Nikolai Novikov's publications, a rare collection of Russian and foreign newspapers, the famous “Word about Igor's Campaign”, “Vladimir Monomakh's Dukhovnaya”, Novgorodskie and Dvina letters, “Life of the Grand Duke Vladimir”, “Laurentian Chronicle” and much more.
But these are only the considered spiritual losses of Moscow and Russia. And how many were unknown, unmarked, dead, not found monuments of our past!
A special role in the appearance of an innumerable number of Moscow treasures in 1812 belongs to Russian robbers and looters. They knew Moscow streets and houses, churches and warehouses better than the French soldiers. They knew better where, how to profit and where to hide the loot.
They were forced to hide for several reasons. Firstly, it was impossible to keep valuables with oneself or in the house due to the fact that the French constantly searched houses and people. Secondly, it was impossible then to drink the stolen goods, to take a walk. Thirdly, it was also impossible to take goods out of Moscow, since the outskirts of the city were guarded by Napoleonic troops, and partisan detachments were operating in the vicinity. Both those and others destroyed the marauders.
Sometimes it was possible only to exchange a gold ring in hungry Moscow – for a piece of biscuit, an icon in a silver setting – for a few grams of salt.
This is how thousands of treasures appeared in the Moscow land of 1812.
In one old entry, it was noted that only one gang of Lame Nikisha took out about 2 thousand kilograms of silver from noble houses. Lame Nikisha himself and several of his friends died in a drunken fight with the French.
In that year, many Muscovites died in fires, starvation, disease, or were shot by the French. So most of the treasures remained unclaimed.
The French, when fleeing from Moscow, had very few horses, so it became impossible to take out all the loot. Some had to be hidden in Moscow.
Some of the Napoleonic army hoped to return to Moscow someday after the war and find their treasure. They made maps, diagrams, wrote down the signs by which you can find treasures.
Few of them returned to France, even fewer lived to see peace. Maps, diagrams, descriptions of places where the treasures were hidden disappeared along with the owners, but sometimes they got to the heirs or ended up in the wrong hands.
And after the war, numerous Frenchmen – tutors, cooks, teachers, musicians – reached out to serve in Moscow, hiding in secret pockets maps of the location of treasures that they got by chance or from relatives – Napoleon's soldiers.
Of course, it cannot be stated unequivocally that all the French then came to Russia only in search of treasures.
In Moscow, as a rule, they were disappointed. The strict times of Nicholas I came, when the police and other services controlled every step of the foreigner both in St. Petersburg and in Moscow. So there were no particular opportunities to find treasures.
Collection of legends about the founding of Moscow
1997 marked the 850th anniversary of Moscow. It is clear that such anniversary figures are always somewhat arbitrary.
The generally recognized date of the foundation of our capital is taken from the Ipatiev Chronicle: under 1147, it describes the meeting of the Suzdal prince Yuri Dolgoruky and the Chernigov prince Svyatoslav Olgovich, which took place in Moscow.
But already from the fact that in 1147 two princes chose this city as the place of their meeting, it follows that it was founded much earlier.
According to modern archaeological data, Moscow most likely arose about 1000 years ago. However, there is no exact data on the time and, moreover, the circumstances of its foundation. The lack of these data is successfully compensated for by many legends, popular and unpopular, more or less plausible, of the most varied content. The most famous of them I would like to consider.
Prince, boyar, wonderful vision and blood feud
There are eight legends about the founding of Moscow. First, we should dwell on four of them that have common features.
The most detailed and well-known of them is the legend about Prince Yuri Dolgorukiy and boyar Stepan Kuchka. It was recorded in the 17th century. on behalf of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich.
At that time, four different people independently were engaged in the search for legends about the capital of the growing Russian state. Each of them heard oral stories, which apparently varied significantly. The result is four stories.
The story about Stepan Kuchka is the most believable of them.
Kremlin at the end of the 15th century. Watercolor A.M. Vasnetsov
According to legend, in 1158 (!) Prince Yuri Dolgoruky was traveling from Kiev to Vladimir. In the middle of the swamp, he saw “a huge, wonderful beast. The beast had three heads and a variegated coat of many colors… Appearing to people, the wonderful beast then melted, disappeared like morning fog”.
The Greek philosopher, when asked by Yuri about the meaning of the vision, said that in these places “a city of great triangles will arise, and a great kingdom will spread around it. And the variegation of animal skins means that people of all tribes and nations will come here”.
The prince drove on and saw the city of Moscow, which was in the possession of the boyar Kuchka. Yuri decided to stay in this city, but Kuchka “is not the post of the Grand Duke with due honor”. At first, he refused to let Yuri and his retinue into the city under the pretext of lack of space in the mansions, which were allegedly recently partially dismantled and were now being rebuilt, and then completely refused obey the prince, saying that all the fugitives from the Vladimir-Suzdal estates run to him, and he will soon become on a par with Yuri.
Then the prince, suspecting Kuchka of collusion with the Novgorodians, ordered “that boyar to be captured and betrayed by death.” After a short battle, the Suzdal squad burst into the city through the main gate, and Kuchka through the small gate together with the voivode Bukal (according to another version of this legend, set forth by A.F. Malinovsky, Bukal was a hermit and lived in a small hut not far from Moscow) and the remainder of the soldiers fled to the woods, where he was soon overtaken and killed by Yuri's soldiers.
The city of Moscow became part of the possessions of the Grand Duke.
Dolgoruky treated the children of Kuchka, who were taken prisoner, kindly, saying that they were not guilty of their father's crime. The boyar's daughter Ulita was married to Yuri's son, Andrei Bogolyubsky; sons Peter and Yakim became his servants.
For a long time they lived in peace and harmony, but once, after the death of Yuri Dolgoruky, Julitta unexpectedly met in the forest the voivode Bukal, already a deep elder, and learned from him the story of her father's death. Julitta told the brothers Bukala's story. Seized with a thirst for revenge, they decided to kill Prince Andrew.
The Kuchkovichi attacked the prince while hunting, but Andrey managed to gallop away from them. Having driven the horse, the prince went further on foot and went to the river bank. There he saw the carrier and asked to be transported to the other side, but he, having lured the prince for payment in advance, sailed away. Andrey, left alone and fearing a chase, hid for the night in a log-grave.
The Kuchkovichs, fearing his revenge, set off in search the next day, taking with them, on the advice of Julitta, the prince's beloved scavenger dog. The dog led them to the grave-frame, where the prince hid, stuck his head into the frame and, rejoicing at the owner, wagged his tail. Seeing this, the Kuchkovichi, opening the roof on the log house, pounced on the prince and killed him.
But soon Andrey's servant, Davyd, fled at night to the prince's brother – Daniil Yuryevich Kievsky (a fictional character) – and told him that Andrey had been killed. After that, Daniel came with an army near Moscow, and the Muscovites gave him Kuchkovichs. Ulita and her brothers were executed, and their bodies were placed in birch bark boxes and released into the lake.
According to legend, these boxes still float to the surface at night, “because neither land nor water wants to accept such villains.” As for Daniel, after that he decided not to return to Kiev and became a Moscow prince.
Of all the legends about the founding of Moscow, this one is perhaps the most plausible, since it is the only one that correlates with the known facts.
First, among the killers of Andrei Bogolyubsky, the chronicle really mentions some Yakim and Pyotr Kuchkovich.
Secondly, in the Vladimir region, a legend has survived to this day that the Kuchkovich brothers, who were killed for treachery by the Grand Duke Vsevolod the Big Nest, are floating in oak boxes in the Floating Lake near Vladimir.
Finally, thirdly, in the chronicle there is a mention of the fact that Moscow was formerly called Kuchkov: “Before Kuchkov, rekshe [that is] to Moscow.” In the XIV–XV centuries. Chronicles several times call one of the Moscow tracts (in the area of the Sretensky Gates, Chistye Prudy and Lubyanskaya Square) Kuchkov Field.
As for the weak points of the legend, one of them is immediately evident: Prince Yuri Dolgoruky died in 1157, a year before the time of its action. In addition, according to the same chronicle in which the Kuchkovich brothers are mentioned, the reason for their murder of Andrei Bogolyubsky was not revenge for the death of Stepan Kuchka, but Andrei's decision to execute Peter, his servant Yakim Kuchkov's brother, for some offense. In response, Yakim organized the conspiracy mentioned in the legend.
I think the real events could have been the war between Dolgoruky and Kuchka, the victory of Yuri and, possibly, the murder of Prince Andrey by the Kuchkovichs. The rest is literary fiction.
Simultaneously with the legend about Yuri Dolgoruk, another was recorded, according to which Moscow was founded by the son of Alexander Nevsky, Daniel, who took the lands of the aforementioned boyar Kuchka and was killed for this by the sons of the latter. This version almost completely copies the previous one; perhaps it arose as a result of its retelling.
The miraculous vision is mentioned in another legend recorded at the same time. It also talks about Daniel, only not about Alexandrovich, but about Ivanovich, who, unlike Alexandrovich, is most likely a fictional character. He, obeying the vision, founded a city on the indicated place, which received the name Moscow.
It is interesting that the scene of the murder of the prince, absolutely analogous to the scene of the murder of Andrei Bogolyubsky, is also found in another story, which has nothing to do with the legend of Kuchka and Yuri Dolgoruk. The name of the prince is not named, but it is said that the murderers were sent to him by an unfaithful wife. Soon after the murder, the prince's brother captured and executed the traitor and her mercenaries, and then, at the scene of their crime, he founded a city – “near the red villages along the Moscow River” – and named it Moscow.