The editors of the journal "Science and Life" turned to Academician Valentin Lavrentievich Yanin, the head of the Novgorod archaeological expedition since 1960, with a request to tell about the latest, truly sensational find, made in the summer of 2000 in the most ancient part of the city, located south of the Novgorod Kremlin.
Veliky Novgorod continues to give archaeologists the treasures of its antiquity. I - a participant in the discovery of the first birch bark letters in 1951 - now had a chance to experience another high point of domestic archeology, for the second time to experience the supreme happiness of an unthinkable discovery ... I will tell you in order.
On July 13, 2000 (after that, believe in unlucky numbers!), at the end of the working day, an unprecedented find fell on the laboratory table of the expedition from the excavation Troitsky-12, led by Alexander Nikolaevich Sorokin. Three wooden boards (as it turned out later, made of linden wood), one centimeter thick and fastened with wooden dowels. The find turned out to be an ancient manuscript or an ancient book. Its size is 19 × 15 centimeters. The two outer boards served as covers. The first is decorated with the image of a cross and a stingy ornament, its inner side had a cavity filled with wax. On wax, 23 lines of a certain text are written in beautiful small handwriting. The second cover plate is arranged in the same way: on the inner, waxed side there is a text, and the outer one, like the first one, bears the image of a cross. Another tablet placed between them had hollows filled with wax on both sides and, consequently, texts on both sides.
The book, therefore, has only four written pages. The first plank of the wooden codex is better preserved. Large pieces of text fell off on others and have come down to us in the form of a scree of wax pieces with individual letters or groups of letters. But, fortunately, significant fragments of the second, third and fourth pages have been preserved in their places.
I confess that when I looked at the almost completely preserved text of the first page, my eyes darkened. It seemed to me that from excitement I would not be able to read a single word ... The reasons for such a strong excitement are understandable and excusable. The find was extracted from reliably dated layers of the end of the 10th - the first quarter of the 11th century. Judge for yourself. Above it are the remains of the first crown of a large log house, dated by dendrochronology methods to 1036. The wooden codex lay 20 centimeters deeper. An approximate calculation of the dynamics of accumulation of the cultural layer within the Troitsky-12 excavation area is equal to one centimeter per year. This means that the probable date of our find is approximately the second decade of the 11th century. Meanwhile, the oldest known manuscript written in Cyrillic script dates back to 1056-1057. This is the famous Gospel, commissioned by the Novgorod posadnik Ostromir. All other most ancient Cyrillic manuscripts also belong to the second half and the end of the 11th century. This means that a half-century earlier manuscript lay on the laboratory table! And therefore, this find is a great event in the history of not only Russian, but also Bulgarian, and Serbian, and Croatian, and Macedonian cultures, since in the entire Slavic world there is no earlier dated manuscript than the "Ostromir Gospel" ... It was from what tremble hands and darken in the eyes!
But then the vision cleared up, and in the middle of the page, the eyes saw the first understandable phrase: "From Thy prohibition, O God Jacob, dozing off on the horse." So, sacred text. The hand reaches out to the Psalms as the most popular work in Christianity, and a consistent review of this great book finds a corresponding place in the 75th psalm of Asaph. Nearby - above and below - what precedes the read verse in this psalm, and what follows it.
The surviving fragments of the remaining pages find their places in the continuation of the 75th psalm and in the 76th psalm of Asaph written after it. Gradually it turns out that on the second page there is the end of the 75th psalm and the beginning of the 76th, on the third page - the continuation of the 76th, on the fourth - the end of the 76th, then an empty space of several lines, and after it - 4– 6 verses of the 67th Psalm of David. When this ending was read, we were bewildered. Why does the text of the 67th Psalm not have the well-known beginning: "Let God arise and his enemies be scattered"? It turned out that this beginning existed, but was erased to make room for the end of the 76th psalm. In other words, the wax codex turned out to be a palimpsest. Once upon a time, one text was first written on it, then erased to write another. "Cers" (the so-called tablets waxed for writing) served like a slate or the current school board, used to place "running lines" on them. Comparison with a slate board is very significant: did the Novgorod Psalter serve as a manual for teaching literacy?
Let's think about the chronological context of the find. Just now, about 20-25 years ago, Christianity was adopted in Novgorod. Consequently, we have before us one of those books that were read by the first Novgorodians who were baptized. One of the first books by which many of them could learn to write. After all, it was the Psalter that for centuries was the most everyday book from which our ancestors took lessons in reading and writing. Many of the psalms that sounded daily during the church service, Christians knew by heart. There were many people who memorized all the texts of this book. In this regard, I will name one episode connected with the reading of the Novgorod codex. At the end of the 76th psalm there are words - "Thy way is in the sea." It warmed my heart at the thought that it was the paraphrase of these lines that the famous place in the poem by A.S. Pushkin "October 19" (1825), addressed to his lyceum friend F.F. Matyushkin, who became a navigator: "From the lyceum threshold you stepped onto the ship jokingly, and since then your road has been in the seas ..."
The assumption about the educational purpose of our find was confirmed brilliantly. It turned out that on the sides of the cer there are poorly distinguishable scratched inscriptions made in the same handwriting as the text on wax. Academician Andrei Anatolyevich Zaliznyak had a chance to read them, who for many days did not straighten his back, illuminating the planks from different angles, using a magnifying glass and straining his eyesight as much as possible. Here is a part of these inscriptions: "Without the rank of service and the hours of all, without the funeral of souls" (that is, "Not for church services and not for reading over the dead"); "Without driving away all people from oneself, without excommunicating those who are hungry for knowledge" (that is, "To attract all people who are hungry for knowledge"). The last sentence expressly states educational purpose code. And further: "This book of the Psalter is a peaceful consolation for orphans and widows, an immovable sea for wanderers, an unjudged undertaking by slaves."
A.A. Zaliznyak established that the Novgorod Psalter was written by a Russian. Her language, of course, is Old Slavonic (Old Bulgarian); until now, worship in the Russian church is conducted on Old Church Slavonic. However, in the text of our book there were about a dozen such mistakes that a Bulgarian, Serb or Croat could not make, but only a Russian could make. In all languages, except Old Russian, the letters "U" and "Yus big" were clearly distinguished, denoting different sounds. "Yus" conveyed a nasal sound that Russians do not have. Meanwhile, in the Novgorod find, both of these letters are used, but this is done indifferently: the scribe writes "U" instead of "Yus" and "Yus" instead of "U". Whether he was a Kyiv missionary or a Novgorodian is not clear, and this is not so important before the significance of the find itself.
In the Slavic world, there are several ancient Cyrillic manuscripts that do not have a date in the text and are dated without much certainty to the 11th century. The "Novgorod Psalter" will become the standard with which researchers will compare them in search of the true date. And if today's textbooks of national history are inconceivable without mentioning birch bark letters, future textbooks will begin the story of Russian written culture with the current find.
The discovery of the ancient book gave rise to many difficult problems. One of them is the restoration of the code. It has been preserved because the wood of the boards is thoroughly saturated with moisture, which prevents the penetration of air to them. Consequently, for thousands of years there has not been a situation in which microorganisms destroy wood by rotting. Stabilization of wood, returning it to dry and solid state are based on methods that, in our case, would destroy the wax and the texts applied to it. We had to remove the wax and transfer it to another base. World restoration practice knows no such precedent. After painful hesitation, an experienced restorer, artist and sculptor Vladimir Ivanovich Povetkin took on this most responsible work, whose golden hands returned most of the crumbling fragments to their place. At the same time, it was possible to reveal the presence of barely distinguishable scratched texts on the tablets under the removed wax, which requires that they be kept dismantled for further study, and the wax should be returned not to genuine tablets, but to their copies.
The discovery of the oldest Slavic book was preceded by another remarkable discovery. A small birch bark leaf was found in the layer of the first third of the 11th century. On both sides of it, images of human figures are scratched: on one is depicted Christ, on the other - Saint Barbara in a crown, with a martyr's cross in her hand and an inscription of her name.
The find immediately created a problem. The estate on which it was found is located on the ancient Chernitsy Street, which got its name from the maiden Varvarin monastery once located on it. Of course, in the first third of the 11th century, there could not yet be any monastery here: the earliest Russian monasteries appear only in the second half of the 11th century, and the Novgorod Varvarin monastery was first mentioned in the annals under 1138. It turns out that Saint Barbara was especially revered on the Slavic coast of the southern Baltic, and it was from there that the Slavic first settlers came to Novgorod, and their descendants did not lose ties with their ancestral home in the future. Saint Barbara was considered the patroness of fishermen and sailors. And indeed, in those layers in which this find was found, objects related to fishing are found in abundance.
And one more interesting detail. Under the image of St. Barbara, a birch bark is inscribed with the date that A.A. Zaliznyak read as 6537 (from the creation of the world), which corresponds to 1029 AD. e. The first, third and fourth digits are given in Slavic characters, and the second, as explained by the philologist S.G. Bolotov, - a Latin sign. This means that Saint Barbara was portrayed by a person who found it difficult to convey the number denoting 500 in Slavic, but knew how to write it in accordance with Western tradition.
It can be assumed that the veneration of Saint Barbara brought to the Lyudin end of Novgorod turned out to be so strong that a monastery was founded in her honor a few decades after 1029.
And in general, for the sake of interest, the text of the apocryphal tetralogy "From Paganism to Christ", read by Zaliznyak and Isabelle Vallotton on the tablets of the Novgorod Code of the early XI century (found on July 13, 2000).
I publish not in the same way as in the journal "Russian Language in Scientific Coverage", but in a more "digestible" form, as for some reader Gudziy. Namely: modern punctuation marks are introduced (the division into phrases, except for two places in the last two texts, corresponds to the author's division within the code), titles are revealed (more precisely, abbreviations, because real titles are not visible), spelling is slightly simplified (see below). I did not always follow the current punctuation rules: for example, the arrangement of commas "X, and Y, and Z" required by Rosenthal, in my subjective opinion, would have distorted the intonational solemnity of the text in some places. The division into lines corresponds to the division into "links of the text" (approximately corresponding to the lines of the original) according to Zaliznyak and Vallotton.
As always, yat is passed as b. There are no Yusovs, instead of them, u, u, me. I know that Unicode can transmit yus (as well as yat, by the way), but all the same, in most browsers they will come out crooked. However, the etymological [u] in the Code is always written as oy, so the big yus (y) is recognizable if someone really needs it. The code is one-er, so instead of ь it is always written ъ.
In this note, as others write on the Internet, there are too many letters. But gain strength and read to the end, because the discovery of the Novgorod Code radically changes the view of what we call Russian history.
On the evening of July 13, 2000, the archaeological expedition Valentina Yanina, at the now famous Troitsky excavation in Novgorod, discovered an object that should be considered as belonging to the time as a whole, in any case, Russian time. It's hard for me to imagine that something of the existing in this world was more about the history of our country.
Of course, this subject is a book.
***
Until the middle of the 20th century, it was common knowledge that medieval Rus', unlike medieval and ancient Europe, did not use one of the most common objects for writing even in the time of Homer - wax tablets, or tser. In 1928, Academician Karsky suggested that the Russians were not familiar with the Tser at all. Despite the fact that styloses - pointed sticks for writing - were repeatedly found at archaeological sites, they were called either writing (and it doesn’t matter what they wrote on what), or they were generally considered unusually shaped nails. In 1951, at another excavation site in Novgorod, Nerevsky, the problem was successfully resolved: styluses were used to write on birch bark.
By itself, the use of birch bark for writing V medieval Rus' was well known, even Joseph Volotsky in the 15th century reported that in the then poor monastery of St. Sergius of Radonezh was written not on paper or parchment, but on birch bark. However, it was assumed that they wrote on it with ink (as the Old Believers did later), moreover, in 1930, evidence was found near Saratov - a birch bark Horde letter of the XIV century, written just in ink. Even before the war, Artemy Artsikhovsky's expeditions in Novgorod repeatedly discovered writing even in the layers of the 10th century. Artsikhovsky assumed that they wrote on birch bark, and on July 26, 1951, he found what he was looking for: a birch bark letter, which was written with a stylus.
And it became immediately clear what he was asking in the "Kirik question" Bishop Nifont's Kirik of Novgorod, who lived in the 12th century - is it good that in Novgorod all the letters are thrown away and people follow the holy letters. Kirik was a monk of the Novgorod Antoniev Monastery - according to legend, Anthony the Roman in 1106 stood on a rock in the middle of Rome and prayed to God, got carried away, the rock floated along the Tiber, swam to the Volkhov, where St. Anthony founded the monastery. Both Kirik and Nifont Antony knew personally. Kirik himself was one of those people who could amaze anyone. For example, in the course of his research on music theory, he was interested in what would now be called the "quantum of time." However, in this case, he asked the bishop a much more prosaic thing, which Artsikhovsky understood almost a thousand years later. Letters scratched on birch bark, after being read, were torn up by the Novgorodians and thrown at their feet, and this was precisely what Kirik was worried about: is it not a sin to follow the letters, which, among other things, books are written with?
Nifont in such cases preferred to remain silent: but what to do. They go by letter - so let them go. In general, when in 1957 the first wax tablet was discovered at the Troitsky excavation site, it, in fact, was no longer important to anyone. Until 1994, 11 ceres of the 11th-14th centuries were discovered in the excavations of Novgorod. In terms of information content, they were an order of magnitude inferior to a thousand known birch bark letters. Little remained on the wax. On one cere, a clear evidence of training in office work is the inscription "... I bow ... yaz tiun ...". The other has three letters and a carved alphabet around the edge. In general, there is almost nothing to read.
Twelfth tsera(out of three plates, one of which, the middle one, was double-sided - in Rome they were called triplices) turned out to be different. Almost in the same place where it was found, at the beginning of the 2000 season, another letter was found - with an almost childish image of St. Barbara and with a scratched date - 6537 from the creation of the world, or, according to the common dating scheme, 1029 from the birth of Christ. From the location of the cera in the layers of the excavation, it followed that it was there 30 years older than this charter, that is, it is older than not only Kirik and Nifont, but also Anthony.
Ceru was opened like a book is opened,- and it turned out to be even more significant. The wax was quite well preserved, and on it was written a text that any literate person in the last millennium would have recognized. Here is a quote from it in the Synodal translation: “... My eyes preceded the night guards; I was agitated and could not speak; I thought about the days of the ancients and remembered and understood the eternal years ”- on the cere were psalms 75 and 76 and an excerpt from psalm 67, which is known even to the illiterate, it begins with the words “May God arise, may his enemies be scattered.” That is, in the hands of the archaeologists of Yanin, a Cyrillic text was discovered, more or less accurately dated between the 10th and 11th centuries.
Let me explain what this means. Cyrillic inscriptions with a more or less exact dating of the 10th century exist: the oldest of them are an epitaph to a certain father Anthony in the Bulgarian Krepcha, who died in 921, ceramic tablets with Cyrillic inscriptions from Preslav, the ancient capital of the Bulgarian kingdom, possibly older, like the Gnezdovo inscription on a jug from the burial, the notorious "pea". But the oldest Slavic book with exact dating is the Ostromir Gospel, rewritten no later than 1057. The Preslav book school, burnt down in 972 by the Byzantine emperor John I Tzimisces, and founded by St. Naum as a legacy of Preslav, the Ohrid book school left us the names of the first Slavic writers - but not books. Several Cyrillic books or sheets from them - "The Life of Kondrat", the Suprasl manuscript, the Kupriyanov, Hilandar and Zograf sheets, the Eninsky apostle, the Undolsky sheets - are among the texts that claimed and still claim the status of the first Slavic book, along with Savvina, now known in this capacity a book; among the books written in the Glagolitic script, in the same row are the Kyiv leaflets and the Zograf Gospel - all these books were created at the border of the 10th and 11th centuries. However, the linguist Andrey Zaliznyak, a longtime co-author of Valentin Yanin on work with birch bark, found on the wooden sides of the Novgorod church the exact date repeatedly scratched - 6507, or 999 AD.
Thus, the tsera turned out to be the oldest accurately dated Slavic book. Or, in any case, with a high probability, the oldest of the Russian books existing in the material world.
That in itself, by the way, is not at all as important as it may sound. Russian scribes of the 10th century, whose existence, in fact, is confirmed by the Novgorod code, had no idea about nationalism, and even more so about sovereign pride: they were only worried about the salvation of the soul.
***
The first article by Andrey Zaliznyak and Valentin Yanin about cer, which in scientific use received the name "Novgorod Code", was published in 2001 - and in it the magical properties of wax tablets have already begun to manifest themselves. The text of the 10th kathisma, preserved on wax, on the one hand, was written in the so-called "one-er system" of Cyrillic graphics, which solved questions (important mainly for historical linguistics) about the evolution of Cyrillic writing Old Russian language. At the same time, Zalizniak could very confidently say that the one who wrote four pages of Davidov's psalms in Novgorod was hardly a Bulgarian, Greek or Varangian. He was Russian, moreover, he probably was not even a Novgorodian - since almost all Novgorod scribes were famous for their “clatter”, indistinguishability between the affricate “ts” and the soft “h”.
The two previous ones released at the time on this topic, Andrei Zaliznyak's monographs, "From Proto-Slavic Accentuation to Russian" and "Old Novgorod Dialect", also discussed issues related to this phenomenon. Historical texts are the material that allows you to explore the history of the language. Both colloquial and written language bear the imprints of the time and place of the message: in what is written, the inscription of letters matters, and in what is said, phonetic features; answers to the question of how what is written and what is spoken influence each other through reading give only a partial idea of the complexity of the subject of historical linguistics.
In any case, the cera fell into the hands, into which it was supposed to fall, and investigated as a physical object by all available methods. Including radiocarbon analysis: wax studies at the University of Uppsala confirmed that the item was most likely created in 980-1050. The then still living restorer Vladimir Povetkin, who since 1978 has been involved in the restoration and conservation of almost all Novgorod birch bark letters found since that moment, said: in his opinion, the cera was in use for a very long time, triplices made of linden were used by the owner for 20-30 years. Povetkin was hardly wrong. His main passion was the restoration/reconstruction of ancient Russian musical instruments, and he, apparently, knew better than any other person in this world how the wood that was used daily a dozen centuries ago changed.
Povetkin had to solve a difficult task cera conservation. It was impossible to fix the state of a wooden object that had lain in Novgorod clay for a thousand years, just like it is done with birch bark - the wax would dissolve, and without preservation, the cera could rot or crack very quickly. A month later, Povetkin was persuaded to try, carefully filming the book in the most “assembled” form (it was a difficult but solvable task to put the crumbling pieces of wax in their places where they were before), to preserve the wax layer and the lime base separately, then put everything back together. And the wax with the text of the psalms was removed, and the wrong side under the wax layer became open for a while. The inside, outwardly empty, was also repeatedly photographed, and more than once, and under different lighting conditions.
And in 2004 Andrey Zaliznyak published a book, which was not directly related to the Novgorod Code: it was a collection of four articles "The Tale of Igor's Campaign": a linguist's view." Some stories are more complicated if they are told in chronological order - this, apparently, is just the case.
***
In one note in the controversy that arose around the Novgorod Code one of the European medievalists casually, as a commonplace, remarked that decades of Soviet denial of reality have made doubts about the authenticity of the "Tale of Igor's Campaign" among Russian philologists something like an intellectual exercise on duty.
Zaliznyak's 2004 book is a text which practically does not discuss the history of the "Lay" and "Zadonshchina": the subject of study is the language of the two monuments from the point of view of not philology, but historical linguistics. This is a very difficult reading, which, however, is able to convince anyone that difficult reading is necessary and feasible. In short, this is the following: in order for the “Word” to be a forgery of the 18th century, as most critics of the authenticity of the most striking Russian text for many centuries suggest, the forger must be a linguist who was two centuries ahead of the knowledge of the development of the language that was relevant to his time. . He, for example, had to be able to accurately arrange the Old Russian enclitics of the general type (yes, li, thou), guided by the Wackernagel law in accordance with their ranks.
The arguments offered by Zaliznyak are very clear.(their criticism has not appeared for ten years): attempts to place the well-known enclitics in the alleged Old Russian sentence, not guided by the rules formulated at the beginning of the 20th century by the Swiss Jacob Wackernagel for all Indo-European languages, are always unmistakably wrong. With two dozen arguments of this series, Zaliznyak shows: “The Word” in theory could be falsified. But this work must be titanic, it must be carried out by a person close to genius and who knows about the development of the Russian language and about the language in general as much as the most competent philologists of our time know about it.
For example (and this, of course, is not and cannot be in Zaliznyak's book), Andrey Zaliznyak himself is able to do such work. However, the alleged falsifier of the Lay had to live with all this baggage of knowledge at the end of the 18th century or earlier. And it was Zaliznyak who, in 2001, had the idea to look at the photographs of the bottom of the Novgorod Codex more carefully and see there what others could not see.
***
There are no unimportant circumstances. Most cers known to science are made of solid wood. Novgorod tsera - from soft linden. When scratching a layer of wax, the one who writes on the cere invariably leaves dents and scratches on the soft bottom or on the side of the cere, which in this case was also waxed. It doesn’t matter to the writer: under wax, these prints are completely invisible. If you remove the wax, then, as Yanin and Zaliznyak write in a 2002 article, it may also seem that there is nothing. Yes, scratches leave marks. Sometimes the strokes left by the stylus are distinguishable, and the photograph shows which letter it is. The problem is that on every square centimeter of the ceres there are dozens of more or less distinguishable letters and strokes on top of each other. Zaliznyak called this painting a "hyperpalimpsest": four wax tablets contain dozens of texts written one on top of the other.
As it turned out - and this is also important - all the strokes and all the letters were made with one hand. On the side of the cera, as if as a gift, the owner not only wrote in two forms two versions of the Cyrillic alphabet existing at that time (which he did incredibly well - while confirming the version of the origin of the Russian alphabet, based on the alphabet scratched by someone in the 11th century on the wall Novgorod Sophia Cathedral), but also verbally duplicated the alphabet: “az, beeches, lead” - and so on up to the “omega” in 43 letters. In addition, he rewrote some sequences of letters in cer many times.
Recall what a sequence of letters is. If the sequence of letters makes sense - this is a word form, and you can recognize the word.
Sounds simple. Over the next many months, Andrei Zaliznyak and his colleagues were busy with what his articles propose to call not “reading”, but rather “reconstructing” the texts of the Novgorod Code hidden at the bottom of the cera. If you have reason to guess which Old Russian word form can be made up of the set of letters that you simultaneously see in a line, you can assume what can be written here and what can presumably not be written. Sometimes an accurate reading is not possible. The better you know the language, the more likely you are to understand what is written.
The one who knows the language and texts in this language perfectly, read as much as possible. And - this is already liberties - the one who creates the language can do more: he can create a text. For the procedure that Andrei Zaliznyak used to read the Novgorod Code, from a formal point of view, fully corresponds to the description of the process of creating a text, that is, creativity. In the same way we read words, but practically the same mental operations we perform when we write these words.
Indeed, how do we read? We see the letter, remembering that in childhood we were taught: this is “a”, not “b”. We see the next letter - and remember the syllable. We finally assume the word - and we assume the context, and finally we say - "alphabet". To compose the word "alphabet", you need formally the same thing. The difference between these activities is known to everyone, but it is by nature subjective: if you read something that no one else can read at all, it is impossible to check whether you did not make up what you read. If no one wants to test you, then only you know whether you read it or made it up. But in order to know the exact answer even for yourself, you need confidence: I am what I think about myself, I know exactly what “I” is and how it relates to the outside world.
Texts found at the bottom of the cera, of this wooden bowl, full to the brim with letters and words, are so remarkable that they make the Novgorod Code perfectly in tune with all ten centuries of the country's development. Before I got acquainted with this story, I did not even imagine that such a thing was possible in principle.
***
Russia has been literary-centric since the time of Rus'. Yakov Lurie in one of his works suggests that the competition of the chroniclers of Rus' until the 15th century, when the first all-Russian codes were created, the constant attempt to correct the texts of the chronicles was associated with the function of these texts - they may have been used as constitutions: in the text, those in power sought to justify their own actions. If this is so, then we have not gone far in a millennium, and this cannot be good or bad: Russia was and is an editable text.
This position itself- the basis of their own Russian national myth. At the bottom of the cera, Andrei Zaliznyak read/reconstructed about a dozen texts, some of which are in fact the first known Russian literary works. Apparently, they are no less than two or three decades older than Boyan's songs, a couple of quotes from which are found in the text of the Lay. Tsera belonged to the very first Russian writer, a witness to the Baptism of Rus' by Vladimir and the emergence of Christian culture, which continued the culture Eastern Slavs, whose literary monuments are unknown to us.
What a man writes, apparently not quite young anymore, in the year 1002 from the Nativity of Christ, writing in Novgorod on a wax tablet, which, moreover, can be erased at any time? What he thinks about, he writes about. It does not occur to him that in a thousand years the scribes will be able to read this.
Therefore, for example, he writes: in the year 999 I, imaginary Isaac, was appointed a priest in Suzdal. In what church? In the church of St. Alexander the Armenian. And it’s understandable why there is no clatter: as a linguist would say, in North-Eastern Rus' the second palatalization of back-lingual speakers has already passed, and in Novgorod the softened “ts” and “h” will still be absent until the advent of radio and then television.
True, further the alleged Isaac writes something completely incongruous: this Alexander the Armenian was not only the great warrior of Christ, but also the Thracian Areopagite, rector of the Iron Mountain monastery, metropolitan of Constantine's city, presbyter of the prophet Daniel. Does Isaac write about the revered Alexander of Nikopol, one of the five leaders of the community of forty-five martyrs of the Armenian Nikopol, according to the lives burned in the 4th century by August Licinius, later co-ruler of Constantine the Great?
Any such text draws a trail of associations. The future Saint Gregory Makar, an Armenian, episcopated in Nikopol Armenian in 990. But then, for some reason, he secretly left the pulpit and sailed to Italy, and then to France, near Orleans, where he lived as a hermit and became famous for great miracles. An almost unbelievable fate: a French saint from Byzantine Armenia.
And by the way, where did the monk Isaac acquire such learning in Novgorod? After all, the following text is the beginning of a previously unknown translation of John Chrysostom's treatise "On Virginity", and, judging by this and other texts, it was Isaac who translated it. Where could one learn Greek in such perfection when some decade had passed from the Baptism of Rus'? And where could one become a monk at a time when in Rus' - both in Suzdal and in Novgorod - there were no monasteries yet, Anthony the Roman not only had not yet sailed to the Volkhov, but had not even stood on a rock above the Tiber?
For example, in Bulgaria. The kingdom, which shook Constantinople three decades ago, is just successfully fighting with Emperor Basil II, an Armenian who will be called the Bulgar Slayer only in the next century. Vasily, in alliance with the retinue of the Kyiv prince Vladimir, his son-in-law, will regain all of Bulgaria. However, by that time Isaac should have already returned to Rus'.
Or on Athos. It is not known whether Isaac, as they began to say later, went abroad before the Baptism of Rus' by Vladimir or later, if before - he could well see in his youth not yet burned by the predecessor of Vasily II, John Tzimiskes, the Bulgarian Preslav and the Preslav book school. Maybe Isaac studied in another part of Europe - the fate of Grigory Makar shows that everything was possible at that time. In any case, it is unlikely that he himself went on this journey: usually in these times princes and bishops sent abroad.
Also Isaac in free time from copying the psalms and the Revelation of John the Theologian on wax, he copies, but is more likely to compose his own texts. For example, hitherto unknown to science "The Tale of the Apostle Paul." And even completely non-canonical prayers to Alexander, who suddenly becomes, in the presentation of Isaac, a prophet, spreading some secret precepts of the Apostle Peter. And these are not even prayers, but some kind of spells. Isaac looks like a complete heretic, and most of all it seems that Isaac writes the same thing that Paulician heretics write in their texts at the same time - they, especially active then in Armenia, were resettled by Tzimiskes to Thrace to protect themselves from the Bulgarian-Russian raids. When Isaac was allegedly studying in Bulgaria, a new Bogomil heresy was taking shape in these places. And Isaac writes something very similar to the texts of the Bogomils in Rus'. And even not in Rus': the Armenian Stepanos Tarotsit at the same time writes about the joint campaigns of Rus' and Byzantium in places where the Armenians were numerous. On North Caucasus Same.
But God bless him, what and where the monk believes X century, ten years after the baptism of Novgorod (and we remember how Novgorod was baptized in 990-991, although there were Christians in it before that). It is not known whether Isaac was a witness and participant in this baptism, but it is probable. After all, he not only composes in one of the hidden texts something like an oath of a former pagan who had just put on a cross for the first time in history - the custom of wearing a pectoral cross, perhaps in the Orthodox world, just started from the baptism of Novgorod, there they gave out crosses to to distinguish numerous pagans from Christians. Isaac writes: “leave your villages and houses and leave your divisions” - but then he endlessly continues the series: “discords, strife, layouts, deliveries, spills, splits, splits, sizes, disagreements, splits, splits, splits, splits, splits , waste ... ".
I would like to see how Andrey Zaliznyak read it. It's not even that Isaac literally repeats what the reader of the hyperpalimpsest does - as if mocking, he offers reading options, continues synonymous rows, replaces roots in word forms. It's about who gets to read it. The main work of the life of academician Andrey Zaliznyak is the first edition in 1977 “Grammar Dictionary of the Russian Language. word change". Almost everyone heard about Zaliznyak's dictionary, but few opened it - and I didn't open it for the time being, otherwise I would have immediately realized what an incredible joke Isaac was joking with the academician. Zaliznyak's dictionary is a reverse dictionary: the words in it are arranged in alphabetical order, but by the last letter, not the first. Here is a quote from this dictionary: "... assurance, reassurance, intention, proportion, measurement ..." - but isn't this all a hoax?
But Isaac, of course, is not a linguist. Reading other hidden texts, combined by Zaliznyak into a tetralogy “From Paganism to Jesus Christ”, you understand why Isaac needs all these word games, almost rhymes, smooth transitions of modalities. Isaac - writer, writer. And what does he write about? Here is a quote from one of the parts of the tetralogy, “Prayers to the Archangel Gabriel” - “... and amuse and build, plow and sow / and make peace and threaten and be quiet / and languish and seek / and drive away and correct.”
Well, yes, it’s not clear: the complexity and architectonics of the Russian non-syllabic prayer verse translation next centuries few monographs are devoted, and it is impossible to read them without a philological education, and one wants to read all the time. But it is clear that these are poems at a time when the Russian language, perhaps, did not know at all that poetry could be written.
But the following text is already completely clear to everyone. In any case, it is difficult not to understand the idea that Isaac put into the first Russian literary work known to us - and this, it seems, is exactly what it is.
The world is a city in which heretics are excommunicated.
The world is a city in which foolish people are excommunicated from the church.
The world is a city in which disobedient people are excommunicated from the church.
The world is a city in which blameless people are excommunicated from the church.
The world is a city in which innocent people are excommunicated from the church.
The world is a city in which inflexible people are excommunicated from the church.
The world is a city in which people are excommunicated from the church, unworthy of such a punishment.
The world is a city in which people are excommunicated from the church, those who are unworthy of excommunication.
The world is a city in which people of pure faith are excommunicated from the church.
The world is a city in which people who are worthy of praise are excommunicated from the church.
The world is a city in which people worthy of glorification are excommunicated from the church.
The world is a city in which people who have not departed from the right faith of Christ are excommunicated from the church.
I do not think that anyone will not recognize in this text of the X-XI centuries the main Russian socio-political plot of the next ten centuries.
And in other parts of this text,“Spiritual guidance from the father and from mother to son,” Isaac, and completely let it slip: “The world is a city in which books are read.” They read, and until now this reading has consequences, because someone needs to write what is read - and give the world an answer for what is written.
***
It's strange and amazing to know that the whole of Russian history already at the end of the 10th century already existed in this wooden bowl with letters. No one then could have foreseen that the emerging country would be riddled with texts. There is no country without these ties, and only they show to what extent Russia is a solid entity.
For example, in one of the texts of Isaac, certainly heretical, the “Laodicean Prayer of Jesus Christ” is mentioned with a reference to the Apostle Paul. Do you want us to stretch the chain? This is easy, I assure you. Actually, Andrei Zaliznyak, already in an article of 2003, devoted to the texts of the Novgorod Code, recalls the “Laodicean Epistle” of the 15th century by Fyodor Kuritsyn, one of the leaders of the Novgorod-Moscow “Judaizers”. The controversy about heretics-Judaizers, the alleged heirs of the Pskov heretics-strigolniks (and people fled from Novgorod to Pskov and back from problems in those days, that is, the XIV century, quite casually), became, in fact, the main Russian dispute, the dispute between Joseph Volotsky and the Nile Sorsky about non-acquisition, in other words, about the proper ratio of material well-being and conscience. It is difficult to draw a chain from the words of Isaac “leave the villages and houses” to the strigolniks, but, in general, this is a matter of time: there is, for example, the text “Vlasfimiya” of the 13th - early 14th centuries, which inspired the strigolniks, written by a knowledgeable Greek Russian author, - and Isaac was one of the first translators from Greek in Rus'.
But from Laodicea to Zaliznyak itself, the links of the chain traced well. Fyodor Kuritsyn sent his texts to the Monk Euphrosynus at the Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery - a freethinker to a freethinker, his addressee in one of the comments was the first in Russia to speak of a world where there are “no temples, no robes, no salt, no king, no buying, no selling, no strife, no fights, no envy, no nobles, no theft, no robbery. Petersburg philologist Alexander Bobrov suggests that these lines belong to a prince who voluntarily left the world and became a scribe monk. Yes, Euphrosynus presumably read the Lay, remaking it into Zadonshchina.
Did the presumably Kievan author of the Lay read in the XII century, the texts of Isaac - translated, rewritten, composed? There is no reason to assume this. But there is no reason to reject the assumption. Books were of great value throughout the Slavic world, otherwise the pages of the Life of Kondrat and other monuments of the 10th-11th centuries would not have come down to us. The books rewritten and certainly translated by Isaac two centuries later should have been in Kiev: there were few scribes at the turn of the 10th-11th centuries, most likely, there were several of them in all of Rus' in 999.
But these are fantasies, but there are more durable matters. Isaac knew exactly the answer to the question that Russian historians discuss as fiercely as Russian philologists - the Word, surprisingly homogeneous in language. The head of a monk in Novgorod could only be the legendary Bishop Joachim, Akim Korsunian of the Novgorod First Chronicle of the younger version. Children were given to Joachim for teaching, for whom pagan mothers “like crying for the dead” - and is it not because they were to be separated from children who could not be taught anything necessary either in Novgorod or in Kiev? It was a time when there was nothing: in Rus', book parchment had just begun to be made, there was not only a child and Sophia in Novgorod. That year there was only a “great multiplication of fruits” in the gardens and in the middle of the temple of Perun, a few years earlier erected by Dobrynya at the direction of the one who had not yet become Equal-to-the-Apostles Vladimir in Kiev. And there was Bishop Joachim sent from the future Sevastopol to the future Equal-to-the-Apostles. Tatishchev ascribes to him the authorship of the Joachim Chronicle - its historian of the 18th century either copied or invented it, it is impossible to find out, because Joachim's manuscript, unlike the text of the Lay, was not seen at all by anyone except the publisher.
Both Isaac and Joachim knew something we do not know for sure. For example, they knew why the idea of the Preslav school of Slavic worship, which eventually created the Russian language and everything Slavic languages, was supported by the Byzantine partners of Rus'. They knew which texts were carried by the “bag-carrying” monks along the ancient Roman Via Egnatia from the Romanesque world into the Slavic world, and which texts were translated from Greek into Slavonic in the Roman Empire. It’s hard to even imagine how important this is: we are another people of the book, of many books, but someone brought to Russia not only the psalms of David, but also translated (perhaps back in the time of Isaac) the stories about Akira the Wise (perhaps from Armenian), about Solomon and Kitovras (from a semi-Bogomil Greek original), about Barlaam and Joasaph (this is a Greek Christianized version of the legend about Prince Shakyamuni, that is, about Buddha). Someone translated The Debate of the Lord with the Devil, the Gospel of Thomas, and other texts mentioned by Metropolitan Zosima at the height of the controversy between Nil Sorsky and Joseph Volotsky in The Tale of the Renounced Books. Five centuries before, the mentioned texts were the same "holy letters" as any other text.
Some of this, which has become part of us, was brought here by the owner of the cera- and he alone still knows where it was brought from. After all, some scribes, who knew Greek perfectly, also translated texts dating back to ancient Greek authors. Through the constantly changing "Bee", "Physiologist" and "Enchiridion", through "The Wisdom of Menander" in Rus', since the 11th century, they had, albeit minimal, albeit strange, but acquaintance with Homer, Epictetus, Menander's arranger Terence, classical antique comedy.
And it was here, in this part of the world, that it had a special meaning. Dmitry Bulanin, one of the critics of the "hidden texts" of the Novgorod Code, writes that in the 15th century, the texts of Menander, revised beyond recognition, were considered soul-saving reading and were almost included in the Holy Scriptures.
***
The word "Laodicea" hardly appeared in the text of Isaac, and five centuries later in Kuritsyn's text by chance. “The soul is autocratic” - this is how Kuritsyn's “Laodicean Epistle” begins.
The very first mention of Laodicea in the context of Christian teaching is found in the "Epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Colossians" - he mentions that he sent a certain appeal to Laodicea. The text is unknown, but somewhere in the vicinity of the year 150 from the birth of Christ, the heresiarch Marcion lists it in the list of the second part of the New Testament - he called the first the Gospel (and it was the text of the Gospel of Luke), the second - "Apostle". The name of the second part of the New Testament survived until the first dated Russian printed book by Ivan Fedorov in 1564 (by the way, the church was found on July 13, when the church celebrates the Council of the 12 Apostles and their deeds). Among the components of the "Apostle" Marcion, the creator of the first major heresy in history (which became especially widespread in the following centuries in Armenia), also names Paul's epistle to the Laodicean church. In 170, the first list of the books of the New Testament was compiled in Greek (it is known from the Latin translation of the 7th-8th centuries, the "Muratorian Canon"), but the epistle to Laodicea is no longer in it. In early Latin translations There are some texts in the Vulgate called the Laodicean Epistle of Paul, but they are already clearly unreliable and are rejected by the authorities. In any case, the local council around 360, which first discussed what constitutes the New Testament, does not know any letter of Paul to the Laodicean church - although, ironically, it takes place precisely in Laodicea.
And from that moment on, the text of the missing message becomes "hidden text" almost all Christian freethinkers of subsequent centuries. For a very simple reason: Laodicea is mentioned in the Revelation of John the Theologian, and the author of the 2nd century AD speaks of the “warmness” of this city. This part of the Apocalypse of John was known in Rus' and Isaac, and the hairdressers, and the Judaizers, and all their followers - all heresies and all dissent in this country since that time are attributed to the legacy of this chain. The last person to speak openly about the Laodicean epistle, with which heretics fool honest people, was Sergei Nilus, the publisher of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The "Laodicean" line, of which Isaac was a part, is continuous from Marcion to the present.
Of course, Isaac could not count on that his “Laodicean Prayer” in tserah would be read by someone, let alone understood. He wrote on cer because birch bark is still evidence. But he knew: what is written is written, and what is said is sinful.
This applies not only to honest Christians, but more - Bogomils. Adrianov-Peretz cites the Bogomil "Word about Lavrenty the Recluse", which directly states: knowledge of the Hebrew, Latin and Greek languages - from the point of view of this doctrine, demonic obsession, the death of the soul. But Isaac cannot but engage in copying, translating Greek books, philosophizing and writing, this is his life. In the late Bogomil teaching text, "Answers of St. John", an allegory is told: the Lord created the earth, descended and began to walk on the water, and a duck swam towards him. Who am I, the Lord asks. You are the Lord, the duck replies. Who are you, the Lord asks. And I, the duck answers, are God. This duck, able to get matter from the bottom, the Lord makes the angel-controller of the world. This angel will become proud and become Satan, and such is the fate of all who become proud. But can a duck not swim?
On the other hand, Isaac(about which we don't even know whether it was or we invented it) writes quite definitely about this path of any intellectual. In the “Prayer to Gabriel”, he again begins with what good intentions move people, step by step, moving from good to evil with an invisible movement, and eventually bow down “with their tongue” to Beelzebub and death.
Did the author of the Revelation of John the Evangelist know the true text of Paul's letter to the Laodiceans, if that text existed? With a high probability - yes. But what was it like at the beginning of the third millennium in Russia to read about the "Laodicean Prayer" by Isaac - and immediately recall the apocalyptic prophecy to Laodicea: miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.” After all, this Laodicea, glorious love of comfort - and a special ointment for the eyes.
***
After all, texts are worth nothing without the people who read them. And this good people: the hopes of the country would be much less if the texts of the tsers who read them and heard what they read would create for themselves some kind of unambiguous, complete history.
The entire Novgorod Code was supposedly created in order to to become a national sensation. This sensation would be in the spirit of what many are talking about. last decade without ceasing. A story for the elite, a secret story. Do you know who was the first Russian writer? Few people know that he was an erudite, an educator, a copyist of books, a teacher and a poet who received better education outside the country, returned to bring light and yet remained forgotten in the homeland. It was the dissident and humanist Isaac, and the first work of Russian literature was, of course, the denunciation of the imperious dictates. A witness to the forced Novgorod baptism, but not crying about past times - he saw the future of Rus' in freedom of speech.
I assure you, such a story would be accepted by many, it has all the necessary elements for the wrong side of the national myth. For Isaac, patriots and liberals could, for example, arrange an endless battle. In the end, translated from Greek, "Laodicea" is simply "the people's sentence."
It's good that this myth was not created. And this is primarily the merit of Academician Andrei Zaliznyak, who turned 80 this year. He published the texts of Isaac and, without getting involved in controversy about what they mean, returned to continuing his affairs. So, in 2008, his book "Old Russian Enclitics" was published, in many ways a logical continuation of the work around the "Word", annually new ones are found and read. birch bark letters, lectures are given, articles are written.
The placement of Isaac in a new conclusion to the served thousand-year term did not happen.
In essence, we are now in the same world as Isaac in Novgorod at the end of the 10th century. He found himself in a place in which, including through his efforts, a huge Christian culture appeared, which became and remained the basis national culture. And the following thousand years were spent on mastering by the Russian language all the wealth that she got in these years and creativity on this basis.
I am very scared to write this text- I always think about what Isaac was probably thinking about: there are so many people in the world who know everything written exactly, and not approximately, who have read a hundred times more, who will see all the inconsistencies that I could not avoid. Those who are able, finally, not to take my word for it, but mercilessly check - and convict me of the fact that I, as Neil wrote, "is ignorant and a peasant." But Isaac was pardoned for the same reason. Toward the end of the 20th century, the world of Russia, like the world of Rus' in the 10th century, opened up with communications, the availability of almost any text, languages, finally. She again fell into the immovable sea described by Isaac to the wanderers, the unjudged undertaking to the children of slaves. We could again know everything that is in the world, and even more - the followers of Isaac expanded this sea with their books, and now this is our sea, into which a hill of Cyrillic letters in a wooden church has grown, the future space of the Russian language.
You are looking for the Russian world, being in it every minute. Our country is a boundless, huge and coherent text, where every word is connected with every other by threads that are a thousand years old. The psalms, rewritten for the first time in Novgorod by Isaac, were read with horror and hope by conscripts sent to Chechnya in 2000. You are now reading about Isaac more than a thousand years later. In those texts there was no longer, just as there is no now, only Russian, only Greek, only national and only foreign, only the New Testament and only Old Testament, only Orthodoxy and only heretical, only true and only unfaithful. They already have everything.
All these letters are still written in wax, and they will be erased, and will again be written by new authors. Perhaps we can't really do anything more; well, that's enough. How enough someone else will be when we soon find ourselves again in the nightmarish emptiness and poverty of Laodicea.
Here, this regularity has never failed. Let us have hope: the continuation of the text begun by the Novgorod Code is irrevocable.
Dmitry Butrin
Kommersant.ru
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The discovery of the Novgorod codex became a truly scientific sensation in its time. But the deciphering of this ancient book of Rus', dated to the 11th century, brings new surprises.
And what, in fact, to decipher if you have a text in front of you? However, while carefully studying the ancient find, Andrei Zaliznyak, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, discovered oddities: some wooden tablets of the Novgorod Code contain not only explicit text, but also hidden. Namely, a lot of letters of earlier records. Moreover, these were completely unrelated texts printed on tablets in different years. The computer helped to sort out this verbal chaos.
Going from later to earlier records, the scientist consistently read the oldest lists of dogmatic writings that every Orthodox believer had - the psalms of David, the Revelation of John the Theologian, as well as the work of John Chrysostom "On Virginity".
And then the unexpected was revealed - religious texts completely unknown to historians. The scientist suggests that these were not translations, but the original writings of the writer of Ancient Rus'. But, perhaps, the most remarkable thing is that they gave out in the author a notorious heretic. For example, he openly calls those who are excommunicated from the church worthy, immaculate people who keep the right faith.
According to the scientist, the book could belong to one of the followers of the Manichaean sect, which was widespread at the beginning of the 11th century in Veliky Novgorod. Moreover, you can "calculate" the name of the author. One of the last deciphered texts was written on behalf of a certain Isaac, who was appointed in 999 as a hieromonk in Suzdal - in the church of St. Alexandra. However, the existence of such a church has not yet been known to historians. The researcher assumes that we are talking about the Suzdal community of heretics, which the author of the book could have headed. How his fate developed further, one can only guess. However, the year 1024 was ahead, when Prince Yaroslav, who came to Suzdal, severely dealt with the local "wizards".
Yuri Nechiporenko
THE FIRST OLD RUSSIAN AUTHOR?
Found in Novgorod literary heritage preacher, philosopher, poet... At the Institute of the Russian Language of the Russian Academy of Sciences Andrey Anatolyevich Zaliznyak read a report on the decoding of the "Novgorod Codex". We are talking about the writings of the tenth century, which were discovered during excavations in 2000 on three wooden tablets. Such tablets have been well known since antiquity - a thin layer of wax is applied to them, and the wax is written with a metal or bone stylus. Traces of the stylus also remain on the wood, so that with a certain art of "deciphering" one can discern traces of past phrases on a tablet (in this way, letters can sometimes be restored from carbon paper that has been used several times).
Andrei Anatolyevich knows this art to a sufficient extent - he was able to decipher on the tablet not only the words of the canonical, well-known psalms, but also the author's own compositions, which sometimes take the form of prayers and very peculiar poetic "exercises".
Here is an example of a phrase that is repeated with variations at least 27 times in a row:
make up your frustrations
make up your strife
make your plans
make your deliveries
make up your spreads
make up your spreads
make up your spreads
make your measurements
make up your sentences
make up your partings
make up your scores
make up your breaks
make up your breaks
draw up your divorces
make your layouts
make up your breaks
...
Note that the old make up means here "connect (again)" - it means: what you have unified with your RELATED frets, RATEDORs, etc.
This text can be read as a conceptual poem - and as a spell, as an exercise in mastering the language and an impulse in its development, it looks like both creativity and apprenticeship, prayer and task, petition and program of action...
Texts of this kind have a syncretic meaning, and in the very fact of their appearance a certain spiritual practice is read, in which the poet turns out to be a preacher, and the preacher is a poet. The poet "kneads" the language, tries its plastic properties.
Before us is the key point - the end of the first millennium, just that Rus' adopted Christianity - and this acceptance went both from above, through "official channels" - and from below, in the spiritual practice of kalik passers-by, passionate preachers, filled with excess spiritual forces, burning with fire - and burning people. These people came from the Greek and Slavic lands, brought the heat of truth ... Many of them understood Christianity and preached it in their own way, and they often came from different, including heretical communities - Christianity came to Russia not only "from above " and "from below" - it came "from the side", in particular, from the Manichaean and Gnostic sects, it came from the West, South and East.
One of these "heralds" of Christianity wrote amazing texts, in which he was sometimes driven by the "logic of paradox" - this is what he says about excommunication from the Church (below is a condensed retelling):
The world is a city in which heretics are excommunicated
The world is a city in which foolish people are excommunicated from the Church
The world is a city in which disobedient people are excommunicated from the Church
... excommunicate people who are blameless
...excommunicate innocent people
... excommunicate people indisputable
... unworthy of such punishment
The world is a city in which people of the most pure faith of Christ are excommunicated from the Church
...
Here one feels the pain of a person and the experience of a thinker, here there is a lot that allows this author to be attributed to the first poets who wrote in the Old Russian language. Here we also discover the origins of authorship: there is a feeling of originality of style with its obvious correlation and closeness with canonical texts.
The closeness here is even physical: the psalms were written in large letters, the secret texts - in small ones, and all this was included in the codex, layering - so the layers enter the Napoleon cake. But the cake rises above the table, while the notes are "on the table", their projections have taken shape.
If the scribe is a non-empty person, then in his memory all texts must exist and complement each other, as they exist in a library, that is, not without a "spatial" arrangement. If the scribe is a student, then he himself could be "formed" by these texts, which have a sacred meaning. The high status of these texts could imply their memorization, and then they could compose a code, which at any moment is voiced by any part, opens on any page. So the time series gives way to the spatial one, but in general, these series pass into each other - hence the virtual cake, in fact - the image of the "brain of the code".
It is difficult now to assess the significance of Andrei Anatolyevich Zaliznyak's discovery for the history of the Russian language. The very possibility of reading a text within a text, a dozen texts "nested" into each other, layered - and leaving traces on a wooden tablet that has lain underground for a thousand years, seems incredible. However, the academic nature of the report indicates that we have before us a unique case of scientific intuition. The location of each phrase is guessed here - and after deciphering, the threads of projections are unraveled, a dozen texts that make up the corpus of the Novgorod Code are restored. (Note that in the practice of intelligence, such tasks are solved technically - using carbon paper or dents that a pen leaves on a pile of sheets of paper, the texts are accurately restored using special equipment - hence the requirement of secrecy: to destroy all papers in the office).
The study of the alphabet of this unique source, which Zalizniak conducted, also provides interesting information (the alphabet itself in its two versions - short and long, from alpha to omega, is written on the ends of the tablet). But about this - a separate tale, as well as about that Manichaean heresy, which is restored from the prayers and sayings of our author: "sin is born before the age." There are some indirect indications of the ethnic preferences of this poet-preacher: when listing peoples, he puts the Armenians in the first place. Apparently, the Armenians, who converted to Christianity much earlier than the Russians, played important role in the formation of this first of the currently known authors who composed in the Old Russian language. This is not surprising: Armenians have long lived among the Slavs, many Armenians turned out to be due to the migrations that took place within the Byzantine Empire and in the Balkans, from where Christianity came to Rus'.
Let's try to think about what the opening of the Novgorod Code means. Before us is a free verse of prayerful and philosophical content. What makes this text a poem in our eyes is not its "sacred" antiquity, but a clear rhythmic beginning - the phrases are arranged in such a way that they keep the excited rhythm of the spell, and the power of the call - personal, authorial, through suffering - and again relevant in Rus':
make up your strife,
make up your frustrations...
The author seems to be trying the possibilities of the Old Russian language - and he manages to express his aspirations: an amazing work is being formed, that high, meaningful and heartfelt something is being compiled that keeps the secret of artistry. This "exercise", even when worn and lost, it is found and restored after a thousand years! There is no loss here, here the trace of what is written and spoken lives in the language, and the channel for transmitting this cultural information is so accurate and so strong that without clay frozen forever, like the Sumerians and Babylonians, without the work of several generations of scribes, like the Greeks and Latins - tests have risen from oblivion.
Truly, great is the power of the language, which preserved the first samples of the pen in the "clothes" of this then new alphabet!
