Birch bark letters of ancient Rus'. Birch bark charters are an important historical document. Did they know about birch bark letters before the discoveries of archaeologists?

Excavations carried out in Novgorod on the territory of the ancient Kremlin in 1951 gave the city an amazing find - the first birch bark letters. The person who found them was not a professional scientist. The find was discovered by Nina Akulova, who worked part-time at excavations.

Since then, more than 1,000 such artifacts have been found where the ancient Russian state previously existed. Their total “vocabulary” exceeds 15,000 words. Until the first such documents were discovered, it was even believed that the inhabitants of Ancient Rus' were illiterate. But in fact it turned out that not only women and men, but also children could write. The discovery was able to completely change views about our culture and history. A number of scientific disciplines were opened, such as linguistics and source studies.

The very first birch bark letter was written with his own hand by a commoner who lived in Novgorod. This was in the 15th century. However, earlier finds have also been found. The certificate is the following: an oblong birch bark sheet, trimmed at the edges, 15-40 cm long and more than 2 cm wide. In order to write on birch bark, you needed a special stylus (it was also called “wrote”). The bone or metal tip of the instrument inscribed letters on the soft surface of the letter. They wrote on the light inner side of birch bark. Some documents have survived where entries were made on both sides.

Basically, the use of letters was limited to everyday records related to monetary issues. Wills, complaints, bills of sale, all kinds of receipts and court records, as well as simple information messages were written on birch bark. Birch bark letters sometimes present real surprises to scientists. It is known about the existence of a number of documents, surprising in content, in which children's notes and drawings made by a 7-year-old boy named Onfim, which came to us from the middle of the 13th century, were preserved. According to researchers, the child, who was born in 1256, learned writing skills from an early age. In fact, it turns out that these are educational notebooks, and the young Novgorodian mastered the alphabet in them. Several charters (there are 12 of them) have drawings that mainly depict horsemen and spearmen.

One can only guess: this child is a genius who shows an interest in drawing and writing, or maybe in those distant times primary education was universal, and Onmif's birch bark letters are simply the only source that has come down to us. Unfortunately, nothing is known about the boy's further fate.

Birch bark turned out to be not the most successful material intended for long-term storage of information. The scrolls broke, cracked and suffered from endless and widespread fires. A huge number of birch bark letters, alas, have not survived to this day; only a small part of them remains, which has become known to science.

Over the past 60 years, many historians and philologists have devoted all their efforts to studying birch bark letters, as a result of which some studies have yielded amazing results. For example, it became known about the existence of a strict system of spelling and grammar since the 12th century; more than 90% of texts were written without a single error.

MOSCOW. /TASS-Dossier/ The bark of trees, including birches, was used in ancient times by various peoples as writing material. In particular, in the 16th century, the spiritual writer Joseph Volotsky, talking about the poverty of the monks of the Trinity-Sergius Monastery, noted that they “their books were not written on charters (i.e., parchment), but on birch bark.” Arab writers of the 10th century also spoke about the existence of writings carved on “white wood” in Ancient Rus'.

For a long time, the oldest surviving documents on birch bark were dated no earlier than the 17th century. At the end of the 19th century, during excavations in Novgorod, cut leaves of birch bark began to be discovered. However, the inscriptions on them were not visible, since they could have been made with ink, the traces of which were not preserved in wet soil. In 1930, near Saratov, while digging a silo, a Golden Horde charter of the 14th century was found, which until the 1950s. was considered the oldest surviving document on this material.

The first letter found

The first Novgorod birch bark document was found on July 26, 1951 by an archaeological expedition of Moscow State University and the Institute of Archeology of the USSR Academy of Sciences. It was headed by Doctor of Historical Sciences Artemy Artsikhovsky. Excavations were carried out at the Nerevsky end (north of the Novgorod Kremlin) on an area of about 10 thousand square meters. A local resident, Nina Akulova, who worked part-time at the excavations, discovered a letter in the cultural layer of the 14th-15th centuries: she noticed scratched symbols on strips of birch bark extracted from the ground.

The document found by Akulova received serial number 1; it is currently stored in the State Historical Museum in Moscow. The document contains 13 lines, 38 cm each, but has not been completely preserved. From the transcript it was clear that it contained a breakdown of income from several villages. The text on the letter has been preserved; it was not written in ink, but scratched out with a special tool - a “writing”, which was a pointed metal rod.

The very next day, July 27, a second letter was found, and then finds became regular.

Description, significance

Most of the birch bark documents discovered in Russian cities are dated from the beginning of the 9th to the end of the 14th centuries. Basically, birch bark was used for private correspondence and drafts, while for official documents and books a more durable material was used - parchment. In the 15th century, birch bark had already begun to be replaced by paper, whose production became cheaper.

The discovery of birch bark letters was of great importance both for the study of history and for Russian linguistics. It showed widespread literacy among the population. A significant proportion of letters are letters about trade transactions, demands for debt repayment, petitions, etc. In addition, among them there are love letters and household instructions. Particularly famous was the find of 1956: 12 birch bark letters, the author of which was the boy Onifim, who lived in Novgorod in the 13th century. They contain educational notes and drawings.

Charters are one of the most important sources for studying the daily life of Ancient Rus', the development of trade, political and social life of cities.

Deciphering and analyzing the texts made it possible to identify dozens of words of the Old Russian language that have disappeared from the modern dictionary. In addition, letters have become the most ancient evidence of the existence of obscene (abusive, obscene) vocabulary in the language.

A great contribution to the linguistic analysis of birch bark letters was made by Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Andrei Zaliznyak, who identified the features of the dialect of Ancient Novgorod, which was significantly different from the dialect of most of Ancient Rus'.

Statistics

In total, 1087 letters were found in Veliky Novgorod (as of September 2016). The second place in the number of inscriptions found on birch bark (46) is occupied by the city of Staraya Russa (Novgorod region) - the first was found there in 1966. This is followed by Torzhok (Tver region, 19 letters) and Smolensk (16 letters). Also, Old Russian letters were found in Pskov, Tver, Old Ryazan, Vologda, as well as in Zvenigorod Galitsky (Ukraine), Mstislavl and Vitebsk (Belarus).

In Moscow, the first birch bark letter was found during excavations on Red Square in 1988. A total of four letters have been found in the Russian capital to date, the last one during excavations in Zaryadye in 2015.

Discovery Rewards

For the discovery and study of birch bark letters, the leaders of the Novgorod archaeological expedition, led by Artemy Artsikhovsky, were awarded the State (1970) and Lenin (1984) prizes. Subsequently, state prizes for related discoveries were received by historian Valentin Yanin (1996), Andrei Zaliznyak (2007), and others.

Certificate Database

Since 2004, the website gramoty.ru has been operating, which contains photographs, drawings, texts, translations and analysis of the studied birch bark letters.

Messages scratched on birch bark hundreds of years ago are today a unique source of information about the language, life and culture of ancient Rus'.

The first Novgorod charter was found on July 26, 1951. Today, almost 65 years later, the scientists’ collection includes more than 1,000 birch barks, the lion’s share of which were found in Veliky Novgorod, the smaller part in Staraya Russa, Torzhok, Pskov and other cities. This geography of finds is explained by natural conditions: organic matter is well preserved in moist soil if it does not come into contact with air. Apparently, Novgorod soils are excellent for the “preservation” of medieval written monuments. The first charters known to us date back to the 11th century; one of the earliest, tentatively dated to 1060-1100, looks like this:

Gramoty.ru

Her translation: “Lithuania went to war against the Karelians.” According to the historian and archaeologist V.L. Yanin, this report was written in 1069, during the military campaign of the Polotsk prince Vseslav Borisovich against Novgorod. A birch bark letter can be dated by determining the age of the cultural layer in which it was found. Dendrochronology helps with this: counting the growth rings on the logs from which wooden buildings and road decks were made, the remains of which are at the same level of the cultural layer as the letter. During the Novgorod excavations, dendrochronological tables were compiled, by consulting which it is possible to determine the age of some letters with an accuracy of 10-15 years. Another dating method is paleography: analysis of the linguistic and graphic features of birch bark “letters.” It is thanks to letters that linguists can reconstruct the language spoken by the ancient Novgorodians. The following text, written in the 13th century, presents one of the features of their dialect: “tsokane” - a mixture of C and Ch.

Gramoty.ru

Translation: “From Mikita to Anna. Marry me - I want you [“hotsu” in the original], and you want me; and Ignat Moiseev is a witness to this.” True, as follows from the birch bark of the 12th century, not all residents of ancient Novgorod had a happy family life:

Gramoty.ru

“From Gostyata to Vasil. What my father gave me and what my relatives gave me in addition is his. And now, having married a new wife, he gives me nothing. By hitting hands [i.e. as a sign of a new engagement], he drove me away and took another as his wife. Come and do me a favor.” The author of the following letter is the boy Onfim, who lived seven and a half centuries ago. He depicted a horseman defeating the enemy, and signed the drawing with the autograph: “Onfime.”

Gramoty.ru

The fifth letter in our selection is a conspiracy against fever (XIV – XV centuries)

Gramoty.ru

Translation: “Saint Sisinius and Sikhail were sitting on the mountains of Sinai, looking at the sea. And there was a noise from heaven, great and terrible. And I saw an angel flying from heaven, Saint Sisinius and Sikhail, wearing handcuffs [parts of armor] of ice, and in his hands holding a fiery weapon. And then the sea was agitated, and seven simple-haired women came out, cursed in appearance; they were seized by the power of the invisible king. And Saint Sisinius and Sikhail said..." - alas, the lower half of the birch bark leaf is missing. the selection of letters is united by the writing technique: letters were scratched with a hard rod - a pen - on the inner, soft side of birch bark. We know of only a couple of birch bark written in ink. The last letters were written in the middle of the 15th century: it was then that birch bark was replaced by paper. When compiling the material, scans, drawings and translations of letters published on the website gramoty.ru were used, as well as works by A.A. Zaliznyak, A.A. Gippius and V.L. Ioannina.

Birch bark letters are records made on birch bark. They are monuments of ancient Russian writing from the 11th to 15th centuries. Their greatest value lies in the fact that they themselves became sources for studying the history of medieval society, not only language, but also everyday life.

By the way, not only the Russians used birch bark as a writing material. In this capacity she served for many other peoples of the world. Birch bark writing, in a word, is one of the oldest types of writing.

A little history

When did birch bark become widespread in Ancient Rus' as a material convenient for writing? Apparently, this happened no later than the 11th century. However, after five centuries it began to lose its relevance and went out of use, since during this period such writing material as parchment, a special type of paper, became widespread in Rus'. Nevertheless, some scribes continued to use the usual birch bark, but, as you understand, birch bark writing became extremely rare, because it was much more convenient to write on paper. Gradually, birch bark began to be used mainly for rough notes.

Nowadays, every birch bark document found is carefully studied by specialists and numbered. Two finds are simply amazing: huge birch bark sheets on which literary works were written. One of them has number 17, it was found in Torzhok. The other, Novgorod, charter is known under number 893.

Scientists found them on the ground in an unfolded state. They may have been thrown out at some point because they were no longer relevant, but perhaps the site was once an archive or other institution that housed them.

Nevertheless, Novgorod birch bark letters were found in such large quantities that this clearly indicates that at the site of the find there was once some kind of office involved in archiving various documents.

Description of finds

Typically, searchers find writing imprinted on birch bark in the form of a rolled up scroll. And the text on them is usually scratched: either on the inside or on both sides. However, there are cases when letters are located underground in an unfolded state. The peculiarity of these letters is that the text in them is placed in a continuous line, that is, without division into individual words.

A typical example of this is birch bark letter number 3, found in Moscow. Among the finds were scraps of birch bark with scratched letters. Historians believe that the owners of these letters, in order to keep the information contained in them secret, tore the birch bark into small pieces.

Discovery of birch bark letters

By the way, the fact that in Rus' there was such writing material as birch bark letters was known long before they were discovered by archaeologists. Indeed, in some archives, entire books written on exfoliated birch bark have been preserved. However, they all belonged to a later period than those found.

The first birch bark letter dates back to the 11th century, and those books that are stored in churches and archives date back to the 17th and even 19th centuries, that is, the period when parchment and paper were already actively used by scribes. So why were these manuscripts made on birch bark? The fact is that they all belong to the Old Believers, that is, conservative. In the Volga region, near Saratov, in 1930, archaeologists found a birch bark Golden Horde document from the 14th century. Unlike the first ones, it was written in ink.

Character of birch bark letters

Most of the records found on birch bark are both private and public in nature. These are promissory notes, household instructions, lists, petitions, wills, bills of sale, court records, etc.

However, among them there are also letters containing church texts, such as prayers, teachings, etc. Of particular interest are birch bark manuscripts, which are literary works and educational materials, such as alphabet books, school exercises, homework with children's scribbles, etc. d.

Very interesting are Novgorod birch bark letters discovered in the 50s containing drawings of the boy Onfim. They date back to the 13th century. A distinctive feature of all letters without exception is brevity and pragmatism. Since they did not need to be large, the scribes here wrote down only the most important things. However, our ancestors were not alien to love lyrics, and among the manuscripts you can find notes of a love nature, written by the hand of a woman or man in love. In a word, the discovery of birch bark letters to some extent helped lovers in expressing their secret feelings.

Where were birch bark manuscripts discovered?

The outskirts of Veliky Novgorod are the places where Soviet archaeologists found a birch bark letter. Along with it, metal or bone pointed rods were also discovered, which were primitive writing instruments - a kind of medieval pens. Or rather, they were found before the discovery of birch bark writings. Only archaeologists initially believed that the pointed objects they found were either hairpins or nails.

However, their true purpose was established only after the discovery of letters, that is, 15-20 years later, in the 50s of the last century. Indeed, due to the Patriotic War, the expedition, begun in the mid-30s, was suspended. Thus, the first letter was discovered in July 1951 at the Nerevsky excavation site. It contained “pozem” and “donation”, that is, records of feudal duties in favor of Thomas, Iev and Timothy. This letter was found by archaeologist Nina Akulova from Novgorod. For which she received a prize of 100 rubles, and the day of the find, July 26, became Birch Bark Charter Day.

After the archaeologist's death, a monument was erected on her grave with an inscription testifying to this event. During that archaeological season, 9 more birch bark documents were found. And among them is the one that most interested scientists. A story was written on the letter. Birch bark letters of that period were mainly of a business nature, but this one could be classified as fiction.

As noted above, the birch bark adapted for writing was not large in size, so everything contained in it was presented briefly and laconically. “About an Unlucky Kid” is a real story. Birch bark letters were used as the main material for writing, just as mountain peoples used rocks or cave walls for this.

List of cities where birch bark letters were found

Until 2014, about 1,060 letters on birch bark were discovered in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. We present to your attention a list of cities near which they were found:

Smolensk;
Torzhok;
Nizhny Novgorod;
Velikiy Novgorod;
Pskov;
Moscow;
Tver;
Vitebsk;
Ryazan and others.

This is the history of birch bark letters. They once served as writing material. Since birch grows only in certain areas and is a real Russian, or rather, Slavic tree, this type of writing was widespread among the Slavic peoples, including in Medieval Rus'.

In Ancient Babylon they wrote on clay tablets, in Egypt - on papyrus, in Europe - on parchment, and in Ancient Rus' - on birch bark. Birch bark was the main material for writing on our lands long before parchment and paper were brought to us.

According to the main version, the appearance of birch bark letters dates back to the period of the 11th-15th centuries, but the discoverer of Novgorod letters A.V. Artsikhovsky and many of his colleagues believe that the first letters were already in the 9th-10th centuries.

Discovery of birch bark letters

Birch bark has been used as a material for writing in Ancient Rus' since ancient times. Joseph Volotsky wrote that in the monastery of St. Sergius of Radonezh “the books themselves are not written on charters, but on birch bark.” Many (though rather late) documents and even entire books (mostly Old Believers) written on layered birch bark have survived to this day.

The place where birch bark documents were discovered was Veliky Novgorod. The preservation of these ancient finds was facilitated by favorable natural conditions and the characteristics of the local soil.

In the 1930s, archaeological excavations were carried out in Veliky Novgorod, the expedition was headed by A. V. Artsikhovsky. Then the first cut sheets of birch bark and writing instruments were found. It was not possible to make more serious discoveries during that period, since the Great Patriotic War began. Work continued in the late 40s of the 20th century.

A.V. Artsikhovsky

On July 26, 1951, birch bark document No. 1 was found at one of the excavations. It contained a list of feudal duties in favor of three residents of the city. This letter confirmed the hypothesis of historians about the possibility of such finds. Subsequently, the events of July 26 became the reason for the approval of the annual holiday celebrated in Novgorod - the Day of the Birch Bark Letter. The discoveries did not end there. That same year, archaeologists found nine more birch bark documents.

Subsequently, the discovery of birch bark letters became commonplace. The first letters were found in Smolensk in 1952, in Pskov - in 1958, in Vitebsk - in 1959. The first find in Staraya Russa appeared in 1966, in Tver - in 1983. In Moscow, the first birch bark letter was discovered only in 1988, when excavations were carried out on Red Square.

Number of birch bark letters

An archaeological expedition to Veliky Novgorod is already a tradition. Every year since 1951, archaeologists open their seasons. Unfortunately, the number of letters found in different years varies greatly. There were seasons when scientists found several hundred specimens, and there were also zero. Nevertheless, today more than 1000 birch bark letters have already been found.

At the end of 2017, the total number of letters found is distributed as follows:

Velikiy Novgorod	1102 certificates and 1 birch bark certificate-icon
Staraya Russa

Smolensk



Zvenigorod Galitsky (Ukraine)
Mstislavl (Belarus)
Vitebsk (Belarus)
Old Ryazan

General characteristics of letters

Birch bark became widespread as a writing material at the beginning of the 11th century and was used until the middle of the 15th century. With the spread of paper, the use of this material for writing came to naught. Paper was cheaper, and writing on birch bark was no longer prestigious. Therefore, the letters discovered by archaeologists are not documents stored in archives, but thrown out and falling into the ground due to their uselessness.

When writing letters, ink was very rarely used, since it was very unstable, and the authors simply scratched letters on birch bark that were clearly legible.

Most of the documents found are everyday private letters on the topic of debt collection, trade, etc. There are also drafts of official acts on birch bark: these are wills, receipts, bills of sale, and court records.

Church texts (prayers), school jokes, conspiracies, and riddles were also found. In 1956, archaeologists discovered the educational notes of the Novgorod boy Onfim, which later became widely known.

For the most part, the letters are laconic and pragmatic. They contain only important information, and everything that is already known to the addressee is not mentioned.

The nature of birch bark letters - messages from humble people - is clear evidence of the spread of literacy among the population of Ancient Rus'. The townspeople learned the alphabet from childhood, wrote their own letters, and women also knew how to read and write. The fact that family correspondence was widely represented in Novgorod indicates the high position of a woman who sent orders to her husband and independently entered into financial relations.

The significance of the found birch bark letters is enormous both for the study of Russian history and for Russian linguistics. They are the most important source for studying the daily life of our ancestors, the development of trade, political and social life of Ancient Rus'.