Since the 70s of our century, the world has become aware of numerous and diverse monuments of the hitherto unknown Bronze Age civilization that existed on the territory of modern Afghanistan and in the ancient Murghab Delta, in Turkmenistan. It was named the Bactrian-Margian Archaeological Complex (BMAC), or the Oxus Civilization, because many of its monuments gravitate to the Amu Darya Valley, the ancient Oxus. Among the numerous and striking finds made in the course of, unfortunately, predatory excavations in Afghanistan , are objects of glyptics and sphragistics made of metals and minerals with images of geometric shapes, animals, plants, and fantastic creatures. They are a mass material that allows us to present the brightness and originality of a culture, the discovery and ongoing research of which is the result of the tireless work of the author of the reviewed book. A huge number of glyptic and sphragistic works purchased at the antiquities markets have been added to the collections of museums in Western Europe and the United States, as well as collections of antiquities lovers. V. I. Sarianidi is one of the few archaeologists who led scientific excavations of Bronze Age monuments in Bactria and Margiana. His opinion plays an important role for both researchers and collectors in attributing and interpreting things that are often taken out of the archaeological context.

The work consists of a short introduction by P. Amier, an author's preface, and sections that describe the historical and cultural background of the BMAC glyptic, the world of mythological representations of the carriers of this culture, and describe the main groups of pictorial motifs and forms of seals. In conclusion, we provide an extensive bibliography and photographs of almost all known seal samples to date.

The book dedicated to the memory of E. Porada, an outstanding researcher of the art of ancient Near East Asia, primarily glyptics, is a corpus of almost 1800 samples. Photos of seals and their impressions are of high quality. The author notes that 95 % of them are published for the first time. It is obvious that many of the preliminary assumptions expressed in the works devoted to these most interesting monuments can be corrected in connection with the appearance of this fundamental catalog, and new hypotheses may arise. The objects come from the collections of R. Garner and D. Rosen (New York), the Anahita Gallery (Santa Fe), the Metropolitan and Louvre Museums, the Los Angeles Art Museum, and the Ligabue Institute Museum (Venice). A considerable number were photographed in the bazaar of Kabul. From the point of view of determining the place of these things in a particular cultural context, finds from the Murghab Delta, made during systematic scientific excavations, occupy a special place. Along with the monuments of the BMAC of the Bronze Age in the publication, as the author notes, there are objects of unknown origin, and in the collection of R. Garner-several cylinders purchased in Iraq. Unfortunately, the catalog does not include prints from Northern Bactria, however, largely published by the authors of excavations in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.

The book opens with a brief introduction by the greatest expert on Oriental antiquities, P. Amier, in which he pays tribute to the contribution of V. I. Sarianidi to the study of the phenomenon of the ancient Baktri-Margian civilization. P. Amier considers it as one of the non-written cultures of "Outer Iran", a region lying on the territory of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, in the marginal regions of Iran and Afghanistan, in Baluchistan and coastal areas of the Persian Gulf. The population of this area was culturally influenced primarily by Elam, and to a lesser extent by Mesopotamia. Many features, including those found in the glyptic and sphragistka, indicate distant connections.

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cultures of this region, extending to Syria, Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean, to participate in a network of intra-Iranian exchange. According to P. Amier, the time of existence of the Bactria and Margiana cultures of the Bronze Age cannot be determined precisely at the present time; he suggests dating it to the end of the III-first half of the II millennium BC. V. I. Sarianidi believes that it existed longer, throughout the entire II millennium BC.

The section "Historical and cultural background" describes the natural conditions, settlements, and farms of farmers and pastoralists. The walled settlements were inhabited by families and communities of high rank. V. I. Sarianidi believes that early states that preserved the traditions of primitive democracy existed on the territory of the BMAK distribution. If the population of Margiana has a significant component of newcomers from neighboring territories, in particular from the Kopet - Dagh foothills, then Bactria was largely inhabited by newcomers from the west. While the characteristics of the cultural complexes of Bactria and Margiana are identical, the set of items found in Bactria gives the impression of being richer, which the author attributes to a large number of monuments excavated, mainly by predatory methods.

At present, it is impossible to judge whether all the stone samples with carved images and metal products of the same type were intended to serve as seals, signs of ownership, or whether their groups or individual copies served other purposes, for example, they were amulets or signs of social status. A small number of impressions were found on clay, but their number and appearance do not allow us to assume that they served only as signs of ownership. However, everywhere in the East in ancient times, such small things worn on the body with images of mythological creatures or conventional signs were treated as carriers of beneficent power for the owner. It is possible to call the works of glyptics of the BMAC seals with a certain amount of convention, bearing in mind that the semantics of those that served as property signs was very broad, their material, forms and images on them had wide semantic connections in the conctext of the representations of their creators, and these representations had to be refracted through myth.

A relatively small but most interesting group bears a variety of images that V.I. Sarianidi considers "quotations" from myths common to the population of both regions. He admits that P. Amier is right about the similarity of a number of motifs with the images of the Elamite glyptic, but believes that the system as a whole provides the closest parallels with the iconography of monuments found on the territory of Syria and Mitanni. Based on the fact that the vast majority of the seals were made locally, and did not come here as a result of trade or exchange, as evidenced by their peculiar features, he believes that their manufacturers were newcomers from the West, who moved at the end of the third millennium BC.e. first to Elam, then to Balochistan and Bactria. V. I. Sarianidi sees the root cause of this widespread migration in the aridization of climate. It presupposes the possibility of participation of the Aryan component in this movement. He places the ancestral homeland of the Aryans in Anatolia, where they lived side by side with the Greeks, with whom they shared certain rites and iconographic motifs. These are V. I.'s ideas. Sarianidi has been developing many works for almost two decades, they have received a wide response and have given rise to fruitful discussions, whose participants, even without sharing some of his assumptions, have consistently emphasized the importance of the materials obtained by V. I. Sarianidi.

The author states that the civilization, largely created by newcomers from the West, eventually acquired the features of originality on the territory of Bactria and Margiana.

Consideration of individual groups of images is preceded by a general description of the world of mythological representations of the ancient Bactrians and Margians, a world filled with fantastic creatures, mostly winged-anthropomorphic and zoomorphic-lions, griffins, rarely-sphinxes. The most important were the anthropomorphic deities, among them the winged bird-man, a possible head of the pantheon. Such male and female characters are depicted standing or sitting on benches or thrones, as well as on real and fantastic animals.

According to the author, the main deities have several hypostases. Surrounded by animals and birds, they represent the "owners" of animals and birds. Depicted in a " kneeling position "(sitting on the heel of one foot, the knee of the other raised), the bird - man is a genius spirit, sometimes fighting snakes or serpent dragons. Anthropomorphic ones

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deities are benevolent towards humans, their zoomorphic opponents are evil carriers. The anthropomorphs are always fighting them, this battle is cosmic in nature, the fate of the whole world depends on it. It is noted that due to the peculiarities of the characters ' relationships, the result of this struggle is not always clear. Ultimately, it is a struggle between Good and Evil.

V. I. Sarianidi believes that the same idea is embodied in numerous scenes where animals and birds act as opponents of coiled snakes and dragon snakes. He believes that in this way the struggle for the possession of the life-giving seed is transmitted, as a result of which life continues. As a result, he discovers two groups of opposing deities in the Bactrian pantheon, which he calls "angels"and " devils".

The characteristics of the main image groups are described below. These materials are familiar to readers of this journal, and they largely coincide with those published by V. I. Sarianidi in VDI, 1999, N 1, in an article with the symptomatic title "Syro-Hittite origin of the Bactrian-Margian glyptic". In this regard, and due to the limited scope of the review, it seems appropriate only to list groups of images in order to proceed further to the presentation of some observations.

Group I - "anthropomorphic" characters (deities on a throne, animal or dragon, winged and / or bird-headed; winged ones with a human head or mouflon head; mistress of the beasts; kneeling deities; dragon - fighting heroes; acrobats; human beings). In Margiana, about 10 images of anthropomorphic creatures with signs of birds were recorded, in Bactria - about 50. Group II - "snakes and dragons", as well as vortex rosettes made up of parts of their figures. Group III-winged lions and similar fantastic creatures. Group IV - animals (bulls, goat-like animals, camels, monkeys, hares) and birds. Group V - scorpions, crabs and plants. A separate group is formed by seals, among which there are also relatively late ones - New Assyrian and, apparently, Achaemenid (1362-1363; hereafter-catalog numbers), as well as possibly even later ones. Individual pictorial motifs are also analyzed and their analogies are indicated. It is noteworthy that the dominant ones tend to the Syro-Hittite (perhaps it would be more accurate to say the Syro - Anatolian) region.

The first thing you pay attention to when considering published items is the variety of their forms and materials. According to V. I. Sarianidi, all objects with ears or handles on the back served as seals, flat but with convex surfaces "amulets" with carved deep images and drilled holes for hanging were made of stone. Looking at these peculiar and unusual objects for the glyptics of the ancient East, with their convex surfaces and double-sided more or less multi-figure images, it can be assumed that their creators knew about the existence of cylindrical seals, but neither their traditions, nor the way they used and understood the purpose of products, nor the capabilities of native carvers and casters allowed them to leave this form, to switch to a different cylindrical surface with a surface that is also completely filled with images. As a result, perhaps under the influence of cylindrical seals, they created what was familiar to them - flat or lentil-shaped objects with images on both surfaces, most likely complementary in meaning, which V. I. Sarianidi suggests (p.24).

The close distribution of the Bactrian and Margian seals by material is remarkable, although they differ very much in quantity: the former were published about 1560, the latter - about 260. Among the Bactrian seals, metal (made of copper or a copper-bronze alloy) is 1.4 times more than stone, in Margiana this ratio is somewhat different - metal is 1.2 times more. The stone materials are dark chlorite, lapis lazuli, etc. Faience samples and plaster seals are known.

There is a large group with one-or two-sided images, cylindrical seals and their impressions are relatively few (Bactria - about 70, among them - and late; Margiana-about 10), although the images on them are very informative. In general, the set appears to be heterogeneous, which has been repeatedly noted by researchers ¹ . Especially diverse are the Bactrian ones, which is natural at their source - predatory excavations, most likely, of various burials. V. I. Sarianidi notes the existence of forms close to Hittite and Late Assyrian. Despite this, a relatively homogeneous group dominates. It is represented by copper-bronze and a few silver (one - gold) seals-stamps cast in molds, including wax

¹ For a summary of information and analysis, see Frankfor A. P. Oksa seals: diversity of forms and changeability of functions / / VDI. 1997. N 4.

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models; precious metals were used to make things with images of female and male mythological creatures. In some cases, the images on the reverse side are designed with an engraving that emphasizes the details. The shapes are rounded and shaped, rosette - shaped and cross-shaped. Another component of this group is stone "amulets"(their function as seals is not documented by the discovery of impressions) with two-sided images made with a chisel and drill. Evidence that some of the samples, metal and cylindrical, served as signs of ownership, are dried and baked clay bulls with their impressions. The rarity of such impressions leads V. I. Sarianidi to conclude that the apotropaic function of glyptic works was more important than their purpose to serve as property signs.

Naturally, the attention of V. I. Sarianidi, as well as other researchers, is primarily attracted by specimens with pictorial motifs. The author notes that the images on stone amulets are the same as on metal seals (p. 23). At the same time, the published material shows that the complex of published items made of different materials, both Bactrian and Margian, is dominated not by figurative, but by geometric motifs or those in combination with figurative ones - cross-shaped figures, rosettes with one or another number of rays. So, cross-shaped motifs and swirling rosettes form several snakes, elements of figures of eagles or other creatures, plants. This is a remarkable feature of the complex, indicating the archaic appearance of the complex as a whole, its genetic connection with the geometric ornaments of the cultures of the south of Turkmenistan and neighboring regions of the Eneolithic and Early Bronze ages, which are characterized by cross-shaped and rhombic motifs.

As already mentioned, V. I. Sarianidi confidently speaks about the nature of relations between the characters of the seals-anthropomorphic creatures, animals, birds, snake-like creatures: he believes that this is a struggle, domination, abduction (of the seed). At the same time, these relations do not follow from the images themselves with absolute clarity in the vast majority of cases. Characters whose relationships are fairly explicit, such as a male and an eagle-headed man holding a snake. they are passed as located next to each other, and their placement does not imply participation in any action. This can be said about the images on one-sided seals, and about those that were applied on opposite surfaces of two-sided seals.

In the interpretation of the characters on the "amulets", one can see rather a side-by-side relationship, they act as neighboring actors of a certain (or certain) situation. In compositions with the participation of anthropomorphic characters and animals, relationships that can be interpreted as "domination" and "submission" or some other are revealed only sometimes, but more often they are not. The rarity of the scenes of ritual actions that are so common on the seals of the Near East at this time is remarkable - in the Bactrian-Margian samples-these are feasts of one or two characters (18, 47-49).

As a rule, the relationships between the characters on cylindrical seals or their impressions are not revealed as well - they are simply placed side by side, like the characters of two-sided or one-sided amulets (1762, 1763). Only rare examples give such complex compositions as the ceremonial scene on the seal of Suratur, which depicts an ape-like creature jumping over a pole and several zoomorphic musicians and some other characters (1765).

All these features give the Bactrian-Margian glyptics and sphragistics an archaic appearance, and the predominance of geometric shapes and motifs suggests its deep roots in the culture of the region where these things were made or in directly related areas. It seems that despite the elements of similarity with objects from other areas of the East, the genesis of the complex is here, and not in the west or southwest, although the cultures of Syria, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Elam and surrounding areas, the Indus Valley civilizations certainly had an influence, which is natural for the rich variety of events of the times of the existence of the BMAC. It is hardly necessary to underestimate the place that the exchange occupied among these events.

Returning to the images of anthropomorphic characters that play a key role in the study of representations of BMAK carriers, we note that V. I. Sarianidi analyzes their characteristics in detail, noting, in particular, a large number of those belonging to the female sex. Carefully consider the details of the interpretation of figures, hairstyles, jewelry. A characteristic feature of female characters, although not only them , is the hands folded at waist level. The study of the hands on the reverse side of some metal samples suggests that the hands were passed without resting on the sides (akimbo), namely

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folded in the upper part of the abdomen, which is important for determining the characteristic ritual gestures. One of the signs of female characters is a long skirt-like clothing and a short hairstyle.

It is likely that the accumulation of material will allow us to identify the signs of various mythological characters that are already emerging today, which were revered in the local formations of the BMAK complex. It seems that so far there is no reason to talk about the existence of a complete pantheon, in which the deities and mythological characters worshipped by its carriers were united. Rather, it is possible to assume that there exist in different social formations, the contours of which are far from clear, differing in detail ideas about supernatural forces, their appearance, and ways of communicating with them. At the same time, there are clear general trends: the worship of male and female gods or spirits that can move between worlds that are closely connected with nature.

Group II - images of snakes and dragons - the most numerous of all figurative ones. As with others, V. I. Sarianidi considers not only the formal features of images, but also analyzes their semantics, drawing analogies primarily from the ancient Iranian tradition. The author's remarkable erudition allowed him to pay special attention to Mithraism, in the images of which he sees an analogy to the relations that can be traced between snake-like creatures and land animals, as well as fantastic creatures, winged lions, forming group III. He notes that images of fantastic animals play an important role in the glyptic, participating in scenes of struggle for the" seed of life " with reptilian creatures.

In group IV-animals and birds-a special place is occupied by the eagle, the semantics of the image of which is interpreted presumably on the basis of the ideas of the ancient Iranians (the connection of the eagle with haoma). The author's special attention is drawn to the images of the double-headed eagle, an image that is widely believed to originate from Anatolia. To what V. I. Sarianidi has said, I would like to add that the image of an eagle in the glyptics and sphragistics of Bactria and Margiana has a number of common features with anthropomorphic male characters and mixomorphic-male eagle-headed ones. All of them are often accompanied by images of snakes, similar to their pose with their legs spread apart.

In group V-plants-images of those of them that are associated with natural difficulties in conditional transmission are of particular interest. Their identification is particularly important because excavations in Margiana recorded the use of quite specific plants in rituals-ephedra, hemp and poppy. V. I. Sarianidi, relying on the evidence of botanists, believes that the seals depicted a poppy, tulip and ephedra, while the first two - and in a blooming state.

The last pages of the text are devoted to the characterization of special samples of seals, mostly late, among the images on which horses are interesting, whose images rarely appear on monuments of the Bronze Age of Bactria and Margiana.

In conclusion, it is necessary to emphasize the great importance of the peer-reviewed publication for the study of the phenomenon of the Bactrian-Margian archaeological complex. The author has done a lot of work on collecting, describing, classifying and interpreting the material. An extensive bibliography is given that deals not only with the glyptics and sphragistics of Bactria and Margiana, but also with the Near East of the third-first millennium BC.

The publication of these most interesting monuments gives grounds for continuing the discussion about the ways to build the BMAK complex. There can hardly be any doubt about the movements of tribes, including large ones, in the entire area of Central Asia of the II millennium BC. At the same time, we should not ignore the continuity of cultural development in close territories. It seems that the study of a large-scale complex of such informative things as small stone and metal objects of various shapes and, probably, various purposes, can shed light on the still unclear history of territories not covered by written texts, where events that played an important role in the further history of Central and South Asia unfolded in the Bronze Age.

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