🗿 What does the Shigir Idol actually show? In 2004, Svetlana Savchenko and Mikhail Zhilin read the back's bottom shapes as a male figure with spread legs and a straight line they took as a phallus, with a similar figure above bearing seven marks between its legs, read as female. Savchenko's 2022 paper argues the main head is a creator giving forth sacred knowledge, the double zigzags are water, plant shapes are vegetation, and the branching lower section is an owl symbolizing the sky — the whole totem depicting people and the world around them. Natalia Chekirina thinks it depicts the entire universe. All of this remains speculation, however well researched 🌊🦉
Savchenko reads Shigir Idol carvings as a creation myth; Chekirina sees the universe
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Key facts
- The idol's combination of totem-like features, eight faces, great height and geometric patterns has no direct parallel among known artifacts, making its identification difficult.
- In 2004, Svetlana Savchenko, a researcher at the Sverdlovsk Regional Museum, and Mikhail Zhilin interpreted the lower-back shapes as a spread-legged male figure with a phallic line. They read a similar figure above, with seven marks between its legs, as female.
- Savchenko's 2022 paper argues that the main head represents a universal creator, the double zigzags represent water, the plant shapes represent vegetation, and the branching lower section depicts an owl symbolizing the sky.
- Savchenko also proposed that the back's snout-face represents the animal world, making the whole totem a depiction of people and the world around them.
- Natalia Chekirina interprets the totem as representing the entire universe, while some researchers have linked its figures with shamanistic skeletal imagery and ancestral worship.
- These readings remain scholarly speculations, however carefully researched.
Sources
cambridge.org
Linked in video description
Shigir Idolen.wikipedia.org
Svetlana Savchenko, a researcher at the Sverdlovsk Regional Museum, suggested that the decoration tells the creation myth those who carved it believed in.
Secrets of the Shigir Idol: The Oldest Wooden Sculpture in ...talesbytrees.com
Carved from the timber of an already 156-year-old Larch tree, Shigir Idol was found in fragments and once reassembled, stands 2.8 metres tall.
The Shigir idol in the context of early art in Eurasiasciencedirect.com
by T Terberger · 2021 · Cited by 21 — In 1890 the so called “Shigir Idol” was found in a peat bog and for a long time discussion on the dating of the wooden sculpture was going on.
The Shigir idol in the context of early art in Eurasiaresearchgate.net
Savchenko, S.N., Zhilin, M.G., 2004. About new details of images of the Great Shigir idol. The 4th Readings in Memoriam Bers, Final ...
S.N. Savchenko. To the question of definition of the age ...camera-praehistorica.kunstkamera.ru
She dates the Big Shigir idol to this time, and explains Mesolithic dates by the use of fossil larch tree trunk for creation of the sculpture. Relentless ...
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