Petroglyphs. Cholpon-Ata.
Some unique ancient monuments are located on territory of Cholpon-Ata town.
There are Bronze Age settlement and ancient sacred place under open sky
with stone painting. Andronic tribes or aria tribes (the middle II millennium
- VIII century B.C.) gave us the artists who began creating these peculiar
art galleries, which consist of thousand petrogliphs. The Saka tribes (VIII-III
centuries B.C.) made their contribution for further development of the
rock painting. The Saka's artists created rock drawings in socalled Saka-Scythian
animal style of art, which attracts attention with their mastership and
realistic images. The latest petroglyphs were dated by Turkic period (VI-IX
centuries?).
Issyk-Kul Open Air museum is most accessible and visitable part of
North Issyk-Kul accumulation of the petroglyphs. That site was gigantic
temple under open sky, which occupied western part of modern Cholpon-Ata
town, and where ancient people worshipped to celestial bodies and did sacraments
and mysteries. The rock paintings took an important sacramental role in
realizing rituals.
They were some kind of virtual sacrifice and prayer, printed on the
stone. Alongside with the petroglyphs, there are stone circles, perhaps
an ancient kin sacred sites with an interesting natural phenomena - geomagnetic
propitious fields. There are some grounds for suppositions, that big stone
circles (some tens meters in diameter) used as astronomy observatories.
Issyk-Kul petroglyphs are unlque in many aspects. First, because of
artistic realism of the images, many rock drawings belong to masterpieces
of Saka-Scythian animal style art. Secondly, the sizes of some petroglyphs
are more than one meter which is really rare. At third, many scenes and
subjects are original, typical only for North Issyk-Kul petroglyphs. At
forth, a technique of making some paintings, for example a relief image
of deer, fulfilled with the usage as natural prominences of the stone.
The central petroglyph in low part of the museum is an embodiment of
all unique features. There is a flock of rock goats (teke or ibex). The
figures of ibexes, perhaps the biggest in Central Asia presented with unusual
expression that allows attributing this petroglyph to outstanding masterpiece
Saka-Scythian animal style of art. The figures of hunters and tame-breeding
bars (snow leopards) during penned hunt are one the background of the rock
painting. This kind of driving off hunt existed in Ancient Egypt, where
hunters used cheetah in hunting of antelope. By the way, there is a petroglyph
with images of hunting dynamically leopards in the museum. This petroglyph
has not analogies in Central Asia.
Kyrgyzstan
