This city has a rich and interesting history, but few attractions in Lugansk can boast such an age as the Park Museum of Stone Sculptures at Taras Shevchenko National University. Most of the museum’s exhibits are about a thousand years old.
In ancient times the territory of modern Lugansk region was settled by Polovtsians. In XI-XIII centuries their culture and life flourished here. The Polovtsians disappeared as a people, but left behind a rich heritage, including stone statues.
Initially, these unique sculptures were scattered throughout the territory of Lugansk region. The Kipchaks erected them on the highest parts of the steppe, watersheds and mounds. Now the stone statues are collected in one place, they were brought to the territory of the university by students of the Faculty of History. Thanks to the initiative of archeologist K.I. Krasilnikov, who owns the idea to collect all the finds in one place, now there is an opportunity to see about 80 ancient sculptures at once, to trace the history of the development of stone art of a long-vanished people.
The very purpose and the history of the appearance of these unique works of ancient Cumans’ art are also interesting.
The Kipchaks were pagans and had a rich spiritual world. A special role in the culture of the Kipchaks was played by the funeral cult and the cult of ancestors. The latter gradually developed into the cult of «hero-chiefs», which was materially embodied by stone sculptures. Statues from 1 to 4 meters high were placed at the head of graves, where the ashes of warriors who died while defending their lands were kept.
But not all of the statues found were tombstones of the graves of fallen warriors. The tallest of them were installed in sacred places, they were worshipped, asked for blessing for war, rich harvest. Such idol statues had a sacred meaning, they were prayed to and sacrificed. All idols are distinguished by a special detail: with both hands they hold a vessel in which offerings were put.
The poet Nizami wrote about such idol-gods (he was an Azerbaijani and his wife was a Polovchanka), who lived in the XII century:
And tribes of Kipchaks come here,
And before the idol the Kipchaks bend their backs,
Whether a traveler on foot comes or a mounted one —
Their native idol conquers everyone.
Therefore, in the park-museum of stone sculptures you can see not only figures-incarnations of heroes, but stone images of gods, in which the ancient people believed.
Thanks to the statues of warriors you can imagine what was the life of the Kipchaks: they depict clothing, headdresses, jewelry, weapons and household items, men have mustaches or beards, often — long hair, braided into a braid reaching to the waist.
The collection of stone sculptures of the Kipchaks in Lugansk today is the largest pagan statue park in Eurasia. It is unique in that it represents the whole variety of types of stone art of the Kipchak people, which allows you to look into the distant past, to see what the people who lived more than a thousand years ago believed in.