The Model of the World in the Architecture of the Nuzal Temple

Abstract

The article is devoted to the identification of a three-level Indo-Iranian model of the world in the architecture of the Nuzal temple. This corresponds to the theory of three functions formulated by J. Dumisil for Indo-European and, already, Indo-Iranian society and confirmed by researchers in the most important spheres of Scythian-Alan culture. Unfortunately, the semantics of the Alanian religious architecture remains unexplored, so the article attempts to consider it on the example of the medieval Nuzal Church – a reference temple that has great historical significance and carries architectural and semantic features of the widest range of monuments of the Alanian religious tradition. The architecture of the monument is considered from the point of view of religious symbolism, which is the basis of church architecture. The complex symbolism of the Orthodox church involves a comprehensive consideration of its constituent elements. In our case, we are talking about the architectural appearance, fresco painting and funerary character of the Nuzal church. As a result of the conducted research, following the social structure of society, mythology, traditional worship, choreography, heraldry, the concept of ternarity manifested itself in religious architecture. The architecture of the temple contains the idea of a three–level universe, a World Mountain – with divine, human and chthonic spheres that correspond to three social functions – religious (judicial), military and productive. The tribe of Tsarazonta, which owned the Nuzal cemetery, was in the paradigm of this three-functional system. The conclusions drawn seem to be quite justified, since the historical immutability of the idea of an ideal social structure reproducing the three-part structure of the universe traditionally had the character of a worldview axiom for the Scythian-Alanian culture.