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There are extremely interesting exhibits in the State Historical Museum, these are the silver tips of copies from the Borodino treasure, and obviously, the more ancient silver tips belonging to the Seima-Turbino Culture.

SHM exhibits, Seminsky-Turbinskaya culture

Silver spear tip Borodino treasure, silver spears. SHM

The detachments of warriors with silver spears are mentioned by Arrian at Alexander the Great and are called argyraspids, from argyr – silver, and speyra-spear, to call them silver-cut is a clear mistake. A detachment of soldiers with silver spears was also owned by the Persian king, according to the testimony of Quintus Curtius Rufus. “Behind the chariot were 10 thousand spearmen with richly decorated silver spears.” The squires of Moscow’s grand dukes and tsars – the market men – were remembered by all foreign guests of the Kremlin. During the ceremonial receptions of foreign ambassadors, they stood on both sides of the royal throne, dressed in ceremonial clothes, with silver hatchets. And here, too, silver weapons, and everything somehow coincides, one to one. If we recall the property of silver, which was considered important in antiquity, to drive away or kill evil spirits.

This is the custom of neutralizing the dead, known only in the Ciscaucasia and the Volga and Don basin. The dissected burials of the Bronze Age are known in the burial mounds of the pit and catacomb cultures. At the same time, they do not form a single chronological layer, often their dating is complicated by the lack of inventory. Often, the practice of dismembering two buried, buried in one pit. The specific forms of manifestation of the ritual of dismemberment of bones could vary, which can be explained by different motives of dismemberment. But, despite this, common to all options is that such a practice has never been applied to all members of the community and has always been unique. There are two types of dissections, each of which has its own motivation:

Type I – dismemberment caused by necrophobia, rather the desire to render harmless the dead, and to make safe his dead body, which already had no relation to the dead person, that is, the soul. And in later eras, the Indo-Europeans did not sign the graves of the dead, did not put any plates with the names of the dead, even the famous royal burial sites of Macedonia were depersonalized, in contrast to the Athenian burials of the same era. The corpse was dismembered, or mutilated, designed to “render harmless” the deceased. You can recall the belief, already widespread in the historical era, that a vampire can be killed with a stake pierced in his heart or cut off his head, but it can also be killed with silver weapons. Both phenomena have the same motivation. In the Bronze Age, such a dismemberment could probably be subjected to mentally ill or worshipers, priests, sorcerers, fortune tellers. The ritual was intended to deprive the powerful dead man of sacred power. Type 2 – dismemberment of the victim, as atonement for the sins of the organizers of the funeral rite and transfer of the “wrath of the deceased” to the dismembered victim. Either this was used to “alleviate” the suffering of the main deceased or undergo posthumous trials. Type 2 was not used in single burials.

In addition to the Oksko-Sur interfluve, such burials are also known in other territories. But the distribution area of this rite is so great that listing all areas of its existence is very difficult. In addition to the ancient Mordovians, this rite was quite widespread both among Finno-Ugric peoples and beyond. So in the III – IV centuries. the rite of neutralization was known to the Sarmatians (II Akhmerovsky, Salikhovsky burial ground), up to the VII century. it existed among the Turbaslinsky tribes (Dezhnevsky, Turbaslinsky burial grounds), Bakhmutin culture (Birsky burial ground), in the VIII – X centuries. in Saltovo-Mayak culture it is (Mayatsky, Saltovsky, Rubezhansky burial grounds), in the 7th-10th centuries. the rite was present in the graves of Mary (Khotiml burial ground, mounds near Kineshma), in the IX – XI centuries. Vymsk culture, in the XII -XIV centuries. in the monuments of the Makushensky type (Makushensky burial ground), Relkino culture (Relka burial ground), the Udmurts, Rodanovskaya culture, etc. (Matveeva G.I., 2003. S.210—211; Flerov V.S., 1993, 2000a, b; Aksenov V.S., 2002; Finno-Ugric peoples and Balts …, 1987. S.74, 78, 125, 221; Goldina R.D., Kananin V.A., 1989; Shutova N.I., 2001).

All this testifies to the wide distribution of the rite of neutralization of the buried, its evolution in time and the emergence of local features in the population of the Oksko-Sura interfluve..

On the territory of Russia, and it was in the Volga-Don basin, there was a custom of neutralizing sorcerers after death in the 20th century, as it were. In the 1900s, in the Menzelinsky district, at the sorcerer’s funeral, it was customary to put him face down in the grave. In Bogava, the Sviyazhsky district was also laid in this case, the deceased was laid face down, as well as they cut out his heels and stuck aspen against the heart. As everyone understands that, these people did not read at the beginning of the 20th century. “Count Dracula”, and it is natural that these customs have their origin since the Bronze Age.