The Erzi tower complex is one of the largest tower complexes in mountainous Ingushetia, located at the tip of the mountain ridge, 900 meters west of Kerbite.

It includes combat, semi-combat and dwelling towers, various annexes to them, as well as crypt burial grounds, a nucleus-shaped mausoleum, a temple-sanctuary, etc.

The number of storeys of towers starts from 4 and ends with 6 levels.

Erzi means eagle in Ingush.

Near the towers of the aul there is a nucleus-shaped mausoleum Yand-Kash (Yand's grave), which was built over the grave of a famous local architect named Yand, the ancestor of the Yandiyev family. There are many tales and legends about Yand.

For example, an old Ingush song - illi “About how the tower was built” sings about the work of stonemasons, one of whom is a famous architect named Yand. We will write more about it in a later piece.

Briefly, Yand-Kash was described in the works of Soviet archaeologists-ethnographers L. P. Semenov, I. P. Shcheblykin, E. I. Krupnov, who in the early twentieth century conducted archaeological research on the territory of Ingushetia, thus laying the foundation for a comprehensive study of the past of our region.

A relic of a bronze eagle was found in the mausoleum, which gave the village its name.

This relic became one of the national symbols for Ingushetia. A copy of this eagle is in the T. Malsagov Local History Museum, while the original is kept in St. Petersburg, in the State Hermitage Museum.

Yesterday, employees of the Museum-Reserve took part in an event held in the walls of the Tugan Malsagov Ingush State Museum of Local Lore. Tugan Malsagov on the return of the third part of the artifacts discovered in 2018 during the reconstruction of the federal highway “Kavkaz” in the Gamurzievsky administrative district.

The archaeological excavations were stored at the Institute of Caucasus Archaeology for almost six years, and during this time a tremendous amount of work was done to study, describe and map them.

The event was attended by the deputy of the People's Assembly Tsoroev A.Kh., representatives of the Institute of Archaeology of the Caucasus, the head of the Committee of State Protection of the objects of cultural heritage Kodzoev T.U., Professor E.D. Muzhekhoeva, associate professor of the History Department of Ingush State University, employees of the Jeirakh-Assinsk Museum-Reserve, employees of the E.I. Krupnov Archaeological Center, employees of the Ch. Akhriev Research Institute of Humanities, local historians, students, as well as people who are not indifferent to the history of the Ingush people.

All speakers agreed that the found exhibits are of great scientific interest for the history and culture of the republic.

In 2018, the expansion of the federal highway “Kavkaz” was underway in the Gamurzievo area. Soon the usual construction work entailed a real archaeological expedition. During this time, whole towns (or rather what was left of them - ancient settlements), Scythian barrows with ancient household items: clay vessels, bronze jewelry and even mysterious remains of people with deformed skulls were discovered underground. Gamurzievskoye ancient settlement is a historical settlement in Nazranovsky district of Ingushetia. The ruins of the ancient settlement occupy a vast territory - about 10 thousand square meters.

In total, during the excavations were found more than 4000 items of deep antiquity, belonging, according to experts, to the Koban culture and the Alanian era.

Yesterday representatives delivered more than 1500 artifacts, by the way, this is the third batch of exhibits, and 2 batches were brought earlier, last year.

The transfer of the artifacts to the Ingush people took place thanks to the joint work of the head of the Committee for State Protection of Cultural Heritage Objects Kodzoev T.U., acting director of the Jeirakh-Assinsk Museum-Reserve Sampiev A.A., head of the local history museum Sagov M.Z. and director of the Institute of Caucasian Archaeology Biyaslan Atabiev, who at the end of 2023 came to a mutual agreement to return the finds to their historical homeland.

All artifacts in the form of fragments of ceramics, women's jewelry, weapons, household items, etc., reflecting the history and culture of the Ingush people are presented at the exhibition in the Museum of Local Lore.

The inspector of the museum-reserve M. Akhilgov held a preventive talk on the formation of a careful attitude to monuments of history and culture with the students of the Beyninsky branch of the State budgetary general educational institution “Secondary Educational School-Kindergarten of the village of Jeyrakh named after I.S.Lyanov”.

Representatives of the Jeirakh-Assinsk Museum-Reserve visited the opening of a monument to Idris Beisultanovich Zyazikov, an outstanding political and state figure, an active participant in the creation of the Ingush Autonomous Oblast and its first leader.

The monument was erected in Magas, on the square in front of the Administration of the Head of the Republic.

The Ingush believed that individual families, villages and societies had special patrons - divine beings or saints. Their name in Ingush is “tstsu” or “yerdy”. Some of these deities acquired general Ingush significance and were equally honored by all Ingush, while others (and these were the majority) were purely local, family or clan patrons.

Public places where deities are honored are usually tracts on elevated places (which, however, is not obligatory), sometimes close to the village, sometimes at a considerable distance from it.

The center of veneration is “elgyts” - a temple or sanctuary - a small building with an inner room, often enclosed by a fence.

Groves are also among the venerated tracts. Thus, in various places in Ingushetia we can point to protected and sacred groves (for example, in the areas of the villages of Furtoug, Khuli and Khairakh).

It was forbidden to enter the sacred grove or to let livestock into it; no trees could be cut down in it. If necessary, the priest gave special permission for this or that.

The veneration of groves and trees was expressed in a number of cultic actions: large trees were chosen, altars were placed under them, offerings were hung on the branches - horns of deer, aurochs, rags and rags, etc., festivities were organized, the so-called Khirkh-erdy.

Here we shall also mention that a number of objects used in cults were connected in different forms with the fact of veneration of groves or trees in general.

The four-sided shaft of the beirah, the sacred flag, which appeared at almost all great festivals, was usually made of a pole cut from a protected grove. The priest, who for the most part held his office for life, had to mark each annual celebration by cutting on the same edge of the shaft. After the death of the priest, his successor made the same cuts on the second edge, and so on. A shaft that had outlived four priests, and therefore had cuts on all four sides, had to be replaced by a new one. It was either stuck behind the ceiling beams of the elgats, as an unnecessary, but still sacred, object, or burned, if the period of its existence was unlucky (diseases, drought, bad harvest, etc.). A rod for a new shaft was cut, on behalf of the priest, in a protected grove by a single guy of chaste behavior. He had to go silently into the forest, silently and with one blow of the axe to fell the tree and silently return and hand the shaft to the priest.

In the cult of Magi-erda there is a rite of throwing linden staffs by old men...

A long time ago there lived in the mountains a man named Diskhi, who was famous for his art of building tall towers. In one of the auls of the Akki Gorge Diskhi married a maiden. Once in spring, when it is easiest to get sheepskins from young sheep in the mountains, Diskhi asked his bride to prepare sheepskins and make him a coat.

The bride promised to fulfill the bridegroom's request, but she was very sluggish: the summer was coming to an end, cold mornings were beginning, and the coat was still missing. The groom inquired whether his errand had been fulfilled, and to his great dismay he was convinced of his bride's utter negligence; it turned out that the sheepskins had not yet been finally dressed. Wishing to express as much indignation as possible for such inattention to his request, Diskhi became indignant and, in order to teach his bride a lesson, said that he himself would prepare everything necessary and build a high tower sooner than the coat was ready.

From words came to deeds: Diskhi began to prepare the stones, and then he soon began to build the walls. Naturally, Diskhi was in a great hurry, so that he could prove the truth of his words before his bride. The walls were already finished, stone slabs were piled on the high scaffolding; it was left to make the roof of them, as suddenly the logs of the scaffolding broke under the exorbitant weight of the stone and.... Diskhi fell from a height of five feet with the material with which he was killed.

The bride came running to the alarm and seeing the disfigured corpse of her bridegroom, threw herself on the dagger beside him and also fell dead. The famous master died, and the fatal tower is still called Diskhi-woo.

As part of the work plan, employees of the Jeirakh-Assinsk Museum-Reserve are holding preventive talks with schoolchildren about developing a careful attitude to the republic's historical and cultural monuments.

A little higher than where the Armkhi River flows into the Terek, at the intersection of the Daryal and Jeyrakhov gorges, at the end of the last century a graceful 5-story watchtower with a rectangular base, flat roof and high parapet stood on a rock. It reached a height of 23.00 meters. Here armed warriors of the surrounding tower settlements alternately performed guard duty, controlling the vital trade and transportation highway. And as soon as enemies appeared in the Daryal Gorge, the guards would light a fire on the tower, and the rising smoke would let people know about the approaching danger. Now only separate stone blocks of the base of the tower have been preserved.

The substantial folklore and ethnographic information about it was collected by N.F. Ustvolskaya, and later by I.A. Dakhkilgov and D.Y. Chakhkiev.

And here is what is written about this tower in Ingush legend.

Not far from this watchtower, where Ezminskoye Lake is now, there was a strong fortress where many people lived. There was also a large army in that fortress.

Once an untold army of steppe warriors appeared in the gorge. The watchtower was alerted to the approaching danger. The men of authority decided that the people of the fortress must either defeat the enemy or perish. And they also decided: “If it happens that all our warriors die and the enemy wins, women should throw themselves and their children into the abyss, and girls should marry into the fire.

- And what should we who have lost our strength do? - asked the decrepit old men.

- You must pass around a bowl of poison,” they were told, ”drink it while making toasts.

The battle began. The fighters didn't know day or night. The children burned large pine beams at night so that they could see their enemies better. The battle was so bloody that the bodies of the enemies flooded the Terek and it went out of its banks. None of the defenders of the fortress survived.

All women and children threw themselves into the abyss and perished at its bottom. The old men sat in a circle and drank a bowl of poison. The girls made a big fire, chose Myalha Azu and started throwing themselves into the fire. Jumping into the fire the girls said that they were marrying him.

The remaining enemies destroyed all their towers to the ground. Of the inhabitants, no one was left alive.

(N.D. Kodzoev, R.H. Buzurtanov. Tales of the Caucasus).

The mountain “Myat-Loam” is indigenous to Ingushetia and literally translates from Ingush as “motherland mountain” or fatherland mountain. According to linguistic and ethnographic studies, the word “Myat” means motherland, and loam means mountain. And the name table appeared because the mountain belongs to the category of rocks with flat tops resembling a table.

Mait-Loam is a symbol of Ingushetia, it is depicted on the coat of arms of the Republic of Ingushetia, to the left of the combat tower.

Mait-Loam is the only peak in the whole world on which three shrines are consecutively located. Two more shrines located on its summit, “Suson Dyala” - the patron saint of noble women, was destroyed in 1925 and “Myater Dyala” - the throne of the gods, also has not survived to this day.

Myat-Loam - is the patron saint of agriculture and fertility, in whose honor the temple of Myat-seli was built.

Myat-Seli - a monument of history and culture of federal significance - bears the name of the mountain “Maьt” and not vice versa, because on its top there are other sanctuaries, the names of which are not borrowed from any topographical names.

The “Mait-Seli” temple had the significance of one of the most important Ingush patrons. In the Middle Ages, our ancestors believed that the sanctuaries of “Tamyzh-Yerda”, “Amgali-Yerda”, and Myat-Seli were siblings, of which Myat-Seli was the eldest.

One of the last priests who performed ritual prayers on the Table Mountain was Elmurza Mehdiyev from the village of Falkhan. He is also mentioned by I. Bazorkin in his novel-epic “From the Darkness of Ages”.

The rites around the sanctuary were completed by the end of the 19th century, due to the mass adoption of Islam by the Ingush.

Every year, since 2008, the Ministry of Foreign Relations, National Policy, Press and Information, as part of respect for the traditions and culture of our ancestors, has been organizing ascents to Table Mountain.

On the southern slope of the mountain there are cave-type rock structures. All the structures will be included in the list of historical and cultural monuments of Ingushetia with official names.

In the vicinity of the village of Morch, one can find the foundation stones of the eighteenth-century core-shaped mausoleum Yarych-Kash (Yarych's Grave), built over the grave of a brave leader of the local military detachment named Yarych.

In 1944 the mausoleum was destroyed. Folk memory preserves narratives (Anthology of Ingush folklore. Vol. 7. Ingush legends) associated with this hero, in particular, emphasizing his courage: "Yerezhev Yarazh stood at a post and guarded people from the attack of robbers, who usually captured and sold people. When Yerezhev Yarazh stood on the post, people slept peacefully, because they knew that he was vigilantly guarding them. When it was time for Yarazh to leave his post and rest at home, seven men were put on guard duty instead of him, because he was such a remarkable man.

On the territory of the tower complex “Tiarsh” revealed previously unaccounted for monuments of architecture.

These days the staff of the museum-reserve, within the framework of the plan of works on revealing and accounting of previously unaccounted architectural monuments, on the territory of the tower complex “Tiarsh” revealed an early unaccounted early Muslim cemetery with 9 steles.

Ta'rsh is a large tower village of castle type, located on the spur of the Ma't Loam mountain, 0.9 km east of the “Egenta” complex.

The staff of the institution took measurements of the objects and made photo-fixation. The height of steles is from 30 to 50 cm, the distance between them is from 1 to 3 meters. After the relevant works, the objects will be included in the list of identified objects of cultural heritage of the Republic.

Acting Director of the State Cultural Institution “Jeirakh-Assinsk Museum-Reserve” A.A. Sampiev took part in a videoconference meeting held in the Ministry of Culture of Russia on the disposal of objects of cultural heritage included in the treasury of the Russian Federation, which are in unsatisfactory condition, including objects located in the territory of the Republic of Ingushetia, namely 859 ancestral towers, transferred to the free use of SCU RI “Jeyrakhsko-Assinsky Museum-Reserve”.

The event was held in pursuance of the instruction of the Government of the Russian Federation from July 27, 2024 № MM-P 14-24263 on the inventory of federal property in unsatisfactory condition.

Head of the Territorial Department of the Federal Agency for State Property Management in the Republic of Ingushetia M.A. Gagiev, Head of the Committee for State Protection of Cultural Heritage T.U. Kodzoev also participated in the meeting on behalf of our republic.

Mountainous Ingushetia never ceases to amaze us with its discoveries and its mystery. As we noted earlier, there are over 3,000 cultural heritage sites in the territory of the Jeirakhsky district, which are officially registered and included in the list of identified cultural heritage sites of the Republic of Ingushetia. We also have photographs of these objects in our database.

Almost every day our employees working in the mountainous terrain discover new objects that are absent from our lists.

Not so long ago we started a comprehensive work on inventory of antiquity monuments, and it should be noted, the effectiveness and fruitfulness of this work: only last year inspectors of the museum-reserve was found more than 200 OCN, which are not registered.

Separate work was carried out on crypts with memorial chambers, crypts of rare type, towers, sanctuaries and core mausoleums. These objects were monitored and acts of their technical condition were drawn up.

As a result of the last round, the head of the department for the preservation of monuments, Zyaudin Gurazhev, discovered a sanctuary with a memorial chamber, popularly called ts1uv, on the territory of the tower complex “Niy”.

The object is strongly destroyed, its safety is 25-30 %. As at all similar sanctuaries, the entrance to a memorial chamber is from the southern side, it is half-destroyed. The roof is not preserved, usually such kinds of buildings had a gable-stepped roof. The more preserved part of the object is the first tier, intended for the burial of the dead. The sanctuary is located in the northwestern part of the complex, at a distance of 4 meters from the dwelling tower, next to a small stream.

The object will be entered into the database of the institution and included in the list of identified objects of cultural heritage of the Republic of Ingushetia.

Today, as part of the All-Russian Subbotnik, employees of the Jeyrakh-Assinsk Museum-Reserve and the Committee for State Protection of Cultural Heritage Sites carried out sanitary measures to clean the adjacent territory of the office building in Magas city, and a subbotnik was carried out in the mountainous area.

Employees of the institutions trimmed trees, worked to control unwanted vegetation, collected and removed garbage from the territories.

We hope that our small contribution to the common cause of improvement and cleaning of adjacent territories will improve the condition of our region.

The photos show the core-shaped mausoleum in Lower Jeyrakh in the 1940s and today. Time is one of the natural factors of destruction and deformation of monuments, including climate, water, wind, sun, soil movement and natural phenomena.

To date, 12 core-shaped mausoleums of varying degrees of preservation have been recorded in mountainous Ingushetia.

Mausoleums, unlike crypts, were built not before, but only after the death of a person and erected them, according to historians, in honor of noble, prominent people.

In these days, the staff of the museum-reserve made a round of this monument and photofixation of its current state.

These days, the staff of the museum-reserve, within the framework of the work plan for visual inspection of the technical condition of the object of cultural heritage with photo-fixation of the object of cultural heritage with visual changes in the structure, in accordance with the schedule of rounds, monitored the core-shaped mausoleum of the architectural complex “Tyarsh”.

The object has a round base and cone-shaped top with a crowning spire, located 75 meters east of the towers.

The height of the monument is 3.40 meters, on the south-western side there is a trapezoidal shaped trapdoor.

Employees of the “Archaeological Center named after E.I. Krupnov” note that the burial chamber of the mausoleum contained the remains of 9-10 deceased (partly in wooden coffins), as well as a variety of belongings. At the base of the chamber a stone box with a rectangular shape with slightly convex long sides was built on lime mortar. Its edges go under the base of the masonry walls of the mausoleum, which clearly indicates the sequence of construction of the monument. The stone box is oriented along the line NW-SE. The burial inventory allows to date it not earlier than the end of the XVII century.

The mausoleum was permanently investigated by R.A. Dautova in 1982. Restoration works were carried out on the monument.

In the course of work on the preservation and registration of cultural heritage objects of mountainous Ingushetia, the staff of the Jeyrakh-Assinsk Museum-Reserve together with specialists of complex architectural and restoration projects of ACM GROUP have revealed previously unknown cyclopean structures - constructions made of huge unhewn stone blocks of mortarless horizontal masonry, ancient stone dwellings.

Cyclopean structures are evidence of the existence of an ancient civilization that existed in Ingushetia long before written history.

It should be noted that the question of dating of cyclopean structures has been debated among scientists for many years. The problem of dating of megalithic structures is as urgent today as before.

L.P. Semenov and E.I. Krupnov, after studying the remains of megalithic buildings in the Ingush villages of Khamkhi, Egikal, Doshkhakle, concluded that these cyclopean houses - fortresses belong to the era of the Scythians, i.e. VII-V centuries BC. “when there were strong clan foundations and all buildings were erected by the efforts of numerous members of the clan”.

Two Cyclopean buildings were recorded at the Niy complex and their coordinates were determined.

Earlier, the work on revealing and accounting of cyclopean structures was carried out on tower complexes: Upper and Middle Ozik, Doshkhakle, Keli, Khart, Targim, Egikal, Tori, Barkhan.

They will subsequently be publicly recorded and mapped.

On the way from the tower settlements of Metskhal to Garakh, half a kilometer east of Falhan, there are 4 steles on the crest of the hill. This place is still called so by the people: "Di1 churt dag1ach".

Noteworthy is the fact that, despite the apparent similarity, the steles have different heights from 1 to 1.6 meters. Interestingly, one of the steles shows the remains of a carved drawing in the form of a tower and elements of ornamentation. There are also remnants of Arabic ligature.

According to legends, in the old days, the inhabitants of the surrounding villages considered this place to be fertile. Here the inhabitants of neighboring settlements used to gather for reconciliation of parties and solution of socially important issues.

A little farther from the steles, towards Metskhal, there is a lonely grave of an old woman healer from Garakh, a member of the Janiev family. It is said that despite the persuasions of her relatives to be buried in the family cemetery, she willed to be buried here, because of the grace of this place.