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.

Monitoring of the Targim coreshaped mausoleum.

In these days, the staff of the museum-reserve, as part of the work plan, monitored the Targim core mausoleum.

According to the Ingush legends, the monument was erected over the tomb of a local warlord hero in the second half of the XVIII century. The mausoleum was first noted by L.P. Semyonov and I.P. Shcheblykin.

The mausoleum has a rounded base and a domed-stepped covering. In the upper part of the walls can be seen plaster of white-yellow color. The monument is built on lime mortar; the masonry of the walls is polygonal, the preserved height is 3.20 meters, on the southern wall there is a single rectangular shaped barred doorway.

The monument requires restoration work.

Two shelter towers are built in caves on the steep mountainside of the Rocky Range, above the Metskhal and Garak tower complexes.

One shelter tower is higher than the other, and in the past enclosed a large cave. Now most of the wall has collapsed.

The tower stands adjacent to steep cliffs, the masonry of the walls is polygonal, on which the remains of ochre paint can be seen, there is a huge niche inside, and an observation window on the preserved wall.

There is also an interesting detail - stone steps leading into the cave.

As is known, the towers had the function of shelter during enemy raids, and during punitive expeditions old men, women and children were sheltered in them.

The staff of the museum-reserve monitored the temple-sanctuary “Kog-Yerda”, located on the southern edge of the tower settlement “Kog”, which is east of “Keli”.

According to the radiocarbon analysis conducted by the archaeological center named after E.I. Krupnov of the republic. E.I. Krupnov of the Republic in 2017, this monument was built in 1441-1486 .

The sanctuary temple is a one-storey building with a rectangular base and a gable-stepped roof made of 10 slates, the thickness of the walls is 60 cm, the area at the base is about 16 square meters. m.

The southern wall is preserved 5 meters high and 3.5 meters wide. The northern wall is 2 meters high and adjoins the rock. A low vaulted doorway is in the eastern wall, near the southeastern corner, and there is a small rectangular niche above the doorway. There is a window aperture in the south wall.

The walls are covered with yellowish-ochre colored plaster on the outside and inside.

The monument is erected neatly on lime mortar. The building was actively functioning until our century.

Despite the fact that the monument has been preserved to its full height, its condition is unsatisfactory: the roof is damaged, the base is weathered, there are cracks on the walls (field material).