A precious belt set from the nomadic elite burial near the village of Kosika

The paper is devoted to the study of the belt set (a buckle and a belt tip made of gold in the form of hedgehogs with inlays of color stone, glass, paste and with the use of cloisonné technique) from the ruined elite burial of the Middle Sarmatian time, discovered in 1984 in the Baer ridge near the village of Kosika in the Lower Volga region. The author comes to the conclusion that the elements of this belt set were designed especially for a nomad originating from Eastern Eurasia. According to the original idea, which was probably represented on the buckle and on the belttip from the Siberian collection, the hedgehog was only one of the heroes of the plot, who had rendered harmless the snakes biting the griffins. Later the idea was changed, and the hedgehog was now represented as a winner, with strangled snakes tied in form of the Herakles knot behind his back and reduced images of griffins depicting only their heads. The elements of decoration and castes images, peculiar of the Late Hellenistic jewelry, were inserted in the composition...