Description of the attraction
Lugansk park-museum of Polovtsian women is a famous landmark of the city of Lugansk. The park is located on the territory belonging to the Luhansk National University. This park-museum is one of the largest collections throughout Ukraine of original stone figures of the 11-12 centuries. All sculptures have different heights - from one to four meters.
The Polovtsian stone women are monuments of the sacred art of the Polovtsians of the 9-13th centuries. They portrayed not only men, but also quite often women. And such monuments are found not only in Ukraine, but also in the southeast of Europe and the southwest of Asia.
The custom of erecting idols originates in Mongolia and Altai in the 6-7th century, and gradually spreads to the Danube. These statues were idols, symbols of ancestors and were located at the highest points of the steppe, on watersheds and burial mounds, as well as in special sanctuaries built specifically for them. The sanctuaries were square or rectangular and were often fenced with stones. The female statues mainly symbolized the immortality of the warriors and their invincibility. The patrons in the images of stone women gave the soldiers strength and protected them from adversity, for which they brought them a kind of sacrifice in the form of killed animals.
The stone women, located in the Lugansk park, mostly represent warriors and only a few - women. They were placed on the mounds by ancient peoples who lived in the vast steppes of Ukraine in the 11-12th century. The largest number of stone women were left by the Scythians and Polovtsians. These monuments are the only ones that were left to the next generations by these long-lost nomadic peoples who lived many years ago in the territory of the present Luhansk region.
