The Khazar bident (less often the trident, Tamga) is a Khazar symbol that influenced the heraldry of Ukraine and Russia. Entire series of Khazar signs are based on a bident or trident with a rectangular, conical or arcuate cup.
During the excavations of Sarkel M.I. Artamonov found a bone plate with a bident. In the same place, in Sarkel, images of bidents on afmors were found. On the bricks in Sarkel (obviously Khazar) similar rune-like signs are depicted.
Before Vladimir I, Russian princes (in any case, Igor Rurikovich, Olga, Svyatoslav Igorevich, Yaropolk Svyatoslavich) also used bidents.
According to the researcher Sergei Beletsky, these bidents were associated with the signs of the Khazar Khagans (whose title was also borrowed by the Rurikovichs), and A.Yu. Chernov believes that these latter were transformed into a trident - a hieroglyph of the Russian princely dynasty, evidence of which is a series of bronze sword-sheath tips with images of a magical direction, on which, since the time of Vladimir I, the falcon has been graphically transformed into a trident of the "heraldic signs of the Rurikids." The Khazar and Scandinavian (Danish) components merge into a trident:
The brothers of Vladimir, that is, Yaropolk and Oleg, as well as the children of Yaropolk, had the Khazar bident as a linear sign... The bident is a symbol of the Khazar rulers... that the Rurikoviches, who competed with the Khazar Khaganate, under Svyatoslav are freed from the southeastern political guardianship. For some time, the Kievan princes will use the title of kagan, but Khazaria is a thing of the past, the bident is gone, and the highest Khazar title is losing its sacred power.
The tamga-shaped signs of Khazaria are not outwardly identical to the “signs of the Rurikovichs”, but schematically many of them are very close.
This borrowing from the Khazars is not limited. So, griffins (eagle griffins) are characteristic of ancient Russian art, where their images are associated with the princely environment. But they are also found in Khazaria.
Flerova sees in the Khazar bident, and in general in the bipolarity of the art of Khazaria, the idea of confrontation between two mutually exclusive cosmic principles, the struggle of the gods of light and fire with darkness.
Thus, these signs came into the Old Russian environment from Khazaria.
Bidents and tridents were widely used on the territory of the Khazar Khaganate as symbols of supreme power - they were the tamgas of the ruling clans. This was a continuation of the Sarmatian-Alanian tradition of using such signs, dating back to the era of the Bosporan kingdom.
At the same time, two-toothed and three-toothed tamgas are found on the territory of the Khazar Khaganate on a variety of categories of things: on the details of a belt set (Podgorovsky burial ground), in the form of graffiti on stone blocks and bricks of fortresses (Sarkel, Mayatsky settlement, Semikarakora, Khumara), in the form of pottery hallmarks on vessels (Dmitrievsky burial ground).
In Khazaria, bidents significantly predominate over tridents.
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