How the Snake Cave in Zaporizhzhia became the home of the Scythians

The Snake Cave is located near the Black Rock tract in the northern part of the island from the side of the Old Dnipro. Above it stands a stone Slavic image of a bearded God, which was installed there by the first director of the Khortytsia museum Arnold Sokulsky about 1975. They brought this statue from the mouth of the Volnianka river (Volniansk district of Zaporizhzhia region), where under his leadership excavations of the Slavic settlement of the 6th-8th centuries were carried out. Access to it is difficult, so almost no one visits it.

The famous local historian Yakov Novytskyi, in 1887, made a description of one of the legends of this cave: “While the Cossacks lived here, there were a lot of fish, animals, birds and forests along the Dnipro, and grasses like riding a horse grew in the steppes, you can’t even see it. But there were reptiles! .. There were yellow-bellies, runners, and in the cave, that there was a serpent in the Highest Head of the island of Khortytsia, he didn’t touch anyone and the Cossacks were not afraid of him. the cave, called Snake, As the Cossacks went under the Turks, so the fish and the bird followed them, every beast went, along the rocks, something walked and yearned ... It was like crying at night, it’s already getting colder. Then, from the Kichkaska side, when he starts throwing stones at Khortytsia, when he starts, then the stones fell to the Black Rock ... It was sad and scary then ...! "

But in the 19th century, historians widely explored the Khortytsia Snake Cave and left interesting observations and thoughts about it: "... here on Khortytsia, in the middle of a wild, formidably majestic landscape, there may be a burial place for Scythian leaders. And is it not because the mythical cradle of the Scythians was probably located here - and the mysterious cave in which Agafir, Gelon and Skif were born - raised the holiness of this place? "

Undoubtedly, the largest cave of the island of Khortytsia deserves respect and various legends, causes pride in its land covered with antiquity.