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Name : Onfim ’s self - portrait ( Gramota No . 200 )
What it is : An engraved piece of birch rod bark
Onfim’s self-portrait on birch bark suggests he got bored with writing out the Cyrillic alphabet (top right) and then doodled himself slaying an enemy.
Where it is from : Novgorod , Russia
When it was made : Around 1260
associate : Yup’ik mask : Carvings depicting misrepresented spirits ' faces dreamed up by priest-doctor in Alaska
What it tells us about the yesteryear :
Around 800 years ago , a 7 - year - old boy make Onfim seems to have gotten blase with doing school assignment and instead drew himself as a hogback rider slaying an enemy . Onfim , who scrawled his name on his entertaining survey , doodle on more than a dozen thin piece of birch barque in the mid-13th hundred , and his aesthetic gift was preserved for centuries by the wet , low-spirited - oxygen soil of his native Novgorod , a medieval East Slavic land that later became part of Russia .
Known asGramota No . 200 , Onfim ’s ego - portrayal include his Cyrillic alphabet exercises above a drafting of a horse , a steel - like weapon , a defeated opposition and , next to a delineation of himself , his signature : ОНѲИМЄ . The crudely drawn reefer figures — a clue that he drew them at around 7 long time of age — have severe expressions , round trunk , long leg and too few fingers on the hands .
In 1951 , archaeologists in Novgorod discovered the first Old Russian birch rod - bark texts , and more than 1,200 of them have been found to date . Before the availability of newspaper , softbirch barkwas scratched with metallic element or pearl implement . The dimensions of the birch - barque textual matter vary , but most are about the size of a postcard . Russian historiographer Valentin Yaninhas estimatedthat there may be more than 20,000 additional texts yet to be unearth from the blotto , clay - comparable soils .
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The city of Novgorod — located in western Russia , about 100 miles ( 160 kilometers ) to the south of St. Petersburg — was a major trade center in the medieval geological period and , as such , hadhigh rate of literacy . The Novgorod birch rod - bark textslargely allot withcommercial transaction or transcriptions of Bible handing over .
But Onfim ’s work is a bit dissimilar . Although he also jotted down psalms and anthem , most of his holograph contained figural doodles , and their delightfully mere style has made him the most far-famed person in the Novgorod birch - bark text edition — as well as the creator of some of the early baby - bring forth graphics ever found .
Unfortunately , there is no historic evidence to reveal what happened to Onfim as he grew up . Did he become a merchant or a monk ? Did he ever actually ride horseback and slay his enemies ? Although we do n’t know Onfim ’s lot , his 800 - year - old doodles have left an unerasable mark on chronicle .
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