Bell caves of the southern Urals. Ignatievskaya and Bell caves

Immediately after the Small Serpievsky Grotto, the Kolokolnaya cave begins. Their entrances are separated by a small wall; perhaps they will someday be connected or, conversely, were once connected.

The entrance to Kolokolnaya is high, and then there is a high corridor. You can walk through almost the entire cave without bending down even once. Friends walked along the main gallery, and my son and I walked through a narrow rounded hole; we had to crawl almost the entire time. As a result, we met with them in a large hall.

There are many small stalactites and stalagmites in this room; apparently, the large ones have already been broken off, and traces are visible. From this hall there are a couple of narrow passages ending in dead ends.

The Bell Cave, like Mayskaya, has one main corridor; it is simply impossible to get lost in it. Just like in this cave, almost all the walls of the corridors and manholes are smooth, as if polished by regular visitors.

It also contains rock paintings, which we, unfortunately, did not find. Apparently, due to the fact that almost everything in it is smoked from torches. But there are many modern inscriptions, starting from the 50s of the last century, ending with this year. And so throughout the Serpievsky cave city, and not just in Kolokolnaya.

Shouldn't we go to the underground cities? See the unprecedented halls hidden from strangers, dip your palms in the icy water of the lakes, admire the fantastic patterns of calcite deposits and bizarre limestone sculptures created over the centuries.

Yes - these are caves! Dark, mysterious, alluring with their unique beauty, ancient secrets and treasures hidden in the depths.

This coming weekend, frosty and invigorating, you shouldn’t sit at home, but rather rush to natural Park"Serpievsky Cave City" and become a conqueror of the underground kingdom. Moreover, winter - best time to visit the caves!

Just a warning, caves are not for neat people. The stone walls and floor are wet and dirty, but beautiful and... unusual. It is not always possible to move in them while standing, and often even to walk on your haunches or crawl on your knees. Sometimes you have to lie down on your belly and crawl. Crawling, crawling and crawling...

But today the story will be about two caves, where new impressions do not require the skills of Plastun movement.

Cave city

The valley of the Sim River is famous for the abundance of a wide variety of caves. There are more than 150 of them! But the most popular and easily accessible are located near the village of Serpievka, Chelyabinsk region. It is these caves that are called the “Serpievsky Cave City”. underground city stretches along the river bank for 15 kilometers! Karst caves are located here one after another. Among them there are funnels, and failures, and niches, and arches, and grottoes. IN large caves are leaking underground rivers, forming lakes.

Serpievsky Castle is not only famous a tourist route, but also unique archaeological site of world significance, since in many caves and grottoes traces of the presence of primitive people were discovered and many bones of prehistoric animals were found.

Caves are ideal for ordinary tourists, not accustomed to cramped caves and manholes, but very curious tourists. Kolokolnaya, Mayskaya and famous all over the world Ignatyevskaya.

Conquering the underground kingdom

The path to the caves begins from a steep cliff on the bank of the Sim, from where a picturesque view of the pine forest and the river valley opens.

The first cave that you will meet on the way is Mayskaya. The entrance to it is wide, but you need to go bent over. But the children are just the right size.

Inside, at a distance of about one meter from the floor to the ceiling, there is constant fog, which settles as moisture on the ceiling and walls and immediately turns into a snow cover, similar to large white moss.

The clay floor of the cave is decorated with unusual decorations for the winter. Water dripping from the ceiling gradually creates transparent columns of ice that dot the entire floor. Ice stalagmites look like rock crystals that flicker and shimmer under the rays of lanterns. A very unusual sight! At other times of the year you will not see such beauty!

The entire cave is essentially one large corridor. The exception is the hole at the end, through which you need to go on all fours or crawl. He leads into another large hall. Mayskaya Cave is easy, it is impossible to get lost in it.

On the way to the next cave, Kolokolnaya, we will meet a couple of small grottoes in the rock, unremarkable, but nevertheless we need to look at them with one eye and be amazed at the beauty of our native land.

The second cave is quite spacious, with a high ceiling. It is impossible to get lost in it, because the cave has only one main passage.

The entire floor of the cave, as in Mayskaya, is strewn with ice columns. But there are much more calcium deposits and limestone figures here, turning the smooth, torch-smoked walls into incredible paintings.

People with a good imagination see in rock patterns fossilized echoes of the distant past of our planet: ridges and bones of dinosaurs and prehistoric animals, trunks and branches of giant trees and ferns, shells of prehistoric mollusks and even prints of unprecedented paws and claws.

However, who exactly lives in the cave are bats! Small brown creatures hanging from the ceiling can be easily spotted by lifting their heads and lighting up the upper walls. Mice hibernate during the winter, so be careful not to disturb their long sleep.

Once upon a time in Kolokolnaya, in its very depths, there was an Old Believer church and services were held. According to one version, the cave got its name because of the bell that hung in the back room. To make it ring, you had to pull the rope hidden at the entrance. Only initiates could know about it. Thus, the caller warned others that “one of their own” was coming into the cave. On one of the rocky ledges there is a bell that rang during church services.

There is also a hole in the cave, about eight meters long, which can only be overcome by crawling. The guides say that this tunnel was one of the elements of ritual initiations, through which boys climbed in pitch darkness, symbolically passing through the birth canal, saying goodbye to childhood and already becoming adults.

In our times, the Kolokolnaya cave has not lost its mystical appeal either. And it still serves as a place of worship of higher powers, judging by the candles placed in the hall and the symbol of the sun-Svarog on the stone in the cave.

They say that scientists have found drawings of primitive people here. Now they are all hidden under a layer of soot and inscriptions from contemporaries.

Near the Kolokolnaya cave there is a small rock arch called Ring rock, and under the arch lie two stones carved in the shape of hearts, which bring happiness to lovers if a certain ritual is performed.

There are many legends and traditions associated with caves, mountains and rocks in the Urals. They intertwine tales of Old Believers-hermits, and belief in magical stones and wonderful places. In the same Kolokolnaya there are stones that, according to legend, give male strength, treat women’s problems, help with infertility, cleanse the body, heart and soul. Believe it or not is a personal matter. But local residents sincerely believe.

And finally

Underground travel has its own charm. You enjoy the adventure in pitch darkness (the dim light of lanterns does not count), from unusual place and atmosphere and come to the surface realizing yourself as a dungeon conqueror, because everything here is REAL. Here, as in the popularized tourist caves (Kungurskaya, for example), there is no foppish concrete path, no electricity that goes out right behind the tourists, no annoying screams of organized groups delivered by Ikarus every 15 minutes - only genuine caves, as they were hundreds of thousands of years ago and you.

By the way, not far from these two caves there is a very famous Ignatievskaya Cave. An entire art gallery of the Paleolithic era was found in it - there are only two other similar caves with so many ancient paintings in the world - one is in Spain, the other in France. And, in addition, here is the greatest treasure of the Ignatievskaya cave - the miraculous Ignatievskaya Mother of God, created by nature itself. But that story is for the next article.

How to get there?

From Ufa we take the Chelyabinsk highway, past the city of Sim, to the fork to Kropacheva. We turn right at the Serpievka sign and drive to the village. We pass it, and right behind the “ancient” farm ruins, which cheerful tourists dubbed the local “Stonehenge”, there will be an exit from the road to pine forest. We leave the cars and go deeper into the forest. After 200–300 meters there will be a rocky cliff and several equipped gazebos and fire pits. You're at the place.

Official information
Country Israel
Biblical city of the period of the Forefathers.

General information about the biblical city of Adulam

Adulam is an area in Central Israel between Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, west and northwest of the Hebron Mountains. Its name repeats the name of the one located here ancient city Adulam (Adullam, Odullom, Eglon).
The first mention of Adulam occurs during the period of the Forefathers (Genesis 38:1; Joshua 15:35). The name Adulam is also found as the name of a fortified city in the land of Canaanite, which even served as the capital of the Canaanite kings. This city was one of the oldest Canaanite settlements and lay in a lowland known as Shephelah. The city was captured by Joshua during his capture of Canaan and included in the possession of the tribe of Judah (Jehovah) (Joshua 12:15). Moreover, its coordinates are given quite accurately: 15-20 miles southeast of Jerusalem. Subsequently, the city was fortified by Rehoboam (2 Chron. 11:7) and is called by the prophet Micah (1:15): the glory of Israel. " He will pass to Adollam, the glory of Israel ".
This place is also associated with the story of King David and the war with the Philistines. Adulam is repeatedly mentioned as an example of an impregnable and strong fortress. Adulam existed back in IV c., as mentioned in the books of the Maccabees and as reported by Eusebius in the Onomasticon. Adulam ceased to exist in the middle VI V. after the Arab conquest of the country. Adullam is identified with Tel ash-Sheikh Mazkur 15 km to km northeast of Bet Gavrina.
IN national park Adulam you can see two today archaeological complex- body of the ancient city Khurvat (“ruins”, “ruins”) And three and the area of ​​the settlement, ancient burials and columbariums Khurvat Midras. In Khurvat Itri, many wineries, columbariums, residential and industrial premises have been preserved. Apparently, in the period before the destruction of the Second Temple in the 1st century AD, this settlement was very large, its area exceeded 12 hectares.
"Midras" means "insole" or "sole". The settlement here existed from the Late Bronze Age (according to other sources, from the beginning of the Iron Age, c. 1000 BC) during the periods of the First ( X-VI centuries BC) and the Second(VI century BC -I c.) temples and during Byzantium (according to other sources, until the end of the Period of Roman rule, IV century AD). Some researchers believe that Khurwat Midras was one of the fortresses of King Assa (2nd Chronicles 14:7). The area of ​​the settlement, together with the burial grounds adjacent to it from the west, south and east, as well as underground reservoirs, various caves and other structures, is 25 hectares. The settlement itself occupied northern slope hill. Here there are a number of columbarium caves for raising pigeons, both for food and as a temple sacrifice, water reservoirs, a huge necropolis, which includes several different types of burials and caves. The largest is the “Bell” Cave (Mearat Ha-Pa’amon), in the wall of which begins a magnificent network of secluded shelter caves in which the warriors of Bar Kokhba hid (the uprising led by Bar Kokhba took place in the period 132-135 AD. e.).
“Mearat Ha-Pa’amon” owes its name to its bell-shaped (pa’amon) shape. Ancient builders pierced it (like other bell caves) from top to bottom. The upper entrance opening to such caves, about 3 m deep, was made in the form of a narrow neck in the hard Nari limestones. Having passed through the hard layers and entered the softer layer of chalk, the builders expanded the dungeons. The digging of the numerous bell-shaped caves characteristic of the area was apparently carried out for the sake of extracting limestone, which served as a building material. But these dungeons had other uses: housing and storage. In modern times, the ceiling of Mearat HaPa'amon around the entrance doorway has collapsed greatly.
An extensive network of secret dungeons from the period of the Bar Kochba revolt was carved into the wall of “Mearat Ha-Pa’amon”. They are a system of multi-purpose rooms connected to each other by underground manholes. You can stand in most dungeons, but you need to get from one to another on all fours. A network of secret dungeons served as a refuge for the rebels. In the area of ​​Hurwata Midras there are a large number of secret dungeons with places discovered there for storing food, oil and water.

General information about the Lusit Caves (from published sources)

The Luzit bell-shaped cave system is located about a kilometer from the settlement of the same name, near the city of Beit Shemesh in central Israel. It includes two complexes of man-made caves - the Bell and the Columbarium (the latter may have served as a dovecote). It is believed that these are the remains of a quarry from the Hellenistic period. First, building stone was mined in the Luzit caves, then the caves were used for housing, storing supplies and burying the dead. Some caves are connected by manholes.

Since the end of the 18th century, the descendants of the first settlers have lived in a special way of life in the Old Believer village of Serpievka. This is in the Southern Urals, in the Katav-Ivanovo region.

Local residents, out of habit, are wary of strangers and keep memories of those times when services were held away from prying eyes in one of the many caves here - Kolokolnaya. The entrance to the cave really looks like a bell. Underground services took place until the 30s of the 20th century. The natural shelter helped local residents keep secrets in order to avoid reprisals, of which there were many against the Old Believers at all times. Local residents invented a whole system of conventional signals. A special cord was hidden at the entrance to the cave.

It was connected to a bell in one of the distant halls. Only the Old Believers were initiated into this secret. When entering the cave, they rang the bell. If footsteps were heard, but the bell was silent, then a stranger had come and an urgent need to hide.

Length Kolokolnaya caves 190 meters. In addition to the main passage, there are several branches and secret holes hidden from random people. No one conducted special experiments, but old-timers claim that fifty people could easily hide in the back streets and remain unnoticed here. One of the small halls of the cave is called a cell. A bench and a sofa stand here, washed in the rock with water and then processed by human hands. They lived in this room, hiding from the royal authorities. However, the Old Believers were far from the first people to appreciate the space Bell Cave. Washing away the soot and soot left by the torches, scientists discovered drawings made with red ocher on the stones. Radiocarbon dating determined that the age of these drawings is 14.5 thousand years. Here preparations for the initiation rite took place. Boys had to pass tests of courage and courage and prove that they were worthy of bearing the title of man. This was an important stage in the life of every member of the tribe.

At the same time, when entering the cave, the boys could not use a torch or a torch, but remained in complete darkness. They moved around, apparently finding by touch some signs placed for them. Each boy had to bring out some stone with a sign as proof of his courage and show it to the leader.

Ancient runes were discovered in Kolokolnaya.

It is considered one of the most beautiful in the Southern Urals. Water enriched with minerals penetrates here through the thickness of the earth, flows along the walls and forms amazingly beautiful patterns, bizarre lines, graceful curves. This a natural phenomenon experts call them calcite rivers. People with a rich imagination will be able to see a panther in the cave. She seemed to freeze, listening to what was happening. And you come from the other side and the panther will turn into a cobra. There is also a rhinoceros and guards and a bull's head. These are all calcite formations.

Ignatievskaya Cave

Ignatevskaya Cave is the oldest art gallery of primitive man. The cave is located in the Katav-Ivanovsky district, near the village of Serpievka.

Ignatievskaya Cave is dry and easy to visit. A wide but low entrance leads inside from the arched entrance grotto. From it you enter the main gallery of the Pillar, more than 130 meters long, which leads to the grotto of the Pillar, from which you can get to the far grotto on the “second floor”, called the “Cell of Elder Ignatius”.

The Ignatievskaya cave (Yamazy-Tash in Bashkir) is small in size (the total length of the passages is 540 m), two-story, known since the middle of the last century and has been examined several times. But only in 1980, in its distant grottoes, under a layer of soot and inscriptions of modern “savages”, drawings were discovered ancient man, applied with red ocher. Unlike the painting of the Kapova Cave, in Ignatievskaya it is not clear silhouettes that predominate, but conventional figures in the form of lines and spots of paint, which were made approximately 15-16 thousand years ago.

One of the most famous caves in Russia, Ignatievskaya Cave has a rich and mysterious history. It is located on the right bank of the Sim River, 7 km downstream from the village of Serpievka, Katav-Ivanovsky district. The cave was declared a cultural monument, first of regional and then of federal significance, and this is not surprising. It is here that the “picture gallery” of ancient people of the Paleolithic era is located - about 40 groups of drawings in total.

This rock painting, according to experts, is already 14 thousand years old. On the walls there are quite realistic depictions of bulls, mammoths, scenes of their hunting, as well as geometric symbols that have not yet been deciphered. At one time the cave was sacred place for ancient people, a kind of temple. There are only three similar caves with Paleolithic drawings of ancient people in Russia: Kapova in Bashkiria, Ignatievskaya and Kolokolnaya near the village. Serpievka in the Chelyabinsk region.

Another feature of the Ignatievskaya Cave is the many traditions and legends associated with it. It is believed that for a long time an old hermit named Ignatius lived here in solitude - the cave was named after him. What kind of person this was is a mystery, however, there are rumors that it was Emperor Alexander I, who exchanged the throne for the peace and quiet of a hermit. According to another legend, the elder was not the emperor himself, but his brother, Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich.

Bell Cave

The cave is located in the Katav-Ivanovsky district of the Chelyabinsk region near the village of Serpievka (1.5 km southeast of the village) 300 m downstream of the river. Sim (on the right bank) from the bridge on the Katav-Ivanovsk highway - the village of Serpievka and 50 m from the Mayskaya cave. The cave is built in dense light gray limestone of Devonian age. The entrance to the cave is oriented to the South-East, has the shape of an arch 3 m high and 4 m wide. It is located at an altitude of 11 m above the river level. 5.5 m after the entrance, the roof of the cave decreases. The corridor-grotto type cave, developing in the North-West direction, is a gallery with a width of 2 to 5 m and a height of 1 to 6-8 m (in grottoes). At a distance of 30 m from the entrance and further up to 70 m, parallel to the main corridor there is a passage - “Metro”, connected to the main passages. The "Metro" passage is quite narrow - 1.2 m wide and 1 m high and has very smooth walls and a semicircular ceiling. The floor of the passage is clay and dry. From the “Metro”, which is about 40 m long, there are three passages to the left into the main corridor, which are located at a distance of 2 m, 13 m, 10 m from each other. In the cave there are several clearly defined grottoes with vault heights of 6 - 8 m and widths from 5 to 10 m. All of them were formed at the intersection of cracks with the main gallery. In total, there are four halls in the cave:

1st from the entrance - “Narrow” - 4.5 X 10 m and up to 6 m high.

2nd from the entrance - "Round"

3rd from the entrance - "Stalactite" - 20 X 8 X 4 m.

4th from the entrance - "Far" - 9 X 8 X 5 m.

Connecting with the main passage, the "Metro" forms the "Stalactite" hall, which is connected to the "Dalny" hall by a 20-meter gallery. At the entrance to “Dalny” there is an organ pipe up to 10 m high. On the right, to the side of the hall there are small gours, cave pearls, small pebbles. Two narrow walkways, up to 0.8 m wide, lead out of the hall to the left. There are active gours in front of the walkways. Both walkways are connected through 15 m into one corridor 5 wide m., 10 m long and 1.2 m high. There are three lakes in the left walkway. There are sinter formations on the walls, many of which have been broken off. In the same passage, 7 m from the hall, there is an organ pipe 2.5 m high, which also has many chips. The corridor rises by 30? and ends with two dead ends that form a rounded grotto. One of the dead ends is directed to the west, and the other is directed to the east. In the western dead end, the dimensions of which are 3 X 1.2 X 1.4 m, the walls and ceiling are covered with mondmilch (moon milk). On the left is a stalagmite - there are inscriptions on the walls. In the eastern dead end, whose dimensions are 5 X 2 X 1.3 m, there are sinter formations and many chips. On the right is a stalagnate. Throughout the cave, the floor is made of clay, crushed stone, and fragments of bedrock. In the “Far” grotto, the floor is covered with sintered calcite bark. The walls of the cave are smooth, in places corroded by the water flows that once existed here. In the “Stalactite” and “Dalniy” grottoes, there is a drop of water in the summer, and there are puddles on the floor. In winter there are icy sinter formations. The cave once had calcite decorations - sinter crusts, stalactites, stalagmites. Currently, they are preserved in the Stalactite grotto, but are significantly smoked by torches and chipped. According to stories local residents Religious ceremonies were performed in this cave, which is why it was called “Bell”. The cave is mostly horizontal along its entire length.