Zhaisan, the sanctuary
It is located about 15 km east of the village of Shu, in the valley of the Shu river, in the lowland steppe part of the northwestern slopes of the Shu-Ile mountains (Shu district, Zhambyl region).
At the memorial-ritual complex of Turkic tribes, which is the sanctuary of Zhaisan, 37 objects were opened. Each of them includes dozens of funeral and religious buildings, rock art monuments and clan tamgas. Ancient Turks belonged to the world of semi-nomadic societies, the role of which in the ethno-political history of Eurasia is extremely great. Moving on huge distances, mixing with settled peoples, Turks repeatedly changed an ethnic card, created giant empires, changed a course of historical development, transferred cultural achievements of one peoples to others, brought the contribution to history of world culture.
Sacred values of any civilization have a longevity of existence and capture the peculiarities of the era, cultural environment, as well as the personality of the creators. Sacred values are associated with intellectual life, knowledge, moral and legal norms and artistic works. No less important dimension of culture is the evolution of religious systems. The cult of the great Tengri (Tangri, Tanir, Khan Tengri, etc.) occupies an important place in the ancient beliefs of the Turkic peoples. The all-Turkic spread speaks of its formation in the ancient Turkic epoch, when the unity of the Turkic people existed as a real socio-political phenomenon.
Ancient Turks were firmly convinced of the existence of interrelation of space, time and all living things - this is evidenced by the description of the world and the universe, the symbolism of artistic images. The memorial sculpture of the Turks carried the idea of timelessness, "eternity", was aimed at reproduction of cycles of time, and also performed magic functions. A clear demonstration of the ancient Turks is the memorial rite, connected directly with the cult of ancestors. The places of their collective performance were the burial places of their ancestors, next to which stone statues were erected, which served as an object of special worship and reverence. Monuments of the sacred zone of the Zhaisan sanctuary are represented by ritual constructions in the form of rectangular fences, single, paired and consisting of several fences, made up in a chain, oriented from north to south. They were erected facing east on the barrows with stone fences and were a place of worship and sacrifice. In the structural and semantic definition of stone sculptures the identification of natural objects with the human body was of great importance: head - sky, body - earth, legs - hell. Burial places together with ritual constructions with stone sculptures served as objects of worship to the spirits of deified ancestors and carrying out rituals of sacrifices to them and the supreme deities of the Turkic pantheon. Places of focus of rock drawings served for carrying out rites and rituals connected with a calendar cycle and socially significant actions.
A characteristic feature of the stone sculptures of the Turkic period is the exact, detailed reconstruction of the images of people. Required attributes of the sculptures: belt, quiver and weapons on the belt. Mostly they depict men of large build with big eyes - they are rulers and warriors. Ancient Turks worshipped their supreme god Kok Tengri with special trembling, revered also natural objects: mountains, rivers, lakes, trees. As well as all ancient peoples, they aspired to the sacral and felt clear fear before it. Fear and reverence from the intangible and inviolable. For many centuries the Turkic monumental sculpture developed in the traditions of the iconographic canon. Systems of images and symbols acquired unique features in different regions of the Eurasian continent. Specific social and natural conditions, way of life, mental structures - all this stimulated the search for peculiar ways in the context of regional artistic tradition.
In the Middle Ages, the ancient Turks created a new original culture, which took its place in the world civilization. All its cultural achievements can not be divided into "history" of separate tribes and peoples of the Great Steppe and attributed exclusively to the past of any one modern people. Turkic-speaking peoples of Eurasia, including Kazakhs, as their ancestors, had a common history and culture for centuries, which became their common heritage today. The land on which they were born and live was called differently at different times: Turan, Steppe of Oguzes, Desht and Kypchak, Turkestan. But regardless of the name, it has always been realized as a single space of the Turkic world and did not distinguish children of different Turkic peoples from each other. Their national cultures have risen from a single root system that goes back thousands of years, and are still intertwined with trunks and crowns.