THE CULT OF THE GODDESS UMAI IN THE TRADITIONAL WORLDVIEW OF THE NOMADS OF EASTERN EUROPE
This article is devoted to the image of the female deity, the goddess of fertility, love and motherhood of Umai and the ideas of Western (Eastern European) Turks, which is integral to the tengrian worldview. The history of the pre-Islamic period of development of religious ideas of the Turkic peoples of Eastern Europe is still poorly studied. Nevertheless, based on the available information and research, we can try to reconstruct a more or less coherent picture of the spiritual life of the Turks of Eastern Europe in the pre-Islamic period. In the pre-Mongol era, the religious beliefs of the Western Turks coincided with those of their Eastern counterparts and fully fitted into the religious and philosophical system of tengriism. Due to the peculiarities of the historical development of the nomadic Eastern Europe at that time was a real reserve, where there are already had deep roots on the local soil ancient cults, which strengthened its influence with the influx of aliens from the East. The absence of any real alternative to the tengrian religion for quite a long time in the vast majority of nomads of the Eastern European steppes led to the flourishing of original cults. The cult of the goddess Umai (Humay) certainly fixed the representatives of the three major nomadic Turkic ethnic groups in Eastern Europe in the pre-Mongol period - proto-Bulgarian, the ancient Bashkirs and the Polovtsians (Western Kipchaks). The image of the goddess Umai in its origin and semantics is very complex. The hypothesis of unconditional connection of this image with ancient Eastern cults and its close connection with the remnants of such phenomenon as matriarchy arises. The complex semantics of the image of the mother goddess (connection with all four elements - earth, fire, water, air) is due to the very ancient origin of this religious idea.