Cult Animals – Totems of Nomads

The coin series "Cult Animals — Totems of Nomads" is devoted to totem animals and reveals the way the Turkic-speaking peoples pictured the world around them and their bond with it. Totems in primitive beliefs are animals that served as the object of the cult of a clan or tribe and were regarded as its forebears or guardians. According to historians, some Turkic leaders traced their descent to legendary ancestors born of a totem animal. What all the coins share is the union of a naturalistic and a stencilled view of the animal with an allegorical treatment in the Saka animal style: one part is shown as the animal, the other as a gilded mask with an element of mysticism. The illustrator is S. S. Maltsev.