IMAGINEA LUPEI CAPITOLINA ÎN ASIA CENTRALĂ
THE IMAGE OF LUPA CAPITOLINA IN CENTRAL ASIA

Summary/Abstract: This study is dedicated to the subject of lupa feeding the twins. The author discusses a magnificent discovery made by a Soviet team of archaeologists led by the scholar N. N. Negmatov, in a palace of Bunjikata (now Shahristan), the capital of the early medieval state Ustrushana. The most interesting thing is, in fact, that this discovery occurs outside the borders of the ancient Roman Empire. How did this subject occurs in Central Asia in the 8th-9th centuries AD ? The painting with this subject was discovered in an early medieval palace, next to other paintings depicting Zoroastrian scenes with the struggles between the knights of the legendary king Faridun and the murderer king Zohak. It is the battle between the forces of Good and Evil. Finally, it is a painting of Iranian art inspired by the Zoroastrian religion and the old Iranian legends. The author contests a few opinions formulated by Prof. Negmatov. Describing the origins of this subject, the scholar wants to make some links between the Eastern origins of the Etruscans and the old Iranian legends. He affirmed in a few articles that the Etruscans, as a people with Eastern origins, were the bearers of this subject in their way to Italy. He reminds us about the statue of the she-wolf from the Vatican Museum. Prof. Negmatov doesn’t know that the legend of the she-wolf feeding the abandoned twins existed since the 4th-3th centuries B.C. There are still a lot of proceedings regarding the author of the ancient sculpture. Today this problem remains opened for debates. The she-wolf had no link with the legend of the founder of Rome, while the twins were added in the Renaissance time. We conclude that the scene of this painting is inspired from the Roman iconography, but in the meantime, in the Iranian mentality existed a few heroes fed by animals (a cow, a she-wolf, etc) found in the Iranian mythology. It is possible to be an old common Indo-European language inherited by Iranians and Romans. We can not conclude that it is an Indo-European inheritance yet. But all these hypothesis are possible. Let us not forget that the commercial relations with Byzantium crossed the Silk Road in the area of Sogdiana. Near Bunjikata, in the ancient ruins of Penjikent, there were discovered ten medallions and bracteatae depicting lupa. We think that these Iranians did not thought of the Roman legend of Romulus and Remus while they looked at the painting. The painter took over this image from the Roman iconography and illustrated the ancient Iranian legends with it.

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