Icon-Pendant with an Image of the Saint Warrior-Horseman from the Excavation of the Mangup’s Palace. Old Rus’ or Byzantium?

Introduction. The article is devoted to the icon-pendant with the image of the horseman St. George the Warrior, discovered in 2020 in the cultural horizon of the late 13th–14th centuries at the research site of the Mangup’s Princely Palace. Methods. The study is complex. The traditional methods of art history analysis and the method of analogies, widely used in archaeological science, are used in the description and attribution of the sign icon. The dating of the product is established using one of the most important stratigraphic methods in archaeology. In explaining the historical context of the find, the available data from archaeological and narrative sources on the history and culture of Mangup at the end of the 13th–14th centuries are used. Analysis. The value of the icon, in addition to its clear archaeological context and the iconographic type of the holy rider-triumphant, which is rare for Byzantine applied art, lies in the expansion of our source base on the spread of the cult of St. George in the Late Byzantine period of the history of South-Western Crimea, represented before that mainly by the churches of Eski-Kermen and Mangup. Results. Despite the general proximity of the iconography and the technique of making the Mangup find and numerous similar products from the territory of Old Rus, there is no reason to consider it as an icon-pendant of Ancient-Russian origin. The conducted research definitely indicates a weak study of this category of Christian objects of personal piety on the territory of Byzantium, the lack of their cataloging and the study of special issues. In this regard, the conclusion that the icon belongs to the number of finds of the Byzantine circle from the cultural layer of the Mangup settlement, made in one of the provincialbyzantine centers, seems to be the most objective.