BIRCHBARK LETTER FROM PEREYASLAVL RYAZANSKY

The corpus of texts on birch bark was replenished with another document found during excavations in the Kremlin of Pereyaslavl Ryazansky (modern Ryazan). The letter comes from the Vvedensky excavation site located in the southeastern part of the Kremlin. The stratigraphic dating of the find is the second half of the 15th century AD. Styluses and fragments of birchbark with drawings have already been found on the site. The letter was a piece of rolled birchbark with the upper and lower edges torn off centuries ago. The three surviving lines of the document produce a legible fragment of a literary text – a record of predictive meaning read under the year 6967 (1459) in ordinary paschal tables of the 15th century AD. The Ryazan birchbark letter is the clearest material evidence of the eschatological expectations that became widespread in Russian society in that period.