Українські прикраси / Ukrainian jewelry

Yahnus (yahnusok, ohnusok, yednus, ahnus) is an uncommon name for dukach which has derived from the Polish language. From the old Polish the word “ahnušek” is interpreted as: - a waxy lamb, consecrated by The Pope, which protects people from the evil; - any image of the divine lamb; - an image of a lamb, made of any material. In the Old Church Slavonic language, the word “lamb” sounds like “ahnets”. Jesus Christ is symbolically called the lamb (“ahnets”) of God in Christianity - he sacrificed himself for the sake of rescuing the human race from the reign of sin, just as the lambs had been sacrificed for the sake of deliverance of the Jewish people from the Egyptian captivity. I. H. Spassky assumes that at first Western European religious medals which depicted the divine lamb (“ahnets”) were called the “yahnus”. The image of the lamb began to be considered as a kind of amulet. In Ukraine, such medals were often converted into dukaches, and respectively, dukaches we...

Traditional Ukrainian national adornments are a priceless source of historical studies of the Ukrainian people. The history of Ukraine and its people had been continuously destroyed, rewritten, forbidden, concealed or simply stolen because other neighbouring countries had been forcing us to lose our national identity. The memory of our nation was erased by means of destroying our language, religion, education, public activity and other spheres of life. The farther from Kyiv, and eventually from any rural area, the people lived, the more they emerged with other culture, enriched it and forgot where they came from. In the situation that was happening at that time, Ukrainian national traditional adornments were a great and a more objective source of studying history, culture and the way of life of our ancestors than written sources. They confirm the Ukrainian origin of numerous historical processes and cultural assets as well as depict the history of separate territories more deeply. T...