Paper long abstract:

The paper deals with the identification of the figural representation containing solar sign on the Akura church.

The Akura Mama Daviti (St. Father David Garejeli, one of The Thirteen Assyrian Fathers) church is located in two kilometers away from Akura, a village in Telavi Municipality, Kakheti region (eastern Georgia).

On the eastern façade of the three-nave basilica is a set of stones laid out in large size concentric circle within which is a two-stepped round niche bearing a badly damaged image of a bearded man. Similarly hardly discernible are the human heads with haloes arranged diagonally on four corners in the section between the niche and the circle. There are red radially arranged lines (rays) around the central image; with the same color are painted the figures.

The Akura church construction was studied by Acad. G. Chibinashvili, who, basing upon historical documents investigated that it was built in 855 CE by famous religious figure Illarion Kartveli (Hillarion the Georgian) for his mother and sister.

The eastern façade mural and its schematic design were published in the eighties of the twenty century by T. Sheviakova who considered the painting already quite damaged by that time, to be contemporary with the construction. According to her, the man in the center of the circle is the Savior while diagonally placed figures are the images of angels and the radial rays might well be the solar sign to be associated with astral cult.

Besides that the façade wall painting is, with some exceptions, unusual for Georgian architectural monuments, the iconography of this painting is itself quite unique: interdisciplinary study of the composition has shown that it illustrates a theme quite rare for Christian art: the representation of Sun-Christ and Seasons.

This unique composition reflects both the pre-Christian cosmogony and Christian Creation wherein Sun-Christ, Logos appears to be the Creator of the universe ["Above the sun there shall rise his name (Ps. 71:17), "It was you who set all the boundaries of the earth; you made both summer and winter" (Ps 74:17)]. It visualizes the Christian conception, contemplation of celestial realm both by physical and transcendental viewpoint, when Sun-Christ is the source of the physical, moral, and spiritual light, and the ever-moving Seasons - the symbol of eternal life of Christians.