Zoomorphic images played a crucial role in the archaic tradition. With a time as a human worldview changed, the animals’ perception, their significance and cultural place was constantly evolving. Today many theories about origins and subsequent development of animal images exist. Different speculations on how people perceive and approach animals in different historical periods circulate among cultorologists. The author’s main interest lies in the ancient and late periods of Egyptian history, where zoomorphic characters were firmly entwined with a cultural context and remained important until the end of this civilization. The main purpose of the article is to demonstrate how primitive ideas about animal world affected its further evolution and preserved in the late history of Egypt.

During the epoch of Late Republic of familia elites penetrated in all the corners of Mediterranean area. New elements of the economics in remote regions of the goings of the elite of Rome on affairs of state did not allow pater familias to control the economic life of familia the same way effectively. Appearing problems were possible to solve with the help of amicitia institute. Those changes were the economic crisis of the growth of Roman familia during the epoch of political crisis of Roman Republic.

This article focuses on the legislative regulation of education and publishing in the 1720-early 1740s. Education expanded the group of literate people, and stimulated their involvement into the production and consumption of culture products. Publishing of educational and scientific literature supported the development of education. It was at this time that the issues of culture were raised to the state level. The understanding of its importance by the government and the awareness of the need for the cultural support for the country’s advance incorporated culture into the legislation of the Russian Empire.

This paper analyzes a Russian manuscript from the 1890s ascribed to M. Velyakov. It contains a heterogeneous mix of botanical, medical, and household information (several copies of herbals, extracts from medical books, recipes, a catalogue of books on botany, household notes,and so forth). A section of this manuscript concerns details of herb-gathering: “Prayers regarding the collection of herbs and instructions on how to pick them” . It contains a list of canonical prayers, non-canonical prayers and charms as well as a description of the herb-picking rite on St. John’s Day and “Detailed instructions on how to gather herbs”. Such sections were not typical of the Russian herbal tradition of the 17th-18th centuries. The manuscript data is analyzed here in the context of oral and written traditions.

The article deals with the problems of understanding and commenting on the works of N. Gogol, L. Tolstoy and other classics of Russian fiction, as well as the re-edition of prerevolutionary essays,journalism texts, and memoirs. In this article, the approaches to commenting are associated with the study of the history of Russian everyday life. The examples demonstrate the importance of small historical and everyday details used by the authors in the creation of their characters. This study puts a question about the commenting technique: which fragments of a text need commenting, since it allows penetrating the author’s intent and understanding the text, and which incomprehensible details can be left without attention.

The article discusses various attempts to interpret Russian saints as exponents of the national spirit. Representation of saints in the Russian culture is considered in the context of the “Masonic Enlightenment”in the late 18^th century, the emergence of critical hagiography, and the codification of practices of piety in Russian orthodoxy. For the first time, data on newly discovered manuscripts from the Archive of the Moscow Religious Censorship Authority are published. The author argues that secularization influenced the socio-cultural processes in the religious sphere.

The article examines the problem of “cultural heritage and tourism” in two aspects. On the one hand, it studies various objects of cultural heritage as a basis for the development of tourism and explores the prospect of increasing their diversity. on the other hand, the article considers the preservation of the authentic objects of cultural heritage presented in the tourism market and examines its dependence on current tasks of the tourist business.

The article focuses on the traditions of depicting exotic animals in Russian iconography, mostly on the icons known as “Praise the Lord from the Heavens”. The author traces the evolution of these complicated images from the 16th century to the present-day icons produced for different churches of Moscow and Saint-Petersburg. This study traces the evolution and explores the new ways of constructing an iconographic theme.

In the miniature of so-called “Verdun Miscellanea” (Verdun, City library Ms1, f.Jr, 1110-1114 or the second quarter of XII century) the Creation Days are portrayed as personifications - the characters with their attributes. If the majority of personifications is similar to the allegorical images of Months in Late-Antique and Early Medieval calendar cycles, then the picture of the Third Day is unlike the others because of the pose, gestures, presence of the green branches aside but not in the hands. The author supposes that, being aware of all the peculiarities of the XII century miniaturist’s work, one can say that the iconography of the Third Day is aligned with the other, mythological sample - the composition “Apollo and Daphne”. Therefore, the miniaturist could have been guided by several samples from different origins or by a Model book containing fragmented calendar and mythological motives.

The article studies a small and very peculiar complex of images(presumably Sarmatian / Alan, produced at the turn of the new era)at the entrance to the half-abandoned Bayte III stone temple, built three centuries earlier at the edge of the desert plateau of Ustyurt. This temple was associated with veneration of ancestors. The compositions engraved by the late visitors can be well explained from the archaic pagan Alano-Ossetian tradition (the dedication of a horse to the deceased, a memorial banner, two carts prepared for a long journey and two dead nearby, a serpent with the animating “bead of happiness”,a rider going to enter the labyrinth, and a likely scene of the “magic hunting” of an archer).

The article examines the changing functions of a modern theatrical trailer and reveals the causes of such alterations. These changes are demonstrated on the example of typical theatrical trailers for films of different genres that were released in three time periods - the“classical”, “transitional” and “modern”. The author argues that the trailer and the way it affects the viewer has undergone a substantial change in the context of the contemporary screen culture. As a result,during these three time periods the key function of the movie trailer has also undergone significant changes.

The article explores the realization of “true crime” genre in digital media. The object of this research is the podcast “My Favorite Murder” (USA, 2016-present day). The author aims to answer the question: what possibilities for interaction between the creators of“true crime” narratives and their audience do audio-podcasts offer?Henry Jenkins’s theory about “participatory culture” is crucial for this study. The independent status of the hosts of the podcast and their self-identification as fans of “true crime” genre allows them to participate in circulation and production of popular culture and to create a virtual community.