Iconography of Power of the Pagan Bulgarian Ruler: Images, Symbolism and Tradition

The ideas of ruler's power of the pagan Bulgarians and their expression are a question of debates concerning different fields of humanities such as history, archaeology, epigraphy, religious studies, and art history. The discussion proposed tends to seek the ideological basis of the ruler's power as seen through cosmogonic, religious and political notions preserved in written historical sources, traces of rites and beliefs in mythology and folklore and in the arts. Thus, the three levels of the ruler's ideology are considered: the written/verbal texts, ritual texts and visual texts in order to find out a set of iconographie formulae of expressing the power of the pagan Bulgarian ruler.