—Why are you delving into hoary antiquity, who needs it? — This question is often asked to Yavdat Ilyasov, both orally and from the pages of printed media, in critical comments. Meanwhile, a similar question was answered long ago and well by F. Engels in his book “Anti-Dühring”: “Hoary antiquity”, under all circumstances, will remain an extremely interesting era for all future generations, because it forms the basis for all later higher development, because that its starting point is the separation of man from the animal kingdom, and its content is the overcoming of such difficulties that future associated people will never encounter.” This capacious and precise definition guided the writer Ya. Ilyasov, who was in love with the history of our country, when working over “The Golden Image” and previous books - “Path of Wrath”, “Sogdiana”, “Arrow and the Sun”, “Spotted Death”, “Black Widow”. I. Ilyasov not only loves history, he knows it well. It seems to some readers that it is easy to write on a historical topic: “Go, they say, check if it really happened.” No, this topic is very difficult to write about. It is not an easy task to reconstruct, from the meager details scattered in dozens and hundreds of ancient works, the living way of life and the way of thinking of long-vanished people. You need to travel a lot, see with your own eyes the traces of past eras: the remains of dams, huge canals, ancient fortresses, and be able to see them not only in their current state, but also as they were before. It takes a fair amount of imagination to bring all this to life on the pages of a work of art.