Ever since the discovery of the monument there has been debate about what exactly the idol represents.
Andrei Sergeevich Famintsyn in his 1884 work "Ancient Slav Deities" argued against Lelewel's theory, and instead claimed that the Zbruch pillar is a representation of a single deity and that all four sides of each tier represented one entity. As was first suggested by Count Potocki, he identified the deity as a representation of the Slavic four-headed god Swiatowid, until then primarily associated with the island of
Rügen, but now understood to be pan-Slavic. The reasoning was that historical sources mentioned the deity of Rügen as being kept in a wooden temple together with a sacred sword, a drinking horn and a horse. Famintsyn was also the first to recognize the three-tiered structure as being related to the three levels of the world, linking it to the Slavic deity
Triglav. The identification of the deity with Swiatowid was also supported by
Gabriel Leńczyk, who was also the first to identify the eroded solar symbol on the side, previously believed to be without attributes. Another theory was presented by
Henryk Łowmiański, who in his 1979 monograph on the religion of Slavs suggested that the idol was altogether non-Slavic, as it was made of stone, and not of wood, which was the basic construction material of the Slavs, but the legends of Swiatowid exist among all Slavic cultures nonetheless.
Boris Rybakov in his 1987 work
Paganism of Ancient Rus argued that four sides of the top tier represent four different Slavic gods, two female and two male, with their corresponding middle-tier entities always of the opposite gender. In Rybakov's hypothesis, the male deity with the horse and sword is the Lightning god
Perun, the female with the horn of plenty is
Mokosh, the female with the ring is
Lada, and the male deity with the solar symbol, above the empty underworld, is
Dažbog, (the God of sunlight for whom the sun was not an object but an attribute, thus the symbol's position on his clothing rather than in his hand ). Further, Rybakov suggests the underworld deity as
Veles. Rybakov also claimed the side with the female figure holding a horn as the front of the idol, based on the bottom-tier figure, which is shown with legs as if seen from head-on, the two adjoining sides showing the legs from the side, and the fourth side left blank. Finally, Rybakov believes that the idol's overall phallic shape is meant to unite all of the smaller figures as a single overarching all seeing larger deity,
Rod. According to Aleksey Komar and Natalia Khamaiko (2011), the sculpture is a fake produced by
Tymon Zaborowski, whose estate was located near the place where the statue was found. == Popular culture ==