Arzhan 2 tomb 7th C. BCE

December 11, 2022

Arzhan 2 tomb 7th C. BCE

"The Arzhan-2 burial of the Scythian ‘King’ and the ‘Queen’, found in 1997 and studied between 2001-2003 by Russian-German expedition is one the most extraordinary discoveries ever made by archeologists.

Now for the first time the features of the powerful couple buried in their gold-encrusted, awe-inspiring clothing can be seen in life-like sculptures thanks to work of Moscow Miklukho-Maklai Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, and Novosibirsk Institute of Archeology and Ethnography.

Two teams of anthropologists spent months meticulously building 3d models of the skulls, using laser scanning and photogrammetry to then re-create the faces.

Siberian scientists established that people buried in the Arzhan-2 mound were - regardless of their social status - from quite a homogenous group in terms of anthropology, which combined features of the Caucasian and Mongoloid races.

Of the ‘King’, Moscow anthropologists said: ‘In front of us there is a battle-hardened Scythian warrior, carrying in his appearance a unique combination of Caucasoid and Mongoloid features’.

The unknown monarch - a Siberian Tutankhamun - was entombed in this ancient necropolis with 14 horses, a defining symbol of wealth in these Scythian times; each animal was from a different herd.

Alongside him lay the woman in his life, his queen or, as is suspected, his favourite concubine, but in any event a woman held in great esteem who was ethnically distinct from this monarch's retinue also buried alongside him which included 33 others, including five children. She was in all likelihood not alone in being sacrificed to accompany him to the afterlife...

The most breathtaking aspect of this Tuvan find are the contents of the burial chamber of this royal couple - pictured here - located by archeologists some two or three metres beneath the surface.

In all, some 9,300 decorative gold pieces were found here, not including the 'uncountable golden beads'. Put in another way, there was more than 20 kilograms of gold (more than $1 million USD worth), including earrings, pendants and beads, adorning the bodies of the royal couple all made in what is known as Scythian Art style.

Ancient robbers had sought to raid vast burial mound, just as they had successfully looted the neighbouring Arzhan 1 site, which was perhaps 150 years older. It could be that specially built 'decoy' graves threw these ancient looters' off the scent.

Here in Arzhan 2, thieves had left a trail which archeologists unearthed but fortunately the raiders gave up shortly before reaching these treasures, which are made from iron, turquoise, amber and wood as well as gold.

So valuable are they that it is rumoured these wondrous objects - now held mainly in local capital Kyzyl but also in St Petersburg - cannot be exhibited abroad because of the cost of insurance.

The find has been described by Dr Mikhail Piotrovsky, director of the Hermitage Museum as 'an encyclopedia of Scythian Animal Art because you have all the animals which roamed the region, such as panther, lions, camels, deer...' It includes 'many great works of art - figures of animals, necklaces, pins with animals carved into a golden surface', he told The New York Times.

'This is the original Scythian style, from the Altai region, which eventually came to the Black Sea region and finally in contact with ancient Greece. And it resembles almost an Art Nouveau style.'

Covered with two layers of larch logs, the royal burial chamber was carefully constructed like a blockhouse and stood inside a second, outer burial chamber of the same construction.

The four walls were presumably adorned by some kind of curtain. Long wooden sticks were found along the walls, which could have been used like curtain rails. The curtains themselves, as well as any other textile remains, were not preserved. On a carefully made boarded wooden floor - likely softened by felt - were the bodies of this sovereign and his companion.

The skulls had dislocated from the bodies because they had probably been placed on a kind of pillow, now decayed. The ancient ruler was buried with a heavy necklace made of pure gold and decorated all over with the carvings of animals.

His outer clothes, probably a kind of kaftan, had been decorated with thousands of small panther figures, each 2-to-3 centimetres in length, attached in vertical rows, also forming motifs such as wings on his back.

On his boots, maybe originally of felt or leather, thousands of mini-beads - in diameter only about 1 millimetre - had been stitched; on the upper part they ended in golden turndowns. Alongside and under the skull were gold plaques with animal-shaped inlays: four winged horses and one deer originally attached to the headgear.

The total weight of his jewellery - including minute glass beads on his trousers - was 2 kilograms. The man's weaponry consisted of an iron dagger, poorly preserved, on his right hip. This was connected to the belt by a strap, and both had been decorated with numerous golden adornments.

Beside the dagger was a miniature gold cup. On the left side of the deceased was a gold quiver with fish scale decoration. The wooden arrow shafts were painted in black and red. His arrow heads were made of iron, but also showed the remains of golden encrustation. The golden adornment on the belt - used for carrying his quiver into the afterlife - was extremely rich.

Below the quiver lay the wooden bow itself, studded with pieces of golden decoration. Between the quiver and the north-eastern wall of the burial chamber were two picks, one of iron with golden encrustation. To the left of the man's head lay a bronze mirror.

A second, slightly larger bronze mirror was located to the left of the woman's head, a little bigger and with a gold handle. Below the woman's head were three gold plaques in the shape of animals - two horses and a mystical winged creature - associated with the woman's headdress.

Beside her head was a pair of gold pins, decorated with carvings in Animal Art style. The decoration of the woman's dress corresponded to the man's kaftan: thousands of golden panthers form different motifs, again, notably, wings on her back. Around her breasts, archeologists found golden earrings and many small beads of gold, amber, garnet, malachite and other precious materials.

Near her feet were thousands of mini-beads made of gold, which must have been fixed onto felt or leather boots which had been inlaid with golden ribbons and granulation.

On her right hip hung an iron knife, poorly preserved but with numerous excellent gold belt adornments. Her wrists were adorned with gold bracelets. Here, too, lay two bronze kettles, seen as exceptionally valuable for these times.

In the western corner of the burial chamber were three large amber beads, a wooden cup with a golden handle, a gold comb with wooden teeth, and a heap of various seeds. Within the heap of seeds was a gold pectoral in Animal Style decoration and a small bronze cup, still inside a small leather bag.

In other burials, which surrounded the prominent couple, bronze knives, an axe-type weapon, known as a Raven's beak, arrowheads, bronze mirrors, belts, and much jewellery - beads made of glass, stone, amber, and golden earrings - were found. So too were fragments of cloth - felt, fur, and fabric.

Here too were discovered bridle sets made of bronze, mane ornaments and tail decorations cut from gold sheet.

What can we discern of the personal stories behind these ancient royals and their entourage found in Uyuk hollow, northern Tuva, and excavated by a joint Russian-German team between 2001 and 2004?

Professor Konstantin Chugunov, highly respected senior researcher at the world famous Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, who headed the project, said DNA analysis of the group indicated those buried here were from the Iranian ethno-linguistic group.

According to the analysis of strontium isotopes in the bones, all those buried were locals except for one person - the 'queen', and it gives reason to think about dynastic marriage,' he said.

Totally 35 people - 16 men, 13 women, five children along with bones which cannot be identified by gender, were buried here, as were 14 horses.

The 'king' was between 40 and 50 years old and analysis of his remains revealed that he died of prostate cancer. 'This is the earliest documentation of the disease,' said Michael Schultz, a paleopathologist at the University of Gottingen. It is believed that in the last years of his life, this potentate could not have walked.

His female partner, accorded pride of place alongside him, was around 30 years old. Who was she?

We don't know if the woman was a queen or a concubine,' said Professor Hermann Parzinger, president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, and a joint leader of the excavations, 'but since their ornaments were similar, both must have had high status.'

No cause of death can be detected for her, leading to a theory that she could have been poisoned or strangled, to be buried beside her liege, and to travel with him into the next world: willingly or not, she was a human sacrifice, according to this version.

'Maybe she was poisoned,' said Chugunov, 'or maybe she chose to die to be with her husband.' We may never know how she died, by natural causes around the same time as her master or in more sinister fashion, but others in the tsar's entourage certainly had gruesome demises.

The scene archeologists uncovered here appears to match with remarkable accuracy a description by Herodotus of the macabre Scythian burial rite.

'Based on accompanying burials, we also found evidence of phenomena described by Herodotus when the living would follow the deceased,' Parzinger has explained. 'Herodotus wrote that when a military leader died, his close circle - wife (or concubine), bodyguards, advisers, servants - were killed. As they were the property of the leader, they had to follow him to the tomb. And we identified particular evidence of their murder.'

Herodotus, who lived later, from 484 BC to 425 BC, wrote: 'The body of the king is laid in the grave, stretched upon a mattress. Spears are fixed in the ground on either side of the corpse and beams stretched above it to form a roof.

'In the open space around the body of the king they bury one of his concubines, first killing her by strangling, and also his cup-bearer, his cook, his groom, his lackey, his messenger, some of his horses... and some golden cups, for they use neither silver nor brass.'

It is believed that when the king died, he was mummified and his body travelled for 40 days across all his lands. And all expressed their sorrow. Then at some sacred place a burial mound was constructed and his entire entourage were slaughtered and buried there.

Herodotus did not describe how the ruler's entourage were killed. While the queen or concubine shows no sign of a violent death - the assumption is that she was poisoned - one woman's skull in Arzhan 2 was pierced four times with a war pick.

A man's skull still retains the splinters from a wooden club used to kill him. In some cases archaeologists see evidence of blows to the head with kind of poleaxe: in other case, they suppose strangulation or poison."

-taken from SiberianTimes