Arzhan Kurgans: Early Scythian Royal Tombs in Tuva, Siberia

The Arzhan kurgans are royal burial mounds in the Uyuk valley of Tuva, in southern Siberia, built by nomadic horse-riding peoples between roughly the 9th and 7th centuries BC. Arzhan 1 is one of the oldest known Scythian-type royal tombs, while Arzhan 2 yielded an untouched burial with thousands of gold objects. Together they changed scholars’ ideas about where Scythian culture began.

The Scythian world

The Scythians are best known from the Greek historian Herodotus, who described nomadic warriors living north of the Black Sea in the 5th century BC (see Darius I’s Scythian campaign). Archaeologists use the term more widely for a family of related cultures stretching across the Eurasian steppe, from Ukraine to Mongolia, in the 1st millennium BC.

These peoples shared mounted warfare, similar weapons and horse harness, and a distinctive “animal style” of art featuring deer, big cats and birds of prey. Their rulers were buried under large earth or stone mounds called kurgans. For a long time scholars assumed that this culture had taken shape in the west, near the Black Sea. The Arzhan mounds pointed east.

The Uyuk valley, a basin of grassland ringed by mountains in the north of Tuva, is sometimes called the “Valley of the Kings” because it contains dozens of large burial mounds from the Scythian period. Good pasture and shelter made it a natural centre for herders, and its rulers were evidently able to command the labour of many people to raise their tombs.

Arzhan 1

The mound now called Arzhan 1 was excavated between 1971 and 1974 by the Soviet archaeologist Mikhail Gryaznov, working with the Tuvan archaeologist Mannai-ool. It was a vast, low cairn of stones, about 110-120 metres across, built over a radial structure of some 70 log chambers arranged like the spokes of a wheel.

At the centre lay the main chamber with the remains of an older man and a woman, surrounded by the burials of further individuals, probably attendants or relatives. Around 160 horses had been buried in other chambers, many with bridles and harness. The main tomb had been robbed in antiquity, but finds included bronze weapons, horse gear and a famous bronze plaque of a curled-up feline, one of the earliest examples of the animal style. Tree-ring and radiocarbon dating place the mound in the late 9th or early 8th century BC.

Arzhan 2

A second large mound nearby, Arzhan 2, was excavated from 2000 to 2003 by a Russian-German team led by Konstantin Chugunov of the State Hermitage Museum, Hermann Parzinger of the German Archaeological Institute and Anatoli Nagler. The mound was about 80 metres across. Its centre had been robbed, but in 2001 the team found a separate burial pit, Grave 5, that thieves had missed.

Inside lay a man and a woman, richly dressed and surrounded by gold. In total the excavators recovered about 5,700 gold objects weighing roughly 20 kg. The man wore a massive gold neck ring decorated with animals, and his cloak was sewn with thousands of tiny gold panther figures. There were iron daggers and arrowheads inlaid with gold, gold earrings, pins topped with deer, and decorated quivers. The grave is usually dated to the second half of the 7th century BC.

Further burials in the mound held other people and a group of horses. Scientific study of the man’s skeleton in 2007 identified signs of metastatic prostate cancer, one of the oldest known cases of the disease.

Why Arzhan changed the picture

Before Arzhan, the richest Scythian finds came from the Black Sea region and dated mostly to the 6th-4th centuries BC, such as the gold pectoral from Tovsta Mohyla. Arzhan 1 showed that a royal mound with mass horse sacrifice and animal-style art existed in southern Siberia a century or more earlier.

This led many scholars to argue that key features of Scythian culture took shape in the eastern steppe, in Tuva, Mongolia and nearby regions, and spread west. Others think the culture formed over a wide area at about the same time. Later sites in the same region, including the frozen Pazyryk burials of the Altai, show how long these traditions lasted.

Timeline

• c. 9th-8th century BC: Construction of Arzhan 1, one of the earliest Scythian-type royal mounds.
• c. 7th century BC (second half): Burial of a ruling couple in Arzhan 2, Grave 5.
• 1971-1974: Mikhail Gryaznov excavates Arzhan 1.
• 2000-2003: Russian-German excavation of Arzhan 2.
• 2001: Discovery of the unlooted Grave 5 with its gold hoard.
• 2007: Publication of the study identifying prostate cancer in the man from Arzhan 2.

Why it matters

The Arzhan kurgans are key evidence for the early history of the steppe nomads who dominated much of Eurasia in the 1st millennium BC. They show that wealthy, powerful nomadic rulers and a sophisticated art style existed in southern Siberia by around 800 BC. The gold of Arzhan 2 is also one of the most spectacular archaeological discoveries of the early 21st century.