The Mysterious Mounds in Bulgaria

SofiaEcho, Bennett Tohara

Nothing but billions of corn and wheat stalks, as far as the passengers could discern as their bus jostled along the bumpy, pot-holed road somewhere between Shoumen and Silistra.

The organiser of the tour, Elena Yurchenko, a native of the area, sought to assuage everyone.

“This place may look provincial and boring...but I’ve got a big surprise for you.”

Passing through one Poluchik Veshanovo village, she revealed how not far away, a phenomenon never mentioned in history class, let alone celebrated, took place: a Bulgarian regiment had badly mauled a Russian one during World War 1.

Here and there, among the otherwise flat terrain embellished by the wayside with colourful, plastic bags, small hills jutted out. Partially covered with small trees and bushes, they resembled islets on TV’s Survivor. But how had these geographical anomalies come about? Were they formed through volcanic activity? Moles? Ants? Transplants from the Caribbean? Mariana Todorova, a city woman, displayed more maturity: “Obviously those mounds were constructed as part of a water reservoir system during communism”.

An alternative theory for at least three of them would come shortly, as the bus turned off the main road, outside the small city of Isperih, then through Sveshtari, a village, which like all others in the region, looked unchanged for generations, and into the Sboryanovo Historical Archaeological Reserve. We soon began snaking along the small, winding canyon of the Krapinets River overlooked by limestone outcrops. Reaching the top, the bus entered a dense forest; then, where the woodline and a picturesque meadow with several hills met, a 21st-century building sprang up.

With tables, chairs and cool drinks on offer, the front presented a seaside resort-like ambience. Visitors queued up to pay the 11 leva entrance fee, and catch a glimpse of the archaeological treasures for sale: miniature reproductions of ceramic vases and jugs unearthed from the vicinity, dating back from the Late Neolithic period, about 7000 years ago, through the Bronze and Iron Ages. The WC here rivalled those of McDonald’s.

Everyone then followed Elena Nedelcheva, our new guide, along a cement road, the only decent so far, into a necropolis – a small section of the “Hundred Mounds” mentioned in mediaeval chronicles that spread over 674 hectares. At an altitude of 289m, the highest point in Sveshtari is the top of Golyama Mogila (Big Mound).

Here a mound, there a mound
On the surface, literally, the tumuli seemed haphazardly arranged and random in size. Scientists, however, have noticed that they mirrored the brighter constellations such as Gemini, Eridan and Orion. The particular mounds here matched the Canis Major-which includes the North Star. Nedelcheva told us that these had been built by the Getae, a people whose exact origins and identity are still being debated.

Lacking their own writing system, most documentation concerning them have come from outsiders, at times their enemies. In 514 BCE, Greek historian Herodotus wrote that “the Getae are the bravest and noblest of the Thracians, inhabiting the region to the south of the lower Danube River”. Others such as Strabo claimed the Getae and the Dacians to the north spoke the same language and belonged to one nation. The only recording of a Getic city came from accounts of how Lysimachus, the Macedonian king of Thrace, led an invasion of their domain in the late 300s BCE, only to be defeated. The Getae king, Dromihete, in turn entertained Lysimachus at his palace in Helis. Food was even served on gold and silver platters.

In her book Sboryanovo The Sacred Land of the Getae, archeologist Dr Diana Gergova says that the foundations and walls nearby are probably the ruins of their ancient capital. The diffusion of ironworking in the Balkans around 1000 BCE aided the Getae in developing such an urban complex.

Nedelcheva brought the group to mogila number 12, where she unlocked the door of a corrugated, metal hut embedded into the side of the mound. The inside resembled the dishevelled starting phase of a construction site with a dirt and rock-strewn ground.

A portion of the earth mound had been dug away, revealing the remains of a brick enclosure, surrounded by other stone blocks much worn and tussled with soil. Originally built between the late 300s to early 200s BCE, it later succumbed to an earthquake or iconoclasts.

Remnants of life
Excavators have found small human bones here of eight individuals, four men and four women, perhaps forming couples. Fragments of local and imported vessels, iron armour and Scythian-type arrows, as well as sheep and swine bones, indications of sacrifices, attest to the high status of the people entombed.

The tomb under tumulus number 13 far exceeded number 12 in complexity and grandeur-or at least it had remained in tact. Housed in a cabin enclosure with thick walls for insulation, air conditioners kept the temperature within at a constant 18.7 C.

The Macedonian-style sepulchre consisted of a rectangular chamber with inner dimensions of 4.26 m by 2.47m, and a smaller antechamber, both covered by semicylindrical vaults. Constructed of large white and yellow limestone blocks fitted almost exactly together without mortar, the masonry looked as if it had been completed in modern times. While the outside surface had a rough texture, the inside had been polished smooth. That done, the builders covered the structure with three different layers of soil, thus forming the tumulus.

At the bottom of the doorway, a deep groove could be seen, where a sliding door once fitted in. This feature according to Dr Tatko Stoyanov, a researcher who has done extensive studies on tumuli, existed nowhere else in the Balkans, but was common in ancient Ionia and Lycia (present-day western Turkey), in association with the cult of Apollo and Artemis (Diane).

In this tomb, archaeologists have found parts of the skeleton of three individuals: a youth, a middle-aged woman and an elderly man. Between them laid half of a dog skeleton and bones of a rooster.

In addition they found a gold profiled bead, fragments of a gilted iron pectoral, a gold spiral and ceramic pieces, along with sections of a broken stone door.

These items along with ancient accounts give an insight into the burial practices and religious beliefs of the Getae. Herodotus wrote that they had had a deep reverence for the dead and practiced an immortalisation rite, which including repeated entrances into the tombs, and removing and re-burying some of the bones and gifts in different places. Nedelcheva adding more drama. “In those days, when a husband died, custom dictated that his widow accompany him into the afterlife,” she said, a practice similar to sati in India whereby widows jumped into their husbands’ funeral pyres, until it was outlawed by the British.

Their souls would then journey to the sky, to their god Zalmoxis, a daemon of a Getic prophet, who later merged with the god of lightning Gebeleizis to form the Getae supreme deity. Some scholars have likened Zalmoxis to the Greek god Dionysus.

Extra-intra-terrestrial
For the climax Nedelcheva brought us back to the Ginina Mogila. Its entrance looked like something out of a Star Trek episode. Entering a secret password on a remote device, she activated a slow, sliding door. We anxiously entered in groups of 10, going through a metro-like passage...and confronted the Thracian Royal Tomb. Outsizing number 13, this one measured 7.20m in length, 6.23m in breadth and a maximum ceiling height of 4.45m, and consisted of a main chamber, with an antechamber and lateral chamber for gifts and possessions. Each had its own semi-cylindrical vault, running asymmetrically along different lines of axis. It resembled a small temple.

Equally striking were the decor, with its depictions the Getae’s view of the universe in Hellenistic style motifs (despite the region’s seeming remoteness, the Krapinets River at that time was much larger and navigable by small vessels to the Danube River, 50km away, and on to Greek colonies along the Black Sea and the Aegean).

The stone architrave above the entrance feature a cornice of rosette, garland and ox head reliefs, the latter, according to Gergova, representing the male beginning.

The ornamentation of the main chamber consisted of four Doric columns, and a Corinthian one whose capital symbolised the Tree of Life. Between the columns stood 10 half-human, half-plant caryatids (female columned figures) embossed on the walls with arms raised above their heads as if supporting a frieze of tryglyths and metopes.

Intrigue and mystery
No one knows for certain what they mean. Perhaps they are a depiction of Mother Goddesses that in turn represent the continuation of life, revival and bountiful harvests. Or they may symbolise the Getae’s 10-stage cosmology cycle. With individual faces they may also be images of ladies in attendance.

Above the architrave, in the lunette of the vault, is a painted scene showing the deification of a deceased ruler, in line with that of Zalmoxis: the Supreme Goddess presenting the wreath of immortality to a king, perhaps Dromihete or one of his successors.

Above the entrance to the chamber, a small, window-like aperture could be seen. Scientists have figured out that at precisely noon on 22 December (the winter solstice) at the end of the 300s BCE, the sun’s ray would penetrate this opening and, as well as illuminating the entire chamber, fall exactly on the king figure. Besides shrouding him in an aura, the light acted as a path for the man’s soul to the heavens.

When archaeologists uncovered the sepulchre, they found skeletons of a couple in the antechamber together with two stallions next to the male and a mare next to the female. Also included were an iron sceptre, a gold earring, bronze fibulae, a small wooden table, and bones of a pig, dog and several more horses. More lavish gifts must have endowed the place before tomb plunderers helped themselves to the goodies.

Many of the discoveries are now on display at the Isperih Museum of History. Discovered in 1982, the Thracian Royal Tomb became inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site three years later.

The Thracian Royal Tomb reception centre telephone: 08335/ 279
Working hours 9am to 5pm. Closed Monday and Tuesday