Roman Times: Nomads of the Golden Mountains of Altai

Saturday, July 10, 2021

Nomads of the Golden Mountains of Altai

Yesterday when I was researching the post about horses in the ancient world, I was intrigued by the detail image of a Persian horseman on the so-called Pazyryk carpet that Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones included in his blog post. The Pazyryk carpet is considered the oldest surviving example of a pile carpet in the world and is thought to have been made around 400 BCE in Armenia or Persia.

It was discovered in a Scythian kurgan burial in the Pazyryk Valley of the Ukok plateau in the Altai Mountains, Siberia, south of the modern city of Novosibirsk, Russia. The tomb mounds discovered there are now part of the Golden Mountains of Altai UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The horseman of the Pazyryk culture apparently accumulated great wealth through horse trading with merchants in Persia, India and China as evidenced by the variety of grave goods including Chinese silk, the pile carpet, horses decked out in elaborate trappings, and wooden furniture and a full-sized burial chariot found there. Some horses were provided with leather or felt masks made to resemble animals, with stag antlers or rams’ horns often incorporated in them. Bearded mascarons (masks) of well-defined Greco-Roman origin were also found. Scholars think these may have been inspired by the Hellenistic kingdoms of the Cimmerian Bosporus.

These finds were preserved when water seeped into the tombs in antiquity and froze, encasing the burial goods in ice until their excavation by archaeologists M. P. Gryaznov in 1929 and Sergei Ivanovich Rudenko in 1947–1949.

In his book, "The frozen tombs of Siberia: the Payryk Burials of Iron-Age Horseman," Rudenko comments on the close similarities between the equestrian and animal motifs of the Pazyryk carpet and the sculptures of Achaemenid Persepolis.

"Arranged chain-like men and beasts in certain spaces, obviously remind us of Achaemenid and Assyrian styles. Decorating horse tail and foretop is also a Persian tradition. Stablemen pace on the horse's left while their right hand is on its neck both in Persepolis statues and Pazyryk."

He also points out that the deer design is a yellow deer known as a Persian Fallow Deer or Mesopotamian Fallow Deer.

Five bodies were found in the Pazyryk burials during this period including a powerfully built man in his fifties thought to be a chieftain. The man was elaborately decorated with an interlocking series of striking designs representing a variety of fantastic beasts. The best preserved tattoos were images of a donkey, a mountain ram, two highly stylized deer with long antlers and an imaginary carnivore on the right arm. Two monsters resembling griffins decorate the chest, and on the left arm are three partially obliterated images which seem to represent two deer and a mountain goat. On the front of the right leg a fish extends from the foot to the knee. A monster crawls over the right foot, and on the inside of the shin is a series of four running rams which touch each other to form a single design.

A carefully embalmed young female, dubbed the Siberian Ice Maiden, was discovered by archaeologist Natalia Polosmak in 1993 at Ukok, near the Chinese border. She had been buried over 2,400 years ago in a casket fashioned from the hollowed-out trunk of a Siberian larch tree. On the outside of the casket were stylized images of deer and snow leopards carved in leather. Six horses wearing elaborate harnesses had been sacrificed and lay to the north of the chamber. Her hair was shaved off but she was wearing a wig and tall hat and was clad in a long crimson and white striped woolen skirt and white felt stockings. Her yellow blouse was originally thought to be made of wild "tussah" silk but closer examination of the fibers indicate the material is not Chinese but was a wild silk which came from somewhere else, perhaps India. Like the chieftain, she had been tatooed with animal motifs including creatures with horns that transformed into flowers. Although Herodotus described the widespread use of cannabis by Scythian nomads, the seeds found in the tomb of the Ice Princess were only coriander, probably used to disguise the smell of the body.

In January 2007 a timber tomb of a blond chieftain warrior was unearthed close to the Mongolian border. Like the other individuals, the man was tattooed and he wore a well-preserved sable coat. What looks like scissors were found among his grave goods. Additional tombs were found as recently as the summer of 2012.

Detail of horseman on the Pazyryk carpet, 400 BCE, courtesy of Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones

The Pazyryk carpet 400 BCE, courtesy of the Hermitage Museum and Wikimedia Commons.

Detail of deer on Payryk carpet, 400 BCE, courtesy of the Hermitage Museum and Wikimedia Commons.

Funerary chariot found in a Pazyryk burial courtesy of Charles Recknagel and the Hermitage Museum.

Closeup of a felt saddle pad from a Pazyryk burial mound courtesy of Charles Recknagel and the Hermitage Museum

A saddle found in the Pazyryk tombs, showing the same kinds of tassels that can be seen on the saddles depicted in the Pazyryk carpet courtesy of Charles Recknagel and the Hermitage Museum.

Wooden table found in a Pazyryk burial mound courtesy of Charles Recknagel and the Hermitage Museum

A gilded wooden figurine of a deer from the Pazyryk burials, 5th century BCE courtesy of the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia and Wikimedia Commons.

Fifth century BCE bridle with wooden Hellenistic motifs, Pazyryk Culture, courtesy of the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia

Wood and leather finial of a griffin with a stag in its beak, Pazyryk Culture, 5th century BCE, courtesy of the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia

Mask with Antlers for a Horse Head, Pazyryk Culture, 5th century BCE, courtesy of the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia

This plaque in the shape of a griffin standing on the defeated ibex served as decoration of the headdress of a noble warrior. The entire composition is raised in relief from a sheet of gold. The griffin's head is hollow. Its figure seems enormous as compared with that of the ibex. The ibex is depicted with its hind quarters twisted upwards, which is typical of Altaic art. The griffin's body was richly decorated in a cloisonne technique, but the insets have not survived. This composition is similar to that of the leather object found in the Pazyryk Barrow No. 2 in Altai. The ibex's posture and the decorative devices are identical to the depictions on the saddle covers from the Pazyryk Barrow No. 1. Thus this splendid aigrette can be attributed to the 5th to 4th century BCE. Besides, we see that the whole composition, particularly the griffin, was produced under the influence of the Achaemenid art, courtesy of the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia.