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.

Leather, fur, and gold foil headdress, Early Iron Age, Pazyryk Culture, courtesy of the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia

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Golden Mummies of Egypt through July 11, 2021 at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, North Carolina

This exhibition uses mummies from the collections of the Manchester Museum (England) to allow visitors to examine life for the wealthy in multicultural Roman Egypt, where diverse Egyptian, Roman, and Greek communities and cultural influences were blended. The exhibition journey traces expectations for the afterlife and introduces cultural constructions of identity, strikingly demonstrated by haunting painted panel portraits. The practices of preservation and decoration of the body, and the transformation of the deceased into a god, are explored by the mummies on display.

Eight gilded mummies  and more than 100 related objects are presented in the display, including papyri, jewelry, ceramics, and artworks depicting deities that connect the daily lives of these Greco-Roman Egyptians to the religious world of the gods in a series of lavishly illustrated thematic sections covering the period from 300 BCE to 200 CE. The youngest of the preserved individuals is a 2 or 3 year-old child wrapped in strips of linen in an intricate diagonal pattern adorned with golden studs. Elaborate wrappings and decorated cartonnage were popular during the Roman period because sarcophagi were no longer used for many inhabitants. Interactive radiographic studies and multidirectional CT scans from three of the mummies will allow visitors to see underneath the wrappings.

 “Using art and science together, we’re able to explore concepts around humanity, divinity, and ideals of eternal beauty,” explains Museum Director Valerie Hillings.

Visitors are also encouraged to explore the Greco-Roman objects in the North Carolina Museum of Art's own collection that includes a gilded mummy covering, circa 300 B.C.E, an Aphrodite-Isis sculpture from the first to second century CE, and the plaster portrait head of a coffin, circa 100 to 150 C.E. 

For those (like me) that will be unable to attend the exhibit, I hope to post images taken by my friend Allan Gluck who will be exploring the exhibit shortly.

A large cache of gilded mummies were found in The Valley of the Golden Mummies at Bahariya Oasis in the Western Desert of Egypt, dating to the Greco-Roman period. Discovered in 1996 by Zahi Hawass and his Egyptian team, approximately two hundred fifty mummies approximately two thousand years old were recovered over the period of several seasons. Excavations have continued and  the excavator estimates the site contains a total of more than ten thousand such mummies.

Many of the mummies were still in good condition when they were discovered by Hawass and his team. They were decorated in different styles. There were four general styles of the mummies at Bahariya. The first style, which was found on approximately sixty mummies, has a gilded mask covering the face and a gilded waistcoat depicting different scenes of gods and goddesses across the chest. The second style is covered with cartonnage, depicting scenes of gods such as Anubis, the god of mummification, and his four children. The third style was not decorated with gold or cartonnage, but rather was placed inside an anthropoid, a pottery coffin. The fourth style was covered in linen.

I found Dr. Hawass' book, "Valley of the Golden Mummies," absolutely riveting! 

Egyptian, from Hawara, Mummy of a woman called Isaious, 1st century C.E., human remains, linen, plaster, and gold leaf, Manchester Museum, © 2019 Manchester Museum / Michael Pollard Photographer

Egyptian, from Lahun, Mummy mask for a woman, circa 50 C.E., gilded and painted cartonnage JULIA THORNE 2020/TETISHERI MANCHESTER MUSEUM, UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER

Egyptian, from Hawara, Mummy mask, 332–30 B.C.E., plaster and linen, Manchester Museum. This is one of a series of mold-made masks, built up from layers of linen and plaster. Michael Pollard 2020 Manchester Museum

Egyptian, possibly from Hawara, Portrait of a woman, circa 138–160 C.E., wood, Manchester Museum, © 2019 Manchester Museum/Michael Pollard Photographer

Gilded Mummy Covering, 300 BCE, Linen with gesso, paint, and gilding, now in the collections of the North Carolina Museum of Art, image courtesy of the museum

Greco-Roman Plaster Portrait Head from a coffin, 100-150 CE, now in the collections of the North Carolina Museum of Art, image courtesy of the museum

Aphrodite-Isis, copper alloy, 1st-2nd century CE, now in the collections of the North Carolina Museum of Art, image courtesy of the museum

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