Gonur Tepe, Turkmenistan

What an amazing site!  I stumbled across this at Art Daily  article a few days ago.  Unfortunately, if you read there you know how that site operates -- I never know the exact date an item was posted!  None of the artifacts mentioned in passing in the article were featured in the article.  Note: These ruins are part of the Bactria-Margiana civilization, during which one or two experienced "amateurs" (not Goddesschess folks but we met a few) in the history of ancient games think it's possible that through a synthesis of various old games a form of the new game we call chess today, first arose. 

Take a moment and think about it.  Doesn't she look like a chess piece...a woman who is also shaped in the form of a "throne" -- her type of distinctive figurine is called a "Bactrian princess:"

This particular "Bactrian princess", above, is from the Lourve Museum website.  I have seen other surviving examples where the flat chair-like surface is much more pronounced.

After being uncovered by Soviet archaeologists, ancient mysteries revealed in Turkmen desert sands

By: Igor Sasin

MARY (AFP).- Over four millennia ago, the fortress town of Gonur-Tepe might have been a rare advanced civilisation before it was buried for centuries under the dust of the Kara Kum desert in remote western Turkmenistan.

After being uncovered by Soviet archaeologists in the last century, Gonur-Tepe, once home to thousands of people and the centre of a thriving region, is gradually revealing its mysteries with new artifacts being uncovered on every summer dig.

The scale of the huge complex which spans some 30 hectares can only be properly appreciated from the air, from where the former buildings look like a maze in the desert surrounded by vast walls.

 

Aerial view of Gonur Tepe, Turkmenistan, from Stan Tours.

Just 50 kilometres (30 miles) from the celebrated ancient city of Merv outside the modern city of Mary, the ruins of Gonur-Tepe are an indication of the archeological riches of Turkmenistan, one of the most isolated countries in the world.

Around 2,000 BC, Gonur-Tepe was the main settlement of the Margush or Margiana region that was home to one of the most sophisticated, but little-known Bronze Age civilisations.

The site -- which until the last century was covered by desert and scrub -- was uncovered in Soviet times by the celebrated archeologist Viktor Sarianidi who, at the age of 84, is about to spend another summer working on the site.

"I remember so well my joy when I first encountered this archaeological Klondike. A sensation right under your feet," the Russian professor told AFP.

Every digging season at Gonur-Tepe yields new discoveries showing the quality of the craftsmanship of the Bronze Age artisans in the town which at the time would likely have been home to thousands of residents.

The town's craftsmen could mould metal, make silver and gold trinkets, create materials for cult worship and carve bone and stone.

"It's amazing to what extent the people possessed advanced techniques. The craftsmen learned how to change the form of natural stone at a high temperature and then glazed it so that it was preserved," said archeologist Nadezhda Dubova.

"This year, Gonur has given us another surprise, a fantastic mosaic," she said, noting that such an object pre-dated the standard era of mosaic-making in Greek and Roman antiquity.


-- 'Anticipating Brunelleschi' --


The ruins of Gonur-Tepe are the centrepiece of a network of towns and settlements in the delta region of the river Morghab that flows through Turkmenistan from its source in Afghanistan.

Gonur-Tepe is a three-hour drive from the provincial centre of Mary -- two hours along a bumpy asphalt road that passes former collective farms that have now fallen into disuse, and then another hour-long slog through the desert scrub.

Mary, 380 kilometres from the capital Ashgabat, is a typical Turkmen provincial city, home to 200,000 people and largely built in the Soviet style with a railway connection and low-rise apartment buildings.

Some 30 kilometres (19 miles) outside Mary lies the other great glory of the region -- the great ruined city of Merv, whose importance goes back to the time of the Achaemenid Persians and reached a peak under Turkic rule in the 12th century AD.

Merv went into terminal decline after it was sacked by the Mongols in 1221 in a deadly conquest that left tens of thousands dead. Its ruins are as deserted as those of Gonur-Tepe.

Its greatest treasure is the still preserved mausoleum of the Seljuk Sultan Sanjar under whose rule Merv was a city of 200,000 people and briefly one of the most heavily populated settlements in the world.

The mausoleum, which is crowned by a cupola with a diameter of over 17 metres, was revolutionary in its design, Turkmen architectural historian Ruslan Muradov told AFP.

The design of the dome "anticipates by 300 years the ideas of the great Renaissance architect Filippo Brunelleschi" who designed the great dome of the cathedral in Florence, he said.

Unlike the ruins of Gonur-Tepe, ancient Merv was excavated as far back as Tsarist times when today's Turkmenistan was a far-flung outpost of the Russian Empire. It has been listed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO since 1999.

Archaeologists have only just begun to scratch the surface of the huge riches of the Mary region, said Viktor Turik, a historian who works at the Mary history museum.

"In the region there are 354 archeological monuments, 95 percent of which have, until now, not been studied by experts," he said.

Turkmenistan remains one of the most isolated countries in the world but still sees a trickle of foreign tourists every year, mostly on organised special interest tours.

Mary has just three hotels although President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has recently ordered the construction of a new 350-bed hotel in an apparent bid to boost tourism.

Meanwhile the question remains about what to do with the extraordinary silver and gold artefacts that are being unearthed in the region but which need painstaking restoration and conservation.

An employee of Turkmenistan's national heritage department said a joint project had been mooted with the antiquities department of the Louvre in Paris, but had fallen through.

"Many unique discoveries which are like nothing in the world are waiting their moments in the storage departments of Turkmen museums," said the employee who asked not to be named.



© 1994-2013 Agence France-Presse

Pre-Incan Wari Female "Mummy" Excavated

Check this out. Notice the interesting burial position of this female - she was buried in a sitting position. And - well, you'll see... From Reuters Tue Aug 26, 2008 7:08pm EDT Pre-Incan female Wari mummy unearthed in Peru By Dana Ford LIMA (Reuters) - Archeologists working at Peru's Huaca Pucllana ruins pulled a mummy from a tomb on Tuesday, thought to be from the ancient Wari culture that flourished before the Incas. Besides the female mummy, the tomb contained the remains of two other adults and a child. It is the first intact Wari burial site discovered at Huaca Pucllana in the capital Lima, and researchers believe it dates from about 700 AD. "We'd discovered other tombs before," said Isabel Flores, director of the ruins. "But they always had holes, or were damaged. Never had we found a whole tomb like this one -- intact," she said, standing on the ancient plaza, a huge partially excavated mound of rocks, bricks and dirt. Workers wrapped the female mummy in tissue paper before lifting it onto a flat wood board. They exposed her face, revealing two big, bright blue orbs in her eye sockets. They extracted the other adult mummies, which were also whole, earlier in the week. "Her face startled me at first," said Miguel Angel, 19, a worker at Huaca Pucllana who helped unearth the tomb. "I wasn't expecting to find anything like that," he said. It was not clear what the fake eyes were made of. The Wari people lived and ruled in what is now Peru for some 500 years, between 600 AD and 1100 AD. Their capital was near modern-day Ayacucho, in the Andes, but they traveled widely and are known for their extensive network of roads. Flores said about 30 tombs have been found at Huaca Pucllana, surrounded by Lima's busy streets. When in good condition, Wari tombs can be identified by the ceramic and textile offerings placed around the dead. Small children were often sacrificed and it is common to find their bodies alongside adult ones. The child discovered with the adult mummies at Huaca Pucllana was likely sacrificed. The discovery at Huaca Pucllana confirms the Wari people buried their dead in what is now Lima and offers a more complete picture of how burials were done. "This enriches Lima's story," Flores said. (Editing by Fiona Ortiz and Kieran Murray

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Aside from the bug-eyes - how interesting! - made out of a blue mineral??? Wonder what they'll find. Well, anyway, compare this sitting-down image of a Peruvian mummy to this much OLDER image of a "Bactrian princess." Note that the Peruvian mummy seems to have been buried encased in some kind of clay-like shroud (baked???) that has stayed intact all these years. That, in and of itself, is absolutely amazing. As far as I have been able to determine, the earliest "Islamically correct" images of a Wazir/Vizier/Mantri (in Europe, the Queen) chess piece was a figure slightly smaller than the "king" piece, but otherwise identical in all respects, depicted as a sort of anthrophomorphic throne. That's about the same time the Wari female may have been buried. The most interesting part of this puzzle is that the "Bactrian princess" figurines go back to at least 600 BCE - almost 1000 years before. I find the resemblance striking.