The Tomb of the Scythian Prince

Over 2,000 years ago, the steppes of Central Asia resounded to the gallop of notorious horsemen, the Scythians. They had neither towns nor palaces. The Scythians left only their tombs, tombly made of stones and frozen earth called kurgans, in which they were laid to rest with their treasures. Barbarians who haunt the realm of legend, or exceptional goldsmiths. Who were these fearsome warriors? What secret does the tomb of this mysterious prince, whose destiny scientists have come to unearth, still hold? How did he die? Who was he? What will these remains reveal about the fabulous saga of the lords of the steppes? Long before our time, bartering a world dominated by the Greeks, the Persians and the Chinese, stretched the Scythian kingdom from the Danube to the Yellow River, between east and west. Today, to the east of Kazakhstan, at the foot of the icy Altai Mountains, researchers have set out to explore the traces of civilization. Here, in the valley of the Bortarma, at an altitude of 1,200 meters, the team has set up camp, living like the nomadic horsemen, whose heritage they've come to explore. Over 40 French, Italian and Kazakh researchers have been working here for the past two months. The two mission leaders, Henri-Paul Francfort, researcher at the CNRS, and Zainul Asamachev, of the Kazakh Institute of Archaeology, have been preparing this expedition for four years. Together, they visited every tomb in the valley on foot, before choosing the kurgan situated in the coldest spot. This site, known to archaeologists for over a century, has never been explored by scientists. While the workers continue to clear the edges of the kurgan, the scientists, beneath their tent, are preparing for the opening of the sarcophagus, and their much-awaited encounter with its occupant. Today is going to be decisive. Then, we don't know exactly when, the pillagers dug an opening into the kurgan. Henri-Paul Francfort's guess is that the frozen soil preserved the body of this one-time prince, and that grave robbers have spared him. Finding the remains of a prince is important, it's one of the goals of the expedition. Today, thanks to laboratory analysis of organic matter, we can determine what his clothes were made of, the kind of food he ate, and the rituals he practiced. Beneath the kurgan, with the stone tumulus removed, the earth which has been thawing now for two months is suitable for digging. But the heat of summer approaches. The body, if it's still there, will not tolerate temperatures above 6°C. The chamber bears signs of pillaging. One of the sides of the sarcophagus was torn open. The wooden lid covering the tomb is removed and wrapped in plastic. It is left whole so as not to damage the original structure. Nothing must be left behind. Repeated pillaging allowed water to seep in. The sarcophagus is filled with mud. Sensitive to heat and dampness, has fragile biological evidence resisted the pillaging? An expert at excavating tombs, Eric, an anthropologist, is doubtful. It's hard to know, because the opening on the side could have been used to remove the body. So it's somewhat alarming. Given the scale of the pillaging, they perhaps wanted to pull the body out and rob it once it was outside. The immense kurgan, illustrated here using computer graphics, was 25 meters in diameter. It protected the burial chamber, located 6 meters beneath the step. Scientists reconstruct the pillaging, step by step. The pillagers first dug out a tunnel through the stone tumulus, wide enough so that it would not cave in. Once they reached the burial chamber, undoubtedly after several days of digging, they cleared their way through the bodies of several sacrificed horses, then used sledgehammers to tear down part of the wall and roof of the burial chamber. They were then able to sack the sepulchre and strip the corpse of its gold. Large kurgans were systematically pillaged. Thousands of priceless objects have consequently disappeared. The Scythian horsemen did not write. Their culture has been passed on to us by the Persians, the Chinese, and the Greeks. The writings of Greek historian Herodotus, who lived in the 4th century BC, have been the principal source for today's historians. It is a piecemeal view, which is undoubtedly a poor account of the reality of the Scythian peoples. In particular, that of the Sakas, a tribe from the east to which the Altai prince belonged. The Scythians, or the Sakas, and other related peoples, represented the archetype of the foreigner, of the outsider, those who did not live like us. They did not own a dwelling or land, they possessed livestock and did not farm the land. Their mores were seen as being extremely barbaric. The Altai expedition is out to establish facts, not legends. Will its findings shed new light on the incomplete puzzle of the Scythian culture? Under Eric's supervision, excavation of the sarcophagus has begun. This is bark, and this is wood. We can tell from the sound of the brush. It's either hair or horse mane. It's not easy to tell the difference because of the degree of decay. The amount of physical evidence of flesh and bone increases. It's an amalgam of cloth, felt and hair. The layers of material used to wrap the body were opened, torn away, and then pushed back, that's why it's stuck to the bottom. That day, a cloudless sky was suddenly overcast with rain and wind. June weather in the Altai Mountains is fickle. Of course it's not the first storm in 2,500 years, but this one is falling upon a frozen tomb that is now exposed to the elements. What ice has preserved for 20 centuries, heat and water can quickly destroy. If the temperature rises, the horse remains will decompose, generating an odor of putrefaction. Hidden under a layer of birch bark, the animal's bodies lie piled, deformed and intertwined in funereal communion. Jorge, a restorer, can hardly believe his eyes. Extremely rare objects, vestiges of Saka art, miraculously preserved in the frozen earth of the Altai Mountains. It looks like there's something in the mouth. In two pieces, it's very fragile, it's like a sponge. That should fit. That's it. Some objects still bear the gold leaf which originally covered them. Ha ha ha! It's a series of pendants around the horse's skull. Small gilded cats. You can see clearly the horse's skin. A horse with beige hair. This part of the tomb has apparently not been pillaged. The pieces are intact, in place on the bodies. A true stroke of luck. When the team realizes the magnitude of its discovery, night has almost fallen. I don't know if it's part of the object, but... The objects, which adorn the horse's harness when they were sacrificed, begin to reveal the scene that unfolded here 2,000 years ago. The dig will go on late into the night. The pieces are fragile and require lengthy and meticulous handling. That's perfect. The slow pace of archaeology must be reconciled with the imperatives of biology. Researchers spend their time at camp in the tomb or outdoors like the nomads of the bygone age. They awaken to the sound of the horses, which each morning cross the steppe to bring the workers to the site. Every day, in their quest for truth, researchers blend into the beauty of the landscape. Seven in the morning, and the June sun is already high. Each object must be carefully recorded before being studied later in the laboratory. Drawings are made of the objects found on the previous day. The quality of subsequent analysis will depend on the quality of the work done at the site. The work carried out at the site has already revealed the exceptional talent of Saka craftsmen, far from the sound and fury of their legendary barbarity. The clean pieces begin to reveal an extremely refined and complex universe peopled with strange figures. Once the pieces of the harness have been pieced together, what will they tell us? The harness is crucial to understanding these societies, how they functioned, and their structure. The Scythians, the Sakas, were horse breeders, outstanding horsemen. Altai harnesses were extremely ornate. The saddles were carefully gilded, as were garlands of pendants, bridles, crops. And later, in the lab, by analyzing how the objects were arranged, we hope to reconstruct what we're already beginning to see, a theme for each horse. The sarcophagus has yet to reveal anything except this large plank fallen from the roof of the burial chamber, proof of violent pillaging. Eric still hopes to find a body in this massive dried mud. He hopes to free the remains of the Saka prince from the shadows, and then give them over for scientific investigation. I'm on the left shoulder bone. So there is a Saka in this tomb, pushed back in and hidden by the pillagers. The team must alter nothing of these fragile bones miraculously left in their original place. They must remain calm and collected before this dizzying discovery. Gradually, an entire skeleton emerges from the depths of the earth. A skeleton entirely stripped of its gold, but still priceless to scientists. Here we can see this headrest, which may have been originally covered with fabric. The head has slid off the headrest. Either from the pillagers, or during decomposition, we can see that the head slid off. What did he look like? A few hairs, which may have been a mustache. Here we can see the remains of braids, another complex hairstyle. Right, we'll take away the plastic up there. So who was this Altai prince? How famous was he? His wanderings must have taken him far from the valley where he was buried. In the princely necropolis of the Bortama, there are at least 15 tombs. With his herd of decorated horses, the prince was laid to rest in the largest kurgan, proof of his importance. The kurgan reveals that a large number of horses were sacrificed. Researchers have counted 13 animals, all richly harnessed. These pendants, just unearthed, indicate the presence of a saddle. Do you see? A sort of circle and eye. Researchers had reason to believe that these step-dwellers were far superior riders than their sedentary contemporaries. These artifacts reveal the origins of Equestrian art. It's probably one of the oldest saddles ever found anywhere in the world, with hoops and a pommel, and padding and embroidery. If one goes by written sources, saddles didn't appear until 2,000 years ago, in other words, much later. At the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans, saddles didn't exist, unless they rode bareback or on a simple blanket. These improvements in saddle comfort are due to the peoples of the steppe. Every evening, Kazakh workers leave the Bortamar camp to return to their nearby village. Will they tell their children what they learned today about their nomadic ancestors? Domesticated for the first time on these vast prairies, about a thousand years BC, the horse has always played a central role in the life of the steppes. Descythians learned to master this fiery animal. In turn, horses changed our lives, driving them on to explore new and distant territories. The horse also made them fearsome warriors. They were an inspiration to the Chinese cavalry. The Persian and Greek armies recruited them. If we span the history of nomadism, the horse stands out as man's greatest conquest. The horse is represented in carvings. Some of the carvings are of strange creatures, ridden as if they were horses, but bearing large ibex-like horns. This horn, carved in wood and decorated with gold leaf, has given a new dimension to the horned animals carved in the rocks. It was fixed onto the skull of one of the horses found in the prince's tomb. Could it be the vestige of a society that worshipped nature rather than gods, unlike the ancient Greeks? We are probably dealing with rites and the notion of passing into another world, the land of the dead, the supernatural world of beyond, via the intermediary of an animal, but it had to be a wild animal. The best way of mounting a wild animal without having to domesticate an ibex or an elk is to render a horse wild through ritual. Digging on site to extract the artifacts used to adorn the horses is out of the question. They could be damaged by the heat. Scientists have developed a new method, a technique called excavation in frozen blocks. Forty or so blocks must be cut out to extract the remains of the thirteen harnessed horses, identified, catalogued and carefully wrapped. They'll be put in a refrigerator truck so that temperatures remain constant. All of the objects found in the tomb must be preserved in the state in which they were found. Thanks to the freezing, the archaeologists will have the time to carry out the necessary analysis to answer this tomb's many riddles. Henri Paul? There are two, two cadavers. Two? What part of the second one can you see? I don't know. We must make sure that there are two, see which sex they are, and if they were buried at the same time. I don't think we'll see very much of the second, but the confirmation is already quite extraordinary. Here we have a leg, a kneecap here, another one here, and there, another foot. One hand there above the face, another hand there, and another hand over here. One corpse there, and another here. That seems most likely. We're feeling our way through, but the scenario seems more complex than at first. Researchers are familiar with double burials, but what does this one mean? Two people in the same tomb. By observing the relative disposition of the two skeletons and the layers of earth separating them, Eric manages to establish a chronology of events. The second body was buried after the pillaging. The severely damaged skeleton is unlikely to be complete, yet examination of the pelvis reveals it to be a woman. Another Altai Kurgan, discovered in 1980, also contained a woman, tattooed like the Scythian chiefs described by Herodotus. It seems to prove that the status of woman was much higher than that of sedentary princesses cloistered in their palaces. Warrior? Priestess? Queen? Who was this mysterious intruder come to join the prince in eternal sleep? The prince, on the other hand, is well preserved and will be studied in the lab. For the researchers, all of the artifacts have been collected. In the refrigerated convoy, they will take the fragile cargo on one last voyage far from the Altai mountains. The second phase of the mission is analysis of the horse's remains as well as those of the prince and his mysterious guest. The cold and mist have taken over the landscape, evoking a fabulous imaginary world of griffons and horned horses, a world that inspired the Greeks. Ulysses seeking the gates of hell or Jason in search of the golden fleece guarded by dragons. Two thousand years later, on a wide silent steppe, an Altai prince is going to guide scientists helping them to reconstruct the world as he knew it. Part of the investigation will be carried out in the suburbs of Almaty, the capital of Kazakhstan. Here, in the laboratories of the National Institute of Archaeology, it is large enough to accommodate the entire team. It has been specially equipped to receive and study the artifacts and remains brought back from the Altai last summer. Sebastien is an archaeozoologist. For a week now he's been trying to untangle the remains of the animals among the blocks cut out of the tomb. That came from there. The vertebrae are out of line. This block, for instance, contains the pieces of several horses. Each one must be identified before anything can be removed. What's unusual about this one is that the forehead comes here. In fact, their foreheads are together. From this puzzle of flesh and bone, Kazakh and French scientists hope to reconstruct the chamber the horses were found in. The time has come to examine the animals themselves, especially their teeth, which will provide information concerning the health of the horses at the time they died. Having extracted all of the bones, cleaned and classified them one by one, the researchers can now compare morphological features. Patiently, Sebastien gathers clues as to the horses' appearance before their sacrifice. Little by little, he pieces together the animals. Overall we know we're dealing with animals measuring 1 meter 35, 1 meter 40, very close to what we find today on the northern steppes of Kazakhstan. All the animals are male, stallions. Other clues tell us that what we have here are old animals. Analysis of tooth wear clearly shows that the animals were between 16 and 20 years old. And that's very important because combined with the sex and size of the animal, it gives us a good idea of the criteria used to choose the animals to be slaughtered. The analysis of the skeletons also reveals that these horses were mounted all their lives. The Sakas chose to sacrifice animals which had become useless to the group, even in honor of a prince. A scientific observation which confirms the importance of horses in the steppe economy. So, at the moment of the funeral ceremony, they were slaughtered with a blow to the head using a well-known tool, a kind of pick, which fractures the bone and kills the animal on the spot. What specialists are just beginning to discover, the petroglyphs of Kazakhstan have been recounting for thousands of years. In the laboratory, the time has come at last to analyze the princely remains. Numerous Kazakh scientists have come to have the privilege of observing, studying and taking samples. For them, this figure is more than just an object of study. He is their ancestor, the cornerstone of their identity, a Saka, a contemporary of the Golden Man. The Golden Man is a national figure of Kazakhstan. For this young nation, he is a hero of antiquity. This warrior wore a fabulous costume composed of hundreds of objects sculpted in gold. The themes represented the rich art of the steppes. He was discovered in 1971 near Alma-Ata, now the Kazakh capital, far from the princely Altai mountains. By comparing artifacts taken from different locations on the steppe, scientists hope to map the spread of the Scythian civilization. What a strange image! A civilization observed through its dead. What will the autopsy reveal about the life of the Saka and their burial rites? There, look. What's that? Like forensic scientists working on a murder victim, researchers are attempting to make a subject who died over 2,000 years ago speak. Here is an incision at the base of the larynx so one could presume that it was open from the base of the larynx. It's open there and there. It's fractured as if they had leaned on the sternum at the same time, like this. So what we have is evidence of an opening for embalming. Yes, because the opening is complete. It can't be a blow. It's hard to imagine a blow going that deep. If the person was alive, he would step back. It will take researchers several days to understand the details of the ritual. There are marks on all the bones made while the flesh was being removed. These marks show that the thorax as well as the abdomen were opened. All the organs and most of the muscles were removed with a very thin knife. Other marks on the bones of the hand show that the skin was removed and perhaps sewn back on. We found three pieces of fine string on either side of the spinal column. Removal of the flesh has already been observed on other Altai mummies. It was a way of preserving the body. In his histories, Herodotus tells how the remains of a Scythian king were transported for several months from one tribe to another before being buried. Block number 9 of the horse pit. An amalgam of animal remains and pieces of artifacts that are buried in the flesh. The extraction of the pieces requires flawless skill. The slightest over-exertion of pressure and the pieces of wood can disintegrate. The initial location of each piece that was used to adorn the horses is carefully recorded before being removed. The same procedure is used for the pieces of gold leaf used over the artifacts. The extraction operations on block 9 alone lasted an entire day. These unearthed representations of animals are beginning to shed light on ancient Saka beliefs. The Saka used real animals, mythological figures, and imaginary creatures like this head of a horned lion. In its representation of nature, Saka animal art abounds with scenes of predatory behavior bearing witness to the violence of their environment. This small grimacing sphinx seems to reflect a universe full of terrifying and violent spirits. Ancient Saka art also expresses a will to stylize the world using perfect forms. The figures that are represented are no doubt part of Saka mythology which is now lost to us. After four days of close questioning, the dismembered skeleton of the Yaltai prince is about to give up another secret. Eric has managed to reconstruct the skull. What is most interesting is the cause of death. It was due to a blow with what a forensic scientist would call a blunt object. The blow was so violent that it caused these deformations in the skull. We can see how the shock wave traveled. This is a very fine incision around the lesion and it's where someone tried to cut into the bone, an operation called a trepanation. What's amazing is that we have these very fine traces and here something much cruder which shows that the operation was surely halted following the death of the subject. The type of cruel and painful death that is depicted in Scythian art, a world in which life was filled with constant danger, warring tribes, internal quarreling, human sacrifice. The Scythians chose to depict their daily lives in sculpted gold, perhaps to make it more precious and extravagant. Herodotus tells how the body of the enemy was decapitated, scalped and transformed into a trophy. How the Scythians fraternized by drinking wine mixed with both bloods. The symmetry used for the harness of one of the old stallions sacrificed in the Altai is almost complete. Only a few more details need adjusting. At last we can imagine the entire animal covered in its ornaments. Here we have a horse Ibex with its horns and all of the artifacts that were part of its harness. A garland of pendants, an elaborate bit, all decorated using a single theme. In fact, the entire cortege bore symbols of the untamed world. Horse-cat, horse-elk, horse-ram, horse-griffon. All the real or mythical animals of the Sakai universe escorted the deceased on his ultimate voyage to the beyond. Scientific observation has widened our knowledge of the beliefs of the Scythians. The material gathered last summer in the Altai is now part of a vast reservoir of images still largely unexplored. So we've got a head turned to the right and left, symmetrical. By deciphering the style of the objects, Henri-Paul Francfort is beginning to confirm the existence of links between these artifacts and more ancient ones found thousands of kilometers away. This first pendant shows a kind of dragon bearing a serpent's tail. And also at the rear of the skull, the beginnings of a curling horn. Typical motifs of Middle Eastern art which could only have been brought to the Altai Plains at the time of the Achaemenids by the Persians. In Altai art we also find felines whose style is more Chinese. The strict symmetry and the spiral inside the ear they're quite close to certain bronzes of the warrior kingdoms of central China who we know had contact with the Scythians of the Altai. Bordering China and Persia, the Altai takes us back to a world in movement filled with exchanges with the so-called civilized peoples of that time. These discoveries are perhaps only part of the art of a much vaster empire of a flourishing artistic community whose traces we can follow from Mongolia to the Danube, from the Black Sea to Siberia. Saint Petersburg. For over two centuries here at the Hermitage Museum on the banks of the Neva, the vast puzzle of the Scythian peoples and the art of the steppes has been coming together. Henri-Paul Francfort has come to compare his discoveries with the treasures housed in the Hermitage. In particular, artifacts from other frozen Kurgans located in the northern Altai in the Pazurig Valley. Sacrificed horses, mummies preserved in the ice and once more, pastiche horns whose ornamentation bears a clear resemblance to the horns found in the tomb of the prince. Here too we can see the same contrasts. Here the French researcher finds traces of the same civilization with similar rites and beliefs. The upper part, and there are a few traces on the other side. Perfectly preserved artifacts from the Pazurig Valley include treasures such as this fabulous fell tapestry with a representation of a goddess facing her champion as he makes his offering. Or this saddle pad which shows the bright colors of a world filled with predators. Hidden away in the museum attic are other pieces discovered in the Pazurig Valley. Henri-Paul Francfort had seen them in books but never up close. He had never touched them with his hands. The pieces in St. Petersburg were placed on stallions in the same way as those of the Altai and the styles are similar. It indeed confirms our hunts that there was an artistic community that flourished throughout the Altai. Here we're dealing with older Kurgans. We had royal ones this time whereas ours was a prince. Yet in both cases the artists were highly skilled and used comparable materials. The Hermitage Museum has been collecting vestiges of Scythian civilization for two centuries. Tsar Peter I, a knowledgeable collector, ordered the Russian people to help save this treasure. Thanks to the work of archaeologists little by little this fabulous collection of solid gold objects that escape pillage has come together. These artifacts bear witness to the cultural and artistic links of these scattered tribes. The same representation of armaments, clothing and of life filled with combat. The same themes of mythical animals such as the horned lion or the griffin. The same ways of hammering, chiseling, filigreeing and encrusting precious metal. These pieces, rarely removed from their cases, are solid gold belt buckles discovered in the royal Kurgans of Siberia. For Henri Paul Francfort they are proof that the regions share the same style of art. Predators are represented on this Siberian belt buckle, on this sword found on the banks of the Black Sea and on this sculpted wooden piece found in the tomb of the Sakha prince. Three variations of the same style and themes. The discoveries made by French archaeologists have now found their place in the immense puzzle of Scythian culture, thus confirming the striking unity of a nomadic art which binds Europe and Asia into a single vast artistic community. Back in France, thousands of kilometers from the Altai, samples taken from the prince's remains show that he died in 294 BC. In Eric's anthropology lab, Altai research is part of an important program that studies the origin and history of illnesses. Analysis reveal the presence of parasites, echinostomes, typical of hot and humid countries. They show that Scythian nomads covered huge distances, hundreds even thousands of kilometers. Meanwhile, these same parasites were found in the remains of the mysterious woman found buried by the prince's side. Were the two individuals related? We carried out DNA analysis which showed a genetic correlation between the subjects. We observed that there was a 50% correlation which is the type of correlation that exists between a mother and son or a father and daughter. When taken into account the age of the two subjects, 30 to 40 years old for one, 60 to 70 for the other, and the time between the two burials, which we determined during the dig as being between 15 and 25 years, the most likely hypothesis is that the son was buried first and that 15 to 30 years later his mother, who was by that time elderly, was buried in the same tomb. The burial ceremony will take place here, around the skirgon, built in honor of the prince. Perhaps there will be a moment of violent and euphoric trance, during which the warriors will become intoxicated by the vapors of cannabis seeds flung on hot stones. The ceremony will perhaps last several weeks. During that time, animals will be sacrificed. Here, 13 horses harnessed in gold and laid out in two layers, one on top of the other, their heads turned towards the east. The prince is wearing his jewelry, his weapons, and other offerings are placed in the tomb. They will eventually be stolen by pillagers. The burial will perhaps be commemorated with human sacrifice for years to come, a series of discoveries that awakens the past and raises new questions, in an endless quest for truth in the great saga of humanity.