The Valley of the Thracian Kings is something I had never heard of before I read a recent report. I thought many of my readers might be as interested as I was, so it is the subject of this blog.
Until recently this picturesque valley between the ranges of the Stara Planina and the Sredna Gora mountains in Bulgaria was known better known as the Valley of the Roses, as it is the centre of production of the “Rose Attar”.
Another name for the area has been given recently, and has stuck in the public consciousness, provoking images of hidden treasures and histories untold – the Valley of Thracian Kings. The term was coined, obviously to encourage parallels with the Valley of Kings in Egypt, by Dr Georgi Kitov, the archaeologist who worked in the area in the 1990s and 2000s and made some of the most fascinating discoveries there.
The region, he argued, had been part of the mighty Odrysian kingdom, and the preferred burial ground for the Odrysian nobility for centuries. This practice resulted in the creation of about 1,300 “Tumuli”, or burial mounds – only about 300 have been archaeologically researched. The biggest concentration of monumental tombs under mounds is between the modern town of Shipka and the village of Kran.
Among so many mounds and tombs, one stands out: the Kazanlashka Grobnitsa, or the Kazanlak Tomb. It was discovered completely by chance. On 19 April 1944, a group of Bulgarian soldiers were digging a trench in a 40- metre-wide massive mound, when their shovels struck a stone wall. The men broke the wall and found themselves in a short corridor. A stone door lay broken on the ground, frescoes of fighting men covered the walls.
The soldiers immediately called the director of the local history museum, Dimitar Chorbadzhiev, who, under the pen name Chudomir, happens to be one of Bulgaria’s most beloved short-story writers. He recognised the importance of the discovery, and called for professional archaeologists.
The painted corridor led the researchers into a claustrophobic chamber – 2.65 m wide and 3.25 m in height – with a beehive-shaped cupola covered with even more impressive frescoes, one of the best-preserved examples of ancient European painting ever discovered.
In the burial chamber, three chariots chase each other, in an eternal circle, around the keystone of the cupola, but it is the main freeze in the burial chamber that makes the Kazanlak Tomb a must-see place. In it, a man and a woman feast, surrounded by musicians, servants and their beautiful purebred horses. Herodotus wrote that some Thracian tribes celebrated the deaths of their loved ones, as they believed that dying frees men from the sorrows of earthly life, taking them to a better place. However, the beautiful face of the veiled woman, who is sitting next to the wreathed man, her white hand gently resting in his, is unmistakably sad.
In 1979 UNESCO put the Kazanlak Tomb on its World Heritage List. Due to preservation issues, the tomb is currently closed to the public – visitors can view an exact replica, a few steps from the original.
Built in the 4th Century BC, the Ostrusha Tomb near Shipka preserves another small but moving example of fresco painting – on the ceiling is the face of a fine lady with white skin and red hair. The tomb’s architecture is also remarkable. It was hewn out of a monolithic stone block which was covered with another monolith, carved in the shape of a Greek temple’s roof.
The Kazanlak and the Otsrusha tombs showed that their interiors had been robbed – by ancient or modern treasure-hunters. But in 2004 the team of Dr Kitov working in the Valley of the Thracian Kings literally struck gold – twice.
In August the team excavated a ostensibly uninteresting stone grave in the Svetitsata Mound, near Shipka, which belonged to a Thracian aristocrat from the second half of the 5th Century. Despite the unpromising appearance, the grave’s contents were amazing: a collection of top-quality weapons and expensive imported vessels, and a 673-gram gold mask of a bearded man. The skeleton of the deceased was there, though some of the bones were missing, suggesting posthumous ritual dismembering.
The words “To Seuthes,” written in one of the silver vessels, and on a bronze helmet found there, have led some historians to conjecture that the tomb belonged to King Seuthes III (ca. 330-300/295 BC). Others, however, dispute the identification, as Seuthes had died decades before the burial took place – around 280 BC or a while later. But the most astonishing find from Golyama Kosmatka was discovered buried in the mound, not in the tomb itself. It was a beautiful bronze head of a man with an unruly beard and strong features. The head was probably an effigy of the deceased, and was cut from an actual, life-size statue: another dismemberment, this time symbolic.
It’s easy to assume that the Thracians were so preoccupied with death that they didn’t care about the living. This wasn’t so, and the proof is the city of Seuthopolis. The city was built after 315 BC, on the whim of King Seuthes III.
The city was discovered in 1948 in the most distressing of circumstances – during the research of an area which had to go under the waters of the Georgi Dimitrov Dam. The scientific importance of the discovery was incredible, but the Communist government wanted to industrialise the country as quickly as possible, and water supply was seen as more important than preservation of history. Archaeologists were given six years for excavations – the time of the construction of the reservoir – and they did all they could before the waters finally rushed over, drowning the only design-built Thracian city preserved in Bulgaria.
Seuthopolis remains on the bottom of the dam’s reservoir (now called Koprinka). Some of its finds are exhibited at the Iskra Museum of History at Kazanlak.
There has been a bold plan for rediscovering the city and turning it into an attraction, but it never took off. (I assume those plans involve draining the reservoir, but the article didn’t mention that).
As I said at the beginning, a fascinating story that I thought I would share as yet another contribution to your “Bucket List”.
