a guide to thracian bulgaria extract

8/19/2019 A Guide to Thracian Bulgaria Extract

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Dimana Trankova

THRACIA

Front cover: Sunrise over Harmankaya rock shrine, in the Rhodope, 1st Millennium BC

Title page: Phiale from the Panagyurishte Treasure, 4th Century BC

ISBN: 978-619-90319-2-6

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may be reproduced,stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system,or transmitted in any form

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consent of the publisher.

Homer's The Iliad quoted from the English translation of A. T. Murray, Cambridge,

MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1924.

The Histories by Herodotus are quoted from the English translation of A. D. Godley,

Harvard University Press, 1920.

The publication of this book is supported by the America for BulgariaFoundation. The statements and opinions expressed herein are thoseof the authors and do not necessarily reect the opinion of the America for Bulgaria Foundation and its partners.

A GUIDE TO THRACIAN BULGARIA

by Dimana Trankova, Miglena Vasileva, Anthony Georgieff

© Dimana Trankova (text)

© Miglena Vasileva (text)

© Anthony Georgieff (photography)

Subedit ed by Vassil Yovchev

Edited by Anthony Georgieff

Graphic design by Gergana Shkodrova

Printed by Janet-45 Print & Publishing, Plovdiv

© FSI Foundation, 2015

First published in July, 2015


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Begliktash megalithic sanctuary, near Primorsko


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About 4,000 years ago the lands of modern

Bulgaria were inhabited by people who built

fortications and cities, buried their dead

in monumental tombs, drank wine from

gold and silver cups , and warred, traded and

did politics with the ancient Greeks and

Romans, with the Persians, the Scythians and

the ancient Macedonians.

These people were the Thracians.

Today their name is barely known to

anyone outside southeastern E urope. The

Thracians built for eternity – especially tombs

and shrines – but they lived in the moment

and, underestimating the importance of

writing down their deeds, they left next to

nothing about their history, faith and beliefs.

And so, bar the fascinating sites and treasuresthey created, the life of the Thracians remains

more or less a mystery.

What we know for sure is that the

Thracians are Indo-Europeans and began to

emerge as a singular ethnic group around

the middle of the 2nd Millennium BC.

Did these people form gradually, over

millennia, from the oldest, Neolithic inhabitants

of southeastern Europe? Or descended from

newcomers who changed the population in

the region during the transition between the

Chalcolithic and the Bronze ages, in the rst

half of the 4th Millennium BC? These questions

so far h ave no denitive answer.

The ancient Greeks, who produced the

most extensive historical source about their

neighbours the Thracians, called Thraike or

Thrake the lands to the northeast of their

own territories. The people who lived there

were respectively called Thracians.

There are several theories about what

the name Thracian means. It could be the

Greek form of a local ethnonym, possibly

connected with ancient Troy and the Trojans.

We know from Homer, who created therst written source of Thracians' existence,

that the Thracians sided with Troy during the

infamous 10-year war. Their kings Rhesus,

Peiros and Acamas fought with the Greeks,

and Rhesus was famed for his beautiful

white horses.

Another theory claims that o riginally

Thracian meant "brave" or "courageous", but

later switched to mean "wild" and "s avage."

According to an ancient story, Thrace, the

land of the Thracians, bore the name of a

nymph called Thrake, a powerful s orceress

who would use her knowledge of herbs to

heal and harm, at her whim.

The Thracians inhabited a vast area

between the Carpathian mountains, the Black

Sea and the Aegean Sea with the islands of

Thassos and Samothrace, and the courses of

the Struma and Morava rivers. Today these

lands are divided between Bulgaria, northern

Greece, European Turkey, southern Romania

and parts of Serbia and Macedonia. The core

of the Thracian lands is in Bulgaria.

The Th racians were famously disunited

politically. They lived in numerous tribes –the accounts vary between 22 and 80 – and

each of these groups had its own nobility

and rulers. Among this multitude, the tribes

of the Odrysians, the Bessi, the Tribali and

the Getae have left the most signicant

historical and archaeological record.

The lands of the Thracians were rich in

natural resources. The dense woods gave

Who Were the Thracians?

them timber and game; copper, iron, gold

and silver mines dotted the mountains.

Healing mineral water springs lured the

Thracians to settle around, and the fertile

soil nurtured the famed local wheat, horses

and vines from which the Thracians made

strong wine.

On the verge of the 2nd and the 1st

millennia BC, the Thracians went through

a crucial change of technolog y. Bronze was

replaced by iron as the metal for tools and

weapons. The new material made ploughing

the land and cutting wood easier, faster

and more productive, and the generally

self-sufcient Thracian society found itself

with more to sell on the market. The new

weapons were better for killing people aswell, and as the Thracian aristocrats saw

hunting, war and plundering to be the s ole

activities worthy of men like themselves,

they became richer.

Iron changed culture too, spearheading

the building of megaliths. In this period, the

Thracians created a signicant number of

dolmens, rock tombs and rock niches, and

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of Thracian sites: megaliths, monumental

tombs, cities, fortresses. These lands were

also closer to the Greek ones, and would be

inuenced by the ancient Greek civilisation.

At the end of the 6th and during the early

5th centuries BC, this territory became the

cradle of the rst and the biggest political

entity the Thracians ever created.

It was the Odrysian kingdom of King

Teres I, a man who according to some

sources lived to 92 years of age, led

aggressive foreign policy, yet boasted that

when he wasn't on a hunt or at war, he

would be indistinguishable in appearance

from his own stablemen.

The history of the Odrysian kingdom

is better known, thanks to Thucydides, thegreat historian of the 5th Century BC.

In the 5th and 4th centuries BC, the

Odrysian kingdom was a prominent actor

in international politics, signing treaties and

waging wars with Athens and the Kingdom

of Macedonia. The Odrysian kingdom

experienced its heyday in the 4th Century

BC, under the kings Sitalces and Seuthes I,

and spread far to the s outheast, southwest

and northeast of the Balkans. It was so

strong that even the Greek colonies on the

Aegean coast paid it tributes.

The game changed, however, in the

mid-4th Century BC. Both King Philip II of

Macedon and his son, Alexander the Great,

invaded Thrace. Their power didn't last

long, but had strong effects on the local

economy, urban planning and culture. A

number of cities, for example, were founded

on the s ites of earlier Thracian settlements,

the most famous of them is Philippopolis

(modern Plovdiv), named after Philip II.

The death of Alexander the Great, in 323

BC, brought about the end of his empire,

which fell apart in several chunks. Thracewas given to Lysimachus, one of Alexander's

generals, but the change was seen by the

Thracians as an opportunity for independence.

Lysimachus tried, in vain, to secure his position

in the eastern Balkans. In this period Thrace

also drifted into the cosmopolitan Hellenistic

world, where, just like today, people, goods,

fashions and ideas moved freely.

In Thrace, a number of independent

kingdoms sprang, and urbanisation was on

the rise. The graves became richer, lled with

luxurious and imported everyday objects,

weapons and jewellery, signalling the increased

wealth of the elite. Seuthes, the king of the

Odrysians, even built himself a capital in line

with the latest Hellenistic urban fashion – and

gave it his name, just like Alexander the Great

did with the cities he had founded.

At the beginning of the 3rd Century BC,

Celts arrived in Thrace and even created a

kingdom there. They had their capital at Tyle,

but its location remains unidentied. The

new settlers changed local culture, bringing

in elements typical for Central Europe, like

new fashions in jewellery and weaponry,mainly brooches, shields and swords.

After the mid-3rd Century BC, Thrace

fell spiralled into gradual decline, a trend

which continued until the 1st Century BC.

The Thracian tribes waged war against one

another, and fought with the Greek colonies

on the Black Sea coast. Thrace was also the

scene of brutal ghts between the heirs of

Alexander the Great, and although it was part

of the bigger Hellenistic civilisation, it was

still in its periphery and far from the glorious

centres of culture and trade in Egypt, the

Near East and the Mediterranean islands.

As a result, most of the Thracian cities

were abandoned and destroyed, and fewer

aristocrats could afford expensive graves and

tombs. The commoners had grown poorer.

The 1st Century BC became the time of

gradual subjugation by the Romans, who used

the tools of politics to achieve their goal –

from war to buying off local rulers, and from

diplomacy to pitting local efdoms against one

another. By 45 AD the whole of Thrace was

already under the Romans, divided into the

provinces of Macedonia, Moesia, Thrace andDacia. The Thracians lost their independence

and became the subjects of the great empire.

Some of the Thracians decided that

enough was enough, and ed to the

mountains, where they became itinerant

herdsmen and stuck to their traditions and

language. Others remained in the cities and

the villages in the plain, making the most of

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Helmet and complete set of armour found in the grave of

a Thracian aristocrat from the mid-4th Century near the

Malomirovo and Zlatinitsa villages. The deceased died at

the age of 18-20 years a nd was 1.84 m high. He was b uried

with the classical bowed Thracian sword called mahaira ,

177 bronze arrows, seven spears, a knitted breastplate

made of iron and a bronze helmet decorated with a three-

headed snake. A silver grieve with gilt and decoration of a

human face was also buried with him

The man from Malomirovo and Zlatinitsa was buried not

only with weapons but also with expensive objects like this

beautiful gold wreath, a gold ring picturing himself receiving

immortality from the Great Goddess, and a set of silver and

gilt drinking vessels. Dogs and horses were sacriced over

the grave of the man, a nd for several yea rs afterw ards, the

tumulus was the centr e of ritual activ ities


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Bronze situla , or bucket, decorated with heads of Sylen, and

a pair of silver bowls from the 4th Century BC were found

in the Malkata Mogila, or Small Mound, near Kazanlak.

The tomb where the deceased was buried was crude in

construction, but his personal belongings were nely made,

and included a gold ring and two sceptres with the form

of a double axe, a symbol of royal power for the ancient

Thracians

Inset : Bronze mirror from the second half of the 5th

Century BC from Kasabova Mogila, near Kazanlak. The

mound was a curious nd – instead of a single grave, four

groups of cremated human bones were discovered there.

Whether they belo nged to the same indi vidual, or to

different people, remains unsolved. During the 1877-1878

Russo-Turkish war, ve Russian soldiers who fell in the

defence of the nearby Shipka Pass, were buried in the

mound

Lavish gold decorations for horse harnesses found in

Golyama Kosmatka Tomb, near Kazanlak, from the

beginning of the 3rd Century BC

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Shrines and Deities


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Harmankaya

King Ivan Shishman (1371-1393) and Ivan Asen; a miniature

from the Ivan

rocks found in these shrines – vulva-shaped

caves and rocks resembling erect phalluses.

The ancient authors have preserved, in

their stories, the existence of a major and

widely respected Thracian sanctuary. The

Oracle of Dionysus resided in the lands of

the Bessi, and its priestesses predicted the

future with great accuracy, including the rise

to power of men like Alexander the Great

and the Roman emperor Augustus. The

whereabouts of the oracle, however, remain

a mystery.

The deities worshipped in Thracian

shrines are also difcult to identify. We know

from Greek sources the names of some of

the Thracian gods and goddesses – Zalmoxis,

Cotyto, Bendis – and are told that theThracians also venerated Dionysos, Artemis,

Apollo and Hermes. The anonymous

Thracian God Rider Ppopular is also popular,

mainly in votive tablets. But it is still unclear

whether these deities weren't in fact just

the multiple manifestations of the Great

Goddess and the Great God. If you explore

Thracian art, you will discover the recurring

Another obstacle for deciphering

Thracian history and religion is the

notorious disunity of this people – the

Thracian tribes were too numerous and

too independent, and there was hardly a

consistent religious system among them. In

all probability, each of the tribes had its own

set of beliefs, rituals and even deities.

Yet, the Thracians have left something

related to their religion which modern

historians could try to "read": their shrines

and the artefacts found in them. But doingso poses another danger. Enchanted by the

beauty of the Thracian shrines, historians

with hyperactive imagination often forget

to exercise healthy scientic scepticism

and start to "see" non-existent faces

of imaginary deities, "nuptial beds" and

"devil's throats" everywhere. The Thracian

religious sites that have suffered from such

overinterpretation are a legion, including

Tatul and Perperikon in the Rhodope, and

Begliktash in the Strandzha. Even natural

phenomena like the rocks at Buzovgrad are

now promoted in the media as the deeds of

the ancient Thracians. Any oddly shaped rock

all over the Rhodope may get advertised as

an actual, larger-than-life, sacred sculpture of

turtles, snakes and even sharks.

But the lack of written sources and the

difculties with dealing with actual sites does

not mean that historians are co mpletely ata loss as to the Thracian religious heritage.

In fact, Bulgaria is rich in marvellous and

interesting Thracian shrines, which are at

once a feat and a delight to see and explore.

The most signicant Thracian shrines

appeared in the Late Bronze Age (16th to

12th centuries BC), sometimes at places

with strong traces of previous religious

activity, like Belintash and Perperikon in the

Rhodope. These sanctuaries thrived through

the 1st Millennium BC, and many were

abandoned only when Christianity slowly

prevailed between the 4th and 6th centuries.

As a rule, these early shrines were built

on naked, precipitous rocks, mainly in the

Strandzha, the Sakar and the Rhodope

mountains. Even today, one can see why.

They stand out against the landscape,

imposing a sense of incredibility, and are

clearly visible from afar. The list of the

most signicant sanctuaries of this type

includes Perperikon, Tatul, Gluhite Kamani,

Harmankaya, Belintash, Madzharovo and

Orlovi Skali, all in the Rhodope.

Many of these rock shrines are coveredwith countless canals, basins, pads, stairs

and niches. They all represent the Thracian

idea that the universe was created in the

stone uterus of the Great Goddess when

she was impregnated by the Great God,

her son and lover, who also symbolises the

sun. This hypothesis is backed by the almost

anatomically correct features of natural

Previous spread : Belintash shrine, near Asenovgrad, in the

Rhodope

This gold earring with the Goddess Nike in a chariot

was buried together with her owner, possibly a Thracian

priestess, in the 3rd-2nd centuries BC in a mound near

modern Sinemorets, on the southern Black Sea coast. It

was discovered in 2006 and is now in the National Museum

of History in Soa

Asara rock shrine occupies a rocky, overgrown height

over Angel Voyvoda village, near Haskovo, and boasts

several rock tombs. It was well preserved until the early

1990s, but treasure-hunters have taken over, destroying a

signicant portion of the site


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or disgured, as if they, too, should be killed

to please the gods.

Temples are an important part of

any shrine, but if you don't count theones found in the Greek colonies on

the Black Sea coast, few such buildings

have been positively identied in the

Thracian heartland. Thracian temples

have been disco vered on Nebet Tepe Hill,

in Plovdiv; the sunken city of Seuthopolis,

near Kazanlak; Cabyle , near Yambol; and

elsewhere. According to an inscription

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the Thracian Great Goddess, the one who

created the universe and ruled it. Her

presence can be seen everywhere: in the

jugs and bowls of the Rogozen Treasure, in

the frescoes and sculptures of the Sveshtari

Tomb, on the paintings of the Kazanlak

Tomb, on gold rings and elsewhere.

The Great Goddess was also the one

who sanctioned the political power of

Thracian kings. In the Thracian society, themonarch or the chief of the tribe was also

its main priest. He was seen as the earthly

incarnation of the Great God, and would

perform rituals of symbolical marriage to

the Great Goddess.

The ancient Greeks believed that after

death all people were doomed to a gloomy

existence as shadows in the sad kingdom

of Hades. But the Thracians believed in life

after death, and according to Herodotus,

some tribes would rejoice so much when

a person died that his wives would begin

to quarrel for the honour to be killed and

buried with him.

Noble Thracians, supposedly the

followers of the mystic teachings of

Orpheus, were even deied after their

death. This is why many shrines feature

some sort of a grave or a tomb: dolmens,rock tombs, monumental tombs. These were

more than sepulchres: they were also places

for worship to the deied people buried in

them.

Sometimes, monumental tombs were

also used as shrines, and there are numerous

signs pointing to this interpretation. The

monumental tombs all have corridors,

implying frequent visitations, and sometimes

had elaborate façades, as if they were built

to be eye feast for the living, who would

perform mysterious rites at the chambers.

The stone thresholds of such tombs are

found much worn out by the feet of

countless visitors. In and around the tombs

are preserved the remains of regular

sacrices.

In spite of centuries of worship, the

barren, hard terrain of rock sanctuaries –

combined with yet more centuries of

treasure hunting – has left few artefacts

for the archaeologists to study. The most

common nds from Thracian shrines

include pottery (whole or in shards), tools

and weapons, animal bones, burned clayfrom the light buildings for the priests and

the pilgrims. Some of these were made

especially for the rituals: amulets and scaled

models of tools, idols and tokens for ritual

games. Yet more were objects for daily use:

sickles and knives, pins and loom weights,

millstones and coins, jewellery and weapons.

Some of these offerings were ritually broken

Remains of a man with severed legs, buried in a sacricial

pit from the 4th Century BC in the sanctuary at Yabalkovo,

southeastеrn Bulgaria. Human sacrice was quite common in

ancient Thrace – the bodies of men, women and babies have

been found, some of them were buried alive

Right : A double rock tomb takes the highest place at the

Tatul rock shrine, a symbolic representation of the idea that

whoever is buried inside the man-made womb of the Great

Goddess will be close to the sun, the element of the Great

God

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when reservoirs and dams were being built.

These include the sites at Bratsigovo and

Ognyanovo, near Pazardzhik. Scant Thracian

artefacts are preserved in later, Roman

shrines by sacred springs – for example,

the temple of the nymphs at Kasnakovo,

near Dimitrovgrad. The only consistently

researched Thracian shrine by a s acred

spring is the one under the Ottoman Demir

Baba tekke, in Sboryanovo.

The Thracian gods and their shrines

started to fade from memory and life when

Christianity took over the Balkans. But

they never quite disappeared. Churches

rose on the remains of a number of pagan

shrines – for example, in Pliska, Madara

and Montana – and many Thracian shrines

are now venerated by Christians and

Muslims alike (Perperikon, Gluhite Kamani,

Demir Baba tekke, the Eski Mosque in Stara

Zagora, which now houses a museum of

religions). The ancient deities trans formed,

too, entering local folklore and even

inuencing the pantheon of Christian

saints.

Left : Begliktash megalithic shrine, near Primorsko

The Great Goddess is depicted on this silver and gold

greave from the 4th Century BC. It was discovered buried

alongside its owner in a mound in Vratsa, northwestern

Bulgaria. The fact that only one greave was in the grave of

a young woman suggests it has it was a part of some ritual.

The stripes on the goddess's face are interpreted as ritual

tattoos. Accordi ng to Herodotus, the Th racians did tatt oo

themselves

pears, beehives and casks. Most often 1-2

metres deep, they were lled with broken

pottery, animal bones, ashes and embers. In

about 1-2 percent of these , parts and even

full human skeletons have been found. Some

of the people in the pits were alive when

they were thrown in, which gives credibility

to the suggestion that they were sacriced

to the Thracian gods.

Again Herodotus sheds light on the

archaeological nds. By his accou nt, when

some Thracian tribes felt that their prayers

needed more attention from the God

Zalmoxis, they would stick spears in the

ground, choose the best man among them,

and throw him on the blades. While he was

dying, they would sent their messages to the

deities.

Most researchers believe that the pit

shrines were devoted to the cult of the

Great Goddess. The holes symbolised her

womb and provided connection with the

spirits of the underworld and fecundity.

The Thracians also venerated running

waters and springs. Unfortunately, most

of the shrines they erected near water

have been lost mainly in the 20th Century


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Monumental Tombs

The sheer size of the massive mound, the

claustrophobic space, the cold, the smell of

times past: entering a Thracian tomb is one

of the must-do experiences in Bulgaria.

More than 200 monumental Thracian

tombs have been discovered so far, and

they have proved to be more than imposing

burial structures. Besides the awe they

inspire, they are also an important source

of information about the funeral rites and

religious beliefs of the people who built

them.

How the Thracians fell for monumental

tombs is a question historians have yet to

answer. Initially, the researchers thought that

the Thracians were inspired by the much

bigger and older tombs of the Mycenaean

civilisation, which ourished in southern

Greece between 1600 BC and 1200 BC.

Other possible predecessors could be the

dolmens and rock tombs in Thrace itself.

But the relatively short period between the

5th and the 3rd centuries BC, when the

Thracians built monumental tombs, has led

to the conclusion that the idea was probably


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Thracian tombs were furnished with stone

funerary beds, sometimes with pillows sculpted

on them, and with a bunch of other furniture:

stone and wooden benches, seats, altars.

Expensive and time-consuming, tombs

were used continuously by later generations,

sometimes for centuries. Still, some tombs

seem to have been destroyed deliberately or

left unnished.

In most cases, ancient and modern-day

treasure-hunters hit upon the tombs before

the archaeologists, emptying the monuments

and breaking them. The examples of tombs

untouched by intruders are too few, most

notably the ones in the Mezek, Sashova

Mogila and Golyama Kosmatka mounds.

But the nds from the tombs still speak

volumes about the life and death of the

ancient Thracians. Expensive ceramic and

metal vessels, made locally or imported from

Greece, were buried along with weapons

and lavish jewellery of silver and gold, to

serve their owners in the afterlife. These

objects were often ritually broken, as if they

should "die" too.

The remains of the deceased present

another enigma. Complete skeletons are

Left : The main scene of the murals of the Aleksandrovo

Tomb from the end of the 4th and the beginning of the

3rd centuries BC, near Haskovo, depicts sacred hunt

Below right : Ostrusha Tomb from the 4th Century BC,

near Kazanlak, is in a monolithic block which was hewn to

resemble a small temple

practically nonexistent, archaeologists

usually discover only parts of them – for

example, the skull, the femurs or odd bones.

These often belong to different people.

Actually, the Thracians had been

doing this since the beginning of the 1st

Millennium BC. The explanation for this

strange ritual could be the Thracian Orphic

rites of immortalisation and deication of

priests, kings and distinguished persons.

In order to achieve divinity, they were

dismembered just like Orpheus, the

supposed founder of this religion, was torn

to pieces by the mad maenads.

Ritually slain horses and dogs are

often found at the Thracian tombs, buried

separately or along with the deceased. Animal

skeletons are usually found in anatomical

order, but this has not always been the case –

the horses and dogs found in the tombs of

Sveshtari, for example, were decapitated.

The people buried in these tombs with

such pomp and ceremony were obviously

men and women of high rank, including

kings an

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80

Circles of Stone


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Previous spread: The cromlech at Dolni Glavanak, in

the Rhodope

After years of neglect, restoration of the stone circle

near Golyamo Zhelezare is now in progress

Glavanak. Situated on a low ridge overgrown

with thick oak forest, the stone circle consists

of 15 rocks about 1.5 m high. Its diameter

is about 10 m. Archaeological research has

shown that the complex was built between

the 8th and 6th centuries BC, and was in use

until the end of Antiquity.

Nearby, two smaller circles of boulders

have been found.

Why the megalith was built remains

unclear. The usual explanation given to tourists

is that it was a sort of observation post for

watching the sunrise to calculate sacred dates

in the Thracian calendar.

The stone circle at Staro Zhelezare was

discovered in 2002, under a pretty insignicant

mound by the village's dump yard.

It was a surprising discovery: 24 erect

stones forming a circle with a diameter of 7 m.

The slabs in the northern part of the circle rose

up to 1.8 m; with one exception, the stones on

the south were less than a metre high.

According to Dr Kitov, the scientist who

discovered them, the cromlech was erected

in the 6th Century BC and was used for

astronomical observations. Other researchers

think that the circle was built around the 10th

Century BC, and the tumulus was erected

later to hide the stones, for a reason that's as

yet unknown.

Regardless of its scientic signicance,

until recently the Staro Zhelezare stone

circle seemed doomed to disappear. After

the excavations ended, the dug-up cromlech

was abandoned, his sole protection from the

elements coming from a imsy cover. Soon, the

roof collapsed and wind and rainwater started

eating into what had remained of the mound.

Several years after the discovery, all the slabs

had fallen down and the undergrowth had

taken over, hiding everything in tall grass and

thorns.

A structure which had survived for

millennia was about to disappear.

But in the past few years an NGO took

interest in the site, and didn't spare effort for

its preservation, conservation and further

research with the main goal of restoring the

slabs to their original places and building

sufcient infrastructure to protect the site.


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Sboryanovo


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the Thracian world. Its three rooms have

unusual barrel-vaulted ceilings. The burial

chamber is decorated with a fresco of an

imposing woman crowning a rider with a

wreath. Sculptures of 10 caryatids line the

walls of the room.

Sculpted of limestone, the women have

disproportionate bodies, intricately carved

dresses and sturdy faces with wide-opened

eyes, which captivate the visitor in the

claustrophobically narrow chamber.

Historians believe that the Sveshtari

caryatids represent the all-mighty Great

Goddess of the Thracians. She is also the

tall woman in the fresco, depicted at the

moment she brings immortality to the

deied owner of the tomb. Relying on

circumstantial evidence, some scientistsgo as far as to claim to know who the

deceased was: King Dromichaetes, who

ruled over the Getae between the end

of the 4th and the rst decade of the 3rd

Century BC.

In 1985 UNESCO listed the Sveshtari

Tomb as a World Heritage Monument. Due

to preservation issues, visiting time in the

tomb is strictly limited, and the site is closed

in winter.

For their part, the burial mounds

in Sboryanovo hold more promises of

interaction with the dead Thracians and

their way of life. So far, more than 100

tumuli have been identied h ere, giving

some explanation why until recently the

locals used to call the area The Land of the

Hundred Mounds. Most of the tumuli are

divided into two main necropoli. According

to a hypothesis, their positions were chosen

deliberately, making them a giant map of

some of the constellations in the sky.

In one of these groups, interpreted as an

earthly copy of the Orion constellation, rises

the 19-metre-high Great Sveshtari Tumulus.It was excavated in the 1990s and again in

2004. The excavations led to the discovery

of a monumental tomb with Doric columns.

Built at the end of the 4th and the early the

3rd centuries BC, the tomb was destroyed

by an earthquake in the mid-3rd Century

BC. In 2013, the Great Sveshtari Tumulus

revealed other secrets: a buried wooden

box containing exquisite gold objects

weighing more than 1.5 kg, among them

women's jewellery and harness decorations.

According to some researchers, the

tumulus and the tomb b elonged to Cothelas,

the Gaetic king in the last decades of the 4th

century BC who played an important role

in the local politics and who got married,

in 339 BC, his daughter, Meda, to the most

powerful man in the world, King Philip II of

Macedon. Other historians, however, believe

that the gold objects have connection with

King Dromichaetes.

Sboryanovo was not only a place for

the dead but also one for the living. On a

narrow and conveniently defensible plateau

by the Krapinets River, a walled city thrivedbetween the last quarter of the 4th and the

middle of the 3rd centuries BC. Back in the

day it was called either Dausdava or Helis

(historians disagree on the exact name) and

spread on over 25 acres. The city was the

home of craftsmen making goods from iron,

silver, gold and bone, and of people who

The fresco in the burial chamber depicts the Great

Goddess giving immortality to the owner of the tomb,

on horseback. Riders had a key position in Thracian

religious beliefs. A mounted man was often depicted

in votive tablets, funeral art and expensive harnesses.

Sometimes he personied the Thracian God Rider, and

sometimes, as is the case with the Sveshtari Tomb, he

represented a deied king or an aristocrat. The idea of

the Thracian Ride r was so strong tha t it survived until

the end of Antiqui ty and blended w ith the image of St

George and the folklore hero Krali Marko


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90

The 16th Century shrine of the Muslim sage Demir Baba

was built over the remains of one of the major Thracian

shrines in the area. The ancient boulders are still clearly

visible

Right: Mounds of all sizes abound in Sboryanovo

reserve – until recently, locals called the area the Land of

Hundred Mounds. Erecting a mound was a tiresome and

time-consuming e nterprise . The ones higher than 15 m

needed between two and six months to take shape. In the

background stands the Great Sveshtari Tumulus

enjoyed Greek wine and olive oil to such an

extent that they left us the mos t extensive

collection of imported amphorae ever found

in ancient Thrace. The city gained additional

importance by its position on an ancient salt

trade road.

The end of the Thracian city at

Sboryanovo came with a bang. It was

destroyed for good by a strong earthquake,

about 250 BC.

Today archaeological research of the

remains continues, but the trenches and low

stone walls are n ot particularly spectacular.

The south city wall can be seen passing

through the main road from the Sveshtari

Tomb to the village of Malak Porovets.

Another piece of the fortications, from the

3rd to 1st centuries BC, is in the Polyanataarea, west of the Thracian city.

Several shrines of the Getae have been

identied in Sboryanovo. One of them,

currently called Demir Baba Tekke, is a good

example of how one set of beliefs has built

on another, ensuring continuity of religions

and superstitions.

It all started with the Thracians who,

between the end of the 4th and the early

1st Century BC, created a shrine with rock

altars and strong walls by the cold waters

of a spring, now called the Five-Fingers

Spring. When Christianity replaced paganism

in the 5

abando

Centur

Muslim

was bui

what ha

a guide to thracian bulgaria extract

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