Since 2001 Dr Erdenebaatar has been excavating a 2,000-year-old cemetery of Xiongnu kings in central Mongolia’s Arkhangai Province. Uelun and I met Dr Erdenebaatar at Ulaanbaatar State University to talk tombs ‒ specifically similarities between his current project and the resting place of Genghis Khan. It also rejected the search for Genghis Khan, and public protests halted the Gurvan Gol project. That was in 1990, the same year as the Mongolian Democratic Revolution, when the country peacefully rejected its communist government for a new democratic system. The Japanese-Mongolian project called Gurvan Gol (meaning ‘Three Rivers’) focused on Genghis Khan’s birthplace in Khentii Province where the Onon, Kherlen and Tuul rivers flow. Head of the Department of Archaeology at Ulaanbaatar State University in Mongolia’s capital city, Dr Erdenebaatar was part of the first joint expedition to find the tomb. Such a landscape holds on to its secrets.ĭr Diimaajav Erdenebaatar has made a career overcoming such challenges in pursuit of archaeology. Humanity, it seems, is just there to provide scale: the distant, white curve of a herdsman’s ger, or a rock shrine fluttering with prayer flags. The population density is so low that only Greenland and a few remote islands can beat it.
Mongolia is huge and underdeveloped ‒ more than seven times the size of Great Britain with only 2% of its roads. Throughout Mongolia, the warrior remains a powerful icon.īeyond cultural pressures to honour Genghis Khan’s dying wish for secrecy, a host of technical problems hinder the search for his tomb. Some identify themselves as ‘Golden Descendants’, tracing their ancestry to the royal family. Many families hang tapestries or portraits of the Grand Khan. Mongolia is a country of long traditions and deep pride. “They went through all that effort to hide his tomb,” she pointed out. In the 800 years since Genghis Khan’s death, no-one has found his tomb. When the emperor was finally laid to rest, his soldiers rode 1,000 horses over his grave to destroy any remaining trace. A grieving army carried his body home, killing anyone it met to hide the route. Upon his death he asked to be buried in secret. Genghis Khan (known in Mongolia as Chinggis Khaan) once ruled everything between the Pacific Ocean and the Caspian Sea. ‒ Where the Earth’s mightiest army roamed
#HARD WEST GRAVE PUZZLE FULL#
His story is full of kidnappings, bloodshed, love and revenge. I couldn’t imagine tackling it on a horse.īut this is the country of Genghis Khan, the warrior who conquered the world on horseback. Sometimes we stopped just for the sake of stopping ‒ Ömnögovi Province, Mongolia, is endless by car. We stopped to drink salted milk tea in nomads’ round ger tents and to snap pictures of roaming horses and goats. No roads, no permanent buildings just unfurling sky, tufted dry grass and streaming wind.
This is an outsized land for outsized legends.
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