Many people not only from scientific world know a wonderful archeological monument Gonur-depe – ruins of the largest town among two hundred settlements in old delta of the Murgap River, where people lived over four thousand years ago. This unique place in the Garagum desert was discovered by archeologist Victor Ivanovich Sarianidi in 1972 together with colleagues. Since, within 40 years, excavations of Margiana expedition under his direct leadership are carried out. Presently, it presents the joint project of the National Management for protection, study and restoration of monuments of history and culture of Ministry of Culture of Turkmenistan and the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences named after N.N. Mikluho-Maklai. Excavations of Gonur allowed proving the highest development level of culture of population in the Murgap oasis in the Bronze Age and gave a reason to the scientists to say that one of the earliest centers of the ancient east civilization existed in this region.
It would seem that the borders of the town were outlined and its architecture was clarified. It became clear that it is consisted of the palace and numerous sanctuaries around. A collection of valuable and unique articles has been gathered; but every year of exploration of Gonur provides new and new discoveries. First of all, it is mass of perfectly made ceramic dishes, wonderful articles from bronze, silver, gold and stone. At present, they are preserved in the museums of Ashgabat and Mary. Among them, there are specimens to which such world famous depositories of universal values as Louvre in Paris, the British Museum in London or Metropolitan Museum in New York can envy.
Excavations of the royal necropolis of Gonur, where eight tombs of rulers of the Margush country were found, opened particular page in the history of the far ancestors. All of them are tiny underground models of real lodgments with all their attributes – hearths, niches in walls for articles of everyday life, narrow stove benches and hidden places for treasures. Ancient people believed in life after death and therefore, left not only dinner sets from ceramics and metal, but also all possible jewelry articles from gold, silver, bronze, copper, and precious stones as well as various statuettes of worship and personal stamp-amulets in graves as funeral offerings. Alas, all found mausoleums of such type have been plundered already in antiquity and archeologists particularly enjoyed only casual remains of the past splendor. But even these remains strike by high art of masters of the Bronze Age.
But what robbers couldn’t take away are the adornments of the walls of the underground vault-houses and large wooden boxes “tabernacles”, The scientists never and nowhere else found such unusual creations of human hands. In the royal necropolis of Gonur-depe, panels adorned with skillfully executed graphic and ornamental multi-figured compositions were revealed. Their major part was pictorial and separate elements were performed with the mosaic method. Similar one couldn’t be found in any rooms of the large palace of Gonur. Maybe, “houses” of rulers or priests for the other life were considered more important than their lifetime abode.
Mosaics existed in all found out tombs, but only in two of them, they were preserved in the form of whole compositions. Only separate elements, which once, were the wall picture, remained in other ones. Nevertheless, even those things we have today allow looking in the world of legends, myths and rituals of residents of Gonur and whole Margush country. As V.I. Sarianidi repeatedly noted on the materials of stamps and amulets of Bactria and Margiana, the couples of griffins and winged lions, snakes, swallowing wild rams, scenes of fight of dragons with snakes demonstrate one of the leading ideas of that time – fight of good and evil. Of course, in the art of the Ancient East, there are similar motifs on Gongur samples. Real and fantastic animals were shown quite professionally, with great expression and naturalism.
Firstly, it was not clear what kind of colors and stones were used for making the Gongur mosaics, on what base and how details were fastened. Finally, we couldn’t imagine how these compositions were created – directly on the place or in a separate workshop? At present, owing to participation in the work of professionals of various specialties, it was possible to clear up much but not all questions. After a series of laboratory analyses, it was determined that the images were created with the use of only several organic dyes: coal (black color), ultramarine obtained from lazurite (bright blue color), vermilion (bright red color). The most important, efficient details – heads and bodies of predators, birds, fishes, griffins, other animals, feathers, elements of geometric ornaments were executed of stone. Among many tens of stony instruments of Gongur masters, it was possible to find out the cutters specially prepared and sharpened at such angle, which allow cutting out exactly such mosaic pictures. This fact proves that masters - stone cutters and artists of antiquity created their wonderful productions in Gonur-depe but never delivered them from somewhere. Raw material was also local. Minerals were mined in the Kopetdag Mountains.
Valuable information for understanding the technique of making the mosaics was provided owing to restoration works, which are carried out at the Fine Arts Museum of Turkmenistan by experienced specialists from Moscow Natalia Kovalyova and Galina Veresoskaya – employees of the State Research Institute of Restoration of Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation as well as Tatyana Shaposhnikova from the State Museum of History of Religion (Saint-Petersburg). They have restored three large fragments from “tabernacle” and several decorative panels from the walls of the royal tombs. The pattern of the saved mosaics is geometric, strongly reminding the carpet ornaments. It is composed of triangular, square and rectangular - linear elements. The space between these large details as well as inside between separate small blocks was dyed with black or red color. Seeming simplicity of the picture showed that it was used numerous diverse, often quite complicated methods for its obtaining. The book, which soon will be published in Ashgabat in Turkmen, Russian and the English languages, will tell in detail about this fact and everything connected with mosaics of Gonur of the end of III millennium B.C.
Still we are at the beginning of the path for comprehension of symbolic or narrative meaning of images on these panels. But we hope that the uniqueness of the Gonur mosaics, artistic mastery of their creators will also attract for researches the specialists, who know well the myths and legends of the Ancient East. One can be fully confident that on the path of their cognition, it will be opened another mystery of the great civilization genetically connected with the culture of the modern Turkmen, but hidden under sands of Garagum for centuries.
It would seem that the borders of the town were outlined and its architecture was clarified. It became clear that it is consisted of the palace and numerous sanctuaries around. A collection of valuable and unique articles has been gathered; but every year of exploration of Gonur provides new and new discoveries. First of all, it is mass of perfectly made ceramic dishes, wonderful articles from bronze, silver, gold and stone. At present, they are preserved in the museums of Ashgabat and Mary. Among them, there are specimens to which such world famous depositories of universal values as Louvre in Paris, the British Museum in London or Metropolitan Museum in New York can envy.
Excavations of the royal necropolis of Gonur, where eight tombs of rulers of the Margush country were found, opened particular page in the history of the far ancestors. All of them are tiny underground models of real lodgments with all their attributes – hearths, niches in walls for articles of everyday life, narrow stove benches and hidden places for treasures. Ancient people believed in life after death and therefore, left not only dinner sets from ceramics and metal, but also all possible jewelry articles from gold, silver, bronze, copper, and precious stones as well as various statuettes of worship and personal stamp-amulets in graves as funeral offerings. Alas, all found mausoleums of such type have been plundered already in antiquity and archeologists particularly enjoyed only casual remains of the past splendor. But even these remains strike by high art of masters of the Bronze Age.
But what robbers couldn’t take away are the adornments of the walls of the underground vault-houses and large wooden boxes “tabernacles”, The scientists never and nowhere else found such unusual creations of human hands. In the royal necropolis of Gonur-depe, panels adorned with skillfully executed graphic and ornamental multi-figured compositions were revealed. Their major part was pictorial and separate elements were performed with the mosaic method. Similar one couldn’t be found in any rooms of the large palace of Gonur. Maybe, “houses” of rulers or priests for the other life were considered more important than their lifetime abode.
Mosaics existed in all found out tombs, but only in two of them, they were preserved in the form of whole compositions. Only separate elements, which once, were the wall picture, remained in other ones. Nevertheless, even those things we have today allow looking in the world of legends, myths and rituals of residents of Gonur and whole Margush country. As V.I. Sarianidi repeatedly noted on the materials of stamps and amulets of Bactria and Margiana, the couples of griffins and winged lions, snakes, swallowing wild rams, scenes of fight of dragons with snakes demonstrate one of the leading ideas of that time – fight of good and evil. Of course, in the art of the Ancient East, there are similar motifs on Gongur samples. Real and fantastic animals were shown quite professionally, with great expression and naturalism.
Firstly, it was not clear what kind of colors and stones were used for making the Gongur mosaics, on what base and how details were fastened. Finally, we couldn’t imagine how these compositions were created – directly on the place or in a separate workshop? At present, owing to participation in the work of professionals of various specialties, it was possible to clear up much but not all questions. After a series of laboratory analyses, it was determined that the images were created with the use of only several organic dyes: coal (black color), ultramarine obtained from lazurite (bright blue color), vermilion (bright red color). The most important, efficient details – heads and bodies of predators, birds, fishes, griffins, other animals, feathers, elements of geometric ornaments were executed of stone. Among many tens of stony instruments of Gongur masters, it was possible to find out the cutters specially prepared and sharpened at such angle, which allow cutting out exactly such mosaic pictures. This fact proves that masters - stone cutters and artists of antiquity created their wonderful productions in Gonur-depe but never delivered them from somewhere. Raw material was also local. Minerals were mined in the Kopetdag Mountains.
Valuable information for understanding the technique of making the mosaics was provided owing to restoration works, which are carried out at the Fine Arts Museum of Turkmenistan by experienced specialists from Moscow Natalia Kovalyova and Galina Veresoskaya – employees of the State Research Institute of Restoration of Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation as well as Tatyana Shaposhnikova from the State Museum of History of Religion (Saint-Petersburg). They have restored three large fragments from “tabernacle” and several decorative panels from the walls of the royal tombs. The pattern of the saved mosaics is geometric, strongly reminding the carpet ornaments. It is composed of triangular, square and rectangular - linear elements. The space between these large details as well as inside between separate small blocks was dyed with black or red color. Seeming simplicity of the picture showed that it was used numerous diverse, often quite complicated methods for its obtaining. The book, which soon will be published in Ashgabat in Turkmen, Russian and the English languages, will tell in detail about this fact and everything connected with mosaics of Gonur of the end of III millennium B.C.
Still we are at the beginning of the path for comprehension of symbolic or narrative meaning of images on these panels. But we hope that the uniqueness of the Gonur mosaics, artistic mastery of their creators will also attract for researches the specialists, who know well the myths and legends of the Ancient East. One can be fully confident that on the path of their cognition, it will be opened another mystery of the great civilization genetically connected with the culture of the modern Turkmen, but hidden under sands of Garagum for centuries.
