The 1913 excavation took the form of a giant trench cut into the side of an 18m-high mound. One of thousands of ‘kurgans’, that at Solokha in eastern Ukraine was among the largest, betokening the burial-place of Scythian nobility of the highest rank. As so often, the main chamber, centrally placed, had been plundered in antiquity. But there was a side chamber, and when Russian excavators reached it, the burial was found intact. A deep shaft descended to a long corridor leading to the burial chamber itself. The main interment had been placed in the largest of three recesses. The buried person, explains Barry Cunliffe, was wearing a Greek-manufactured gold torc around his neck and was surrounded by his personal equipment. On his right-hand side lay his ceremonial sword in a wooden scabbard covered with elaborate repoussé-decorated gold sheeting, with a second sword placed next to it. To the left, beyond the swords, was a small side-chamber created to contain a gold phiale (vessel) and a gorytos (quiver) sheathed in gold and silver decorated with battle scenes. Close to his right arm was a mace with a six-lobed head. Nearby were six silver vessels, a now famous battle-scene comb, a bronze helmet – Greek in origin, but modified to suit the wearer’s needs – and a pair of Greek bronze greaves with the tops cut off.
At the entrance to the chamber containing his body, a fourth set of equipment was laid out: a short-sleeved tunic covered with iron scales, two spears, a sword, and a number of arrows. Close by, along the north wall of the chamber, was the skeleton of another man, who appears to have been wearing scale armour. He may have been the armour-bearer of the warrior king. To complete the picture, to the south side of the royal burial was a small recess containing the funerary feasting equipment. There were three cauldrons with an iron flesh-hook and a bronze ladle. The burial assemblage also included a bronze basin, a rhyton (drinking horn) with silver rim, and ten Greek amphorae, once containing oil and wine. Not far away was the body of the cup-bearer.
It was last of the great kurgan excavations of the heroic age of Russian archaeology. Exploration had begun as early as 1763, after Catherine the Great’s armies had opened up the Pontic Steppe north of the Black Sea to archaeological investigation. Most of the mounds had been robbed, but some were found with treasures intact, and the Hermitage in St Petersburg acquired a growing collection of stunning objects from the burial chambers – objects of gold, of superb craftsmanship and artistry, many of them 2,500 or more years old. And as the armies of later Tsars extended the Russian Empire deep into Central Asia during the 19th century, other kurgans were investigated, some in the frozen wastes of Siberia, where tombs were uncovered with timbers in situ, textiles preserved, and bodies mummified – a rich gift of the bitter cold to archaeologists who found themselves uncovering the evidence for a civilisation that had previously been the stuff of legend.
