Archaeologists from the Haskovo Regional History Museum have discovered a third Thracian tomb with wall paintings similar to those in Kazanlak and Alexandrovo, Bulgarian National Television (BNT) reported. The tomb dates from the end of the 4th and beginning of the 3rd century BC.
The Odrysian kingdom was created around 460 BC by the Thrace tribe of the Odrysians and lasted until the Roman conquest in 46 AD. The Odrysian kingdom included the territories of all of modern Bulgaria, northern Greece, the European part of Turkey and a small part of southeastern Romania.
Unfortunately, at this point the Thracian wall paintings of the tomb itself were damaged; all that was discovered were the indicative pieces of the wall paintings in a treasure hunter’s pit near the village of Teketo.
Archaeologists at the Haskovo Regional History Museum have discovered wall paintings destroyed by treasure hunters. Despite the damage, the state of the tomb surprised archaeologists.
Near the southern town of Haskovo there are hundreds of burial mounds, and the majority of them probably cover graves. The race for treasure hunters is unequal, far from being in favor of the archaeologist.
“Here we only have the top, thinnest layer, the stucco. It is made of a very fine mortar plaster with marble dust, usually to make it so fine, and the colored decoration is applied over it. It’s with a dark red orange. We have something like green here, a stripe,” said Archaeologist Assoc. » Professor Georgi Nehrizov told BNT, demonstrating the top of the piece.
Some colorful pieces match perfectly with the decorative frieze surrounding the wall paintings of the Alexandrovo Tomb.
“This strip which ends the figurative hunting scene from the tomb. This is called kymation. Lesbo kymation, a series of kyne (waves) which are a purely decorative ornament. The same can be seen in Kazanlak. This kymation is only present on those in which figurative scenes are found. The same goes for other Hellenistic tombs found not in Thrace, but in Greece and Italy,” Nehrizov added.
However, it will provide valuable information for science and open a new chapter in the history of the Odrysians.
“It is curious to show you a situation which also perplexes us. We see here fragments of protective clothing, under this block. It is a chasuble made up of small plates sewn onto a leather or fabric garment. We see 7-8 here,” said Assoc. Professor Georgi Nehrizov, head of archaeological excavations.
We still don’t know exactly what these protective garments do between two stones, and archaeologists are trying to find out.
The discovery of the tomb was announced by the team of archaeologists of Associate Professor Georgi Nehrizov of the National Archaeological Institute with Museum of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences on April 25 this year. The collection of donations to support the discovery, research and future exhibition of the tomb continues, and the amount collected so far amounts to almost 26,000 BGN.
BG64RZBB91553120056106 – Regional History Museum – Haskovo
Cover photo: Wall pieces discovered by archaeologists (Photo BNT)
