The new exhibition, Gold of the Great Steppe, that has just opened at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge is not to be missed. The golden grave goods found in Saka-Scythian burial kurgans in East Kazakhstan within the last few years are remarkable. Dating from the 8th-6th centuries BCE, they come from a number of sites in and around the Tarbagatai Mountains in the east of this vast country, including Eleke Sazy, Shilikti, Urzhar and Berel. They were excavated by Profefssor Zainolla Samashev, a noted expert on Kazakh petroglyphs, and Professor Abdesh Toleubayev, the leading achaeologist in East Kazakhstan and head of the department of Archaeology, Ethnography and Museology of Al-Farabi Kazakh National University.

The exhibition focuses on one burial in particular, in which were found two bodies, at Eleke Sazy in the northern foothills of the Tarbagatai range. It was excavated in 2018. In this small area there are around 300 kurgans arranged in independent groups and chains. The burial of the young woman, aged around 14, had been disturbed and robbed in antiquity, but alongside her lay another body that had been hidden by a rockfall. That was of a young man aged about 18. His richly adorned body had lain undisturbed and was only the second such complete burial to have been found in this region in the modern era.

The Eleke Sazy kurgan is a hemispherical structure, surrounded by a ditch and double ring of stones. The main structure is 33.25m across.

Amongst the grave goods were dozens of arrow heads, suggesting that the young man was a skilled archer. He also carried a beautiful bronze dagger in a gold shealth adorned with precious stones. The carved stone handle had been ritually broken at the time of the burial.

Hundreds of other stunning golden objects were found in the tomb, as can be seen below:

This part of east Kazakhstan is quite literally full of kurgans, most of which were looted many years ago. Indeed, Thomas Atkinson also noted the large number of monuments in the area. He and Lucy crossed the Tarbagatai Mountains twice on their journeys to and from the Djungar Alatau Mountains, that lie just to the south, on the other side of Lake Ala Kool. He gives numberous descriptions of the kurgans he came across and painted one particularly large one he found close to the old border checkpoint of Chuguchak – now known as Tacheng. An engraving of that picture was reproduced in his book Oriental and Western Siberia (1858).

The exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum, which is free to enter, runs until 30th January. Get along and see it. You won’t regret it.