Mary
Mary may refer to:
People
* Mary (name), a feminine given name (includes a list of people with the name)
Religious contexts
* New Testament people named Mary, overview article linking to many of those below
* Mary, mother of Jesus, also call ...
(ancient
Merv
Merv ( tk, Merw, ', مرو; fa, مرو, ''Marv''), also known as the Merve Oasis, formerly known as Alexandria ( grc-gre, Ἀλεξάνδρεια), Antiochia in Margiana ( grc-gre, Ἀντιόχεια ἡ ἐν τῇ Μαργιανῇ) and ...
),
Turkmenistan
Turkmenistan ( or ; tk, Türkmenistan / Түркменистан, ) is a country located in Central Asia, bordered by Kazakhstan to the northwest, Uzbekistan to the north, east and northeast, Afghanistan to the southeast, Iran to the so ...
consisting of a large early Bronze Age settlement. It is the "capital" or major settlement of the
Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex
The Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex (short BMAC) or Oxus Civilization, recently dated to c. 2250–1700 BC,Lyonnet, Bertille, and Nadezhda A. Dubova, (2020b)"Questioning the Oxus Civilization or Bactria- Margiana Archaeological Cultu ...
(BMAC).
Archaeology
The site was discovered in the 1950s by Greek-Russian archaeologist
Viktor Sarianidi
Viktor Ivanovich Sarianidi or Victor Sarigiannides (russian: Ви́ктор Ива́нович Сариани́ди; el, Βίκτωρ Σαρηγιαννίδης; September 23, 1929 – December 22, 2013) was a Soviet archaeologist. He discovered ...
, and excavated in the 1970s. Sarianidi uncovered a palace, a fortified mud-brick enclosure, and temples with fire altars which he associated with the
Zoroastrian
Zoroastrianism is an Iranian religion and one of the world's oldest organized faiths, based on the teachings of the Iranian-speaking prophet Zoroaster. It has a dualistic cosmology of good and evil within the framework of a monotheistic ...
religion.
Gonur Depe has a total area of about 55 hectares, and is divided by archaeologists in three main sectors: Gonur North, the Large Necropolis, and Gonur South. The northern part of the complex called Gonur North had a central citadel-like structure about in size.
Gonur North
The main fortified complex is the almost elliptical sector known as Gonur North, (ca. 330 × 460 m), from ca. 2400 to 1900 BCE, which includes the "Monumental Palace" and annexed buildings, ritual areas and many temples, as well as the "Royal Necropolis" and various water reservoirs. The Monumental Palace was at the centre, (ca. 150 x 140 m), and was surrounded by a double wall, featuring two big courtyards and an axial corridor, as well as a large deposit for products, and inner dwellings which could have been a throne room and audience halls.Vidale, Massimo, (2017) Treasures from the Oxus I.B. Tauris, p. 20. Near the entry of the Monumental Palace, there were water sources connected to ceramic pipes, maybe for visitors' ritual cleansing.
The Royal Necropolis or Royal Graveyard, located to the southeast in Gonur North, consists of eight underground houses for sepulture and three big pits for the same purpose; artefacts of gold, silver, stone, and bronze were found there, showing the high status of the people buried.Dubova, Nadezhda A., (2019) " Gonur Depe – City of Kings and Gods, and the Capital of Margush Country (Modern Turkmenistan)" in Christoph Baumer and Mirko Novák (eds.), ''Urban Cultures of Central Asia from the Bronze Age to the Karakhanids, Proceedings of the First International Congress on Central Asian Archaeology held at the University of Bern, 4–6 February 2016'', Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden, pp. 29-53. In the last phase of this necropolis, many objects made of elephant ivory were found, and this level is contemporary to late layers in Altyn Depe in Turkmenistan, and
Mohenjo-daro
Mohenjo-daro (; sd, موئن جو دڙو'', ''meaning 'Mound of the Dead Men'; In excavations at a brick-lined burial pit, grave number 3200 of this Royal necropolis, a horse skeleton was found in period I, dated around 2200 BCE along with a four-wheeled wooden wagon with bronze rims. Archaeologist Julio Bendezu-Sarmiento, mentioning N. A. Dubova's (2015) article, comments that this was an "almost complete skeleton of a foal" resting on the wagon with "wheels circled by bronze bands" and radiocarbon-dated to 2250 BCE.Bendezu-Sarmiento, Julio, (2021) "Horse domestication history in Turkmenistan and other regions of Asia" in MIRAS 1 (81), pp. 22-24. So he considers this horse and the wagon are "one and a half century prior" to similar burials of
Sintashta culture
The Sintashta culture (russian: Синташтинская культура, Sintashtinskaya kul'tura), around 2050–1900 BCE, is the first phase of the Sintashta–Petrovka culture. or Sintashta–Arkaim culture,. and is a late Middle Bronze Ag ...
. A stone statuette that seems to be a horse with saddle was found in burial number 3210 also in the Royal necropolis and was reported by Sarianidi in 2005, and in burial 3310 parts of a stallion's body were found, the stallion lacked its head, rump, and tail, and was considered as a cult burial of a domestic horse by archaeologist Sarianidi in his 2008 publication.
The Large Necropolis
There is also a Large Necropolis, with more than three thousand graves of many types in an area of ca. 10 hectares, around 200 m west of Gonur North. Only adults and young people over eight years old were buried in this necropolis, children were buried near houses or in abandoned buildings.
In the so-called "tomb of a warrior", number 2380 at this necropolis, a mace head made of bronze and featuring a horse with prominent ears was found.Bonora, Gian Luca, (2020) "The Oxus Civilization and the northern steppes" in ''The World of the Oxus Civilization'', Routledge, p. 749.
Mosaics
Numerous mosaics compositions have been discovered in the Necropolis. These were decorating some of the walls, as well as found on many large wooden trunks and boxes that once held rich royal offerings. These mosaics have been dated to the end of the third millennium BC.
Such mosaics are almost unknown elsewhere in ancient East Asia, yet numerous parallels to these Gonur Depe mosaics have been found in
Mari, Syria
Mari (Cuneiform: , ''ma-riki'', modern Tell Hariri; ar, تل حريري) was an ancient Semitic city-state in modern-day Syria. Its remains form a tell 11 kilometers north-west of Abu Kamal on the Euphrates River western bank, some 120&n ...
. Other clear parallels are also found in the
Royal Cemetery at Ur
The Royal Cemetery at Ur is an archaeological site in modern-day Dhi Qar Governorate in southern Iraq. The initial excavations at Ur took place between 1922 and 1934 under the direction of Leonard Woolley in association with the British Museum and ...
.
Gonur South
Gonur South is a smaller, square complex, (ca.130 × 120 m), about 1.5 hectares in size, inhabited between ca. 1900 and 1600 BCE, fortified with two series of massive concentric walls featuring round towers in their perimeters. The so-called ''Temenos'', also located in Gonur South, is a parallelogram shrine with strong walls, round towers at the corners, and half-towers in the perimeter, that was considered a
Soma
Soma may refer to:
Businesses and brands
* SOMA (architects), a New York–based firm of architects
* Soma (company), a company that designs eco-friendly water filtration systems
* SOMA Fabrications, a builder of bicycle frames and other bicyc ...
-cult-related precinct by archaeologist Sarianidi. Inside the ''Temenos'' a small temple designated as "the fort" was built, the shape of the building is cruciform, bearing twelve round towers, one in each angle of the cross, these towers had a narrow door each one. As it is a later development, this "fort" was not finished, but is very similar to the "fire temple" in Tepe Nush-i Jan.
Gonur is among the largest ruins in the
Murghab river
The Marghab River ( Persian/ Pashto: مرغاب, ''Morqâb''), anciently the Margiana (Ancient Greek: Μαργιανή, ''Margianḗ''), is an long river in Central Asia. It rises in the Paropamisus Mountains (''Selseleh-ye Safīd Kūh'') in G ...
delta region; over 150 ancient settlements have been found here.
Chronology of the site
Considering the data of early research in Gonur Depe and recent stratigraphic studies, conducted from 2014 to 2018, Robert M. Sataev, Nadezhda A. Dubova, and Muhamed A. Mamedovone mention five periods, or construction horizons, of this settlement:
Two sherds in the Geoksjur style of Namazga III period (c. 3200-2800 BCE) were found in Gonur North in the first period of the site, and three radiocarbon samples from Gonur Depe belong to Geoksjur/ Sarazm period from narrow walls showing a short-term occupation.
Soma drink
Sarianidi found what appears to be the boiler for the ritual drink
soma
Soma may refer to:
Businesses and brands
* SOMA (architects), a New York–based firm of architects
* Soma (company), a company that designs eco-friendly water filtration systems
* SOMA Fabrications, a builder of bicycle frames and other bicyc ...
, which is mentioned in the ''
Rigveda
The ''Rigveda'' or ''Rig Veda'' ( ', from ' "praise" and ' "knowledge") is an ancient Indian collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns (''sūktas''). It is one of the four sacred canonical Hindu texts (''śruti'') known as the Vedas. Only one ...
'' and also in the
Avesta
The Avesta () is the primary collection of religious texts of Zoroastrianism, composed in the Avestan language.
The Avesta texts fall into several different categories, arranged either by dialect, or by usage. The principal text in the l ...
as
haoma
''Haoma'' (; Avestan: 𐬵𐬀𐬊𐬨𐬀) is a divine plant in Zoroastrianism and in later Persian culture and mythology. ''Haoma'' has its origins in Indo-Iranian religion and is the cognate of Vedic '' soma''.
Etymology
Both Avestan ''haoma'' ...
. Sarianidi says he also found dishes with traces of
cannabis
''Cannabis'' () is a genus of flowering plants in the family Cannabaceae. The number of species within the genus is disputed. Three species may be recognized: ''Cannabis sativa'', '' C. indica'', and '' C. ruderalis''. Alternativel ...
, poppy and ephedra. According to him, this discovery strengthens the theory that these were the ingredients of soma.Sarianidi, Victor, (2003) Margiana and Soma-Haoma. Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies (EJVS), Vol. 9 (2003) Issue 1c (May 5); archived 10 May 2020
The excavations of the settlement of Ulug Tepe, near Dushak in south
Turkmenistan
Turkmenistan ( or ; tk, Türkmenistan / Түркменистан, ) is a country located in Central Asia, bordered by Kazakhstan to the northwest, Uzbekistan to the north, east and northeast, Afghanistan to the southeast, Iran to the so ...
, found similar implements for making soma drink, described as a "pressure set". The finds were made in the Late Bronze layers.
The implements,
: "... consisted of a huge stone mortar and a pestle, a pressing stone with a half-spheric projection in its centre and next to it a similar one with a half-spheric deepening."
South Turkmenistan also belonged to the area of Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex.
Historical context
Scholars believe that the ancient
Oxus river
The Amu Darya, tk, Amyderýa/ uz, Amudaryo// tg, Амударё, Amudaryo ps, , tr, Ceyhun / Amu Derya grc, Ὦξος, Ôxos (also called the Amu, Amo River and historically known by its Latin name or Greek ) is a major river in Central Asi ...
culture (Bactria-Margiana) may have its origin at sites like Anau, on the northern slopes of the Kopet-Dag mountains. Anau dates back to 6500 BCE. Later settlements like Gonur may have been founded by people who moved there from the Kopet-Dag area because of changing climate.
There were increasing incursions of nomadic encampments of the
Andronovo culture
The Andronovo culture (russian: Андроновская культура, translit=Andronovskaya kul'tura) is a collection of similar local Late Bronze Age cultures that flourished 2000–1450 BC,Grigoriev, Stanislav, (2021)"Andronovo ...
at the site during the period 1800-1500 BCE. According to Lamberg-Karlovsky, the presence at Gonur of Andronovo pottery (the characteristic ceramics of the Eurasian steppes, where the modern horse was domesticated) certainly implies that the horse was known to the BMAC. However, Sarianidi disregards the steppe connection for the presence of the horse in BMAC.Mallory (1997) points out that the BMAC fortified settlements such as Gonur and
Togolok
Togolok is an archaeological site in the Murghab Delta, Turkmenistan, located about 10–15 km south of Gonur (or about 40 km north of Mary, Turkmenistan). Togolok 21 is an Indo-Iranian temple and fortress dated to the first hal ...
resemble the
qila {{other uses
Qila ( ar, قلعة), alternatively transliterated as Kilaa, is an Arabic word meaning a fort or castle. The term is also used in various Indo-Iranian languages. Qila often occurs in place-names.
India
;Forts
* Aligarh Qila
* Rohtas ...
, the type of fort known in this region in the historical period. They may be circular or rectangular and have up to three encircling walls. Within the forts are residential quarters, workshops and temples."BMAC" in: Mallory, J. P.; Adams, D. Q., ''
Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture
An encyclopedia (American English) or encyclopædia (British English) is a reference work or compendium providing summaries of knowledge either general or special to a particular field or discipline. Encyclopedias are divided into articles ...
'' (1997), p. 72.
The site was most likely abandoned after the course of the
Murghab River
The Marghab River ( Persian/ Pashto: مرغاب, ''Morqâb''), anciently the Margiana (Ancient Greek: Μαργιανή, ''Margianḗ''), is an long river in Central Asia. It rises in the Paropamisus Mountains (''Selseleh-ye Safīd Kūh'') in G ...