In Search of
Khan
He's been dead for almost 800
years, but the mystery surrounding the elusive tomb - and treasures
- of Genghis Khan is as current as ever.
. Illustrations by Kako.
For those who know him only as a character in
Bill
& Ted's Excellent Adventure, the real Genghis Khan
(known to the Mongols as Chinggis Khan) is the Asian-history
equivalent of Napoleon or Alexander the Great.
The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were all about Genghis and
his descendants, the Great Khans. At its height, the Mongol empire
stretched from modern-day
Korea to
Poland and from
Iraq to Vietnam.
By the end of the 1200s, Genghis's sons and grandsons - including
Marco Polo's pal Kubilai - had amassed the largest contiguous land
empire in world history. It was more than twice the size of the
Roman Empire and more than four times the size of Alexander the
Great's.
So, considering that Genghis Khan has been dead for almost 800
years and that his empire is long gone, why does anyone care about
him anymore? The obvious answer of "historical significance" aside,
most of the fascination surrounding him has to do with his secret
burial site (after all, who doesn't love a mystery?) and one juicy
word:
treasure.
During their reign, the Khans pillaged the wealthiest cities of
their era, including a string of shimmering gilded citadels along
the legendary Silk Road: Samarkand, Bukhara, and Tashkent. And
while much of the plunder was undoubtedly used to maintain the vast
empire and to pay off debts, scholars know that some of the
priceless objects Genghis was accused of looting in his lifetime of
conquest did indeed make it back to
Mongolia. Even though much was
given away, it is believed that he may very well have collected a
stunning treasure, one unrivaled in history - and taken some of it
with him to the grave.
But finding the final resting spot of this fearsome conqueror was
never going to be easy, especially since he went to great lengths
to make sure his grave was undisturbed. According to Chinese texts,
Genghis issued detailed orders to his trusted generals instructing
them to make certain that his tomb remain hidden for all time.
Legend goes that when Genghis's cortege brought his corpse back to
Mongolia from the Chinese region where he had died in battle (or in
bed), every living creature they encountered was killed. And, just
as pirates dispose of those who help to bury their treasure, the
generals slaughtered the people who dug Genghis's tomb and buried
them in a nearby mass grave.
Imagine the history world's surprise, then, when in August 2001, a
group of American and Mongolian entrepreneurs and academics calling
themselves the Genghis Khan Expedition claimed that they had zeroed
in on the burial spot of Mongolia's founding father. Was it
possible that one of the world's greatest mysteries was about to be
solved? Answer: not really. Or at least a highly probable not
really. But, being the intrepid reporter and archaeology buff that
I am, I decided to drop everything and head out to see this
discovery for myself.
MONGOLIA SHOCKS first-time visitors, and
not just because things like the local drink (a beverage
traditionally made with fermented mare's milk, called kumis) are
slightly less than appetizing, but because the whole experience
feels a lot like an interplanetary journey - to planet Genghis.
Imagine combining
George Washington with
Justin Timberlake. Genghis
is that ubiquitous, and that revered.
Less than two weeks after the news of the discovery broke in the
United States, I flew from New York to
Seoul and then hopped on a
MIAT (Mongolian Airlines) flight to Ulaanbaater, the capital of
Mongolia. I dropped my bags off at my room in the Chinggis Khaan
Hotel and grabbed my equipment so I could rush across town to
interview the local team members of the expedition. That's when my
initial shock at the fact that a group headed by a Chicago
personal-injury lawyer and a professor of Islamic history at the
University of
Chicago had made this stunning discovery quickly
turned into a panicky dread.
Sitting in an office that overlooked the parliament building and
Sukhbaatar Square, Shagdar Bira, PhD, secretary general of the
International Association for Mongol Studies and a member of the
expedition, began to carefully backtrack from their find. "We are
not sure this is his tomb," he said, exchanging meaningful, furtive
glances with his deputy, Tsogt-Ochir Ishdorj, PhD, department head
at the Institute of History, Mongolian Academy of Sciences. I
convinced myself to assume the best (being ever the optimist) and
hoped that they were merely uncomfortable at the possibility of
being perceived locally as modern-day grave robbers disturbing the
resting place of the country's revered leader. Against his wishes.
Within a day, I had talked Ishdorj into leading my English-speaking
(yet mute) driver and me to their guarded site, deep in the
countryside.
Mongolia is three times the size of
California and has about 2.83
million people, about half of whom are concentrated in the capital,
so a journey into the sparsely populated countryside can seem like
a trip back in time. Many rural Mongolians still live the same way
as those who lived during the time of the Khans. They learn to ride
horses before they can walk; they dress in traditional
deels (gowns); and they dwell as
nomads, moving their circular
gers
(yurts) from valley to valley, just as their famous ancestor
did. Genghis is omnipresent. Everyone knows the story of his
life, death, and secret burial.
Two hundred miles has never felt as long as it did on that off-road
venture through the Mongolian countryside in the back of a
shock-absorber-free Russian jeep. After 14 kidney-crushing hours of
bumping around the carpet-covered backseat, we pulled up to the
middle of nowhere, and I suddenly saw
it:
the Oglogchiin wall surrounding the supposed grave site. I got
goose bumps. Then my doubts came rushing back. Popping a Tums to
ease my pre-ulcerous condition, I wondered how previous searches
could have possibly overlooked such a massive ancient wall circling
a hillside.
AFTER SPENDING THE NIGHT in a yurt
belonging to a local family, we trotted up the hill on horseback
the next morning. Mongolians ride either on wooden saddles or with
no saddle at all. I opted for the wooden saddle. For future
reference: bad choice. I was jet-lagged, haggard from a lack of
food, and more anxious than I've ever been - and the sharp pain
from the saddle was not helping. Still, my wild anticipation
started to block it all out as our horses tiptoed up the rocky path
to the secret, (hopefully) sacred spot. I was so breathless that I
had to remind myself to focus on getting some great shots in the
morning light. Yes, I was finally about to see these tombs that had
brought me from the other side of the globe, but I was also here to
get a story.
I stopped picturing that Pulitzer and popped a few more Tums when
we reached the top of the rock-strewn hill. After climbing down off
his horse, Ishdorj began jumping up and down on a heavy stone slab
that sounded as though it were resting above a hollowed-out section
of ground. "Heyyy! It's, you know, something in it. Over there is
not," he said to me, pointing down with an excited look. "It looks
like natural rocks, but I think this is a tomb." My heart sunk. Not
the most convincing moment in archaeology. And definitely not the
peek at a gauze-wrapped mummy lying among gold chalices that I had
been hoping for.
IN THE FOLLOWING WEEKS, everyone I
interviewed - from Mongolia's prime minister to top Mongolian
specialists at universities around the globe to Japanese
archaeologists who had searched for Genghis's tomb in the 1990s -
poured buckets of cold water on the Genghis Khan Expedition's
claim. They each gave reasons why this "find" was nothing new and
most likely not even close to true. Shimpei Kato, the chief
Japanese archaeologist from a well-funded, high-tech expedition
that had visited the Oglogchiin site in 1996, told me, "Inside,
there was a relatively small Mongol-era grave, but, for sure, that
was not Genghis's tomb." And Christopher Atwood, PhD, a respected
Mongol from
Indiana University, actually laughed when I asked him
about it, saying, "The [Mongolian] government only approves digs if
they know the teams are looking [for the tomb] in the wrong place."
Thus the catch-22: No one - not even those in the government - is
absolutely positive of the grave's location. There is one spot that
many suspect is the tomb's location - a sacred mountain that's in
the Khentii district and off-limits to digging - but, in the end,
it's all speculation. Add to that fact the objections of Genghis's
descendants, the Mongols, to disturbing the remains of the founder
of their nation, and anyone searching for his elusive tomb has some
pretty big obstacles to overcome. Granted, the government realizes
that extending the permits to dig has some economic benefit to them
(e.g., bringing wealthy foreigners in, providing jobs for
translators); however, the people of Mongolia seem overwhelmingly
against disturbing their ancestor's remains. They don't want him
dug up - for the same reason that people in
Britain would object to
anyone rummaging around the tombs of the English kings in
Westminster Abbey. Genghis was their first king. He is the revered
ancestor of a living people.
As a result, the American team’s initial 2001 announcement and a subsequent one in 2003 about unearthing skeletons dating to the thirteenth century (the time period in which many of the Khans lived) were greeted with a bit of nervousness. Then came the news, in 2004, that the returning Japanese-Mongolian team of bona fide archaeologists had discovered a site that they claimed was Khan’s palace — about 50 miles east of the Oglogchiin site — and the government felt the heat once again.
Since then, things have been quiet on the Khan front, but this summer, the race to be the next Heinrich Schliemann continues. And the good news for those looking for a different kind of vacation is that the American-Mongolian Genghis Khan group is currently enlisting the help of tourists. Over the course of the next five and a half months, through the adventure-travel company iExplore, the Genghis Khan Expedition is inviting in-shape globe-trotters to spend at least $4,295 (airfare not included) to take part in one of history’s last great treasure hunts.
Who knows, you might just end up in a vast tomb, knee-deep in a pile of riches from all across
Asia,
Eastern Europe, and the
Middle East. More likely, though, you will have one of the most memorable trips of your life and leave feeling the same way many Mongols (and I) do — rooting for Genghis to stay hidden, undisturbed. Just as he wanted.