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The Pazyryk burials are a number of Iron Age tombs found in the Pazyryk Valley of the Ukok plateau in the Altai Mountains, Siberia, south of the modern city of Novosibirsk. The tombs are Scythian kurgans, that is barrow-like tomb mounds of larch logs covered over by large cairns of boulders and stones, dated to between the 6th and 3rd centuries BCE. The Pazyryk kurgans are the type site of the wider Pazyryk culture. The site is included in the Golden Mountains of Altai UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Siyah Kalem or 'Black Pen' is the name given to the 15th century school of painting attributed to Mehmed Siyah Kalem. Nothing is known of his life, but his work indicates that he was of Central Asian Turkic origin, and thoroughly familiar with camp and military life. The paintings appear in the 'Conqueror’s Albums', so named because two portraits of Sultan Mehmed II the Conqueror are present in one of them.<br/><br/> The albums are made up of miniatures taken from manuscripts of the 14th, 15th, and early 16th centuries, and one series of paintings is inscribed 'work of Master Muḥammad Siyah Kalem'. Something of the style and techniques of Chinese paintings is apparent in these, and an acquaintance with Buddhist art, particularly in the depictions of grotesque demonic figures.
Kalmyk people or Kalmyks (alternatively translated as &quot;Kalmuck,&quot; &quot;Kalmuk,&quot; or &quot;Kalmyki&quot;) is the name given to western Mongolic people - Oirats, whose descendants migrated from western China in the seventeenth century. Today they form a majority in the autonomous Republic of Kalmykia on the western shore of the Caspian Sea. Through emigration, small Kalmyk communities have been established in the United States, France, Germany, Switzerland, and the Czech Republic.
Kyrgyzstan is one of the six independent Turkic states together with Turkey, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Located in Central Asia, landlocked and mountainous, Kyrgyzstan is bordered by Kazakhstan to the north, Uzbekistan to the west, Tajikistan to the southwest and People's Republic of China to the east. Its capital and largest city is Bishkek.
Timur (1336—1405) was the conqueror of Western, South and Central Asia, founder of the Timurid Empire and Timurid dynasty (1370–1405) in Central Asia, and great-great-grandfather of Babur, the founder of the Mughal Dynasty, which survived until 1857 as the Mughal Empire in India.
The most famous undisturbed Pazyryk burial so far recovered is the 'Ice Maiden' found by archaeologist Natalia Polosmak in 1993, a rare example of a single woman given a full ceremonial wooden chamber-tomb in the 5th century BC, accompanied by six horses. She had been buried over 2,400 years ago in a casket fashioned from the hollowed-out trunk of a larch tree.<br/><br/> On the outside of the casket were stylized images of deer and snow leopards carved in leather. Shortly after burial the grave had apparently been flooded by freezing rain and the entire contents of the burial chamber had remained frozen in permafrost. Six horses wearing elaborate harnesses had been sacrificed and lay on the logs which formed the roof of the burial chamber. The maiden's well-preserved body, carefully embalmed with peat and bark, was arranged to lie on her side as if asleep. She was young; her hair was still blonde; she had been 5 feet 6 inches tall. Even the animal style tattoos were preserved on her pale skin: creatures with horns that develop into flowered forms. Her coffin was made large enough to accommodate the high felt headdress she was wearing, which had 15 gilded wooden birds sewn to it.
The Pazyryk (Russian: Пазырык) burials are a number of Iron Age tombs found in the Pazyryk Valley of the Ukok plateau in the Altai Mountains, Siberia, south of the modern city of Novosibirsk, Russia; the site is close to the borders with China, Kazakhstan and Mongolia.<br/><br/> The tombs are Scythian-type kurgans, barrow-like tomb mounds containing wooden chambers covered over by large cairns of boulders and stones, dated to between the 6th and 3rd centuries BCE. The spectacular burials at Pazyryk are responsible for the introduction of the term kurgan, a Russian word of Turkic origin, into general usage to describe these tombs. The region of the Pazyryk kurgans is considered the type site of the wider Pazyryk culture. The site is included in the Golden Mountains of Altai UNESCO World Heritage Site.<br/><br/> The bearers of the Pazyryk culture were horse-riding pastoral nomads of the steppe, and some may have accumulated great wealth through horse trading with merchants in Persia, India and China. This wealth is evident in the wide array of finds from the Pazyryk tombs, which include many rare examples of organic objects such as felt hangings, Chinese silk, the earliest known pile carpet, horses decked out in elaborate trappings, and wooden furniture and other household goods. These finds were preserved when water seeped into the tombs in antiquity and froze, encasing the burial goods in ice, which remained frozen in the permafrost until the time of their excavation.
The Scythians were an ancient Iranian people of horse-riding nomadic pastoralists who throughout Classical Antiquity dominated the Pontic-Caspian steppe, known at the time as Scythia. By Late Antiquity the closely-related Sarmatians came to dominate the Scythians in the west. Public Domain image by PHGCOM.
The Scythians were an ancient Iranian people of horse-riding nomadic pastoralists who throughout Classical Antiquity dominated the Pontic-Caspian steppe, known at the time as Scythia. By Late Antiquity the closely-related Sarmatians came to dominate the Scythians in the west. Public Domain image by PHGCOM.
The Pazyryk burials are a number of Iron Age tombs found in the Pazyryk Valley of the Ukok plateau in the Altai Mountains, Siberia, south of the modern city of Novosibirsk. The tombs are Scythian kurgans, that is barrow-like tomb mounds of larch logs covered over by large cairns of boulders and stones, dated to between the 6th and 3rd centuries BCE. The Pazyryk kurgans are the type site of the wider Pazyryk culture. The site is included in the Golden Mountains of Altai UNESCO World Heritage Site.