Bilge Khan's Golden Crown

In the summer of 2001 a Turkish-Mongolian expedition at the memorial complex of Bilge Khan, at Khöshöö-Tsaidam in the Orkhon valley, cut a block of earth from between the altar and the symbolic grave and lifted it out whole. In it lay a crushed silver chest with its contents heaped in confusion. Among the gold pieces was a diadem of thin gold sheet with a bird on its front panel.^[1] The diadem is called the crown of Bilge Khan and is kept in the National Museum of Mongolia.^[2] Whose it was, and when it was laid in the ground, is disputed.^[3]

The memorial complex

The complex lies about a kilometre south of the monument of Kül Tegin, between the Orkhon and Lake Khöshöö-Tsaidam, some four hundred kilometres from Ulaanbaatar.^[4] It was made for Bilge Khan, who died in 734. The inscription of his monument was set up in 735.^[5] The inscription of Kül Tegin says that the Chinese emperor sent his court artists to build the monument of Kül Tegin. It says that Bilge Khan had an extraordinary building put up, with extraordinary carving inside and out.^[6] According to the Old Tang History, the emperor sent an envoy to condole when Bilge Khan died. He had a stele and a temple set up for him and ordered the court historian to write the text of the stele.^[7]

The plan was laid bare by the campaigns from 2000 to 2004. The monument stands in a rectangle of 72 by 36 metres.^[8] The entrance faces east and is guarded by two marble rams that face each other. The inscribed stele stood on a tortoise pedestal in the first court. A passage lined with the statues of Bilge Khan, his wife and probably of dignitaries led to the bark, the temple, on a clay platform of fifteen metres square. The figures of the dignitaries were not found.^[9] In the west part of the bark stood a sacrificial stone of granite, the altar, and north of it lay the symbolic memorial grave.^[10] A line of about 550 balbals was traced from the east entrance for three kilometres to the east.^[11] Several figures were carved sitting cross-legged and carry no weapon.^[12] The heads are gone from all of them. The complex had been badly robbed and damaged before 2000.^[13]

The excavation of 2001

The expedition was part of a project for the protection of the Turkish monuments in Mongolia, which the Turkish agency TİKA paid for. Twenty-five scientists left Turkey on 19 June 2000. Work began at the complex on 22 July 2000.^[9] The first campaign ended on 28 August. Campaigns followed from 2001 to 2004.^[14] Before that the complex had been worked only on the surface, in the early 1890s by Radloff. The Czechoslovak-Mongolian expedition of 1958 had dug at the Kül Tegin monument and not here.^[15] The team of 2001 consisted of Turkish and Mongolian scholars under a coordinator from Turkey.^[16]

A later account of the team says that the trench between the altar and the symbolic grave was dug deep because an electromagnetic survey had shown a stronger signal there than expected.^[17] At about 102 centimetres, where the cultural layer ended, three silver appliqués in the form of flowers came out first.^[17] Another report puts them under the original clay floor at a depth of 123 centimetres.^[18] More followed, fused into a mass with metal fittings. The diggers stopped. On the next day they cut the earth around the find, put it into a frame of steel plates and took it to the camp as a block.^[17] A photograph in one report is dated to the midnight of 31 July 2001. It took seven days to uncover the contents and document them.^[18] The hoard was therefore found at the end of July or the start of August. A publication of about 2003 puts the find in August 2002. The reports of the team give 2001.^[19]

The chest was largely destroyed. Its silver appliqués in the shape of flowers lay piled, 2,556 of them in one count. Some had melted by fire in the top ten to twenty centimetres around the altar. Under them lay two deer statuettes, nine silver dishes, the rolled sides and upper plates of the chest and two handles.^[18] One of the deer was whole except for a leg and an antler. The other was broken and melted. Small ritual vessels, plates, cups, mugs and jugs held organic remains.^[20] After the silver came the gold. The crown lay in the middle, with pieces of a gold belt, a large gold dish and precious stones. Buckles, clasps and earrings lay in the same group.^[21]

The counts differ. A catalogue of the finds gives 1,878 silver objects in 17 groups, 78 gold objects in 20 groups, 26 precious stones and 304 bronze nails.^[2] Another publication speaks of about two thousand silver and gold objects. The summary of a report of the team says that four thousand five hundred pieces were found.^[22] The numbers are not those of a single count.

After the lifting the hoard went to the National Museum of Mongolia. In October 2001 it went to the Art Centre in Ulaanbaatar, where a team of Turkish and Mongolian restorers worked on it. An exhibition hall was made for it in the museum.^[23] The crown was shown in several countries under the name of the inheritance of Genghis Khan.^[11]

The crown

The diadem is a band of thin gold sheet with five upright panels. The four side panels are decorated with tendrils on a chased ground. The front panel bears the full-face figure of a bird of prey with spread wings.^[24] The head of the bird was cast and fixed to the crown with two rivets. The bird holds in its beak a stone on a gold wire, which is thought to be an amethyst.^[25] The bird has both wings spread and is shown rising. An object stands behind it. If that stands for the sun, the bird flies towards it.^[25] Small holes along the edges show that the band was sewn to a cloth, a cap or a headband. Round empty settings show where stones sat.^[26] The stones were already lost or removed when the crown was laid down. The diadem therefore seems to have been in use for some time before.^[24] When it was put in the hoard it was folded on purpose.^[25]

The dimensions are given in two ways. One catalogue gives 9.3 centimetres high and 23 wide, another 9.8 by 25.7.^[27] The inventory number in the National Museum of Mongolia is 2005-1. Another catalogue uses the code Y.2003-4-46.^[28]

The nearest parallel is the head of the statue of Kül Tegin, found in 1958. It wears a high tiara of five panels with a band at the foot, three ribbons at the back and, on the front panel, a bird of prey with spread wings seen from the front. Another, smaller tiara of the same kind came from the monument. The likeness was noticed when the diadem was found.^[24] The excavator’s report of 1958 describes the find. The head of the statue of Kül Tegin lay thrown aside in a pit, beaten and broken. The five-pointed crown lay in another pit, torn from the head, with a heraldic bird on the front, perhaps an eagle. The excavator adds a fragment of a similar, smaller crown, probably that of the statue of his wife.^[29] He sees the damage as a deliberate erasure of memory. The necks of the statues were struck, and on the statue of Kül Tegin the neck and the crown were cut away, so that the damage could not be repaired.^[30] The Tang histories say that a likeness of the dead prince was cut in stone at his monument.^[7]

Two explanations of the crown rest on that parallel. The first takes the bird tiara for ceremonial headgear of the eastern court in the first half of the eighth century. It was probably an insignia of supreme military command. It was probably not worn by the khan himself, because a khan and a tegin would then have worn the same thing. The first explanation suggests that the diadem was part of Bilge Khan’s old insignia from the years when he was shad, and that it had been out of use for some time.^[31] It also holds a local workshop at an eastern residence, perhaps with a Chinese or Central Asian master, more probable than an import. It compares the tiara with the pheasant hat of Chinese military officers.^[32] The second finds the closest forms in the crowns of Buddhist figures of Asia, with a metal band of three or five points on a cloth headband. It sets them against the three-pointed crown that marks women on Göktürk statues.^[33] The excavator of 1958 gives the crowns of Kül Tegin and of his wife a third origin. He takes their form from the west rather than from East Asia, and the eagle on the brow from the art of Central Asia.^[34] Turkish writing on the dig calls the bird on the crown the Kut bird, Kut kuşu. It says that others call it the Umay bird.^[35] These are names given by modern writers.

Date and owner

The excavators’ accounts take the hoard to be the possessions of Bilge Khan or gifts sent to him. One of them sees in the crushed chest a sign that it was buried in haste.^[36] The team holds that the hoard lay under the original floor of the complex and was therefore laid down when the complex was built, in 735, for Bilge Khan or for someone very close to him. It holds that the symbolic grave belonged to the complex and that complex and grave were damaged together in the Uyghur period.^[37]

A critique of 2019 holds that the hoard stands in place but was put there later. It finds no trace in the published photograph of the plaster of the original floor covering the finds. The level of the original floor is not even visible in the picture.^[38] It notes that the reports of the team do not say that a geophysical survey found the hoard, whereas the later account of the team gives the electromagnetic anomaly as the reason for the deep trench.^[39] It sees the complex as one of two phases, in which a simpler cult place east of the altar cut the floor and received the hoard.^[40] It assigns the later cult place to the Uyghurs or the Kirghiz. It prefers the Uyghurs, since the Kirghiz are not known to have turned to Buddhism or Manichaeism in numbers.^[41] It holds the hoard to be that of a woman. No weapon lay in it, and the crown has the form of Buddhist crowns.^[42] It quotes an objection of another scholar, that a khan of the best years of the Göktürks could not have been sent off with so plain an offering.^[38] If so, the hoard was not Bilge Khan’s treasure but that of a lady of the Uyghur age.^[43]

Both sides hold that the hoard lay in its original place when it was found.^[40] The dispute is about what lay over it.

Reliability

The crown testifies only to itself. It shows that it was made, of what, with what ornament and with what likeness to the headgear of the Kül Tegin statue. It does not say whose it was, since it bears no inscription. The date of its deposit depends on the floor, which the excavators and their critic interpret differently. The reports from the team come second-hand in part. The counts of the hoard come from the primary reports of the project through later papers. What the find shows beyond doubt is that gold work of a high order stood at a memorial complex of the Orkhon in the age of the khaganates. Whether it was Bilge Khan’s remains open.

References

^ Bahar 2009, p. 2; 34–36; Gökçek 2022, p. 2; 34–36
^ a b Yılmaz 2019, p. 394
^ Bahar 2009, p. 2; 407–412; Yılmaz 2019, p. 2; 407–412
^ Bahar 2009, p. 1
^ Thomsen 1924, p. 139
^ Kül Tegin inscription
^ a b Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194
^ Bahar 2009, p. 3; 28; Gökçek 2022, p. 3; 28
^ a b Gökçek 2022, p. 28–29
^ Gökçek 2022, p. 29–30; 1; Bahar 2009, p. 29–30; 1
^ a b Bahar 2009, p. 3
^ Yılmaz 2019, p. 396–398
^ Gökçek 2022, p. 27
^ Gökçek 2022, p. 29
^ Gökçek 2022, p. 28; 1; Bahar 2009, p. 28; 1
^ Gökçek 2022, p. 30
^ a b c Gökçek 2022, p. 31
^ a b c Bahar 2009, p. 2
^ Ōsawa 2006 (Druck); Netzfassung 2003
^ Gökçek 2022, p. 34
^ Bahar 2009, p. 2; 35–36; Gökçek 2022, p. 2; 35–36
^ Stark 2009 (erschienen 2011), p. 120; 1; Bahar 2009, p. 120; 1
^ Bahar 2009, p. 2–3
^ a b c Stark 2009 (erschienen 2011), p. 120
^ a b c Yılmaz 2019, p. 395
^ Stark 2009 (erschienen 2011), p. 120; 395–396; Yılmaz 2019, p. 120; 395–396
^ Yılmaz 2019, p. 395; 128; Stark 2009 (erschienen 2011), p. 395; 128
^ Yılmaz 2019, p. 394–395
^ Jisl 1963, p. 395
^ Jisl 1963, p. 398
^ Stark 2009 (erschienen 2011), p. 121
^ Stark 2009 (erschienen 2011), p. 120–121
^ Yılmaz 2019, p. 399–407
^ Jisl 1963, p. 399
^ Gökçek 2022, p. 35
^ Bahar 2009, p. 1; 38; Gökçek 2022, p. 1; 38
^ Yılmaz 2019, p. 407–408; 2; Bahar 2009, p. 407–408; 2
^ a b Yılmaz 2019, p. 408
^ Yılmaz 2019, p. 409; 31; Gökçek 2022, p. 409; 31
^ a b Yılmaz 2019, p. 409
^ Yılmaz 2019, p. 409–410
^ Yılmaz 2019, p. 411
^ Yılmaz 2019, p. 412

Sources

Kül Tegin inscription
Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194

Literature

Hasan Bahar, The Excavation and the Conservation of Bilge Khan Monumental Grave Complex in Mongolia (2009)
Kürşat Koçak, L. Gürkan Gökçek, Bilge Kağan Hazinesinin Gün Yüzüne Çıkarılması: Bilge Kağan Anıt Alanı Kazı Çalışmaları (Digging Out Bilge Kağan's Treasure) (2022)
Anıl Yılmaz, Bilge Kağan'a Atfedilen Taç ve (Doğu) Gök Türklerin Budizm'e Yaklaşımı (The Crown Attributed to Bilge Kaghan and the Approach of (Eastern) Gök Türks to Buddhism) (2019)
Sören Stark, Some Remarks on the Headgear of the Royal Türks (2009 (erschienen 2011))
Takashi Ōsawa, Aspects of the relationship between the ancient Turks and Sogdians: based on a stone statue with Sogdian inscription in Xinjiang (2006 (Druck); Netzfassung 2003)
Vilhelm Thomsen, Alttürkische Inschriften aus der Mongolei, in Übersetzung und mit Einleitung (1924)
Ja. A. Šer (Ya. A. Sher), Каменные изваяния Семиречья (Kamennye izvaniya Semirech'ya) (1966)
Lumír Jisl, Kül-Tegin anıtında 1958'de yapılan arkeoloji araştırmalarının sonuçları (1963)