Noin-Ula
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Noin-Ula kurgan is located in the northern Mongolia hills north of Ulan Bator on the Selenga River near Lake Baikal and dated by the 1st century AD. Noin-Ula kurgan contained a lacquer cup inscribed with the name of its Chinese maker and dated September 5, 13 AD. It was excavated in 1924-1925 by general P.K.Kozlov. Noin-Ula kurgan is notable for its rich burial of a Hun prince or a noble. Like in the Pazyryk kurgan, the graves were flooded and frosen, and organic material had been well preserved. The tombs, plundered in antiquity, formed wooden burial chambers in deep shafts covered by earthen kurgans.
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[edit] Noin-Ula kurgans
Noin Ula burials contain more than 200 large kurgans, constructed with a square footprint and rising to 2 m in height. Inside the kurgans are timber burial chambers. Noin Ula had horse burials and one tomb had especially lavish furnishings. The deceased prince had apparently coffin made in China, and many of his possessions were buried with him. His horse trappings were elaborately decorated and the leather covered saddle was threaded with black and red wool clipped to resemble velvet. Magnificent textiles included a woven wool rug lined with thin leather with purple, brown, and white felt appliqué work, and textiles of Greco-Bactrian, Parthian, and Anatolian origin. Some objects are similar to the artifacts from Pazyryk in the Altai.
Among the burial inventory were artifacts of the Hunnish craftsmen including weaponry, home utensils, art objects, and multiple Chinese artifacts from bronze, nephrite, lacquered wood, and textiles. Many artifacts show that Huns actively participated in the vigorous exchanges along the Great Silk Road.
Most of the objects from Noin Ula today are in the collections of the Russian Hermitage Museum, some artifacts were transferred to the Mongolian National Museum in Ulaan Baatar. The display of materials from the Mongolian National Museum includes other Hun (Ch. Xiongnu, Hsiung-nu) materials.
[edit] Uchjulü-Chanuy
Kurgan No 6 was a tomb of Uchjulü-Chanuy (8 BC - 13 AD), known from the Chinese historical annals. Uchjulü-Chanuy is famous for freeing his people from the Chinese protectorate that lasted 56 years, from 47 BC to 9 AD. Uchjulü-Chanuy was buried in the 13 AD, the date is established by the inscription on a cup given to him by the Chinese Emperor during a reception in the Shanlin park near Chanan in the 1 BC. Uchjulü-Chanuy remains rested in the kurgan No 6 for 1911 years, until excavated in the 1924 by the general P.K.Kozlov. During his lifetime, Chinese dominated the steppe politically. Yielding to the Chinese demands, Uchjulü-Chanuy changed his personal name Nanchjiyasy to Chji. On entering the throne, Uchjulü-Chanuy confirmed the standing agreement between the Han and Huns: "Henceforth the Han and Hunnu will be one House, from generation to generation they will not deceive each other, or attack each other. If a larceny happens, they will mutually inform and execute and compensate, in case of enemies' raids they will mutually help with troops. Who of them first would breach the agreement, he will be penalized by the Sky, and his posterity from generation to generation would suffer under I this oath". During his reign, Uchjulü-Chanuy faced relations with China going from cordial to antagonistic when an usurper Wan Man came to power in the Empire Han. Assembling a 300,000-strong army, Wan Man opened war actions, but his attempts were futile. To Wan Man's luck, Uchjulü-Chanuy died in the 13 AD, before the end of the war. His successor was Uley-Jodi-Chanuy from Süybu clan.
The most visible objects of the Uchjulü-Chanuy funeral inventory are the local, Chinese and Bactrian textiles. The art objects show that Huns belonged to the circle of the Scythian "animal" style. The portrait shows exaggerated Mongoloidness, but with long waving hair split in the middle, and a braid tied visibly and falling from the tip of the head over the right ear. Such braids were found in other kurgan tombs in the Noin Ula cemetery, they were braided from the horsehair, and kept in special cases. The braid was a part of a formal hairdo. Along with exaggerated Mongoloid face totally dissonant with the curled hair, the braid resembles the Tashtyk masks, which are made more Mongoloid then the faces buried under these masks. This dissonance discloses that in the 1st c. AD the far-eastern Mongoloid appearance was looked upon by the Huns as more attractive then the western type appearance, resembling modern Telengits who consider large eyes and high nose to be ugly. From these observations, L.N.Gumilev drew a conclusion that between the Huns in the 1st c. BC the far-eastern ideal of beauty overcame the traditional western ideal, which continued to be carried forward in the art of the Scythian "animal" style.
L.N.Gumilev elaborates the roots of the Chinese cultural influence found in the Noin Ula kurgan cemetery. The Chinese culture was spread not only by material objects, but also by population admixtures. The Chinese continuously migrated to the steppes and settled there, the first big wave came in the 3rd c. BC during Tsin dynasty, when the captured Chinese became Hun Chanuy's subjects, a process repeated during the following centuries. The Chinese women marrying Chanuys, princes, and nobles, and their entourage were bringing Chinese tastes and ideas, and the numerous deserters who entered Chanuy service (for example, Vey Lüy, Li Lin) tought the Huns the subtlety of diplomacy and martial arts. The presence of strong Chinese influence on the Huns is clearly visible in the Noin Ula kurgan burials.
[edit] Retribution
In the "royal" kurgans of the Noin-Ula the archaeologists never found human remains. This fact agrees with the Han chronicles which tell that the leaders of one of the nomad tribes oppressed by the Huns during the days of the height of their empire, a hundred years after its decline, took an unprecedented step which today could be with some stretch called a PR demonstration. Trying to unite their subjects, and driven by revenge, the nomadic leaders initiated a desecration of the Hunnish Chanuys' "royal" tombs. With the depth and number of kurgans, it was a massive campaign. All to the last burials were unsealed, and the remains of the Chanuys were extracted together with clothing, weapons and symbols of authority.
The grave robbers were not interested in fabrics and carpets, wooden wares, ceramics, gold, and objects of art. They wanted to preclude their former oppressors from having a good afterlife. Because of that, in the Noin-Ula kurgans archeologists find unique, perfectly preserved cultural objects of the three worlds, three civilizations, the Ellinist, Chinese, and of the indigenous nomadic Asian civilization. The time and clay soil literally preserved these objects in the Noin-Ula Sutszukta.
[edit] Culture and Anthropology
The Hun's cultural affinity was with the peoples of southern Siberia and Central Asia, and with the Chinese they mostly exchanged arrows: The Huns were shooting with bows, and the Chinese with the cross-bows. The motives of the "animal style" are sometimes found in the in art of the Han China, but they are borrowed from the nomadic surroundings. The Hun's art influenced Chinese more than Chinese art influenced Huns.
Many immigrants lived in the Hun's pasturelands, but they did not mix with the Huns. To be a Hun, one had to be a member of a clan, to be born from the Hun parents. The newcomers were well off, but were in position of strangers, and did not marry the Huns, but the same as themselves. Later, they intermixed, increased in numbers, and even created a state that existed fromn 318 to 350 AD.
The Hun's culture can be differentiated into local, Scythian-Sarmatian, and Chinese. The main objects for life were produced locally, showing the stability of the nomadic culture. The Chinese masters handled small hand-made objects and ornaments, and the art objects connected with ideology have Scythian, Sarmatian and Dinlin S.Siberian cultures[1].
Noin-Ula embroidered portrait images are not only objects of art, but also anthropological monuments, the portrait images throw light on the Hun's ethnic type. Their Mongoloidness is expressed extremely poorly. There were even that the portraits depicted Greek-Baktrian persons, or the Greek depictions of Scythian soldiers from the Black Sea. These suggestions were too far-fetched. In the Hun history, in the 350 AD the power in the South Hun state Chjao was seized by an usurper, a Chinese Shi Min, who ordered to exterminate all Huns in the state, and then in the slaughter died "many Chinese with prominent noses". This suggests that Hun's anthropological type was not Mongoloid. And, in famous Chinese bas-relief "Fight on the bridge" the mounted Huns are shown with big noses. And the craniological analysis of the Huns' burials made by G.F.Debets determined a distinct paleosibirian type of the Asian branch with "not a flat, but with not strongly protruding nose", something similar to some North American Indians. This type is represented on the embroidery from Noin-Ula. What to the Mongoloid Chinese looked as a high nose, to the Europeans looked as a flat nose.
The portraits are not made in the Chinese manner, and are a handywork of the Central Asian or a Scythian artist. These masterpieces could be executed by the Baktrian or Parthian masters, living among the Huns, in the capital of the Hun's Shanüys who had active diplomatic relations with the Central Asian states.
The hairdo on the portrait shows long hair bound with a wide ribbon. This hairdo is identical with the Türkic clan Ashina, who were originally from Hesi in the province. Ashina belonged to the last Hunnish princedom destroyed by Syanbies-Toba, till 439 AD. From Gansu Ashina retreated to Altai and brought with them a number of ethnographic traits specific for them.
[edit] Literacy
The Chinese sources say that the Huns (Chinese "Hsiong-nu", "Hsiung-nu", "Xiongnu", etc.), did not have ideographic form of writing like Chinese, but in the 2nd century B.C. a renegade Chinese dignitary Yue "taught the Shanyu to write official letters to the Chinese court on a wooden tablet 31 cm long, and to use a seal and large-sized folder. The same sources tell that when the Huns noted down something or transmitted a message, they made cuts on a piece of wood ('k'o-mu'), and they also mention a "Hu script". At Noin-Ula and other Hun burial sites in Mongolia and region north of Lake Baikal among the objects were discovered over twenty carved characters. Most of these characters are either identical or very similar to the letters of the Turkic Orkhon-Yenisey script of the Early Middle Ages found in the Eurasian steppes. From this, some specialists hold that Huns had a script similar to the ancient Eurasian runiform, and that this alphabet was a base for later ancient Turkic writing.[2]
 2nd century BC - 2nd century AD, characters of Hun- Syanbi script (Mongolia and Inner Mongolia), N. Ishjatms, "Nomads In Eastern Central Asia", in the "History of civilizations of Central Asia", Volume 2, Fig 5, p. 166, UNESCO Publishing, 1996, ISBN 92-3-102846-4 |
 2nd century BC - 2nd century AD, characters of Hun- Syanbi script (Mongolia and Inner Mongolia), N. Ishjatms, "Nomads In Eastern Central Asia", in the "History of civilizations of Central Asia", Volume 2, Fig 5, p. 166, UNESCO Publishing, 1996, ISBN 92-3-102846-4 |
 Oldest known Türkic alphaber listings, Rjukoku and Toyok manuscripts. Toyok manuscript transliterates Türkic alphaber into [Uighur|Uigur]] alphabet. Per I.L.Kyzlasov, "Runic Scripts of Eurasian Steppes", Moscow, Eastern Literature, 1994. |
[edit] References
- Camilla Trever, "Excavations in Northern Mongolia (1924-1925)", Leningrad: J. Fedorov Printing House, 1932
- Rudenko S.I., "Culture of Huns and Noin Ula kurgans",M-L, 1962 (In Russian)
- Rudenko S.I., Gumilev L.N., "Archaeological Studies of P.K.Kozlov from standpoint of historical geography", in News of All-Union Geographical Society No 3, 1966 (In Russian)
- Gumilev L.N., "History of Hun People", 'Eastern Literature', 1960, Ch. 12 Regained Freedom http://gumilevica.kulichki.net/HPH/hph12.htm
- N. Ishjatms, "Nomads In Eastern Central Asia", in the "History of civilizations of Central Asia", Volume 2, UNESCO Publishing, 1996, ISBN 92-3-102846-4
