Noin-Ula burial site

The Noin-Ula kurgans are located by the Selenga River in the northern Mongolia hills north of Ulan Bator. It was excavated in 1924-1925 by Pyotr Kozlov. One of Noin-Ula kurgans is notable for its rich burial of a Hun (Ch. Xiongnu/ Hsiung-nu) Uchjulü-Chanuy, a ruler of the Hun confederation. Most of the objects from Noin-Ula are now in the Hermitage Museum, while some artifacts unearthed later by Mongolian archaeologists are on display in the Mongolian National Museum, Ulan Bator. One kurgan contained a lacquer cup inscribed with the name of its Chinese maker and dated September 5, 13 AD.

Noin-Ula kurgans

The Noin Ula burials consist of 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 coffin was apparently made in China, and the interned person had many of his possessions buried with him. His horse trappings were elaborately decorated and his 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 Altay Mountains. As with the finds at Pazyryk, the Noin Ula graves had been flooded and subsequently frozen, thus preserving the organic material to an unprecedented degree. The tombs, plundered in antiquity, formed wooden burial chambers in deep shafts covered by earthen kurgans. 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 trade along the Great Silk Road.

Among the Noin Ula art works are many imported objects and fragments of fabrics recognized as Greek. The fabric, color, weaving methods and embroidery of the cloth were similar to the cloth produced in the Greek colonies on the Black Sea coast for the Scythians, and from there they were flowing to the Huns, bringing along a knowledge about western countries. The Huns' later migration was planned and weighed: pushed from the borders of China and "Western Territory", they had to move to the borders of another agricultural culture, because isolation doomed them to poverty and obliteration.

Uchjulü-Chanuy

Kurgan No 6 was the tomb of Uchjulü-Chanuy (Uchilonoti, Ulunoti, 烏珠留若提 Wu-Zhou-Liu-Ju-Di, 8 BC–13 AD), who is mentioned in the Chinese annals. He 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 AD 13, a date established from the inscription on a cup given to him by the Chinese Emperor during a reception in the Shanlin park near Chanan in 1 BC. Uchjulü-Chanuy remained in his kurgan for 1911 years, until excavated in 1924 by General P.K. Kozlov.

During the life of Uchjulü-Chanuy, the Chinese dominated the steppe politically. Yielding to Chinese demands, he changed his personal name Nanchjiyasy to Chji. On ascending to the throne, he confirmed the standing agreement between the Han Chinese and the Huns: "Henceforth the Han and Hunnu will be one House, from generation to generation they will not deceive each other, nor attack each other. If a larceny happens, they will mutually inform and execute and compensate, in the event of raids by enemies they will help each other with troops. He of them who is first to breach the agreement, he will be penalized by the Sky, and his posterity from generation to generation would suffer under I this oath".

Despite this agreement, during Uchjulü-Chanuy's reign relations with China went from cordial to antagonistic when a usurper Wan Man came to power in the Han empire. Assembling a 300,000-strong army, Wan Man began military actions, but his attempts were futile. To Wan Man's ill-luck, Uchjulü-Chanuy died in AD 13, before the end of the war. His successor was Uley-Jodi-Chanuy of the Süybu clan.

The most dramatic objects of Uchjulü-Chanuy's funeral inventory are the textiles, of local, Chinese and Bactrian origin. The art objects show that Huns belonged to the circle of the Scythian "animal" style.

A surviving portrait shows a low nose bridge, epicanthic (?) eyes, long wavy hair, divided 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 horsehair, and kept in special cases. The braid was a part of a formal hairstyle. The braid resembles the death-masks of the Tashtyk. This appearance of the masks demonstrate that in the 1st century AD a Far-eastern appearance was perceived by the Huns as more attractive then one of western type, resembling modern Telengits who consider large eyes and high nose to be ugly. From these observations, L.N. Gumilev concluded that among the Huns of the 1st c. BC, a far-eastern ideal of beauty overcame the traditional western model, which continued in the art of the Scythian "animal" style.

Lev Gumilev elaborates the roots of the Chinese cultural influence found in the Noin-Ula cemetery. The Chinese culture was spread not only by material objects, but also by population admixtures. The Chinese migrated continuously to the steppes, the first big wave arriving in the 3rd c. BC during the Tsin dynasty (Pin. Qin), when captured Chinese became Hun Chanuy's subjects, a process repeated during the following centuries. The Chinese women married Chanuys, princes, and nobles, and their entourages brought Chinese tastes and ideas. The numerous deserters who entered Chanuy service (for example, Vey Lüy, Li Lin) also taught the Huns the subtlety of diplomacy and martial arts. A strong Chinese influence is clearly visible in the Noin Uul(Ноён Уул) kurgan burials.

Retribution

In the "royal" kurgans of the Noin-Ula the archaeologists found no human remains. This corroborates the Han chronicles which state the leaders of one of the nomad tribes oppressed by the Huns at the height of their empire, took an unprecedented step 100 years after their decline. Wishing to unite their subjects, and driven by a desire for revenge, the nomadic leaders desecrated the Hun Chanuys' "royal" tombs. With the number of kurgans, it must have been a huge effort. All the burials were unsealed, and the remains of the Chanuys were removed, together with their clothing, weaponry and symbols of authority.

The grave robbers were not interested in fabrics and carpets, wooden and ceramic wares, gold and other art objects. They wished to prevent their former oppressors from passing into a peaceful afterlife. Hence, in the Noin-Ula kurgans, the archeologists have found unique, perfectly preserved relics of three civilizations -- Hellenistic, Chinese and indigenous nomadic. The time and clay soil literally preserved these objects in the Noin-Ula Sutszukta (?).

Culture and Anthropology

The cultural affinity of the Huns was with the peoples of southern Siberia and Central Asia; with the Chinese they exchanged arrows rather than culture. Even here the two worlds differed: the Huns shot with bows, while Chinese employed crossbows. Nomad art influenced Chinese more than Chinese art influenced Huns. "Animal style" motifs are occasionally found in the art of the Han China, borrowed from their nomad neighbours.

Many immigrants lived in the Hun pasturelands, but they did not mix with the Huns. To be a Hun, one had to be a member of a clan, born of Hunnish parents. The newcomers were well off, but were outsiders, and could not marry the Huns, only among themselves. Only later did they intermix, increase in numbers, even creating a state that existed from 318 to 350 AD.

The Hunnish culture can be differentiated into local, Scytho-Sarmatian, and Chinese. Most everyday objects were produced locally, showing the stability of the nomadic culture; Chinese masters made small handmade objects and ornaments; while objects with ideological connotations originated from the Scythian, Sarmatian and Dinlin S. Siberian cultures.

Among the most important artifacts from Noin-Ula are embroidered portrait images. These shed light on the ethnicity of the Huns, albeit controversially. It has been claimed that the portraits depict Greco-Bactrians, or are Greek depictions of Scythian soldiers from the Black Sea. Such suggestions are far-fetched. There are several historical sources confirming the appearance of the Huns. In 350 AD, for example, power in the South Hun state of Chjao was seized by a usurper, a Chinese named Shi Min, who ordered all the Huns in the state exterminated; in the slaughter "many Chinese with prominent noses" died, suggesting the Huns had "prominent noses". In the famous Chinese bas-relief "Fight on the bridge" the mounted Huns are shown with big noses. A skull analysis of Hun burials made by G.F. Debets found a distinct Paleo-Siberian type of Asian branch with "not a flat, but with not strongly protruding nose", somewhat similar to some North American Indians. This type is represented on the embroidery from Noin-Ula. What to the rest of the Chinese looked like a high nose, to the Europeans looked like a flat nose.

The portraits are not made in the Chinese manner, and are the handiwork of a Central Asian or Scythian artist, or perhaps of a Bactrian or Parthian master among the Huns, in the capital of the Hun Shanüys (who had active diplomatic relations with these Central Asian states).

The hairstyle on one portrait shows long hair bound with a wide ribbon. This is identical with coiffure of the Türkic Ashina clan, who were originally from Hesi in the province. The Ashina belonged to the last Hun princedom destroyed by Syanbies-Toba by AD 439. From Gansu, the Ashina retreated to the Altai, taking with them a number of distinctive ethnographic traits.

Literacy

The Chinese sources say that the Huns (Hsiung-nu, Xiongnu, etc.), did not have an 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 Xiongnu 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.

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  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
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  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
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  Oldest known Türkic alphaber listings, Rjukoku and Toyok manuscripts. Toyok manuscript transliterates Türkic alphabet into Uygur alphabet. Per I.L.Kyzlasov, "Runic Scripts of Eurasian Steppes", Moscow, Eastern Literature, 1994.

References

• Camilla Trever, "Excavations in Northern Mongolia (1924-1925)", Leningrad: J. Fedorov Printing House, 1932
• Rudenko S.I., "Culture of Xiongnu 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