Gaimanovo Mogila

Gaimanovo Mogila 

(Gaimanovo Tomb), a Scythian royal barrow of the fourth century B.C., located near the village of Balki, Vasil’evka Raion, Zaporozh’e Oblast, Ukrainian SSR. Its mound, which is 9 m high and 70 m in diameter, is surrounded by a low stonework that props it up. Investigations, conducted in 1969-70 by V. I. Bidzilia, revealed traces of a funeral feast under the western part of the stonework and an additional burial of a later period beneath the mound. Two entry pits containing the remains of carts that blocked the entrance to the dromos led to the burial chamber—a catacomb. The oval catacomb, measuring 16 sq m, had recesses in the north and south walls. Its central section and the southern recess had been robbed as far back as ancient times. The remains of two male and two female burials (the female burials contained leather shoes with small gold buckles), two skeletons, probably of slaves, without belongings, and the skeleton of a horse were discovered. More than 250 gold ornaments fashioned in the Scythian animal style were found at the bottom of the catacomb and in the robbers’ passage. The skeleton of a man, perhaps a cupbearer, with a spear, arrows, and a sling lay in the intact northern recess. Various utensils were behind him: amphorae, bronze cauldrons, a tray, braziers, a dish, a small pail, and an oenochoe with small satyr and silenus heads on the handle. A cache containing two wooden bowls with gold casings, a silver kylix, a silver pitcher, two silver rhytons with gold bindings in the form of a ram’s and a lion’s head, and other objects were found beneath the floor at the catacomb’s western wall. The most interesting item was a gold-plated silver bowl decorated with reliefs of Scythian warriors.

V. I. BIDZILIA