ᴅᴇᴀᴅ masks of a Woman. Tashtyk Culture, Huno-Sarmatian Era, 3rd-4th centuries.
Found in Oglakhty Burial Mound. South Siberia, Republic of Khakᴀssia. The State Hermitage Museum.
Tashtyk people were settled cattle-breeders and farmers known for their idiosyncratic burial rituals. The Tashtyk culture existed between the first and seventh centuries AD in the area of so-called Minusinsk Basin of the Yenisei valley.
The face hidden behind the mask
The culture of Tashtyk
The Tashtyk culture developed along the Yenisei valley and surrounding areas of southern Siberia from the 2nd century BC. to the 4th century AD, supplanting the Tagar culture.
In 2009, a genetic study of ancient Siberian cultures, the Andronovo culture, the Karasuk culture, the Tagar culture and the Tashtyk culture, was published in Human Genetics. On the basis of this, the Tashtyk tribes appear to be formed by a mixture of Turkish and Indo-European elements, in particular Iranians and descendants of the Afanasians.
This culture has left us several settlements and hill fortifications in the Enisej region and in particular in the Sayan Mountains region, but also numerous petroglyphs. In the funeral environment, the impressive burial chambers inside the kurgans are worthy of mention, from which large quanтιтies of clay and metal vases and ornaments come. Some of these artifacts – lacquers, bronze mirrors and the singular honorary insignia – are distinguished by being imported products of Chinese origin.
Some of the tombs contained leather models of human bodies, filled with grᴀss, with heads wrapped in cloth and painted in bright colors. Inside these models were small leather bags that probably symbolized the stomach and contained burnt human bones. In the vicinity of the tombs, smaller-scale replicas of swords, arrows and quivers have also been identified, to which a particular symbolic value was probably attributed.
The funeral masks of Tashtyk
Tashtyk culture is particularly known for its richly decorated funeral masks. Despite the custom of cremating their ᴅᴇᴀᴅ, the Tashtyks used to place a funerary mask over the remains.
Dr. Kiselev interprets the masks as real portraits of the ᴅᴇᴀᴅ and classifies them into three groups:
1) large faces with slightly pronounced cheekbones, full lips, eyes in a straight position and thin, long noses with a hump;
2) big, wider faces, rather full lips, straight eyes, straight noses;
3) thinner, elongated faces with slightly pronounced cheekbones, thin lips, eyes in a straight position, small, straight noses, slightly turned upwards.
Of all these types, only the faces of the last group come close to the masks of the Tagar culture.
The anthropologist G. F. Debetz argues that as a whole the masks of Tashtyk present a mix of europoid and mongoloid features reminiscent above all of the current Šori and Hakᴀssi. In conclusion, the population carrying this culture could be interpreted as a fusion of western elements, probably Indo-European and Finno-Ugric, with oriental elements (in which Proto-Mongolians and perhaps Chinese converge) and therefore it is the natural candidate for the role of progenitor, at least in part, of the Turkish populations.
What was behind the mask?
Recently it was possible to see for the first time the face hidden behind a Tashtyk funerary mask, it is the face of a male individual who died 1,700 years ago, coming from the mountainous region of present-day Khakᴀssia.
The individual, who died when he was between 25 and 30 years old, was found in the necropolis of Oglakhty, south of Minusinsk. This cemetery was accidentally discovered by a shepherd in 1902, when the man tumbled into one of the wooden burial chambers. Seeing himself surrounded by the ᴅᴇᴀᴅ with disturbing whitish masks he was scared to death and fled as fast as he could. However, a short time later, his mother-in-law who was surely more courageous than him, sneaked into the tomb discovered by his son-in-law and looted some objects.
Local official and researcher Alexander Adrianov learned of the incident, and began excavating the site in 1903, bringing to light three tombs.
In 1969, Professor Leonid Kyzlasov resumed excavations of the Oglakhty necropolis and unearthed further burials including that of the man whose skull was recently the subject of a CT scan.
The dating of the burial whose remains were found was made possible thanks to the radiocarbon analysis carried out on the larches used for the construction of the burial chamber, this allowed us to date the burial to the 3rd-4th century AD. confirming its ᴀssociation with the culture of Tashtyk.
The burial in question contained the remains of three individuals wrapped in furs, a man, a woman and a child, along with what we can define as two life-size rag dolls. The male individual remains to date the only Tashtyk mummy found with tattoos on his body, not only the latest CT scans have revealed other interesting surprises.
The man had brown hair, although due to the scan they appear bright red, and he had an extensive suture on his face that went from eye to ear. The injury sparked the interest of archaeologists, who hypothesize that this suture was sewn after the individual’s death, perhaps to recompose the disfigured face after the wound that probably caused his death.
In other words, we can evaluate this operation as an intervention aimed at improving the appearance of the deceased before his journey to the afterlife.
However, for now it is not yet certain whether this “facial embroidery” was made post-mortem or when the individual was still alive. In fact, this would not be the only evidence of surgery on Tashtyk’s individual, who also presents:
The face of the woman lying in the same burial chamber has not yet been investigated by means of a CT scan. Or at least not yet.
“I would really like to do a CT scan of the female mummified head”,
added Dr. Pankova in this regard:
“I am planning to find a clinic that can do this research and decipher it for us.”
We still know little about the two funerary “mannequins” found in the same tomb. These are leather models of human bodies in “real” dimensions, which are usually explained as the product of the fusion of two cultures or traditions: one used to bury one’s ᴅᴇᴀᴅ and the other to cremate them. According to scholars, the mannequins seem to represent the remains of those who were cremated. However, it must be emphasized the existence of testimonies that would show that men were cremated more frequently than women and children who were usually buried.
Furthermore, Dr. Pankova explained that:
“The full-length models, a kind of mannequins, were made of leather, filled with тιԍнтly twisted grᴀss. These mummies, male and female, were dressed in furs and had masks on their faces.”
As for those found in the burial we know that:
“The head of one of the mannequins has not been preserved. Unfortunately, the rodents have probably sneaked in and ruined it. The second mannequin, on the other hand, has a face covered in bright red wool, with eyes and nose. ‘was a piece of Chinese silk. ”
Now we just have to wait for the results of the next analyzes to find out more about this ancestral Siberian culture.
