Digging for buried treasure in the Gobi Desert sounds like the opening scene of an Indiana Jones film. For Austrian-born Michael Eisenriegler, it was a real-life adventure.
The 40-year-old amateur archeologist was in the Gobi over the weekend, helping to unearth Buddhist relics that had been buried for more than seven decades in a remote part of Mongolia.
Less than an hour of digging revealed two crates filled with priceless treasure, including rare manuscripts, Buddhist statues and clothing.
PHOTO: AFP
The relics were once part of a much larger cache of artwork housed at Khamaryn monastery, located 450km southeast of the capital, Ulan Bator.
The monastery was looted and destroyed by order of the communist government in 1937, but not before one monk named Tuduv hid many of the sacred objects.
Around 1,500 boxes of treasure had originally been stored at the monastery. Tuduv managed to bury 64 of them. The rest were destroyed.
Tuduv maintained the secret of the hidden crates for decades until finally revealing the story to his grandson Zundoi Altangerel.
When freedom of religion was allowed with the end of communism in 1990, Altangerel dug up a third of the boxes and placed his findings in a new museum.
Eisenriegler, an online media producer, visited the museum last year, met Altangerel and learned that many more boxes still lay hidden in the Gobi.
The museum was apparently not safe enough to house all the artifacts so Altangerel left about 20 boxes hidden in the wilderness. His grandfather had made him memorize the exact location of the crates.
Eisenriegler convinced the historian to dig up some of the boxes. That happened on Saturday with a joint team of Mongolian and Austrian experts on hand to inspect the items as they came out of the ground.
“My ancestors protected these boxes for many years. Now it is my duty to protect them,” said Altangerel after the dig. “In the future we plan to dig up the remaining crates.”
The event was filmed and streamed live on the Internet. Web users who logged on to the site, www.gobi-treasure.com, were encouraged to donate money, which will be given to Altangerel to improve his museum.
Viewers watched as the excavators spent 45 minutes digging into the earth, lifted the boxes out of the ground and displayed their contents.
The boxes housed a trove of artifacts including bronze statues, holy texts known as sutras and other riches. Altangerel carefully lifted the items out of the boxes and described their meaning.
Many were musical instruments, possibly used in Buddhist ceremonies at the monastery. He displayed a small drum that he described as a child’s toy.
The crates also contained manuscripts. Historians are interested in studying the texts, hoping they will provide clues to daily life at Khamaryn Khiid.
“We were deeply impressed with this event … These treasures were some of the most amazing things that I have seen, especially the statues,” Eisenriegler said after the dig.
The texts should also go a long way in helping historians better understand the founder of the monastery, Danzan Ravjaa, who lived from 1803 to 1856.
The legendary monk wrote hundreds of poems, performed Mongolia’s first opera and established schools and a museum. Wild legends about his miraculous feats still circulate among the Gobi nomads.
“We did this as a way to promote Danzan Ravjaa in the West,” Eisenriegler said. “He is worth being studied and known in the West. We also want Mongolians to get to know their history and Danzan Ravjaa is a big part of that.”
Danzan Ravjaa was best known for writing Mongolia’s first opera, Saran Khokhoo, or “Moon Cuckoo.” He staged the event at various monasteries across the Gobi Desert, raising money for building projects at his monastery. When Danzan Ravjaa died his mummified body was placed inside the White Temple of Khamaryn Khiid, and boxes of treasure were set around the body.
The relics remained there until the 1930s when the Mongolian army closed the monastery and arrested most of the monks, charging them with “counter-revolutionary activities.”
‘THEY KILLED HOPE’: Four presidential candidates were killed in the 1980s and 1990s, and Miguel Uribe’s mother died during a police raid to free her from Pablo Escobar Colombian presidential candidate Miguel Uribe has died two months after being shot at a campaign rally, his family said on Monday, as the attack rekindled fears of a return to the nation’s violent past. The 39-year-old conservative senator, a grandson of former Colombian president Julio Cesar Turbay (1978-1982), was shot in the head and leg on June 7 at a rally in the capital, Bogota, by a suspected 15-year-old hitman. Despite signs of progress in the past few weeks, his doctors on Saturday announced he had a new brain hemorrhage. “To break up a family is the most horrific act of violence that
HISTORIC: After the arrest of Kim Keon-hee on financial and political funding charges, the country has for the first time a former president and former first lady behind bars South Korean prosecutors yesterday raided the headquarters of the former party of jailed former South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol to gather evidence in an election meddling case against his wife, a day after she was arrested on corruption and other charges. Former first lady Kim Keon-hee was arrested late on Tuesday on a range of charges including stock manipulation and corruption, prosecutors said. Her arrest came hours after the Seoul Central District Court reviewed prosecutors’ request for an arrest warrant against the 52-year-old. The court granted the warrant, citing the risk of tampering with evidence, after prosecutors submitted an 848-page opinion laying out
STAGNATION: Once a bastion of leftist politics, the Aymara stronghold of El Alto is showing signs of shifting right ahead of the presidential election A giant cruise ship dominates the skyline in the city of El Alto in landlocked Bolivia, a symbol of the transformation of an indigenous bastion keenly fought over in tomorrow’s presidential election. The “Titanic,” as the tallest building in the city is known, serves as the latest in a collection of uber-flamboyant neo-Andean “cholets” — a mix of chalet and “chola” or Indigenous woman — built by Bolivia’s Aymara bourgeoisie over the past two decades. Victor Choque Flores, a self-made 46-year-old businessman, forked out millions of US dollars for his “ship in a sea of bricks,” as he calls his futuristic 12-story
A man has survived clinging to the outside of an Austrian high-speed train, Austria’s state railway said on Sunday, reportedly after it left while he was having a cigarette break. The man late on Saturday grabbed onto the outside of the train at St Poelten, west of Vienna, and was later taken onboard after the train performed an emergency stop, railways spokesman Herbert Hofer said. “It is irresponsible, this kind of thing usually ends up with someone dying,” he said. “And you’re not just putting yourself in danger, if you end up under the train there’s rescuers, there’s police, fire
RSS