The Valley of Thracian Kings
MúzeumCafé 16.
An area in the vicinity of Kazanlak in Bulgaria was a site of major royal burials in ancient times. Kazanlak, a town in the Stara Zagora province of Bulgaria, was bombed on 19 April 1944 with the result that a Thracian tomb dating from the turn of the 3rd and 4th century B.C. was revealed. The participants of the funeral procession – the wife of the deceased, family members, musicians, warriors and servants – accompany the monarch who was setting out for the eternal fields on his last journey. The area where the Thracians used to live was enormous. Some Thracian tribes occupied the islands of the Aegean, others settled in present-day south and east Macedonia, as well as a part of Thessaly-Pieria. A people related to the Thracians populated territory to the north of the Danube up to the Carpathians and Thracians also lived to the northeast of the river Dnieper. Furthermore, the area of Bithynia in Asia Minor also belonged to the Thracians. The names of more than 50 tribes are known in Europe. In 2006 Georgi Kitov explored the ‘Golyama Kosmatka’ tumulus of Seuthus III close to the village of Shipka, near Kazanlak in eastern Bulgaria. The monumental tumulus was covering a sarcophagus chamber. Its most noted and adorned finds are Seuthus’s gold mask, gold ring and gold crown, a life-size bronze head of the monarch, beautifully shaped silver rhytons, silver phials, gold kylikes, silver and gold armoury, shield ornaments, as well as carriage and harness ornaments with a characteristic style. The extremely rich set of finds excavated with the help of the TEMP programme can be seen for the first time in Hungary due to the cultural co-operation between the twin towns of Nagykanizsa and Kazanlak. The exhibition, which is running to 30 April, is housed in Nagykanizsa’s cultural centre, The Hungarian Poster House.