In Search of Khan
He’s been dead for almost 800 years, but the mystery surrounding the elusive tomb — and treasures — of Genghis Khan is as current as ever.
By Charles Runnette. Illustrations by Kako.
For those who know him only as a character in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, the real Genghis Khan (known to the Mongols as Chinggis Khan) is the Asian-history equivalent of Napoleon or Alexander the Great.
The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were all about Genghis and his descendants, the Great Khans. At its height, the Mongol empire stretched from modern-day Korea to Poland and from Iraq to Vietnam. By the end of the 1200s, Genghis’s sons and grandsons — including Marco Polo’s pal Kubilai — had amassed the largest contiguous land empire in world history. It was more than twice the size of the Roman Empire and more than four times the size of Alexander the Great’s.
So, considering that Genghis Khan has been dead for almost 800 years and that his empire is long gone, why does anyone care about him anymore? The obvious answer of “historical significance” aside, most of the fascination surrounding him has to do with his secret burial site (after all, who doesn’t love a mystery?) and one juicy word: treasure.
During their reign, the Khans pillaged the wealthiest cities of their era, including a string of shimmering gilded citadels along the legendary Silk Road: Samarkand, Bukhara, and Tashkent. And while much of the plunder was undoubtedly used to maintain the vast empire and to pay off debts, scholars know that some of the priceless objects Genghis was accused of looting in his lifetime of conquest did indeed make it back to Mongolia. Even though much was given away, it is believed that he may very well have collected a stunning treasure, one unrivaled in history — and taken some of it with him to the grave.
But finding the final resting spot of this fearsome conqueror was never going to be easy, especially since he went to great lengths to make sure his grave was undisturbed. According to Chinese texts, Genghis issued detailed orders to his trusted generals instructing them to make certain that his tomb remain hidden for all time. Legend goes that when Genghis’s cortege brought his corpse back to Mongolia from the Chinese region where he had died in battle (or in bed), every living creature they encountered was killed. And, just as pirates dispose of those who help to bury their treasure, the generals slaughtered the people who dug Genghis’s tomb and buried them in a nearby mass grave.
Imagine the history world’s surprise, then, when in August 2001, a group of American and Mongolian entrepreneurs and academics calling themselves the Genghis Khan Expedition claimed that they had zeroed in on the burial spot of Mongolia’s founding father. Was it possible that one of the world’s greatest mysteries was about to be solved? Answer: not really. Or at least a highly probable not really. But, being the intrepid reporter and archaeology buff that I am, I decided to drop everything and head out to see this discovery for myself.
MONGOLIA SHOCKS first-time visitors, and not just because things like the local drink (a beverage traditionally made with fermented mare’s milk, called kumis) are slightly less than appetizing, but because the whole experience feels a lot like an interplanetary journey — to planet Genghis. Imagine combining George Washington with Justin Timberlake. Genghis is that ubiquitous, and that revered.
Less than two weeks after the news of the discovery broke in the United States, I flew from New York to Seoul and then hopped on a MIAT (Mongolian Airlines) flight to Ulaanbaater, the capital of Mongolia. I dropped my bags off at my room in the Chinggis Khaan Hotel and grabbed my equipment so I could rush across town to interview the local team members of the expedition. That’s when my initial shock at the fact that a group headed by a Chicago personal-injury lawyer and a professor of Islamic history at the University of Chicago had made this stunning discovery quickly turned into a panicky dread.
Sitting in an office that overlooked the parliament building and Sukhbaatar Square, Shagdar Bira, PhD, secretary general of the International Association for Mongol Studies and a member of the expedition, began to carefully backtrack from their find. “We are not sure this is his tomb,” he said, exchanging meaningful, furtive glances with his deputy, Tsogt-Ochir Ishdorj, PhD, department head at the Institute of History, Mongolian Academy of Sciences. I convinced myself to assume the best (being ever the optimist) and hoped that they were merely uncomfortable at the possibility of being perceived locally as modern-day grave robbers disturbing the resting place of the country’s revered leader. Against his wishes.
Within a day, I had talked Ishdorj into leading my English-speaking (yet mute) driver and me to their guarded site, deep in the countryside.
Mongolia is three times the size of California and has about 2.83 million people, about half of whom are concentrated in the capital, so a journey into the sparsely populated countryside can seem like a trip back in time. Many rural Mongolians still live the same way as those who lived during the time of the Khans. They learn to ride horses before they can walk; they dress in traditional deels (gowns); and they dwell as nomads, moving their circular gers (yurts) from valley to valley, just as their famous ancestor did. Genghis is omnipresent. Everyone knows the story of his life, death, and secret burial.
Two hundred miles has never felt as long as it did on that off-road venture through the Mongolian countryside in the back of a shock-absorber-free Russian jeep. After 14 kidney-crushing hours of bumping around the carpet-covered backseat, we pulled up to the middle of nowhere, and I suddenly saw it: the Oglogchiin wall surrounding the supposed grave site. I got goose bumps. Then my doubts came rushing back. Popping a Tums to ease my pre-ulcerous condition, I wondered how previous searches could have possibly overlooked such a massive ancient wall circling a hillside.
AFTER SPENDING THE NIGHT in a yurt belonging to a local family, we trotted up the hill on horseback the next morning. Mongolians ride either on wooden saddles or with no saddle at all. I opted for the wooden saddle. For future reference: bad choice. I was jet-lagged, haggard from a lack of food, and more anxious than I’ve ever been — and the sharp pain from the saddle was not helping. Still, my wild anticipation started to block it all out as our horses tiptoed up the rocky path to the secret, (hopefully) sacred spot. I was so breathless that I had to remind myself to focus on getting some great shots in the morning light. Yes, I was finally about to see these tombs that had brought me from the other side of the globe, but I was also here to get a story.
I stopped picturing that Pulitzer and popped a few more Tums when we reached the top of the rock-strewn hill. After climbing down off his horse, Ishdorj began jumping up and down on a heavy stone slab that sounded as though it were resting above a hollowed-out section of ground. “Heyyy! It’s, you know, something in it. Over there is not,” he said to me, pointing down with an excited look. “It looks like natural rocks, but I think this is a tomb.” My heart sunk. Not the most convincing moment in archaeology. And definitely not the peek at a gauze-wrapped mummy lying among gold chalices that I had been hoping for.
IN THE FOLLOWING WEEKS, everyone I interviewed — from Mongolia’s prime minister to top Mongolian specialists at universities around the globe to Japanese archaeologists who had searched for Genghis’s tomb in the 1990s — poured buckets of cold water on the Genghis Khan Expedition’s claim. They each gave reasons why this “find” was nothing new and most likely not even close to true. Shimpei Kato, the chief Japanese archaeologist from a well-funded, high-tech expedition that had visited the Oglogchiin site in 1996, told me, “Inside, there was a relatively small Mongol-era grave, but, for sure, that was not Genghis’s tomb.” And Christopher Atwood, PhD, a respected Mongol from Indiana University, actually laughed when I asked him about it, saying, “The [Mongolian] government only approves digs if they know the teams are looking [for the tomb] in the wrong place.”
Thus the catch-22: No one — not even those in the government — is absolutely positive of the grave’s location. There is one spot that many suspect is the tomb’s location — a sacred mountain that’s in the Khentii district and off-limits to digging — but, in the end, it’s all speculation. Add to that fact the objections of Genghis’s descendants, the Mongols, to disturbing the remains of the founder of their nation, and anyone searching for his elusive tomb has some pretty big obstacles to overcome. Granted, the government realizes that extending the permits to dig has some economic benefit to them (e.g., bringing wealthy foreigners in, providing jobs for translators); however, the people of Mongolia seem overwhelmingly against disturbing their ancestor’s remains. They don’t want him dug up — for the same reason that people in Britain would object to anyone rummaging around the tombs of the English kings in Westminster Abbey. Genghis was their first king. He is the revered ancestor of a living people.
As a result, the American team’s initial 2001 announcement and a subsequent one in 2003 about unearthing skeletons dating to the thirteenth century (the time period in which many of the Khans lived) were greeted with a bit of nervousness. Then came the news, in 2004, that the returning Japanese-Mongolian team of bona fide archaeologists had discovered a site that they claimed was Khan’s palace — about 50 miles east of the Oglogchiin site — and the government felt the heat once again.
Since then, things have been quiet on the Khan front, but this summer, the race to be the next Heinrich Schliemann continues. And the good news for those looking for a different kind of vacation is that the American-Mongolian Genghis Khan group is currently enlisting the help of tourists. Over the course of the next five and a half months, through the adventure-travel company iExplore, the Genghis Khan Expedition is inviting in-shape globe-trotters to spend at least $4,295 (airfare not included) to take part in one of history’s last great treasure hunts.
Who knows, you might just end up in a vast tomb, knee-deep in a pile of riches from all across Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East. More likely, though, you will have one of the most memorable trips of your life and leave feeling the same way many Mongols (and I) do — rooting for Genghis to stay hidden, undisturbed. Just as he wanted.