Mysterious tomb unearthed in Armenia
For the past 10 years Polish and Armenian archaeologists have been excavating the site of Metsamor, a once important religious and economic center in ancient Armenia. Recently, researchers uncovered a well-preserved tomb that contains theremains of a couple.
“The death of these people is a mystery to us, we do not know the cause, but everything indicates that they died simultaneously, because there are no traces of the reopening of the tomb,” Metsamor expedition director Krzysztof Jakubiak said in a press release, Art News reported.
The discovery is a rare one, not for the couple interred there but because most of the tombs of Metsamor have been looted. This one is untouched.
Along with the couple, researchers also found precious artifacts, including hundreds of beads and gold and carnelian pendants that made up three necklaces, ceramic vessels that came from the Syrian-Mesopotamian borderlands, and the remains of a wooden burial bed.
The tomb dates from the late Late Bronze Age (1300–1200 BC), making it some 3,200 years old. Metsamor belonged to the empire of Urartu, which spanned parts of modern Türkiye, Iraq, Iran, and Armenia. Metsamor was continuously inhabited from the 4th to 17th centuries, until it was destroyed by Scythian or Cimmerian nomads. Though the artifacts left behind in Metsamor suggest a thriving society, little is known of the people who lived there, as they seem to have had no written language and, as a result, left no texts behind.