The Claim
The burial site of one of the most powerful dictators of all time has never been discovered
Genghis Khan is a name that anyone who has spent more than 10 minutes learning about world history would have heard of. He was one of the most successful military dictators of all time and his empire one of the largest that’s ever existed, and its not often someone with such a big name hasn’t had their place of burial discovered.
Normally when a ruler of some sort if buried, they require a large state funeral and monument and a publicly known place of burial, but not Genghis Khan. He is one of the big names in history that specifically requested his burial site to remain a secret, and enforced this request with as much blood as he could.
He was known to be a brutal ruler, responsible for the deaths of an estimated 40 million people through direct killings and causing massive famines. His empire stretched from eastern Russia down to south east Asia, and as far West as eastern Europe and most of India and the Middle East.
After a very successful campaign across most of the known world as well as naming a successor, Genghis Khan spent his last days in Western Xia, which is now an area in north west China. He is said to have died here but the cause of death seems unclear, with most accounts claiming he fell from his horse during a hunting session and died from an injury he sustained from doing so. Other claims range from battle wounds to general illnesses, but it seems the reason his death is unclear may have been intentional.
Before he died he left instructions for his burial, which is probably the bloodiest burial of a ruler in human history. He wanted to be buried without any kind of marking, which was a tradition in his tribe, and was presumably transported back to his birthplace in Khentii Aimag, a province in eastern Mongolia.
As for his actual funeral most historians agree on some similar figures concerning the amount of people who died, with a number close to 40,000 total dead. Apparently 30,000 people attended his funeral which was held at the place he was to be buried, after the service his soldiers then killed the 30,000 guests, who were then in turn killed by Genghis Khan’s personal bodyguards, who then in turn killed anyone who may have discovered the location of his burial site, and after that was done they committed suicide.
There is one tale of how a river was diverted to flow over the grave so no one would find it, but this is just folklore. There are a number of Mongolian chronicles that make conflicting claims about the burial site, such as the Erdeni Tobchi written in 1662 that claims the coffin was empty when it reached the funeral and the Khan was buried in secret earlier on.
The Altan Tobchi written in 1604 claims that only his shirt, tent and boots were buried in a desert region in modern day China, tricking people into thinking it was his body which was supposedly buried in secret earlier on.
Numerous other claims exist but it seems that not a single one of them has any real evidence to back it up, mostly that the grave still hasn’t been discovered.
There have been various expeditions to try and find the grave site, but as sophisticated as they were, non of them have found the grave. One things for sure though, and that’s the discovery of the grave of this man would be one of the biggest archaeological finds in history, and would certainly also contain a significant amount of treasure, though the finder wouldn’t exactly be able to sell the sword of Genghis Khan online as the ownership would hotly contested by the Mongolian government.
Recent Comments