Thracian treasures on Alexander’s northern border

Thracians remain a relatively obscure people somewhere north of ancient Macedonia. It was long thought that they had no writing, but rare examples of inscriptions have been discovered using Greek letters that did not make sense. As a result, the history of the Thracians is only known through what other ancient authors tell us. 

Thracia is generally associated with Bulgaria. In antiquity, its borders extended from the Danube River, the Hellespont, the Bosporus, and the Black Sea in the east to Macedonia in the west. Today, the Greek province of Thracia still stretches from the Rhodope Mountains on its northern border with Bulgaria to the Aegean. It is squeezed between the Nestos River in the west and the Hebros in the east, forming the modern border with Turkey. 

[Photo: Todor Dimitrov/Courtesy of the Regional Historical Museum, Ruse, Bulgaria]

One of the most characteristic heritages of Thracian civilization is their profusion of burial mounds – a tradition that goes back to the Bronze Age, the middle of the 4th-2nd millennium BC. In central Bulgaria alone, over 1,500 such tumuli exist. 

The treasures of these tumuli in Bulgaria, went to the National Archaeological Museum in Sofia, otherwise to other European museums. More typical Thracian tumuli exist in Greece's Province of Thracia (see: Thracian Tombs at Doxipara, Greece). 

The great merit of the Thracians is their exceptional craftsmanship, especially in creating gold and silver objects. Most such testimonies come from grave mounds, which yielded a great variety of treasures, including the best-known Tomb of Kazanlak (see: Valley of the Thracian Kings). 

These precious legacies are occasionally brought together for special exhibitions. In 2015, the Louvre organized The Saga of the Thracian Kings. In 2002, an imposing number of objects were displayed at Bozar in Brussels in the frame of Europalia. 

I have not visited the Paris exhibition but have vivid memories of the one in Brussels. I marveled, for instance, at the gold jewelry from the Chalcolithic era (5-4,000 BC). Since the treasures from that era look very similar to those created in the 5-400 BC, I got my mental references mixed up. Other objects, however, looked like the forerunners of Cycladic Art. 

The collections presented in Paris in 2015 come from the Chernozem-Kaloyanovo and Mushovitsa tombs and the Kosmatka Tumulus of Seuthes III, King of Thracia, who died in 300 BC (see: Valley of the Thracian Kings). For the first time, some of the exhibited artifacts were brought together. 

The link to Architectural Digest displays an inspirational number of objects worth to be relished one by one.