Treasures of the "Slovak Tutankhamun"

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The tomb of the "prince" of the 4th century was discovered in 2005 during the construction of an industrial zone in the town of Poprad (Slovakia). The rich burial of a noble man was plundered in antiquity, but the preserved artifacts and the actual remains of the "prince" have been providing work for modern researchers for 14 years, regularly presenting surprises.

A wooden tomb with a burial chamber measuring 2, 7 * 4 meters, wooden "furniture" and a wooden sarcophagus with the body of the deceased are well preserved - like other items that did not attract the attention of ancient robbers. The man from Poprad was quickly nicknamed "Slovak Tutankhamun", but in practice this means "long, complex and costly research": Slovak specialists admit that in some areas they simply do not have the necessary skills and modern equipment. Most of the research is carried out jointly with specialists from other countries - Denmark, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, USA …

The main sensation of the ancient burial was and remains a wooden playing board (in the title photo), the only one in Europe. There are only two of these in the world (the second in Egypt), and the game itself has added to the list of ancient board games, forgotten or unknown to anthropologists.

In addition to the unique game board, the tomb robbers ignored the furniture of the deceased: now a wooden table, chair and bed, once covered with sheet silver, are on display in the local museum.

The ancient robbers could not stand such trifles as toiletries: silver scissors, tweezers and ear spoons. The image of a well-groomed "prince" with clean ears somewhat contradicts the results of isotope analysis carried out several years ago together with German experts: according to the data obtained, the man was born in the Tatras, grew up in Spis (now this is a historical region in Slovakia and Poland) and, probably, was a representative of one of the Germanic tribes that inhabited the north and east of Slovakia at the end of the IV century. This information is contained in a recent note by The Slovak Spectator, but previous genetic studies have pointed to a more eastern region of origin, "somewhere between the Volga and the Urals."

Over the 14 years of research, the age of the deceased has also changed: earlier it was believed that he was about 30 years old at the time of death, now estimates have shifted towards 25 and even 20 years. The height has not changed yet: 172 cm, established on the basis of eighty surviving bones.

Scientists admit that they cannot more accurately identify the remains of the "prince" - he lived and died at the beginning of a difficult era known as the Great Nations Migration. The found pendant made from a gold coin - the solidus of Emperor Valens II, minted in 375, helped to date the tomb.

Archaeologists suggest that the burial itself dates back to 380 - at that time the Roman Empire still remained a common denominator for Europe, and the deceased probably had a direct relationship to it: judging by the data of isotope analysis, in the future, his eating habits (and the diet in overall) became "Mediterranean".

“He spent much of his short life in the Mediterranean region. Perhaps he lived in Rome for a long time, at the court of the emperor, or served in the Roman army, holding a high post,”says Karol Pieta, deputy director of the Archaeological Institute at the Slovak Academy of Sciences.

The cause of death of the young aristocrat, who ate properly and took care of himself, until recently remained a mystery. A recent large-scale study suggests that he died from acute liver damage from hepatitis B virus (HBV).

Strictly speaking, this is not news: the study itself - "Hepatitis B Virus from the Bronze Age to the Middle Ages" - became one of the scientific sensations of 2018. But only now the Slovak media reported that the "prince from Poprad" also took part in these investigations, in the form of mortal remains under the number DA119.

Today, the hepatitis B virus kills about a million people every year. Globally, the WHO estimates that the number of people infected with HBV is close to 260 million, despite the availability of the vaccine. Relatively recently, with the development of new technologies in the field of studying ancient DNA, researchers have not only the desire, but also the opportunity to find out the "medical history", in the literal sense - from the place and time of the appearance of the virus to the ways of its development and spread. Similar studies are now being conducted on many pathogens and diseases, among them - plague, smallpox, "Spanish flu", cancer (we talked about this in the article "Oncology in Ancient Egypt: modern mankind loses 100: 1"). But the ancient hepatitis B virus, among other things, turned out to be also “convenient” for detection and study, and the peculiarities of its transmission from person to person practically exclude the risk of contamination of modern DNA.

The speed of development of scientific thought is eloquently indicated by the fact that quite recently, in 2017, the oldest HBV genome at that time was sequenced - it was found in the mummy of a two-year-old child from Naples, who died in the 16th century, presumably from smallpox. In the end, the smallpox virus was not found, but the hepatitis B virus was found.

But this specimen remained the oldest only a few months: the already mentioned international study "Hepatitis B Virus from the Bronze Age to the Middle Ages", published in the spring of 2018, increased the "age" of the virus to 4500 years. This work became, in a sense, a "by-product" of a larger study of ancient DNA led by the famous Eske Villerslev, while studying 304 sets of ancient remains from around the world, hepatitis B virus was found in 12 samples, a separate study was devoted to these twelve, and one of this dozen turned out to be the "Prince of Poprad".

By the way, the earliest victims of the deadly virus in this study were representatives of the Sintashta culture from Russia (Bulanovo) and the bell-beaker culture from Germany (Osterhofen) - these remains are more than 4000 years old.

But they did not hold the title of the oldest for long - after a couple of months, specialists from the Max Planck Institute in Jena published their results: they found HBV in three of 53 samples, the oldest belongs to the Neolithic era, it is more than 7000 years old.

However, the speed and number of discoveries speak only of the rapid development of scientific thought and the improvement of technologies, it is still far from practical results: the available data is still insufficient.

Scientists believe that HBV originated about 20 thousand years ago, but the path of its distribution is still difficult to establish. The distribution of ancient genotypes of the virus does not always coincide with the modern one; some of the oldest strains are long extinct, while others bear more resemblance to HBV found today in gorillas and chimpanzees; medieval strains are frighteningly close to modern human ones, as if the virus almost did not mutate over the past 500 years …

"These data speak about a complex history of the evolution of the virus", "these data do not allow formulating a coherent theory of the origin and spread of HBV" - such conclusions are found in all scientific papers devoted to the ancient deadly virus.

As for the "prince from Poprad", he was found to have a genotype A virus. It is curious that the same genotype of the virus was detected in the 4000-year-old remains of two people from Bulanovo (Russia), belonging to the Sintashta culture, and in the 2700-year-old remains " Scythian woman "found in Hungary.

Today, each HBV genotype (10 in total, designated by Latin letters from A to J) has a territorial and ethnic area of predominance. It is logical to assume that this was the case in ancient times. This again raises the question of the origin of the "German prince" from Poprad - was he a descendant of those who came from the east, from the region "between the Volga and the Urals", or was he still a local native addicted to Roman customs and Mediterranean food?

Judging by the speed of updating information in the Slovak media, a response can be expected for several more years.