[Mb-civic] The Secret in the Steppes Thought Safe for All Time - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

The Secret in the Steppes Thought Safe for All Time
Despite Misgivings in Mongolia, Explorers Hope to Find Site of Genghis 
Khan's 800-Year-Old Tomb

By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, February 9, 2006; A20

ULAN BATOR, Mongolia -- On the vast flatlands of eastern Mongolia, 
enclosed by a two-mile wall in the form of an oval, diggers have 
uncovered tantalizing clues to the solution of one of history's enduring 
mysteries: the site of Genghis Khan's secret grave.

Finding the spot where the great Mongolian conqueror was laid to rest in 
1227 by his famed horseback warriors would fill in a blank that has 
fascinated historians for centuries. Although he and his descendants 
galloped out of Mongolia to subdue most of the known world, Genghis Khan 
was buried without a monument or even a headstone, in keeping with 
Mongol belief that the dead should not be disturbed. Legend has it that 
the soldiers who carried out the mission were slaughtered to make sure 
the secret was safe for all time.

For eight centuries it has been, despite a number of more or less 
scientific expeditions, claims and counterclaims, some of them evocative 
of an Indiana Jones movie. But a U.S.-Mongolian expedition organized by 
Maury Kravitz, a retired Chicago commodities trader, made what may have 
been a breakthrough two summers ago. His explorers unearthed several 
graves dating from the 13th century inside the wall, a shambles of stone 
200 miles east of Ulan Bator, the Mongolian capital. Shagdaryn Bira, 
secretary general of the International Association for Mongol Studies 
and a recognized authority, said the graves are a promising sign that 
the wall could surround the bodies of Genghis Khan and his closest kin.

"Some Mongolian scholars are of the opinion that this might be a Genghis 
Khan family burial ground, including several generations, and perhaps 
including the great Khan himself," Bira said in an interview here. Not 
yet convinced, but highly intrigued, the tall, gray cultural historian 
said he was eager to see another round of careful scientific digging to 
confirm the hopes.

"My dream is to find the tomb," said Bira, 78. He has spent a scholarly 
life accumulating knowledge about the warrior-statesman who united the 
Mongolian nation 800 years ago and founded an imperial dynasty whose 
power at one time extended from China to the Middle East.

Kravitz, who shares the dream to the point of obsession, said he was 
unable to continue searching last summer because of a shortage of funds 
and an associate's health problems. But he is raising money for an 
expedition this summer to comb the now-frozen site anew in hopes of 
confirming it as a family burial ground -- and eventually of pinpointing 
the grave of the conqueror himself.

"That's where we spend our time, because in my considered opinion that's 
where the tomb of Genghis Khan lies," he said by telephone from Chicago. 
"We're going to continue working until we find what we're looking for."

Although Kravitz has been seeking Genghis Khan's tomb for 14 years, the 
coming dig is likely to generate more than the usual interest here. 
Mongolians this year have organized a round of horse races and other 
celebrations to commemorate the 800th anniversary of what they regard as 
Genghis Khan's first great achievement: unification of Mongolian tribes 
into a single state.

In most of the world, mention of Genghis Khan evokes images of the 
bloodshed and violence committed by his cavalrymen as they pushed west. 
When Americans moved against Afghanistan's Taliban in 2001, for 
instance, Afghan officials compared the invasion to Mongolian attacks in 
the 13th century and in revenge killed a number of ethnic Hazaras, who 
descend from those early Mongolian invaders, according to "Genghis Khan 
and the Making of the Modern World," a 2004 book by Jack Weatherford. 
Similarly, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, facing U.S. attack in 2003, 
drew a comparison between the Americans and the Mongolians who sacked 
Baghdad in 1258 and executed the caliph.

Mongolians have remembered Genghis Khan as the founder of a vast empire 
who delivered such advances as free-trade zones, census-taking, 
international postal systems and equality before the law to backward 
medieval Europeans. The far-reaching Mongol rule of the 13th and 14th 
centuries was, Bira said, a form of globalization practiced long before 
the term was invented.

Genghis Khan's descendants have enthusiastically embraced this 
conception of their heritage. Recent governments have sought closer 
relations with foreign countries after nearly a century as an isolated 
Soviet satellite. In that vein, the Mongolian Embassy in Washington has 
raised the idea of erecting a Genghis Khan statue. And here in Ulan 
Bator, a trendy crowd gathers nightly at the Great Khaan Irish Pub to 
drink pints of lager imported from Singapore while English soccer plays 
on big-screen Japanese televisions in a setting patterned on American 
sports bars.

Kravitz, who also has developed an admiration for Genghis Khan's 
contributions to civilization, said he first became interested in the 
Mongolian conqueror 45 years ago when a friend gave him a history book 
to while away the time during service in the U.S. Army in Germany. 
Although trained as a lawyer and for years busy most of the time on the 
commodities trading floor, Kravitz said, he read everything he could 
find on Genghis Khan. In the process, he accumulated a collection of 
books and documents that he said graduate students still come to 
consult. But most passionately, he has since 1992 tried to solve the 
mystery of Genghis Khan's tomb by making nearly annual research 
expeditions to the Mongolian steppes.

The mystery has remained intact over the years in large measure because 
Mongolians want it that way. Many of the country's 2.8 million 
inhabitants have clung to the ancient belief that it would be 
sacrilegious to dig up anyone's tomb, much less Genghis Khan's. In 
addition, to avoid any nationalist-based opposition, Soviet bureaucrats 
who ran Mongolia for most of the 20th century closed off the area where 
the tomb was most likely to be found -- the same area that interests 
Kravitz today -- fueling the mystique.

More recently, a Japanese-organized expedition to find the tomb was 
closed down after three years in the early 1990s after popular 
resentment built up on fears that Japanese scientists planned to dig up 
Genghis Khan's remains if they found them.

The Ministry of Education, Culture and Science has instituted 
regulations requiring a permit for any digs to ensure their legitimacy. 
But Bira, who has worked with Kravitz, said many Mongolians, officials 
as well as average citizens, were also uneasy when the Americans began 
digging. "We had to do a lot of work with people," Bira said. "I told 
them we were not going to disturb Genghis Khan's tomb," adding that he 
wanted only to identify the burial location.

Bira said the ministry requires evidence of serious purpose before 
granting the permit, and academic archaeologists have accompanied the 
expeditions organized by Kravitz. But provincial officials near the site 
have understood the tourism potential if the walled area does turn out 
to be Genghis Khan's burial site, he said, and businessmen are already 
thinking about organizing tours.

For many Mongolians, however, there is still something vaguely wrong 
about digging around in a place that has potentially held its secret for 
800 years. Traditional families to this day hold funerals in strict 
intimacy, sometimes in the hours just before dawn to avoid notice, and 
many believe disturbing Genghis Khan could bring bad luck.

"Oh, you hear these rumors from time to time," said a skeptical Foreign 
Ministry official, Luuzan Gotovdorjiin, when asked whether the Kravitz 
dig is on to something. "But I have my doubts. Genghis Khan is Genghis 
Khan."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/08/AR2006020802295.html?nav=hcmodule
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