Metsamor is a city in Armenia founded just 50 years ago in the province of Armavir to provide shelter for the workers of the only nuclear power plant in the country. The site is also famous for its Bronze Age archaeological site, a settlement that once covered some 200 hectares and housed up to 50,000 people around 3,500 years ago.
The old fortress, perched on top of a volcanic hill, housed at least seven sanctuaries, as well as Neolithic stone circles from some 7,000 years ago that could be part of a prehistoric astronomical observatory. The period of maximum splendor of the city was between the second and the third millennium BC, when Metsamor was the main producer of bronze (an alloy of copper and tin).
It is precisely to that time that we must go back to find the protagonists of this story, a man and a woman who were buried together in the same tomb accompanied by several necklaces of gold and carnelian (a reddish-brown mineral, variety of chalcedony).
Their bodies, according to archaeologists from the University of Warsaw who have discovered the burial, were placed with their legs slightly drawn up on a wooden funeral bed inside two underground chambers framed with large stones. The skeletons found are in good condition and show that the couple died when they were both between 30 and 40 years old.
“His death is a mystery to us. We still do not know the cause, but everything indicates that they died at the same time, because there is no trace that the sarcophagus was reopened,” says Professor Krzysztof Jakubiak, who has directed the campaign of excavation.
The tomb, which dates to the end of the Late Bronze Age (1300-1200 BC), is very well equipped and has not been looted. Inside, the researchers found more than a hundred gold and carnelian beads and pendants, some of which had a certain resemblance to Celtic crosses.
“All these elements probably formed three necklaces”, considers Professor Jakubiak. In addition, there were a dozen complete ceramic vases and a flask (a spherical-shaped container finished with a narrow, straight tube) made of wood that was not locally produced but was brought from the Syrian-Mesopotamian border, experts say. .
Polish archaeologists affirm that in the great Metsamor necropolis, which began to be excavated in 1965 and would have extended approximately 100 hectares, around 100 tombs have been found, but only a few of them have not been looted. The burials, the researchers say in a statement, were shaped like mounds because the stone chests were covered with a lot of earth.
Archaeologists don’t know exactly who lived in this ancient city 3,000 years ago because it was a culture that left no written texts. What is known is that the grandeur of this settlement was unmatched in the region “in terms of range and size.”
“Fortifications made of huge, gigantic stone blocks have survived to the present day, with Cyclopean walls surrounding what is known as the Citadel,” Professor Jakubiak notes. The central part had a temple with up to seven sanctuaries. At that time it was one of the most important cultural and political centers in the valley of Arax.
Starting in the 8th century BC, Metsamor became part of the kingdom of Urarat, the biblical kingdom of Ararat. King Argishti I was the one who conquered it during his reign and led it to expand until it reached what is the Yerevan region (the capital of Armenia) today.
