The location of the tomb of Genghis Khan

Genghis Khan

Genghis Khan , born Temujin and occasionally known by his temple name Taizu , was the founder and Great Khan of the Mongol Empire, which became the largest contiguous empire in history after his death....

(died 1227) has been the object of much speculation and research. As of 2011, the site remains undiscovered.

Historical accounts

Genghis Khan asked to be buried without markings. After he died, his body was returned to Mongolia

Mongolia

Mongolia is a landlocked country in East and Central Asia. It is bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south, east and west. Although Mongolia does not share a border with Kazakhstan, its western-most point is only from Kazakhstan's eastern tip. Ulan Bator, the capital and largest...

 and presumably to his birthplace in the Khentii Aimag, where many assume he is buried somewhere close to the Onon River

Onon River

The Onon is a river in Mongolia and Russia of length 818 km and watershed 94,010 km². It originates at the eastern slope of the Khentii Mountains. For 298 km it flows within Mongolia...

. According to legend, the funeral escort killed anyone and anything across their path, to conceal where he was finally buried. After the tomb was completed, the slaves who built it were massacred, and then the soldiers who killed them were also killed. The Genghis Khan Mausoleum is his memorial, but not his burial site. Folklore says that a river was diverted over his grave to make it impossible to find (the same manner of burial of Sumerian King Gilgamesh

Gilgamesh

Gilgamesh was the fifth king of Uruk, modern day Iraq , placing his reign ca. 2500 BC. According to the Sumerian king list he reigned for 126 years. In the Tummal Inscription, Gilgamesh, and his son Urlugal, rebuilt the sanctuary of the goddess Ninlil, in Tummal, a sacred quarter in her city of...

 of Uruk). Other tales state that his grave was stampeded over by many horses, that trees were then planted over the site, and the permafrost also did its bit in the hiding of the burial site. The Erdeni Tobchi

Erdeni Tobchi

The Erdeniin Tobchi is a national chronicle and set of Mongolian judicial laws over historical content in the 17th century. It was written in 1662....

(1662) claims that Genghis Khan's coffin may have been empty when it arrived in Mongolia. Similarly, the Altan Tobchi

Altan Tobchi

The Altan Tobchi, or Golden Summary , is a 17th century Mongolian chronicle written by Guush Luvsandanzan. Its full title is "Herein is contained the Golden Summary of the Principles of Statecraft as established by the Ancient Khans". Mongolian scholars typically call the work the "Lu Altan Tovch"...

(1604) maintains that only his shirt, tent and boots were buried in the Ordos

Ordos Desert

The Ordos Desert is a desert and steppe region lying on a plateau in the south of the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China . The soil of the Ordos is a mixture of clay and sand and, as a result, is poorly suited for agriculture. It extends over an area of...

 (Ratchnevsky, p. 143f.).
Tumbull (2003, p. 24) tells another legend according to which the grave was re-discovered 30 years after Genghis Khan's death. According to this tale, a young camel was buried with the Khan, and the camel's mother was later found weeping at the grave of its young.

Marco Polo

Marco Polo

Marco Polo was a Venetian merchant traveler from the Venetian Republic whose travels are recorded in Il Milione, a book which did much to introduce Europeans to Central Asia and China. He learned about trading whilst his father and uncle, Niccolò and Maffeo, travelled through Asia and apparently...

 wrote that, even by the late 13th century, the Mongols did not know the location of the tomb. The Secret History of the Mongols

The Secret History of the Mongols

The Secret History of the Mongols is the oldest surviving Mongolian-language literary work...

has the year of Genghis Khan's death but no information concerning his burial. In the "Travels of Marco Polo" he writes that "It has been an invariable custom, that all the grand khans, and chiefs of the race of Chingis-khan, should be carried for interment to a certain lofty mountain named Altaï ,and in whatever place they may happen to die, although it should be at the distance of a hundred days' journey, they are nevertheless conveyed thither." Marco Polo also writes that Chingis-khan died "in the siege of a castle named Thaigin, he was struck by an arrow in the knee, and dying of the wound, was buried in the mountain of Altaï." Other sources name the area of the Burkhan Khaldun mountain as his burial site (roughly 48.5°N 108.7°E). The area near the Burkhan Khaldun was called the Ikh Khorig

Ikh Khorig

The Ikh Khorig, or Great Taboo, is a 240 km² area in the Khentii Aimag of Mongolia, believed by some to be the location of Genghis Khan’s grave...

, or Great Taboo. This 240 square-kilometer area was sealed off by the Mongols, with trespassing being punishable by death. It is only within the last 20 years that the area has been open to western archeologists.

Search

There were rumours concerning a standard containing clues to the site that had been removed by the Soviets

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 from a Buddhist

Buddhism

Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...

 monastery in 1937, and rumours concerning a curse leading to the death of two French archaeologists (comparable to the curse of the tomb of Tamerlane, Gur-e Amir

Gur-e Amir

The Gūr-e Amīr or Guri Amir is a mausoleum of the Asian conqueror Tamerlane in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. It occupies an important place in the history of Persian Architecture as the precursor and model for later great Mughal architecture tombs, including Humayun's Tomb in Delhi and the Taj Mahal in...

).

On October 6, 2004, "Genghis Khan's palace" was allegedly discovered, and that may make it possible to find his burial site.

Amateur archaeologist Maury Kravitz has dedicated 40 years to the search of the tomb. In a 15th-century account of a French Jesuit

Society of Jesus

The Society of Jesus is a Catholic male religious order that follows the teachings of the Catholic Church. The members are called Jesuits, and are also known colloquially as "God's Army" and as "The Company," these being references to founder Ignatius of Loyola's military background and a...

, he found a reference to an early battle where Genghis Khan, at the time still known as Temüjin, won a decisive victory. According to this source, he selected the confluence of the Kherlen and "Bruchi" rivers, with Burkhan Khaldun over his right shoulder, and after his victory, Temüjin said that this place would be forever his favourite. Kravitz, convinced that Temüjin's grave would be near that battlefield attempted to find the "Bruchi" river, which turned out to be unknown to cartographers. He did, however, discover a toponym "Baruun Bruch" ("West Bruch") in the area in question, and as of 2006 is conducting excavations there, roughly 100 km east of the Burkhan Khaldun (48°N 110°E, the wider area of Bayanbulag).

Footnotes