Bruno Macaes


On the trail of Europe’s last ‘lost city’

A forgotten empire lies buried beneath the desert on Europe’s easternmost border.



ASTRAKHAN, Russia — One recent cold December morning, I find myself aboard a wooden raft, pulled across the Volga by a small fishing vessel. I’m here to look for the remnants of a powerful, mostly forgotten medieval empire few have heard about. Once a mythical capital of enormous wealth, it once stood at the crossroads of the ancient Silk Road trading route — but exactly where is still a mystery. One man — with the help of a devoted team of students — may have found the missing piece of the puzzle.

Now I am normally more interested in geopolitics than in archeology but it turns out that in Russia the pursuit of buried histories and ancient civilizations is as much about geopolitics as anything else.

Every important archeological discovery will either confirm or challenge the stories Russians like to tell about their place in the world. Some people see Russia as the creation of Slavs who lived in Russian lands from prehistoric times. Others look east to the Mongols and the Golden Horde, and go as far as to claim that the Russian state is the inheritor of Genghis Khan’s imperial legacy.

What seems to have been lost is the idea of Russia as a bridge between east and west, a melting pot of tribes and religions.

Astrakhan, in southern Russia, has kept some of its identity as connector of major civilizations. When it was incorporated in the Russian empire in the 16th century the city was destined for a glorious role as a second capital in the south, and in the 17th century merchants from India established a permanent residence here.

Today, Asktrakhan is just as cosmopolitan: Christians, Muslims and Buddhists co-exist peacefully and more than a hundred different ethnic groups mix in the boisterous Tatar bazaar a few blocks south of the Kremlin’s snow-white walls.

* * *

The archeological laboratory at Astrakhan State University sits in the basement of the main university building, at the bottom of a set of spiraling stairs. It is a cramped space which serves simultaneously as library, storage, meeting room and safe. I am there to meet Professor Dmitry Viktorovich Vassilyev, head of the laboratory and renowned expert on the steppe civilizations.

We are sitting on gold coins, but leave them in the earth.

Every summer Vassilyev takes a team of students to an excavation camp in nearby Samosdelka. Life at the camp alternates between hard work, swims in the Volga and songs around the fireplace at night. By the end of August, Vassilyev returns to Astrakhan with thousands of newly discovered artifacts. The artifacts are then classified and archived at the city museum, out of sight of visitors, for lack of exhibition space or, perhaps more likely, lack of official interest in the project. “We are sitting on gold coins, but leave them in the earth,” Vassilyev says.

Vassilyev has in fact found many gold coins and jewelry in Samosdelka. This is one of the main reasons he is so confident he has found Itil, the mythical capital of the Khazar empire and Europe’s last lost city.

* * *

For more than three centuries starting around the middle of the 7th century the Khazars commanded a vast empire stretching from the north steppes to the Caucasus and Crimea. It stood on the Silk Road, benefitting from extensive trade between east and west, and served as a buffer between Christian lands and the expanding Arab Caliphate to the east and south. Mostly, it was the final outpost before the steppe, the last orderly state before the danger and lawlessness of the nomad hordes roaming to the east.

One road took travelers from Spain and France through Prague and Krakow to Kiev and then Sarkel and on to Itil, the Khazar capital. It was, by all accounts, a remarkably tolerant society: The judicial system provided for the practices and customs of Jews, Muslims, Christians and pagans in ways that presaged the later millet system of the Ottomans.

In the 10th century, it came to an abrupt end, replaced by a bourgeoning Kiev principality and later, the Russian Empire. The causes for the collapse are still unknown. Khazaria had powerful neighbors and its own internal divisions may have weakened the state and the army. Around 965 the Kievan Rus ruler Sviotaslav conquered and destroyed the city of Itil. A visitor wrote soon after that not a raisin or grape were left in the land. Itil had been leveled to the ground.

“Are you sure that Itil is in Samosdelka?” I asked Vassilyev, as we leave Astrakhan, driving south.

“I am completely sure,” he replies. Then adds, “But of course other archeologists disagree and there are people in Moscow who think it is in Sarkel, or that it disappeared under the Caspian. But I am sure.”

When I show people pictures of the site, they say it looks like Mars

Vassilyev has been working in the Samosdelka archeological project since the very beginning. When, 25 years ago, farmers in Samosdelka began digging trenches for cattle pasture, they found strange artifacts, mostly pottery. They took their findings to the local school teacher, who brought them to the attention of the university in Astrakhan. Vassilyev started digging 10 years later.

By nature, the work of archeologists is, of course, slow. But here things are even slower, thanks to heavy bureaucracy and a persistent lack of funding. So far most work has been limited to two small excavations, both about 3 meters deep.

The Volga delta region is an extraordinary mixture of languages, races and religions. Russian poet Velimir Khlebnikov once described it as the triangle of Christ, Buddha and Mohammed. I could see what he meant as we drove south and Vassilyev translated the names of the villages we crossed, some Tatar, others Kalmyk. We soon came to a hill, which Vassilyev explained was considered sacred by Buddhists in Russia, who believe that once it is destroyed the world will come to an end. Worryingly, half the hill seems to have collapsed already.

At this point we are deep in the delta region of the Volga, where it splits off into multiple branches before flowing into the Caspian Sea. We cross two of these branches before arriving at the excavation site. The lack of bridges in the area means crossing at select points where an improvised ferry service had been established — hence the wooden raft pulled by a small fishing boat.

Russia today is not a place where personal dreams can be realized.

This is a country built on strong organizational skills. The infrastructure is crumbling or was never developed, but things work with clockwork efficiency. If this seems contradictory, it is perhaps one of the contradictions that best explain Russia. Like Russian trains: They’re excruciatingly slow, but they arrive on time.

In the final stretch of our journey we pass by a few camel farms, prodigious Bactrian camels grazing in the distance. To watch one of the organized camel races in Astrakhan, the only place in Europe where they take place, is to come face to face with the raw power of nature. These animals run at speeds close to 60 kilometers per hour and are notoriously difficult to tame.

When we finally arrived at the excavation site, I feel elated. The Volga alluvial lands are entirely devoid of vegetation, a fact that must have something to do with what lies just beneath the surface. There are red bricks everywhere. Tons and tons of primitive bricks, certainly more primitive than the red bricks the Mongols brought with them in the 13th century. Later, when I show people pictures of the site, they say it looks like Mars: No vegetation, the brick-colored earth, an old Russian tabletka instead of the landing module. It’s odd to think that a powerful empire once stood on this place.

* * *

On returning to Astrakhan, I find that the old categories of east and west have become somewhat confused. The imposing white walls of the Astrakhan Kremlin no longer seemed as beautiful or as tall, in comparison to the red walls of Itil. Geographically Itil is a city at the very edge of Europe, but the concept seemed foreign and irrelevant there. Europe and Asia, these are concepts wielded for certain ends: Here in Astrakhan they serve no purpose, and no one takes them seriously. Whatever Europe might be, it is also a land of steppes, camels and pots of gold coins.

Vassilyev returns to his archeological laboratory. He is a man whose whole life has been spent in pursuit of dream.

Will he get the money he needs to pursue his dream to the end? I doubt it. Russia today is not a place where personal dreams can be realized. There is not enough thirst for the unknown. The country has settled on a narrative for its past, and is not willing to open it up again.

Outside Russia, Itil is an unknown blip on the map. But it has a lesson to impart: At a time when we are retreating behind national borders, we should retrace the forgotten connections that link together disparate corners of the earth.
