The Tamgaly tract is located 170 km northwest of Almaty, in the southeastern part of the Chu-Ili Mountains, which stretch from south to north from the Zailiysky Alatau to Lake Balkhash and the Betpak-Dala desert. The geographical position and nature of Chu-Ili have since ancient times determined the direction of the seasonal migrations of large herds of animals (saigas, kulans) and, later, the routes of many peoples settling across the expanses of Asia. At this peculiar crossroads of ancient roads, already in the Bronze Age, more than 3000 years ago, there arose a mountain sanctuary with thousands of petroglyphs that, by the design of their creators, adorned the rock surfaces of the small Tamgaly canyon.
The Chu-Ili Mountains lie in a desert zone with an arid, sharply continental climate; today this is one of the sparsely populated areas of Semirechye. There are few rivers here, and many of them dry up in summer; in the hot season only the brackish water of springs and pools provides people and animals with moisture. There are no forests here, and solitary trees are rare, but the mountain slopes are covered with dense shrubs. The sparse grass vegetation becomes brighter and richer in spring, clothing the mountains and plains in the variegated colors of flowers. With the onset of the summer heat the vegetation quickly yellows, and until late autumn only the floodplain of the Tamgaly River retains the greenery and freshness of an oasis. Tamgaly is home to rare plant species found only in the Chu-Ili Mountains and listed in the Red Book of Kazakhstan – Regel’s tulip, Kushakevich’s juno and others, which require special protection. Among the wild animals here are wolves, foxes, hares, tortoises and snakes, as well as numerous birds, including birds of prey – the steppe eagle, the red-footed falcon and the saker falcon. The deserted and seemingly uninhabited world of the desert is filled with life and a special beauty. The picturesque relief of the Tamgaly tract took shape over the long geological history of the Chu-Ili Mountains. The main role in this process was played by neotectonic movements, the youngest of which are about 1 million years old. The boundary between the mountains and the broad plain that spreads out north of Tamgaly marks the line of an ancient fault, as a result of which the earth’s surface was once uplifted and a high escarpment formed; water and wind erosion completed the shaping of the river valleys that made their way through the chain of low mountains with dome-shaped and flat summits (a landscape of low hills).
The most striking attraction of Tamgaly is a small canyon formed at the mouth of the gorge. Here, on the fanciful bends of the valley, the rocky slopes at times come right up to one another, forming an almost enclosed space. The broad, smooth rock surfaces have over many millennia become covered with “desert
varnish”, making an ideal backdrop for this gallery created by no human hand, in which more than one generation of ancient masters – the creators of the rock art – labored. For centuries, for the different peoples who left their mark on the history of Kazakhstan, the rocks of the canyon and the narrow Tamgaly valley retained the significance of a sanctuary – a place where ritual ceremonies were held, magic rites performed, and homage paid to gods and ancestral spirits. The tradition of veneration lives on at Tamgaly to this day: it is clearly attested by the colorful scraps of fabric tied to the branches of shrubs and by other simple “offerings” of modern pilgrims.
About a hundred different monuments are known at Tamgaly – settlements, burial grounds, altars and petroglyphs dating from the Bronze Age, the Early Iron Age, the Middle Ages and the modern era. Concentrated within a comparatively small area, together they form an archaeological complex that embodies the history of many ancient and modern peoples of Kazakhstan over three millennia.
The most ancient inhabitants of Tamgaly were the Bronze Age tribes of the Andronovo culture, who inhabited the lands of Kazakhstan in the 2nd millennium BC. The origin of these tribes remains a matter of debate, but their connection with the Indo-Iranians – herders and farmers, skilled metallurgists and masters of swift war chariots – is considered the most likely. The first inhabitants of Tamgaly, having chosen this picturesque spot, transformed the natural world around them: in creating petroglyphs, setting up dwellings or stone tombs, they impressed upon the landscape their own vision of the order of the world. For the generations of successive peoples – the Saka and the Wusun, the ancient Turks and their descendants, the Kazakhs – this inner orderliness of Tamgaly was perceived as a heritage of the ancestors and was preserved, hallowed by tradition.
The core of the complex at all times was the canyon, on whose rocks, conventionally designated as groups I-V, about 3000 petroglyphs have survived. Close by, at the foot of a solitary hill, lies an extensive necropolis, where the most ancient burials were made in the 14th-13th centuries BC; on the piedmont plain, the burial mounds of nomads of the 1st millennium BC – 1st millennium AD stand out in separate groups, including a mound with stone ridges known as “mustaches”. This entire territory, including the canyon with its petroglyphs, has from the most ancient times been a ritual zone, within which people did not live and which they visited for ceremonial purposes.
The everyday life of the inhabitants of Tamgaly took place on the periphery of the tract; it is here that archaeologists find the remains of ancient settlements and campsites. Settling in clans and families, people chose convenient sites in small intermontane valleys, where springs were close at hand and the hilltops sheltered them from winter winds and, of course, from sudden raids. The mountain conditions of the tract limited the choice, which is why many sites once settled by people continued to be used by subsequent generations. Gradually the old buildings turned into ruins and were covered with earth, and new ones arose in their place. Thus, at the Tamgaly I settlement, the remains of a stone dwelling with a hearth inside, built at the end of the Bronze Age (12th-10th centuries BC), were found buried under a three-meter layer of earth that had accumulated as a result of almost continuous habitation here until the end of the 19th century. Far from all the monuments of Tamgaly have been thoroughly studied, and many questions therefore remain unanswered.
The petroglyphs of Tamgaly are the most important scholarly source and, moreover, possess enormous artistic value. The creators of the ancient drawings skillfully exploited the phenomenon of “desert varnish” — a very thin layer of patina covering the rock surface and formed by oxides of magnesium, manganese and iron, as well as by colonies of particular species of microorganisms. The master artist, with strong blows of a stone or metal tool, removed the layer of patina along the outline of the drawing, achieving the desired effect: the light image stood out in sharp contrast against the dark background of the rock. But with time, after centuries, the images once again became covered with “desert varnish”, the drawing darkened and was lost against the background of the rocks. The brightness of a drawing could be restored only by striking off the patina once more, that is, by renewing the petroglyphs.
At Tamgaly one can sometimes see images carved on a single rock surface that differ markedly in color; as a rule, the darkest petroglyphs, barely distinguishable on the surface, are the most ancient, while the medieval and modern drawings look much lighter. Often petroglyphs made at different times overlap one another; such multilayered compositions (called palimpsests) and the color of the patina help to determine the relative age of the drawings.
The age of the Tamgaly petroglyphs can be established more precisely thanks to drawings found on building stones from ancient graves and dwellings studied by archaeologists: by dating the burials and settlements using radiocarbon analysis or objects characteristic of one era or another, the age of the drawings themselves is determined. Finds of images on the walls of Bronze Age graves helped establish the time when the most ancient petroglyphs of the sanctuary were created: the end of the 14th-13th centuries BC.
The age of the petroglyphs can also be judged from depictions of real weapons or items of clothing whose existence in one era or another is established from other sources. For example, horse-drawn chariots as a form of military transport appeared among the tribes of Kazakhstan in the Bronze Age in the 16th-15th centuries BC, but already by the beginning of the 1st millennium BC they had lost their importance with the mastery of riding and the spread of cavalry. The appearance of stirrups, the rigid saddle, the pike and the sabre accompanied the conquests of the ancient Turkic tribes in the 1st millennium AD.
The petroglyphs of the Saka period are easily recognized by the distinctive manner of depicting animals known as the “animal style”. Finds at Tamgaly and at other sites of Semirechye of petroglyphs in the style of the “deer stones” of Mongolia and Altai testify to the contacts and migrations of the peoples who inhabited these territories at the beginning of the 1st millennium BC.
Of particular historical value are the inscriptions (an Old Turkic runic inscription of the 9th-10th centuries, an Oirat one of the late 17th – mid-18th century, Kazakh ones of the 19th century) and the clan tamgas left on the rocks by the different peoples for whom the Tamgaly tract was a place of habitation and a shrine.
The creators of the first petroglyphs of Tamgaly — the artists of the Bronze Age — were not as constrained in their work by a shortage of free rock faces as the masters of later epochs. That is why they occupied the broadest and most even surfaces, gleaming with the sheen of patina. The drawings of the Bronze Age differ in size: on average 25-30 cm, sometimes up to 60-70 cm and 1 m. It can be noticed that many of the petroglyphs on the rocks of groups I-V are strikingly alike in technique and manner of execution, as if done by one and the same master. Alongside images of wild bulls, horses and kulans, deer, boars and wolves, the main characters are fantastic anthropomorphic heroes: monsters dressed in animal skins with hooked, crooked arms, valiant warriors with maces and battle axes, and, of course, supreme gods with radiant halos around their heads.
The pantheon (“all the gods”) of the tribes of the Bronze Age, who worshipped the elemental forces of nature, is represented on the tallest vertical rock of the canyon, in the center of the sanctuary (group IV). In a set order and each in its own way, seven divine figures are depicted here, and below them — ten warriors in a battle dance, a woman, the patroness of the clan, and figures of people with arms raised in prayer. Perhaps this is exactly how the structure of the world was imagined in the Bronze Age: as a strict hierarchy of gods and ancestors, whose veneration by people was meant to ensure the preservation of the World Order.
The most ancient petroglyphs were carved only on rock surfaces facing in a particular direction. Before each of the canyon rocks, out in the valley, there is a spot from which all the drawings of the Bronze Age can be seen at once, successively merging into complex compositions. Such viewing spots lie 20-40 m away from the rocks, yet the drawings remain clearly visible.
The gallery of rock drawings at Tamgaly embodies a coherent artistic narrative based on the ancient mythology of the tribes of the Bronze Age. The display of the petroglyphs may have taken place during collective rituals and ceremonies, serving as an important means of emotional impact in passing sacred knowledge from generation to generation.
Many of the Bronze Age petroglyphs of Tamgaly are unique in the rock art of Central Asia. The great cultural significance of Tamgaly in the centuries-long history of Kazakhstan lies in the fact that here the artists of the Bronze Age for the first time created a visible image of a deity, giving it an anthropomorphic form. The world significance of Tamgaly lies in the fact that here man, creating a temple of the Sun under the open sky, managed to join his creative genius brilliantly with the natural distinctiveness of the landscape.
The petroglyphs of the Early Iron Age are numerous and were created by the different peoples who succeeded one another on the routes of the mass migrations and campaigns of the warlike nomads — the Saka, the Wusun, the Yuezhi, the Xiongnu… The conquering tribes sought to subjugate the ancient population of Semirechye, asserting their power, their aesthetics and their ideology. That restless and anxious time left its testimony on the rocks of Tamgaly.
The graceful drawings and entire pictures of the Saka artists appear alongside the petroglyphs of the Bronze Age, and more often on top of them, crudely overlapping and, as it were, crossing out the ancient creations. The hunt for wild animals and predators pursuing deer or goats become the main themes of the rock art. The mythical images of gods and demons on the rocks of Tamgaly give way to depictions of a mounted or foot warrior in a pointed cap, or of a shepherd — the protector of the herds. For the first time in the sanctuary and near the settlements there appear tamgas — signs of clan affiliation and of property. Some of these signs are found across the entire steppe expanse of the continent, marking the historical path of the ancient nomads of Central Asia.
In the epoch of the formation of the first states of the Turkic peoples, the emergence of writing and the spread of the world religions, the content of rock art changed substantially. The new inhabitants of Tamgaly were alien to many of the images of the Bronze Age and Saka petroglyphs; the purpose of the gallery itself was forgotten, but the sanctity of the place endured. The mass renewal of the ancient drawings covered mainly the rocks of groups IV-V, where the “sun-headed” images are concentrated; it was here that a new image of a deity was created. Everywhere, the medieval masters complemented the pictures of their predecessors, changing their content in accordance with their own conceptions. The mounted warrior-standard-bearer, hero and victor, became a favorite character of the art. Warrior duels, the driven hunt and scenes of migration convey the everyday life of the steppe peoples. Unusual is the image of an elephant with a rider — vivid evidence of the cultural interchange of the era of the Great Silk Road.
Four centuries (13th-16th centuries) make up the “Dark Ages” in the history of Tamgaly: the Mongol conquest, the frequent wars that followed and the intermingling of peoples left no noticeable traces here. In the 17th century an Oirat prayer inscription appears on the rocks of the sanctuary, and the images of the ancient gods are renewed once again. The few Kazakh graffiti drawings of the 18th-19th centuries are executed with great skill, although on the whole the tradition of creating petroglyphs continues to fade. Nevertheless, the cult significance of Tamgaly persisted right up to the beginning of the 20th century.
The petroglyphs of Tamgaly were discovered in 1957 by A. G. Maksimova (the Semirechye detachment of the YuKAE of the IIAE of the Academy of Sciences of the KazSSR); in the 1970s-1980s the monuments of the tract were surveyed by the geologists A. G. Medoev and B. Zh. Aubekerov and by the archaeologists A. N. Maryashev and A. S. Yermolayeva, and in 1988-2005 by A. E. Rogozhinsky. In 2003 the Tamgaly State Historical, Cultural and Natural Reserve was established. In 2004 a new site appeared on the World Heritage map — “Petroglyphs within the Archaeological Landscape of Tamgaly”, the first monument of rock art in Central Asia to be included in the UNESCO List.
Rogozhinsky A. E., Aubekerov B. Zh., Sala R. Monuments of Kazakhstan. – Monuments of Rock Art of Central Asia: public participation, management, conservation, documentation. Almaty. NIPI PMK MK RK. 2004. Pp. 45-94.
Maksimova A. G. Rock images of the Tamgaly tract – Vestnik AN Kaz. SSR. No. 9. Almaty. 1958.
Rogozhinsky A. E. Bronze Age burial grounds of the Tamgaly tract. – History and Archaeology of Semirechye. Almaty. Issue 1. 1999.
Rogozhinsky A. E. The pictorial series of the Bronze Age petroglyphs of the Tamgaly sanctuary. History and Archaeology of Semirechye. Almaty. Issue 2. 2001.
Maksimova A. G., Yermolayeva A. S., Maryashev A. N. Rock images of the Tamgaly tract. Almaty. 1985.
A. E. Rogozhinsky
