If you travel through the Thracian plain that separates the southern Bulgarian mountains from the northern Balkan Range, in the area known as the Valley of Roses, you will see that the landscape is dotted with countless tumuli. These are the tombs of Thracian kings and leaders who lived in these lands for 2000 years until their people were assimilated by the incoming Slavs and Proto-Bulgarians in the 6-7th c. AD. 

There’s a concentration of tumuli in the area northwest of the town of Kazanluk along the route to the Shipka Pass in the Balkan Range. It was an area sacred to the inhabitants of the ancient Thracian capital Seuthopolis and today it is known as the Valley of the Kings. Some fine tombs, about twenty or so, have been excavated and recent spectacular discoveries such as Golyamata Kosmatka tomb, believed to be that of King Seuthes III, excavated in 2004, and the Starosel tomb in the Sredna Gora Mountain, have shed more light on this ancient and proud warrior civilization.

The Thracian tomb at Kazanluk, dated 4th-3rd century BC, is an excellent starting point to find out more about the Thracian way of life and death. Excavated by sheer chance in 1944, today it is one of nine Bulgarian UNESCO World Heritage sites. The Tomb has been on the list since 1979.

The stone-built beehive tomb dates to the end of the 4th century BC. It has an ante chamber and a low narrow passageway leading into the small round-domed burial chamber. The passageway is beautifully painted on both sides with two friezes, one battle scene and the other with vegetation motifs, set above a strip, stained a deep red, the colour of life with the Thracians. But the tomb’s crowning glory is the intimate vaulted burial chamber, decorated with exquisite frescoes. At the centre sits the Lord or King for whom the tomb was built. He sits at a small table laid with a general feast. His wife sits next to him on a throne, her face downcast, and the couple tenderly clasping each other’s hand. On the Lord’s (King’s) other side a woman offers him pomegranates, the fruit of death. A graceful procession of people approaches the couple from either side, bearing gifts of fruit, jewels, perfumes and a cloak. Young women play on long slender horns, followed by warriors bringing a chariot drawn by four horses and leading two other horses. Above this scene, at the top of the dome a chariot race gallops wildly round in an eternal circle.

The paintings are Bulgaria’s best preserved artistic masterpieces from the Hellenistic period.
“This is a typical small family tomb,” Kosyo Zarev, Curator of the Regional History Museum in Kazanluk, told Radio Bulgaria. “There has been definitive speculation lately that this could have been the tomb of King Roigos, who rule The Valley of the Thracian Kings immediately after Seuthes III. Assuming that Seuthes III was murdered sometime around 292 BC after him comes Roigos, who ruled Thrace to the time when it was subdued by the Celts in the 3rd century BC. The Thracian Tomb at Kazanluk had been broken i8nto and plundered even in ancient times. When the Bulgarian archeologists excavated it, they found only single small gilded silver jug and a complete set of clay vessels. This is a royal burial and there must have been gold vessels that have vanished without a trace. The murals are most important because we have uncovered only another three tombs with murals in the Valley of the Thracian Kings - at Mudlizh and Krun and the Ostrusha Tomb, exponents of a Thracian school of mural painting”, said Kosyo Zarev.

According to Herodotus, the Thracian dead were laid out for three days of Mourning, which was followed by a communal feast. The body was then buried and laid to rest beneath a burial mound, while horse races or athletic games were held around it.

“This is a burial tomb from the third stage of the development of the Thracian burial arrangements, where bricks and mortar were used”, goes on Kosyo Zarev. ”The megalithic monuments, made of crude or roughly tooled big rocks, were the earliest. Then followed ashlar structures, which in the king’s lifetime would serve as shrines and only after the demise of the ruler would serve the purpose for which they had been built. In the Thracian Tomb at Kazanluk the bodies of the ruler and his wife were laid out straight on the ground or on a wooden lattice, testified by the number of nails found lying around. The position of the body is east-west, the head being in the east towards the rising sun. The traditional funeral gifts of clothing, jewelry, food and others are spread around the body”, said in conclusion Kosyo Zarev, Curator of the Regional History Museum in the town of Kazanluk.