Berel is an outstanding monument of the Kazakh part of Altai. The necropolis of the supreme leaders of the nomads is located 7 km from the village of Berel in the Katon-Karagay district of the East Kazakhstan region and consists of more than 70 burial and memorial structures of various sizes. The period to which the burial grounds belong is called the Berel stage of the development of the culture of the nomads of Eastern Kazakhstan of the early Iron Age (5th-4th centuries BC). The first excavations here were carried out in 1865 and are associated with the name of the archaeologist and Turkologist Wilhelm Radlov. He explored over 150 burial mounds here, including the largest, known in world science as the "Big Berel burial mound". Almost 100 years later, an expedition of the State Hermitage was organized. Systematic studies of the Berel burial mounds were started by Zainolla Samashev in 1998-1999. During the studies under his leadership, the "royal" burial mound No. 11 was excavated, where 13 fully equipped riding horses, which had accompanied the Berel leader and the woman buried with him, were found preserved in the permafrost lens. Two more burial mounds with horse burials were later studied. As a result, unique in their information content and outstanding in their artistic value items from the era of ancient nomads were obtained. In 2003, an archaeological expedition led by Doctor of Sciences Abdesh Toleubayev found the so-called "Golden Mound of the Kings" here, which dates back to the 8th-7th centuries BC. The mound is famous for the jewelry found there, which later became the basis for the reconstruction of the third "Golden Man" in Kazakhstan. The clothes of the deceased were supposedly completely embroidered with gold, but not like in all the other rich Scythian-Saka tombs - research has shown that the king wore these clothes constantly. In addition, earlier in the neighboring burial mounds, some more gold and valuable items were found, most of them are now kept in the Hermitage.
On the basis of the Berel burial mounds, the State Historical and Cultural Museum-Reserve "Berel" was created in the open air, which is located in the Katon-Karagay National Park.
East Kazakhstan region
Katon-Karagay district, Zhambyl village
Tel: +7-723-422-92-55