Qualla: Melgunov Kurgan

Melgunov Kurgan: Introduction

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nataliya Shestakova, CC BY-SA 4.0. In September 1763, diggers broke into a mound on the open steppe and found gold under the stone slabs - a short sword with a golden hilt, a golden diadem, plates worked with eagles and lions and strange animals no one had seen in life. The mound was already old beyond reckoning: raised in the seventh century BC by the Scythians, the horse peoples who ruled these grasslands, and known locally as Lyta Grave. It was one of the earliest Scythian tombs ever excavated anywhere, and what came out of it has never stopped resonating. One of those buried eagles now flies on the flag of the Kirovohrad region.

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Image: Nataliya Shestakova | CC BY-SA 4.0

Melgunov Kurgan: The Mound of Fire

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit KseniiaBondar, CC BY 4.0. Rising about ten and a half meters above the plain near the village of Kopani, the kurgan is no simple heap of soil. Cut into, it reveals a startling composition: burnt, slag-like earth laced with the remains of melted metal, charred bone, stone, and clay mixed with coal. Fire, i...

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Image: KseniiaBondar | CC BY 4.0

Melgunov Kurgan: Gold Beneath the Slabs

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Никита Иванов, CC BY-SA 3.0. The riches lay about two meters down, tucked beneath stone slabs and, curiously, untouched by the fire that marked the rest of the mound. There was an acinaces - a short Scythian sword - with a golden hilt and a gold-plated wooden scabbard alive with images of fantastic beasts. T...

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Image: Никита Иванов | CC BY-SA 3.0

Melgunov Kurgan: The Eagle That Endured

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Константинъ, CC BY-SA 4.0. The treasure scattered over the centuries. Much of it entered the Hermitage Museum and the historical museum in Kharkiv, though a large part of that collection was destroyed by bombing during the Second World War - a reminder that even gold that survives 2,600 years underground i...

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Image: Константинъ | CC BY-SA 4.0