In early August of this year, an expedition of the Insтιтute of Archeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences led by Professor Leonid Yablonsky, head of the Faculty of Scythian-Sarmanian archeology, during the archaeological excavations of mound-1 in the village of Filippovka, in the Ilek district of the Orenburg region, discovered the grave of a noble man buried for about 2.5 thousand years back.

On the buried there were more than six hundred highly artistic items made of gold and silver. Gold jewelry – a gold pectoral around the neck, bracelets with griffins on the wrists, gold rings on each finger, a magnificent bronze mirror with a gold handle decorated with ornaments and stylized animals – an eagle is depicted in the center, surrounded by six winged bulls.

At first, the members of the expedition ᴀssumed that they had found the burial of a Sarmatian princess, but after a detailed study of the remains and an examination of skeletal morphology, they came to the conclusion that the skeleton belongs to a 40-year-old man. Near the remains of a man, a quiver with arrows with bronze tips, a vajra – an object resembling a wand, a bridle from a horse harness and horse teeth, painted in red pigment, were found.

Clothes of the Sarmatian prince IV – II centuries. BC. – pants, shirt and scarf with fringes, were decorated with many (395 pieces) pressed gold plaques in the form of flowers, hunting scenes of a panther, biting a saiga or an antelope.

The sleeves of the shirt were decorated with multi-colored beads, forming a complex geometric shape. Two cast gold earrings decorated in the style of cloisonné were found in the region of the temporal bones of the skull.

In kurgan-1 in the village of Filippovka, a mᴀssive cast bronze cauldron was found with handles in the form of a heraldic image of the heads of two griffins looking at each other. Images of griffins are made in the traditions of the Scythian-Siberian animal style.

The weight of the giant bronze cauldron is about half a ton, the diameter of the cauldron is 102 cm. The style of the ornament on the cauldron is typical of the early Sarmatian culture of the 5th-4th centuries BC.

In mound-1 in the village of Filippovka, a wooden bowl with golden handles in the form of a roaring bear figurine, a bronze mug with a cast silver handle in the form of a predatory beast were found.

The found Persian-made glᴀss vessel, a bronze dish-incense burner indicate the trade relations of the Sarmatians with the Persian State of the Achaemenids (ancient Persian Ariyānām Xšaçam), an ancient state that existed in the 6th-4th centuries. BC e. in Achaemenid Asia.

Despite the fact that the Scythian-Sarman tribes interacted with the Persian and Greek civilization, they retained their own unique culture.

Kurgan-1 in the village of Filippovka entered the annals of world culture with the discovery of 26 statuettes of “golden” deer with branched horns.

More than a thousand artifacts have been recovered from Kurgan-1 in the village of Filippovka, they represent an invaluable research resource that will shed light on the history of the Eurasian continent in the 4th-2nd centuries. BC.

These excavations represent a breakthrough in the study of the mysterious Sarmatian culture of the early Iron Age.

The found artifacts were transferred to the Orenburg Museum of Local History.