Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, September 1, 1995 TAG: 9509010077
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: MOSCOW LENGTH: Medium
He's more than 2,000 years old and they call him the Horseman. When Russia's master embalmers get through with the ancient nomad, he'll be ready to hit the road again.
After more than two millennia locked in the frozen earth of Siberia, he now lies in a thick glass tank in Moscow, soaking in a chemical cocktail much like the one that preserves Lenin.
In about a year, scientists hope, the Horseman will be ready to go on display throughout the world with another well-preserved ancient from the same corner of Siberia, an elaborately tattooed woman called the Princess.
The Horseman had been given a ceremonial burial in his fur coat and high leather boots alongside his horse in a log-lined chamber in the Altai Mountains. He also had his ax, quiver and dagger.
For someone who died about 2,500 years ago, the Horseman was in great shape when archaeologists found him last month under more than 7 feet of ice near the Chinese and Mongolian borders.
More than 6,500 feet above sea level, the Ukok Plateau is blanketed by a thick layer of rocks that helps keep the ground frozen year round.
``It's like a natural fridge,'' said Anatoly Derevyanko, head of the Russian Academy of Science's Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology in Novosibirsk. In July 1993, the plateau yielded the Princess, its first major mummy. She, too, is estimated to have died some 2,500 years ago.
The Princess was a spectacular find by any standard. But they almost lost her. Her flesh, fair and firm when she was found, began to darken and shrivel when exposed to heat and light.
The desperate archaeologists turned to the Biological Structures Research Institute, which tends Lenin's preserved remains, even though back then the lab's unique embalming process was reserved for communist leaders.
``It was still considered half-secret at the time,'' recalled Derevyanko. ``It wasn't so easy to persuade them to tackle a job so new to them,'' Derevyanko.
For a mummy, the Horseman is in even better shape than the Princess.
Most of the flesh on the exposed parts of his body - his face and hands - is gone, but the rest of the Horseman is still there, right down to his toenails, muscular legs, long braids and elaborate tattoo of a deer draping over his right shoulder.
Derevyanko believes the Princess and Horseman were Scythians, an ancient nomadic culture that flourished along the Black Sea but vanished without any written record.
by CNB