42

by the natural disasters and over time
doplis Mindori, near the junction of
earth and grass covered the site. Fi-
nally, 200 years later a new dwelling
was built on the remains of the Dedo-
plis Gora palace but the ruins of the
temples remained untouched until
the 20th century. About 80 hectares of
land around the temple complex were
considered taboo – a forbidden place
where it was prohibited to even make
hay, sow or plough, much less esta-
blish dwellings.
In 1873 a Ruisi nobleman, Aleksandre
Paniashvili, built an aedicule to St. Ge-
orge of Sarke on a small hill in the mi-
ddle of the forbidden territory – a stele
with a relief of St. George slaying a dra-
gon. I discovered this hill in 1971, over
100 meters in diameter, which was un-
touched. There were offerings of coins,
and a carved fragment of yellowish li-
mestone around St. George’s stele. The
limestone fragment, with its shape and
ornament, in the form of a section view
of a lotus flower, resembled the bell-
-shaped base of the Achaemenid (First
Persion Empire) period, and the disco-
very suddenly became an archaeologi-
cal sensation.
In 1972 stationary excavations be-
the left bank of the Ptsiula River. On
the southern slope of the hill, over
which the river flows, a layer of cultu-
ral significance has been exposed at
a depth of 14 meters. The settlement
remains in the lower layers of Dedo-
plis Gora date back to the Chalcolithic,
Early, Middle and Late Bronze Ages,
the Early Iron Age, and the Achaeme-
nid and Early Hellenistic periods. The
subsequent higher layer includes the
ruins of an ancient palace and, in turn,
these ruins are covered by four hori-
zons of Late Roman – Early Medieval
cultural layers, the last of which dates
to the 6th-7th centuries. No habitations
were found on this hill after the 7th
century AD.
There are two more hills with settle-
ment remains to the east and north of
Dedoplis Gora. They are not as high as
the latter, but have much larger, flat
hilltops. The eastern hill has revealed
only Late Bronze and Early Iron cultural
layers, and the northern hill we excava-
ted houses of Early Iron and Late Bron-
ze periods in 1979-1981, as well as pits
filled with materials of the early Bronze
period (Kura-Araxes and Bedeni cultu-

A Roman Pantheon
gan at Dedoplis Mindori. Curiously
enough, a Mazdean altar was found
directly under the stele at a depth of
2-2.5 m. As a result of five fieldwork
res). North and east from the hill on
the other terrace of the Mtkvari River
(on Dedoplis Mindori), 13 burial sites
of the first part of the 3rd millennium BC

on a Zoroastrian Altar
expeditions, the archaeological re-
search expedition of Simon Janashia
State Museum of Georgia uncovered
a monumental temple complex. They
discovered a main and minor temples,
Archaeology > Iulon Gagoshidze six identical temples, eastern and wes-
tern gates and other structures. This
In Shida Kartli, Georgia’s geographic center between the left tributaries of the Mtkvari River– East Prone and temple complex, built as a single pro-
West Prone, there is a wide valley called Dedoplis Mindori, or “Queen’s Hill”. In the Middle Ages this territory ject during the same period, covers
was part of the royal estate of the Queen. territory of almost five hectares. In
1976, we stopped excavations in the
hope that one day it would be possi-
were found, as well as 41 burial moun-
ds dating to the turn of the 2nd and 1st
millennia BC, and one mound with a
chariot from the Late Bronze period
(14th-13th centuries BC). There is a lar-
ge burial site spread across this part of
Dedoplis Mindori, called the “Doghlauri
Burial Mound”. In 2012, 2013 and 2015,
we excavated 410 graves of the Early
and Late Bronze Age at this burial site.
The Bronze Age settlement spread to
the west from the hills, on a terrace, up

A
rchaeological excavations have
established that during Anti-
quity this territory was owned
by the kings of Kartli (“Iberia”), then by
the end of the 2nd century BC, at the
Kartli King Parnajom’s orders a family
chapel for Kartli’s Pharnavazid kings
was built in Dedoplis Mindori, while
one of their palaces was built south of
the temples on a high hill on the banks
of the Mtkvari River. The palace would
become a royal residence where the
Kartli kings would go to pray.
Around 80 AD, a powerful earth-
quake destroyed both temples and the
three-story palace on Dedoplis Gora
(“Queen’s Hill”). This was followed by
a great fire. King of Kartli, Mithridates,
son of Pharsmanes, never restored the
temples or the palace. The population
also avoided the buildings destroyed
ble to conserve the ruins of this mas-
terpiece of ancient Georgian architec-
ture. Research continued, however,
on Dedoplis Gora, where we hoped to
find the Royal Palace.
Dedoplis Gora is a lofty hill 34 me-
ters high, at the southern end of De-
to where the East Prone River, with the
West Prone, flows into Mtkvari River.
At the mouth of East Prone River, on
its left bank, on Berikldeebi, there is
a vast field of 50 mounds. We excava-
ted seven of them in 1979-1985. Two
dated to the Early Bronze Age (the

GEORGIAN NATIONAL MUSEUM 43


Bedeni culture) and four to the Mi-
ddle Bronze Age. One of them, Num-
ber 4, turned out to be from the early
Late Bronze Age (15 th century BC). In
1979-1990, at the junction of Mtkvari
and Prone, excavations supervised by
Acadamician Alexander Javakhishvili
revealed a cultic settlement where the
remains of Chalcolithic, Early Bronze
(Kura-Araxes and Bedeni cultures) and
Late Bronze – Early Iron periods – buil-
dings were discovered along with se-
veral burial mounds from the Chalcoli-
thic and Middle Bronze Ages.
Since I am not aware of any other set-
tlement of such a large scale anywhe-
re else on the territory of Shida Kartli,
I believe that it was likely a central
settlement within a large region, at
least during the Bronze Age. The ruins
of a three-story palace and its tiled
roof, which were turned into a unified,
pumice-like mass by heat, securely
conserved the rooms on the first floor,
and everything that survived the fire
that resulted from the earthquake is
there for us to find. Many things sur-
vived the fire because the temperatu-
re at the first-floor level near the flo-
44 GEORGIAN NATIONAL MUSEUM
or was not very high: not only metal,
stone, clay and glass artifacts but also
organic materials have survived, such
as wood and bone items, fruit stones,
nuts, grains and – consider this – even
baked bread and textiles. This is why
the artifacts found as a result of the De-
doplis Gora palace excavations are so
numerous, diverse and, at times, unex-
pected. There is furniture, tableware,
weapons, tools and equipment, food
and other items. Such a diverse archa-
eological discovery provides a unique
opportunity to glimpse the everyday
life of a 1st-century Kartli nobleman, to
talk about the nature of his estate, his
income and expenditure records, the
entertainment and level of education,
faith, domestic and external relations,
clothes and weapons as well as nu-
merous details of daily life that even
written sources would hardly be able
to portray. In short, this site permits us
to conduct ethnographic research on
1 st century Iberia.
The excavated site was a vivid illus-
tration of the anxiety and chaos that
preceded the moment of the final des-
truction of the palace: items are mis-
placed, an unopened sack of wheat is
dropped on the doorstep of one of the
rooms (No 1), a bronze amphora is in
one corner of the room while its hand-
le was found on the sofa. Things were
even dropped in the courtyard, inclu-
ding gold jewelry and a Lysimachus
stater.
After the fire the palace was never res-
tored, as with the temples of Dedoplis
Mindori. It seems that some significant
changes occurred in Kartli Kingdom
in the late 1st century that apparently
affected the royal religion and the ter-
ritorial organization of the country. It is
also possible that this catastrophic ear-
thquake, which destroyed not only the
palace but also the temples, was percei-
ved as God’s wrath and the ruins were
abandoned as a result.
One way or another, life on Dedo-
plis Gora was extinguished with the
fire and no one lived there for almost
200 years. Only towards the end of the
3rd or the beginning of the 4th century
new dwellers began to settle on the
hill. The floors of the first houses often
imitated the mudbrick daubed palace
walls, while the remaining walls of the
palace were sometimes even used as
walls for mud huts.
The settlement on Dedoplis Gora
existed until the 6 th-7th centuries. Over
three centuries an extensive cultural
layer was created at a depth varying
from 50 cm to 4 m. In the 4th-6th cen-
turies on a relatively lower place in the
middle of the hilltop, there was a ritual
site. Excavations here revealed altars
in small rooms, with identical structu-
res to those found in the northern hill
and Berikldeebi settlement remains
that date to the Bronze and Early Iron
Age.
The discovery of pre-Christian altars
in the layers of the Early Medieval pe-
riod point to the continuity of religious
traditions from the Bronze Age until
the Middle Ages. This is proof that no
ethnic changes occurred here during
this period and also indicates that an-
cient Georgian folk astral cults of ferti-
lity were preserved intact in Kartli des-
pite the fact that the religion of Iberia’s
royal dynasty and, probably, of the ru-
ling aristocracy since the Achaemenid
period must have been some type of
Mazdeism (Zoroastrianism). These in-
cluded fire temples on Dedoplis Min-
dori and a family Zoroastrian place of
worship inside the palace on Dedoplis
Gora as well as the Iranian-Zoroastrian
theophoric names of Kartli kings and
aristocracy.
Finally, the Early Medieval altars dis-
covered on Dedoplis Gora prove how
difficult and slow the spread of Chris-
tianity was in Kartli despite the fact
that it had already been declared a sta-
te religion as early as the first third of
the 3rd century. Among the numerous
Early Medieval artifacts discovered
on Dedoplis Gora, there is no sign of
Christianity at all except for a single
seal from the 5th or 6th century that
seems to have a cross and Georgian
Asomtavruli alphabet letters engraved
on it.
In the course of excavations in 1985-
2014, about one third of the palace
territory was cleared. These are: the
western part of the courtyard sur-
rounded by pylons (peristyle), western
(small) and northern gates and also 20
rooms 18 of which have doors leading
to the gallery along the perimeter of
the courtyard, separated from the
courtyard by pylons.
Such a construction technique was
typical of Kartli in the Hellenistic pe-
riod. The load-carrying structure is
wooden, while the lower part of the
walls and pylons is formed by a cage of
crisscrossed wooden beams filled up to
a height of 1.5-2 m with large pebble
stones placed on mud-and-clay mor-
tar. A mud brick wall was then built on
the base prepared in such a manner.
On the outside and sometimes on the
inside as well, walls are plastered with
blocks of sandstone ashlar attached to
each other, and with reinforcing beams
of the wall supported with wooden do-
wels shaped like arrowheads.
In the eastern part of the palace, a
fire altar with sacrificed items on it was
discovered in the storeroom No 20. We
found small bronze and silver sculptures
representing the Greek and Roman pan-
theon: Apollo-Phoebus, his twin sister
Arthemis-Diana with a silver spear and
silver anklets, their mother, Leto-Latona
(silver), Tyche-Fortuna, Silenus sitting
under a vine, as well as the figurines of
a bronze eagle, a dolphin and a large
silver raven. The sculptures were placed
on bases. There was also a gold laurel
wreath, a silver thymiaterion (vessel for
burning incense) and 15 coins in a glass
dish: 13 Augustus denarii and two local
(Georgian) gold copies of Alexander the
Great staters. Two pheasant eggs were
placed on the altar. This kind of almost
unbelievable coexistence of Mazdeism
and Greco-Roman culture could only be
possible in Georgia (Kartli Kingdom).
Archaeological excavations at the
Dedoplis Gora palace shed light on
many aspects of our country’s past
that had yet been unknown. Each new
season of excavations has been full of
surprises and the study of the Dedo-
plis Gora palace continues. Hopefully
this site will amaze us many times
more.
GEORGIAN NATIONAL MUSEUM 45