Besshatyr: The Five Tents

The City of the Dead That Was Built for Kings

The mounds appeared at a distance before the archaeologist Zhaksylyk Tastanbekov could make out their shape. Eighteen of them, rising from the floor of the Ili River valley in the shadow of the Alatau foothills — not natural hills but constructed, built by human hands twenty-six centuries ago for the bodies of Saka kings and the belief that the dead required architecture as serious as the living.

Besshatyr — "five tents" in Kazakh, a name that hints at what the mounds would have looked like from the steppe, their grass-covered profiles suggesting the great domed yurts of a royal encampment — is the primary necropolis of the Saka-Tigrakhauda, the "sharp-capped Sakas" named in Persian records for the distinctive pointed headdresses their warriors wore. These were the Iron Age horse cultures of the Eurasian steppe, the same peoples whom Herodotus called "Scythian," whose golden animal-style art has been turning up in burial mounds from the Black Sea to the Altai for over a century. Their royal cemetery sits in what is now Altyn-Emel National Park, roughly 260 kilometers east of Almaty, preserved by the dry steppe climate in extraordinary condition.

The complex contains 18 large royal kurgans — burial mounds ranging from 6 to 18 meters in height — as well as scores of smaller stone enclosures marking subordinate burials and ritual spaces. The largest mounds have stone rings at their perimeters and catacomb systems beneath them that were robbed of their gold contents in antiquity, though the structural archaeology remains intact. The Saka period spans the 7th to 3rd centuries BCE; Besshatyr represents the peak of this culture's funerary architecture, a concentrated statement in earth and stone about the permanence of royal lineage on the Central Asian steppe.

Essential Facts

Besshatyr is located within Altyn-Emel National Park in the Almaty Region. The park entrance is near Basshi village, approximately 260 kilometers east of Almaty. Access requires a park permit (available at the entrance gate) and either a park-organized vehicle or your own 4WD — the tracks to the burial complex require serious ground clearance. The site is open year-round, with spring (April–June) and autumn (September–October) the most comfortable seasons. Summer temperatures in the Ili valley regularly exceed 40°C. There is no on-site visitor infrastructure; bring your own water, food, and shade.

The kurgans are a protected archaeological site. Walking on the mounds is prohibited. Photography is permitted from the designated approach areas. The site's power is in its scale and its silence — eighteen royal tombs in a landscape that has changed very little since they were built. That combination, experienced on a quiet morning with the Alatau visible in the distance, produces a quality of presence that no photograph quite catches.

Before Kazakhstan Was a Name

The Saka-Tigrakhauda did not call themselves Kazakhs. The Kazakh identity — forged from the union of nomadic clans across the great steppe, formalized in the founding of the Kazakh Khanate in 1465 — would not exist for another two thousand years after the last royal kurgan at Besshatyr was sealed. And yet the line of continuity is real and documented: the Saka were among the primary ancestral cultures of the Kazakh people, their genetic legacy, their horse culture, their steppe cosmology, their animal-style art — all traceable into the nomadic tradition that eventually crystallized into Kazakh identity on the same landscape.

The Saka-Tigrakhauda — "sharp-capped Sakas," named in the Behistun inscription of Darius I of Persia for the pointed headdresses worn by their warriors — ranged across the Semirechye (Seven Rivers) region of what is now southeastern Kazakhstan from roughly the 7th to the 3rd centuries BCE. They were Iron Age horse-nomads of extraordinary sophistication: capable military forces (they repelled Persian advances), skilled goldsmiths (the animal-style gold artifacts recovered from Saka burial mounds across Kazakhstan are among the finest metalwork of the ancient world), and architects of a funerary tradition that expressed royal power through permanent landscape intervention.

Besshatyr was their primary necropolis. The selection of the Ili River valley site was deliberate: the valley provided reliable water, the foothills of the Alatau provided defensive position, and the flat valley floor provided the visual space for the mounds to assert their scale. The largest kurgans — up to 18 meters high, ringed with stone, with catacomb systems beneath — required engineering knowledge and organizational capacity that challenges any assumption about the "primitiveness" of nomadic Iron Age cultures. These were not simple burials. They were architectural projects, coordinated across communities, designed to be visible and permanent.

The gold grave goods that accompanied the Saka royal burials were looted in antiquity — the catacombs were robbed, likely within centuries of the original interments. But in 1969-70, Soviet archaeologist Alexander Maksimova conducted systematic excavations at Besshatyr and in other Saka burial sites of the Almaty region, confirming the cultural identity and the architectural sophistication of the complex. The famous "Golden Man" — a Saka warrior's burial discovered at Issyk kurgan in 1969 — was found not at Besshatyr but nearby in the same Semirechye cultural zone, dressed in armor covered with over four thousand gold plaques in the form of horses, snow leopards, and mountain goats. The Besshatyr kings' gold is gone, but their architecture stands.

For the Kazakh people, the Saka represent a foundational ancestry — not distant or abstract, but ancestral in a direct cultural and genealogical sense. Kazakh oral tradition, preserved by the jyrau (poet-historians), maintained a continuous connection to the landscape and its history long before modern archaeology began excavating it. Besshatyr was never forgotten by the communities who lived near the Ili valley; it was remembered as a place of kings, long before anyone attached a century number to it.

Independence in 1991 accelerated the formal reclamation of the Saka as Kazakh ancestors. The site was designated within Altyn-Emel National Park and received protected heritage status. Research continues. And the mounds remain, patient and permanent, predating the Russian annexation of the steppe (1731–1848) by twenty-three hundred years, predating the Kazakh Khanate by twenty-one hundred years, predating everything that has happened in this valley since.

How to Spend Time at Besshatyr

Archaeologist Aizat Bekova says most first-time visitors spend too little time. "They walk around the main mound, take photographs, and go," she says. "But if you give it two or three hours — if you actually sit down and look — the site starts to reveal itself. The relationship between the mounds. The way the stone rings were placed. You start to understand what you're looking at."

She's right. Here's how to use the time well.

Walk the Full Complex

The eighteen kurgans are spread across the valley floor, not clustered in a single point. Walk the circuit from the largest mound to the smallest enclosures and back — the full route takes about an hour at an unhurried pace. The size relationships between the mounds tell you something about the hierarchy of the burials. The stone rings at the base of the largest kurgans show the engineering logic of a culture that understood both gravity and permanence. Walk it all.

Sit at the Base of the Great Kurgan

The largest mound — nearly eighteen meters — requires a specific response that photographs don't require. Stand at its base and feel the scale of it. Then sit down with your back against of the perimeter stones and stay for a while. Think about what it took to build this: the coordination, the labor, the sustained belief in the importance of marking this death in this way. The site asks for stillness, and it returns something for the stillness you give it.

The Stone Enclosures

The smaller burial enclosures and ritual circles surrounding the main kurgans are easy to overlook against the dominance of the large mounds. Don't overlook them. They represent a different social stratum of Saka funerary practice — not the royal kurgans, but the graves of nobles, warriors, priests, the community infrastructure of a culture that organized its entire ceremonial geography around the honoring of the dead. Each circle has its own logic.

The Ili River Fringe

The riverside vegetation along the Ili — the tugai forests of willow and poplar that border the river in an otherwise arid landscape — provide a counterpoint to the open steppe setting of the mounds. Walk toward the river after your time at the kurgans; the birdlife in the riparian forest is diverse and active, and the contrast between the open burial valley and the cool shade of the riverside trees is refreshing in summer.

Photography: Timing and Angle

The mounds are best photographed when the light is low and raking — early morning or late afternoon — because the angled shadows reveal the constructed geometry of the mounds in a way that flat midday light entirely obscures. The blue hour after sunset, when the round profiles of the kurgans are visible against the darkening sky, is particularly striking. Find a position that includes multiple mounds in frame; the grouping communicates the scale of the complex better than any single mound in isolation.

On How Long to Stay

Two to three hours at the site itself — more if you walk to the river. Plan on a full day from Almaty including travel time. The site is best combined with the Singing Dunes (Altyn-Emel's other major attraction), which can be reached within the same park visit.

Insider Tips for Besshatyr

Don't Climb the Mounds

This is the cardinal rule and it matters more than it might sound. The kurgan surfaces look solid and walkable, but they are composed of compacted earth and loose stone that has been settling for twenty-five centuries. Erosion from foot traffic is real and cumulative. The mounds are also protected heritage sites under Kazakhstani law. Stay on the ground around them, not on top of them.

Go Earlier Than You Think

The Almaty day-trip crowd typically arrives at Besshatyr in the late morning. If you can arrange a very early start from Basshi or camp the night before, the site before 8 a.m. has a quality that disappears with the arrival of other vehicles. The light is better, the silence is complete, and the scale of the complex is somehow more comprehensible when you have it to yourself.

The First Sunday of the Month

National parks in Kazakhstan sometimes offer reduced or free entry on designated national heritage days. The Altyn-Emel park entrance fee is modest regardless, but it's worth checking with the visitor center whether any heritage day discounts apply on the day of your visit.

Photography: The CPL Filter

The light in the Ili valley is intense and the sky is often a deep, saturated blue — conditions that benefit significantly from a circular polarizing filter, which cuts glare off the stone surfaces and deepens the sky contrast. This is the difference between photographs that show the mounds as washed-out lumps and photographs that show them as the architectural objects they are. If you shoot in RAW, much of this can be corrected in post; if you're shooting JPEG or phone camera, the CPL filter makes a bigger difference.

Combine with the Singing Dunes

The Singing Dunes — Altyn-Emel's famous crescent dune that emits a low resonant sound when the dry sand flows down its face — are located in the same national park and accessible on the same day trip. Most organized tours from Almaty cover both. If you're driving independently, plan the kurgans for the morning (cooler, better light) and the dunes for the late afternoon (the sand performs best in dry heat, and the light at golden hour on the dune face is striking).

Silence is Required

The site carries the weight of twenty-five hundred years of burial. There are no rules requiring silence, but the place asks for it. People who arrive speaking loudly and leave quickly miss what Besshatyr actually is. Spend time sitting. Look at the mounds from different distances. Let the scale of the commitment made here — the labor, the belief, the permanence — have time to register. That's the whole point of coming.

Water: Bring More Than You Think

There is absolutely no water at the site. In summer, the valley floor at Besshatyr reaches temperatures that consume your water reserves faster than you expect. Three liters minimum per person; more in July and August. Dehydration in the Ili basin at the height of summer is not a minor inconvenience.