CULTURAL HERITAGE: - Macedonian Information Centre

WHO WERE THE AUTHORS
OF THE TREBENIŠTE CULTURE
AND THE GOLD FUNERAL MASKS
nade Proeva
On 30 September 2002, at a distance of only 13 kilometers (Ohrid-
Trebenište), in the Ohrid region a funeral gold mask, the fifth in the
range, was again found which represents a rare practice in archeology.
Namely, in less than a century, or more precisely, after 84 years, at such
a small distance and in a country that cannot actually invest a lot in the
expensive archaeological excavations, up to five gold masks have been
found! This finding, like so many before, proves that Macedonia is indeed
a Balkan archaeological pearl.
Normally, the finding of the fifth gold mask, as it was the case with
the first, incited an enormous interest, with the only difference that the
first one found caused particular interest with the scientific public whereas
the fifth excited the wider public. Beside the admiration for the artistic
quality, especially shared by the larger public, a number of questions were
immediately imposed, like the time and the place of the manufacturing
of the mask(s) and the other objects (the glove and the ring) discovered
in the grave (the 132 nd in the archeological notebook on the necropolis
within Samoil’s fortress), the purpose of these luxurious objects, but
mostly who were the people who had ordered them, that is who owned
them. What were their names and who they actually were…?
Before answering these questions, let us recall the history of
the discovery of the gold masks in the necropolis near the village of
Trebenište, actually near the village of Gorenci, at 10 kilometers to the
north of Ohrid. In this necropolis, on two occasions, two times two, four
Nade Proeva, Ph.D. is an eminent Macedonian historian and a professor of
Ancient History at the Ss. Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje, Republic
of Macedonia.
The author has graduated from the Faculty of Archaeology in Belgrade.
She specialized in epigraphic, numismatics, and religion at Sorbonne - Paris.
Her published works include over 50 scholarly articles on Ancient History
and Archaeology, and two books about the history of Ancient Macedonia.
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UDC: 903-032.42:391.8(497.7-35)