Lands of Asia layouts (Eng) 26.11.21

part iii | cultural and spiritual development
The architecture of a mithraeum is now well known as so many have been excavated.
A map drawn up by M. Vermaseren demonstrates that mithraea have been discovered
in North Africa, Syria, Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, Italy, Austria, Romania, Hungary,
Spain, France, England and Scotland – in other words in practically every part of the
erstwhile Roman Empire. Of particular importance for the history of Mithraism are
those excavated at Dura-Europos (Syria), Carnuntum (Austria), Altenburg (Germany),
Klagenfurt (Austria), and the mithraeum of Santa Prisca (Rome, Italy).
Until recently, no mithraea had been known of in the area east of Dura-Europos
(Syria). Today, however, there is some evidence of the existence of this type of
structure on the territory of ancient Uzbekistan.
Ten years ago, the team of the Uzbekistan Art History Expedition, led by this
author, investigated the Kara-Kamar area in the far south of the Surkhan Darya region
of Uzbekistan, bordering Turkmenistan. Here, the Sherabad valley gives way to the
low spurs of the vast Kalif-Sherabad ridge of sandstones and conglomerates from the
Tertiary period. Several artificial caves have been carved into this thick rock.
The name Kara-Kamar (literally ‘Black Cave’) itself suggests that these caves predate
the Islamic era, as the word kara (black) is usually applied to archaeological sites
from this era not to designate the colour but to mean ‘impure’, ‘un-Islamic’.
Kara-Kamar was first surveyed in 1877 by N.A. Maev during a road survey in
Eastern Bukhara. He noted the presence here of three caves on the eastern side,
covered inside with crude images of people, horses, dogs, hands and heads, made,
in his opinion, by shepherds who had driven their flocks into the cave for the night.
In 1940, the Kara-Kamar caves were studied by the archaeologist G.V. Parfenov,
who believed they were a Buddhist cave monastery, similar to Karatepa in Old
Termez, although no clear traces of Buddhist identity were found. His conclusions
were based mainly on the similarity between the architectural appearance of the
Kara-Kamar and Karatepa caves and on the alleged presence of images of a ‘lotus’
and ‘stupa’ in the former. However, the results of this research were never published.
Our detailed research, which led to the discovery of inscriptions in ancient
Latin and other languages, has allowed for a completely different interpretation of
this cave complex, unique in Central Asia. It has a U-shaped courtyard (55×30 m),
which is open from the north-east and is enclosed on the other three sides by a 2–3
to 8–10-metre-thick sandstone wall, in which the cave structures are arranged on two
levels. The lower tier contains the largest and best preserved caves, and the second
tier contains small niches (2×1 and 2×1.8 metres) at a height of 5–6 metres above
the courtyard. Part of the courtyard, above the entrances to the cave structures, was
covered by a ‘rock overhang’, which later collapsed from weather and wind erosion.
The inscriptions and the cave structures have also been damaged as a result.
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