Tanbaly Tas: The Ancient Steppe’s Gallery

 

Tanbaly Tas: The Ancient Steppe’s Gallery

Tanbaly Tas is a vast open-air art gallery featuring more than 2,500 engravings on rock faces, most of which date back to the late Bronze Age. They offer a window into an ancient steppe civilisation.

Kazakhstan, the ninth largest country in the world, has six UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Three of these are transnational, shared with neighbouring countries. Among the remaining three are the petroglyphs at Tanbaly Tas, about 170 km north of Almaty.

We visited Tanbaly Tas recently. It was a four-hour bus ride from Almaty with a short break. It’s not a popular spot despite its heritage status; there are few adequate signages, and the site is often conflated with Tamgaly, another location of historical and archaeological importance. Tanbaly Tas is a vast, scrawny landscape, not exactly pleasing to the eye. In the middle of nowhere stood a compact sand-coloured, single-storied building topped by a bluish-green cupola—the visitor’s centre-cum-museum.

At the visitor’s centre, we learned that the petroglyphs and other monuments were discovered by archaeologist Maksimova in 1957. Further excavations and study continued between 1970 and 1990. Another 14 years passed before the site was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2004. The Tanbaly complex covers petroglyphs, burial mounds, and religious altars spanning a vast period—from the Bronze Age (14th–13th centuries BCE) to the 19th–20th centuries CE.

The engravings mostly depict animals, hunting scenes, dancing warriors, war chariots, camel carts, and, most notably, “sun-headed figures.” The visitor’s centre is a good primer on what to expect in the field.

We stepped out to explore the vast barrenness. A guide from the museum accompanied us, as per the mandatory protocol. It was an overcast and windy day. The first thing to greet us was a goalpost-like archway framing nothingness. Tanbaly Tas in small print could be discerned on the bar. A solitary horse grazed in the distance.

Our first stop was at a burial ground dating from the 13th century BCE. The dead were buried in a foetal position with their heads turned west. Ceramic vessels and bronze jewellery were found in the graves.

We then went ahead and visited four out of the five groups of petroglyphs. Getting close to the engravings wasn’t easy. It required climbing up and down rocky slopes—more a test of agility than stamina. Pictogram warnings of snakes and spiders were sprinkled across the landscape. The contrast between the engravings and the parent rock wasn’t always easy to discern. At certain angles, the sunlight washed out the details. Ironically, some engravings were clearer in phone photographs than to the naked eye.

Petroglyphs are images, symbols, or designs carved into the surface of rocks. Etymology: From Greek petra (rock) + glyphein (to carve). Unlike pictographs, which are painted onto rock using pigments, petroglyphs are engraved—created by removing part of the rock surface with tools made of harder stone, metal, or bone. For example, the images at the Bhimbetka Rock Shelters in Madhya Pradesh are pictographs.

The anthropomorphic figures of humans with radiant sun-like heads intrigued me the most. They were the most enigmatic of all the engravings. Were they priests participating in rituals? Personifications of the sun that governed life on the steppes? Or guardians watching over the living? Many questions filled my mind.

One group of petroglyphs was closed for restoration. A board crisply explained why: micro-vibrations from visitors’ footsteps could destabilise the precariously balanced rocks.

Why did our ancestors create these petroglyphs? Unlike pictographs painted inside caves to shield pigments from weathering, petroglyphs are carved out in the open—a bold statement. They are like our modern-day graffiti. The petroglyphs at Tanbaly Tas are at an elevation, positioned like a billboard, obviously requiring great effort to carve. Maybe they were placed there for the supernatural forces to see from a distance? Or maybe they were territorial markers? Or perhaps classroom boards to teach the young?

Tanbaly Tas is not everyone’s cup of tea. It is for those willing to travel seven or eight hours just to spend a couple of hours wandering through an arid landscape, trying to understand the hopes and fears of people from the steppe several hundreds of years ago.

On the long return bus ride, my mind grappled with a larger question: why did petroglyphs and pictographs across geographies and millennia portray the same themes—animals, hunting, reproduction, sacrifice? Across ages, human hopes and fears have remained constant: food and fertility. They still are today.

As the steppe rolled past my window, I felt that the Tanbaly stones hadn’t just survived time—they had survived forgetfulness.