The Khan Collection

“The greatest happiness is to vanquish your enemies, to chase them before you, to rob them of their wealth, to see those dear to them bathed in tears, to clasp to your bosom their wives and daughters.”

— GENGHIS KHAN

Boy, talk about a man who knew what he wanted out of life. He also knew how to get it: after the tribal leader known as Temujen was crowned in A.D. 1206 as the Mongols’ Genghis Khan — “emperor of all emperors” — he waged nearly continuous wars of conquest against his neighbors. By his death in 1227, Genghis Khan ruled most of the lands between the Sea of Japan and the Caspian Sea, an empire that encompassed two-thirds of the known world and far eclipsed the celebrated realms of Alexander the Great. To those who were overrun by the Khan’s mounted hordes — and to the victims’ modern descendants — the Mongols were a barbaric people who swept out of the unknown reaches of the Asian steppe, a warmongering race whose only talents were for rape, murder and pillage.

The Mongols were indeed good at all that. But thanks in part to recent archaeological finds in the arid lands of Inner Mongolia, now part of China, historians have begun to realize this perception of the medieval Mongols is woefully one-dimensional. Genghis Khan, their most celebrated leader, was not merely a bloodthirsty killer but also a supreme military strategist and talented politician, as adept at forging alliances and gathering intelligence as he was at wreaking terror and havoc. And the Mongol civilization he ruled had a rich cultural and artistic heritage that went back at least 6,000 years.

Now the public has an unprecedented chance to peer over the shoulders of archaeologists and historians and get a firsthand look at the legacy of the Mongols and their Asian predecessors. A traveling exhibition called “Empires Beyond the Great Wall: The Heritage of Genghis Khan” opened last week at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City after a hugely successful five-month run at California’s Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. The show features more than 200 artifacts dating from roughly 2000 B.C. through the dynasty founded by Genghis Khan’s grandson, Kubilai Khan, in the 13th century A.D. Most of the objectshave never before been permitted to leave China. Says the show’s curator, archaeologist Adam Kessler of the Los Angeles museum: “Inner Mongolia is one of the great frontiers of archaeology left in the world today.”

Before that frontier opened up, scholars had to rely mostly on Chinese and Persian manuscripts for their information. The newly discovered treasures have helped place those manuscripts in context as well as providing valuable clues to the cultural development of Eurasia. Everyday items such as bronze vessels, weapons, clothing and funerary offerings provide a picture of daily life. And the discovery of both Chinese- and Indian-inspired imagery on porcelain and sculpture confirm Mongolia’s role in the cultural exchange between China and Eurasia.

The story researchers have pieced together from these artifacts contains plenty of surprises. Says Kessler: “From our knowledge of Genghis Khan and the Mongols, we had assumed tribes in this region spent most of their time on horseback. But archaeology is beginning to show that from 6000 B.C. on, these were agrarian societies.” The northern peoples had much in common with the Chinese to the south:stone altars and pieces of jade carved into dragons suggest there was a common origin for the two groups’ important beliefs, rituals and religious concepts. In addition, recent excavations have uncovered the remains of more than 100 walled cities dating to the 3rd millennium B.C., none of which were mentioned in ancient Chinese records.

Around 1500 B.C, Mongolia’s climate became colder and drier, prompting a shift from a crop-based to a livestock-centered society. And by about 200 B.C., a warlike people called the Xiongnu had overrun a large part of the region. As part of a peace agreement with China’s Han dynasty, the Xiongnu demanded annual tributes of silk, wine, rice, concubines and other luxuries. According to Kessler, the transport of these goods to central Asia marked the earliest full-scale use of the Silk Road, the fabled network of trade routes that ultimately stretched to the Mediterranean Sea; on the Silk Road, bolts of Chinese silk were carried all the way to the Roman Empire.

The Xiongnu empire finally collapsed during the 1st century A.D., primarily because of disputes over succession rights. Some 800 years later, another clan, the Qidan, conquered much of northeast China and amassed a formidable empire stretching from central Asia to the Sea of Japan. During the Liao dynasty they founded, the Qidan built several hundred cities.

The Qidan produced exquisite ceramics, which were commissioned from skilled artisans in conquered Chinese states. They also developed elaborate funerary trappings, including yurt-shape urns, gold burial masks, painted wooden coffins and tomb guardians, that seem to indicate a melding of the region’s major religions: Taoism, Buddhism and shamanism.

In the early 12th century, the Qidan were conquered by a northern tribe that founded the Jin dynasty and evidently had many contacts with other empires. Specimens of southern Chinese blue-and-white porcelain found in Jin settlements — a surprise, since these wares are believed to be a 14th century invention — may have been gifts from visiting diplomats.

By the time Temujen, the future Genghis Khan, was born in the 1160s, the Jin were in decline, and the tribes of the steppe were once again at war with one another. When Temujen was nine, his father, a clan leader, was poisoned by Tatars; the clan then abandoned the rest of the family. Isolated and impoverished, mother and children were forced to eat rats and insects to survive. Temujen eventually reclaimed his hereditary right to be clan leader, and by means of powerful alliances, marriage and a series of battles, he began to annex rival tribes. In 1206 tribal leaders declared Temujen ruler of all the steppe peoples and gave him the title Genghis Khan.

The new emperor proceeded to break apart traditional tribal connections, convert his subjects to a feudal system and above all organize a rigidly disciplined, well-supplied army. Like all Mongol warriors, Genghis’ troops were superb horsemen, equipped with sturdy mounts that were obedient, even tempered and ideal for winter fighting. A soldier might stay in the saddle for days, slitting a vein in the neck of his horse to drink its blood so he would not have to stop for meals.

The warriors relied primarily on bows, arrows and hand axes to slay their foes and may have protected themselves with weatherproofed leather armor. To attack fortified cities, they hired Chinese and Middle Eastern engineers who knew how to use siege catapults and other mechanical innovations. After capturing a city, these relentless troops would pretend to withdraw, as a way of determining whether a surrender was genuine; if the Mongol representatives left behind were killed, the soldiers would return to massacre the entire population. They rarely took prisoners, unless they needed men to use as shields in the front lines during the next siege.

Despite the ruthlessness, says Kessler, “Genghis Khan was a very intelligent man and not at all impulsive. He avoided war if he could subjugate another tribe with diplomacy. If he had to fight, he would use spies to gather all the available information and then send in agents to unsettle the situation before attacking.”

This combination of cruelty and craftiness was powerfully effective. Genghis first took control of the major Mongolian tribes to the west and then tried to conquer China. He managed to seize power in the northern states but failed to vanquish the entire country. (That goal would be accomplished by Kubilai Khan, the ruler who founded Beijing, received Marco Polo in his court and inspired Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s famous poem.) In 1217 Genghis gave up and instead turned his attention back to central Asia, sweeping westward through Bukhara and Samarkand, Azerbaijan and Georgia, eventually reaching the Dnieper River in what today is Ukraine.

Most signs of these conquests are gone from the outer reaches of Genghis Khan’s empire, except for lingering impressions of barbarian terrorists sweeping in from the east. But that is far from the case in Inner Mongolia and in independent Mongolia, the ex-Soviet satellite next door, where the great conqueror is revered as a folk hero. Every year thousands of Mongols visit a shrine in the Ordos region where Genghis is said to have dropped a horsewhip during his final campaign and where he reportedly wanted to be buried. His actual burial spot is unknown (see box). In Ulan Bator, Mongolia’s capital, there are hotels, streets and even a brand of vodka named for him. His image, says Christopher Atwood, professor of Mongolian studies at Indiana University, “has become kind of tacky.”

Many archaeological sites, especially in Inner Mongolia, have hardly been excavated because of limited local resources and decades of Chinese xenophobia. This has started to change, however, as China has taken part in cooperative digs with several European countries. Kessler, who has already made six surveying trips to the area, hopes Americans will get their chance to dig as well. “There is a fantastic potential there for finding well-preserved artifacts,” he says. Considering what scientists have learned from the pieces they have found so far, the broadening of our understanding of Genghis Khan and the Mongols has barely begun.