Transcript
The Valley of the Thracian Kings is an area of south-central Bulgaria situated to the west of the ancient Hellenistic polis of Seuthopolis (near modern day Kazanlak), on the southern slopes of the Haemus (Balkan) mountains. However, behind the fairy tales and golden masks lies another reality, a reality which, for reasons best known to Bulgarian archaeologists, is conspicuously absent from their glossy tourist brochures and history books. The nature of the complex, which is unique in Thrace and, from an architectural and structural perspective, Hellenistic rather than ‘Thracian’, as well as archaeological and numismatic evidence from the site which shows the presence of Macedonian troops there (Nankov 2009), clearly show that Seuthes III and his successors were under de facto Macedonian control and played a role similar to the ‘puppet’ kings, again from the Thracian Odrysae tribe, who were installed by the Romans at the end of the 1st c. BC / beginning of the 1st c. AD to facilitate their rule in Thrace (on the Odrysae ‘puppet’ kings in the Roman period see ‘The Scordisci Wars’ article). Judging from the lavish palace complex and rich Macedonian type tombs in this area it appears that the Thraco-Macedonian elite profited substantially from this relationship, although there is no evidence that this prosperity was shared by the ordinary Thracian population. Brendan Mac Gonagle, University College Dublin, a Celtic historian, archaeologist and archaeo-linguistic working in Eastern Europe (based in Bulgaria)
