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Our guide dated most of these pictures of humans to the 8th and 7th centuries B.C., “but the latest research indicates that there are some from two or three centuries earlier.” She continued: “From the fragments of bones found here we also know what kind of animals lived here.” We saw many petroglyphs of buffalos. Some were easy to recognize.
When I banged them with a small stone they made a tambourine-like sound. According to our guide, “that ancient dance was similar to the yalli which is one of our folk dances today.”
They used an ancient percussion instrument, called Gavaldash, which was a volcanic stone with a chamber and a metallic sound, “unique to this area because of its climate.” There were many of those stones here. Several were set on a rock.
In another picture both men and women were armed with bows and arrows. Then there was a group of dancers with a “magic man.” Our guide said this was a ritual dance before hunting.
“Between the man and woman you can see a boy, and from this side a girl who is holding the hands of two children, two girls. Those last figures are mostly on the back of this rock. That is why the name of this big carving is Three Generations: a grandfather and a grandmother, their own children, and their daughter’s own two girls.”
We followed our guide on the path through the caves which were mostly shallow and open; in some, canopies had served as natural cover. Soon we met the caves’ long-dead inhabitants in their carvings.
Gobustan is close to the shores of the Caspian. The level of the sea was more than 150 feet higher around 10,000 years ago and the land near it was full of vegetation, making it natural for settlement by hunter-gatherers who could fish here as well. In what is today a semi-desert we could see huge blocks of boulders pressing against each other, just a short walk away from the water. They had produced over a dozen of caves as shelters for the ancient settlers, who later added a few they dug themselves.
It is the most popular state reserve in the country. The Azerbaijanis, who proudly depict Gobustan petroglyphs on their 5 Manat banknote, find in them the earliest signs of settlements in their land.
Scenes from his literary works carved on his neck and hair. Aliagha Vahid is credited with introducing, in the early 20th Century, the medieval ghazal style of poetry into the Soviet Azerbaijan literature.
The Carpet Museum in Baku was now located in a neo-classical colonnaded building left from the Soviet era when it was a branch of Moscow’s Lenin Museum, an institution that had branches in all major capitals of the Republics of the Soviet Union. The building’s portal is still adorned with the symbolic hammer and sickle.
As we left Shemakha heading north we came to a verdant field. Our guide said this area was called Moghameh, “a very old geographic name after the word mogh (magi) which was the name of the Zoroastrian patriarch.”
Our guide now led us to see the impact of Zoroastrianism in the cemetery. “Look at these designs,” she pointed to a standing pillar.
Our guide said that in this cemetery “One grave was used several times; ladies were buried deeper than men.” The closest evidence of this which we found was the one rare legible tombstone writing that had survived. Dated from about 1815, it indicated, in Persian, the deceased’s royal tile (alijah), and signified the importance of family relations by mentioning his birth (valad) from a mother who was the daughter (sabieh) of another person with the royal title.
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