Orkhon Valley

The Orkhon Valley Cultural Landscape^[a] sprawls along the banks of the Orkhon River in Central Mongolia, some 320 km west from the capital Ulaanbaatar. It was inscribed by UNESCO in the World Heritage List as representing the development of nomadic pastoral traditions spanning more than two millennia.

For many centuries, the Orkhon Valley was viewed as the seat of the imperial power of the steppes. The first evidence comes from a stone stele with Orkhon inscriptions, which was erected in the valley by Bilge Khan, an 8th-century ruler of the Göktürk Empire. Some 25 miles to the north of the stele, in the shadow of the sacred forest-mountain Ötüken, was his Ördü, or nomadic capital. During the Khitan domination of the valley, the stele was reinscribed in three languages, so as to record the deeds of a Qidan potentate.

Mountains were considered sacred in Tengriism as an axis mundi, but Ötüken was especially sacred because the ancestor spirits of the khagans and beys resided here. Moreover, a force called kut was believed to emanate from this mountain, granting the khagan the divine right to rule the Turkic tribes.^[2] Whoever controlled this valley was considered heavenly appointed leader of the Turks and could rally the tribes. Thus control of the Orkhon Valley was of the utmost strategic importance for every Turkic state. Historically every Turkic capital (Ördü) was located here for this exact reason.

The main monuments of the Orkhon Valley are as follows:

• The Orkhon monuments are early 8th-century Turkic memorials to Bilge Khan and Kul Tigin, the most impressive monuments from the nomadic First Turkic Khaganate. They were discovered by Russian archaeologists in 1889 and deciphered by Vilhelm Thomsen in 1893.
• Ruins of Ordu-Baliq at the site known as Kharbalgas in Mongolian, an 8th-century capital of the Uyghur Khaganate, which cover 50 square km and contain evidence of the palace, shops, temples, monasteries, etc.
• モンゴルの首都カラコルムの遺跡。
• エルデネ・ズー寺院は、モンゴルで最初に建立された仏教寺院である。1937年から1940年にかけて、ソ連当局によって一部が破壊された。
• トゥブフン修道院は、標高2,600メートルの丘を見下ろす、もう一つの壮麗な修道院である。ソビエト連邦によってほぼ完全に破壊された。
• ドイト丘にある13世紀から14世紀にかけてのモンゴル宮殿の遺跡。オゴデイ・ハンの居城だったと考えられている。
• ウラン・ツトガラン滝は、幅10メートル、高さ20メートルで、冬には水が枯れたり、凍結したりすることもある。

• Google Arts and Culture のユネスココレクションに掲載されているオルホン渓谷の文化的景観