During archaeological excavations at the Hulbuk settlement, a furnace for making glass was discovered, as well as seven-colored crystal jugs, decanters, ceramic and ivory chess pieces, bronze bells, ceramic vessels, and other artifacts. Intensive archaeological excavations at the Hulbuk site began in 1950 (B.A. Litvinsky, E.A. Davidovich), continued until 1991 (E. Gulyamova), and were resumed in 2004-2006 (Y. Yakubov).
The palace of the rulers of Khuttal is located on a natural elevation, raised on a high platform. The rooms are built from paksha (pressed earth) and mud bricks, faced with fired bricks. Advanced technologies known to people at the time were used in its construction. While some of these features can be found individually in other places, in Hulbuk they were all combined. An example is the warm air heating system. Each room was equipped with heating structures made of ceramic pipes laid under the brick flooring.
To this day, archaeological excavations at the Hulbuk settlement are not yet finished. When we were there, they were actually expecting the arrival of some serious, world-renowned archaeologists. A wall is being built around the citadel of the Khuttal rulers, based on ancient models, replicating its original form. It is being constructed on the ancient foundation and the parts of the walls that were unearthed by archaeologists. The plan is to complete the entire wall around the citadel by 2018, and to finish the archaeological excavations by 2020. Next to the settlement is a museum of the same name, which displays archaeological finds from the Hulbuk site.
This is a photo of a map from the museum, showing the state of Khuttal and, accordingly, the city of Hulbuk.
The Hulbuk settlement, view from the outside, from the road.
The gates of the citadel.
The walls have been reconstructed on the ancient foundation and the remaining parts of the walls that archaeologists managed to excavate.
Around the corner, you can see that the wall isn't fully built yet. We were waiting for our guide and actually entered here.
View of the walls from the inside: crenellated walls, guard towers, walkways along the walls – everything as it should be.
Since we didn't enter through the main gate, we ended up directly in the theater. I was surprised at first, but then I understood. Well, they needed some form of entertainment, and for these purposes, they had a private theater.
Private because there were only two boxes for spectators, one for the ruler.
The other one? Well, I don't know, perhaps for the wives, or for some guests.
This is the artists' dressing room.
This is kind of a general view of the stage, but for some reason I didn't capture it fully.
Further on, behind the theater, there were some service buildings, probably the kitchen and such...
On the other side was the ruler's harem, where his numerous wives resided.
In the middle of the harem was a pool, right in this depression.
Further past the buildings was a square.
This is a photo to the left and right after I came out onto the square.
You could reach the square by passing through the main gate and the guard post.
The guard post was located here.
This is a view of the square from the other side.
From the main gate, if you turned right, you could enter the mosque.
This is a view of the mosque from above.
And along this path, passing five guard posts, you could reach the ruler's throne.
The throne room and the throne itself were located in this place.
In the museum, which we visited after exploring the Hulbuk settlement, there are models that clearly show all of this.
Here is the model. I added labels to it for better clarity. In places where the walls are cut off, it's simply because no sketches were found and they don't know what the buildings looked like.
Here are these models without labels; there are two of them.
A piece of the original citadel gates, which was used to reconstruct the modern gates.
On the walls of the museum are various photographs of the Hulbuk settlement excavations from different years, as well as sketches.
Pieces of stucco from the interior decoration of rooms in the citadel. Based on these sketches, samples were made inside the museum. In fact, the museum itself is decorated with the same patterns for illustrative purposes.
Other museum exhibits come from finds at the Hulbuk settlement: jugs, hums (large clay vessels), glassware, jewelry, chess pieces, coins.
Of course, all of this needs to be seen with your own eyes. There are very many exhibits, and many have very interesting stories and facts associated with them – it's impossible to fit it all into a blog post. Much of what's in the museum and at the settlement simply remained off-camera.
Our tour was conducted by the director of the museum. He has been working at the site since 1978 and literally knows everything about everything connected with Hulbuk. So, I want to say that it was incredibly interesting and educational.
Our next destination was to be the Khoja Mumin mountain, where a Salt cave awaits us...
