Day #77: The personality cult of Chinggis Khaan

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One of the reasons I wanted to tour the Eastern part of Mongolia was the strong connections to Chinggis Khaan, who was born and held court here. It is over 800 years since he united the disparate tribes into the nation of Mongolia for the first time, and he is still by far the most important figure in the Mongolian national consciousness. The history of his life and accomplishments - documented in The Secret History of Mongolia - are studied in depth by all schoolchildren here, and here there is Chinggis Khaan everything - beer, monuments, restaurants, bank notes, hotels. His image is all over the country and sites gain importance through a connection to him, and Mongolians remain very proud of the man and his accomplishments. This approach to him reminded me of the Russians' connection to Lenin: the image of one man coming to symbolise a nation and everything it stands for, beyond his actual personality and present-day influence.

Yesterday we visited a huge metal statue of Chinggis Khaan on a horse that has been built by a tourism company 60km from Ulaanbaatar. They claim the site was chosen because Chinggis Khaan auspiciously found some horse whips here, but according to historians this is apocryphal. They intend to build a complex of tourist gers and leisure facilities around the statue. You can climb right up into the horse's head for the views (we couldn't the first time we went because of a power cut, but we went back another day to do this). The statue is made of so much metal that if you wave your arms around from the balcony on the horse's head the air crackles with static electricity. You can also watch a video of the statue being erected, to the glorious accompaniment of the Gladiator soundtrack. There is a museum there which actually did have some interesting information about why the empire was a success - it was relatively liberal in allowing conquered nations to retain their own customs and religions and there was much promotion of trade links and learning. I had also seen in the National History Museum a clip of how Chinggis Khaan actually succeeded in battle through the use of different troop formations depending on the formation the enemy adopted.

Today we visited the site of his court, which has recently been excavated by a Mongolian-American expedition. Their main findings, according to our guide, were that Chinggis Khaan lived in a large ger in the centre with women living in gers on one side and men on the other. Chinggis Khaan had four official wives but, of course, many more children, and allegedly the illegitimate sons were given an injection of poison to permanently mentally incapacitate them, preventing them from making a future claim to the throne.

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