Chorna Mohyla

Chorna Mohyla (Black Barrow). An Old Rus’ 10th-century kurhan in Chernihiv. According to local beliefs it is the grave of Prince Chorny, the legendary founder of Chernihiv. The kurhan is 11 m high, 125 m in circumference, and surrounded by a trench 7 m wide. It was excavated by Dimitrii Samokvasov in 1872–3. A funeral pyre and the bones of at least two warriors and a slave girl, weapons and armor, tools, pots, ornaments, items of daily life, coins, etc, were discovered. In the upper part of the kurhan, at a height of 7 m, the remains of a funeral banquet (helmets, shirts of mail, Byzantine coins, and an iron kettle with sheep bones) were found.