The Tomb of Genghis Khan

The account

When Genghis Khan died in the late summer of 1227, he had built the largest land empire the world has ever seen, and he wanted to disappear. By his own order he was buried with no mound, no marker, no stone, somewhere in the mountains of his Mongol homeland, and the people who put him there made very sure no one would ever find him.

The stories of how are chilling even by the standards of the age. The soldiers escorting the body are said to have killed everyone they passed on the road so no traveler could point to the route. The burial party that dug the grave were themselves killed when they came back. A thousand horses were driven over the turned earth to flatten it, and a forest was left to grow over the whole valley. Then the Mongols sealed off a vast stretch of the Khentii mountains, around the sacred peak of Burkhan Khaldun, called it the Great Taboo, and put anyone who trespassed to death.

It worked completely. Marco Polo, writing only decades later, says the Mongols themselves had already lost the spot. Eight hundred years of legend, satellite scans, and quiet expeditions have circled Burkhan Khaldun without ever putting a spade where it counts, partly because the mountain is sacred and the Mongolian government keeps it closed.

So the grave of the man who conquered half the known world, packed by every account with the plunder of a dozen civilizations, is hidden so perfectly that his own descendants could not find it, on a holy mountain that no one is allowed to dig. The greatest tomb never opened is sitting under a forest with a name, and the secret is still keeping itself.

Known intelligence

• Genghis Khan died in August 1227 and, by his wish, was buried in secret with no marker.
• The funeral escort is said to have killed everyone it met, then been killed in turn, to keep the location secret.
• A 240-square-kilometer "Great Taboo" around Burkhan Khaldun was sealed off, with trespass punishable by death.
• Marco Polo wrote that even by the late 1200s the Mongols no longer knew where the tomb lay.

Theories of the hunt

• The tomb lies on or near the sacred mountain Burkhan Khaldun in the Khentii range.
• A 250-meter human-made mound surveyed in 2015 may be a royal Mongol tomb.

Leads, where the trail points now

• The consensus search zone is the Khentii mountains around the sacred peak Burkhan Khaldun, a UNESCO site the Mongolian government keeps closed.
• A 250-meter human-made mound surveyed near Burkhan Khaldun in 2015 and 2016, controversially and without permission, is the most concrete physical lead.
• Only non-invasive methods are legal: satellite imagery and the crowdsourced Valley of the Khans aerial project are the model; ground excavation is forbidden and culturally explosive.
• The Secret History of the Mongols, Marco Polo, and Rashid al-Din give the burial customs but no location; the open work is reconciling them with the geography.

The trail, in order

• 1227: Genghis Khan dies and is buried in secret.
• late 1200s: the location is already lost, even to the Mongols.
• 1990s-2010s: satellite and ground expeditions search the Khentii mountains.

Sources and the record

• Burial place of Genghis Khan (Wikipedia)
• Where is Genghis Khan's tomb? (National Geographic)