https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/genghis-khan-tomb-location
Hopefully of interest
For those unwilling to pay National Geographic...
The latest claimed site ... https://archaeology-world.com/archaeologists-unearth-tomb-of-genghis-khan/
Doesn't fully match the description from the secret history but possible
I know nothing of Ghengis Khan's tomb nor the circumstances of its construction, but ... the slaves (or perhaps the 'slaves') who constructed the tomb were massacred to keep the tomb's location secret? How did they keep the killers quiet about the location of the tomb? Who massacred the massacrers? ... and where were they massacred? May there perhaps be an alternative interpretation?
It's easy. When the slaves have finished the tomb, you tell them to go to a suitably remote location to have a celebratory banquet and receive their completion bonus. Then you send a load of your henchmen, who have no idea where the tomb might be, to go to the banquet location and kill all the slaves they find there.
Despots have been doing it for millenia...
:-\
I'm assuming that they buried him next to Alexander, so that shouldn't be too difficult to find.
Quote from: Nick Harbud on Oct 07, 2025, 01:03 PMDespots have been doing it for millenia...
Though perhaps despots, having taken so much trouble to remove the construction slaves to a place of massacre by henchmen ignorant of the tomb's location, probably don't transport the corpses of the freshly executed slaves back to the site of the secret tomb to inter them on top of the big cheese. :)
How about you get the guards to massacre the slaves and bury them, then invite them to a celebratory banquet etc etc where they are in turn massacred by a hit squad who don't know why they are carrying out the massacre ?
Also, if the site was under a river, how did the bodies on top of it stay put?
Having now consulted Wikipedia I feel qualified to speculate that, contrary to the later tales about the circumstances of his burial, perhaps the Khan was just laid to rest in an unmarked grave as the Secret History seems to suggest. Perhaps he had the insight to know that if he were buried in an actual tomb (whether visible on the ground or not) his bones would not be safe from subsequent despoilation (even if the motive for that was veneration)? Whatever he thought, it seems to have worked so far.