Archaeologists believe that the city of Uplistsikhe, carved into the rocks, was built around the 6th century BC. Ancient people began to settle on the steep banks of the Kura at the end of the 2nd millennium BC, initially they founded settlements on the Katlaniskhevi hill, adjacent to Uplistsikhe. This center of social life existed for a long time, until it died in a fire. Most likely, Katlaniskhevi was burned and destroyed by hostile neighbors. And those who fled from the fire had to look for a place for a new settlement.
The same age as the Bronze Age
This was the beginning of the rocky city of Uplistsikhe. Of course, in those days this city hardly had such a name. It became Uplistsikhe much later - when the hill was already indented with numerous passages, when it turned into a city inside a stone - with palaces, temples, streets and gates. “Uplistsikhe” is translated from Georgian as “God's fortress”. Of course, today everyone understands what kind of god we are talking about. But in the 6th century BC, the inhabitants of Uplistsikhe had other gods - pagan, and the main thing was not the god-father, but the goddess-mother - the sun goddess, who gave life to everyone. They worshiped her, they glorified her. The founder of the city is the legendary king Uplos, who, like our Rurik, had two brothers - Javakhos and Odzkhos, children of King Mtskhetos, grandchildren of King Kartlos, great-grandchildren of King Phoharma, and they all descended from the biblical Japheth. Whether Uplos really lived or whether it was invented much later - no one knows. When exactly he lived, if he was a historical person, too. However, by the 4th century BC, Uplistsikhe had already become a large tribal center.
Uplistsikhe was built not in a year, not in ten, not even in a century or centuries. It can be said to have been hammering in the rocks for thousands of years. Appearing in an era when tools and weapons were made of copper and bronze, it reached its peak in the next, Iron Age.
The hill eaten away from the inside
The location chosen for the construction of the cave city was ideal. The hill consisted of sandstone - a rock that can be easily worked even with not the hardest tools. Bronze tools coped well with sandstone. This is an excellent material for cutting solid and intricate designs out of it. Of course, Uplistsikhe was not the only city in the then Georgia. Cities have already appeared in Kartli and Iberia, Mtskheta became the capital of the united Georgian kingdom, but Uplistsikhe was radically different from other cities - it was built and conceived as a temple complex. In it, sanctuaries were erected to almost all the gods of the Georgian pantheon - both agrarian, water, solar, and chthonic. Apparently, it was the chthonic gods that occupied such an important place in this pantheon,that people preferred to carve temples for them inside the hill - closer to the underworld. More than a hundred temples were carved! And almost a couple of decades of the 4th century BC. The largest and most majestic was, of course, the Temple of the Sun, but the most ambitious were sacrificial pits for chthonic gods: some of them were four meters in diameter and 12 meters deep. Even a bull could be easily placed there, like a stone trap.
In addition to the sanctuaries, other necessary buildings were erected in the rocky city - houses for the priests who performed rituals there, houses for the personnel serving their needs, houses for artisans who were engaged in construction work. By this time, the craftsmen had already mastered the processing of iron, improved tools cut stone like oil. Between the houses in this fantastic city, they made tunnels, streets, removed tons of rock to build squares. All buildings were mathematically verified so as not to collapse, although outwardly they looked light and delicate, like lace. Stone carvers amazingly imitated wooden details, carving them out of stone. They decorated stone ceilings with reliefs and patterns, cut through doors and false windows in the walls, connected the cave halls with arched passages. However, it is significant that no pottery workshops,there were no smithies with smelting furnaces in Uplistsikhe. Both dishes and tools were brought into the city from outside.
The city was built not only inside the mountain, but also on the surface of the hill. Above-ground structures were cleverly combined with underground ones. By the 1st century, when Christianity appeared, the city already occupied a vast territory. Not only priests, builders and artisans lived in it, a significant part of its inhabitants were engaged in trade - after all, Uplistsikhe lay at the intersection of several trade routes. To protect against enemies, the city was surrounded by a deep moat and high walls, and for a constant supply of water, a system of stone pipes was built from a spring in the mountains and a tunnel was laid to the Kura River, and a deep storage well was made. In Uplistsikhe there was a sewage system perfect for that time, "rumors" for secret forays during the siege, a suspension bridge at one of the four city gates, which could be removed if necessary.
In other words, Uplistsikhe was not only a temple complex, but also a reliable fortress.
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Christian Center
The pagan period in Uplistsikhe lasted until the 330s, when the Georgian kingdom adopted Christianity. The first thing that the Georgian Christians did was to destroy the Temple of the Sun and rebuild it into a church, just like they did with another pagan sanctuary. Smaller structures were simply broken, and the unfortunate priests were executed. They also destroyed pagan pride - a huge storehouse for - the sacred wine. The vessels were broken, the wooden supports were destroyed, and then torches were thrown into the cave halls. Only embers remained.
In the X-XI centuries, active church construction began in Uplistsikhe. It was then that the Christians erected here the "Uplistsuli Church", that is, the "Prince's Church". Perhaps this happened under Bagrat III, who united Georgia and freed it from the dominion of the Arab conquerors. At that time, about 20 thousand people lived in the city - by the standards of the Middle Ages, it was a metropolis. However, the joy was short-lived. The Arabs were replaced by the Armenians, the Armenians were replaced by the Seljuk Turks, then again by the Arabs. Only David the Builder was able to completely get rid of Arab domination in the XII century. But for him Uplistsikhe did not really matter. King David set up his capital in Tbilisi. He did not even want to think about the rocky city of King Uplos. So the Christian fate of Uplistsikhe did not work out.
In the XIII century, Genghis Khan moved to Georgia. And in Uplistsikhe monks moved, hoping to sit out the danger inside the mountain. The monks hastily began to build secret shelters on the lower tiers and pray. Alas! Over the centuries of Christianization, Uplistsikhe turned into an ordinary town, albeit partially carved inside the hill. It was home to artisans and merchants, united by profession, as in other medieval cities. The building skills of the Christian craftsmen were worse than those of the ancient pagans. They could not help the monks. And when they set out to sew the hill with new passages and erect new underground churches and monasteries, their structures violated the integrity of the existing structures. And the ancient buildings collapsed. And then there were the victorious campaigns of the Mongols. Genghis Khan's grandson Hulagu, without further ado,drove the Uplistsikhe monks out of the caves and gave the order to the army to chop off their heads. And then he ordered to burn Uplistsikhe and all the forests around it to the ground. Of course, the ancient city fell into decay and lost all meaning.
Archaeological Museum
Medieval chroniclers and scientists perfectly remembered the existence of the fantastic city of Uplistsikhe.
The local peasants also remembered this. As soon as any enemy appeared in the mountains, they went to the ancient caves. And they sat out the invasion. Although no one else lived there permanently. Except for the monks. They courted the Uplistsuli church and periodically renovated it. And now she survived the Middle Ages, and the Caucasian wars with Russia, and earthquakes, and several revolutions, and lived to the happy moment when the most normal people came to Uplistsikhe - archaeologists. And in 2007, the rocky city of Uplistsikhe was included in the UNESCO cultural heritage list.
Magazine: Mysteries of History No. 43, Nikolay Kotomkin