Mongolia’s Largest Xiongnu Tomb Held Jade, Silver and Glass

On a forested slope in eastern Mongolia, a burial mound held its secret under nine layers of stacked stone for nearly two thousand years. When Korean and Mongolian archaeologists finally reached the bottom, they found jade shaped like Chinese ritual discs, a silver ornament that matches finds from Pyongyang, and a clear glass cup that may have come from the Roman Empire. They also found a puzzle no one expected: the biggest Xiongnu tomb ever confirmed in Mongolia hides one of the smallest burial chambers.

A Giant Tomb at Duurlig Nars

The tomb sits at Duurlig Nars in Khentii province, about 500 kilometers northeast of Ulaanbaatar. The cemetery holds around 300 graves, and researchers have surveyed the area since 2006 as part of a Korea and Mongolia partnership that began in 1997. Tomb 160 stands out from all the others. With its long southern access ramp, it stretches about 73 meters (240 feet), which makes it the largest Xiongnu tomb confirmed anywhere in Mongolia.

The National Museum of Korea, the Institute of Archaeology of the Mongolian Academy of Sciences and the National Museum of Mongolia began excavating it in 2023. The work took about four years. The builders had cut the site into terraces and packed it with stone in nine separate layers, and the team removed all of it, down to 14.5 meters below the surface. The museum dates the tomb to the late 1st or 2nd century AD, a period when Xiongnu power was already in decline.

Who Were the Xiongnu?

The Xiongnu built the first great nomadic empire of the eastern steppe, starting in the late 3rd century BC. For roughly three centuries they rivaled Han dynasty China, raiding its frontier, demanding tribute and trading horses for silk and grain. Their elite buried their dead in large square tombs with long ramps, and in July 2026 UNESCO added the Xiongnu noble funerary complexes, including Duurlig Nars, to the World Heritage List. Mongolian President Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh visited the Tomb 160 excavation in August.

413 Objects From Across Eurasia

The team recovered 413 objects from the tomb. Even before reaching the chamber, they found a lacquered carriage placed over the center of the tomb, a clear sign of high rank. The finds inside tell an even bigger story about how far this person’s world reached.

Jade from the Han tradition. Fifteen jade pieces lay across the floor of the coffin. Their design follows the Han Chinese bi, a flat ritual disc, but the Xiongnu versions come in varied shapes with finely carved surfaces. The museum says the burial adopted Han customs and then reshaped them into something new.

Silver with a Pyongyang twin. A gourd-shaped horse-harness pendant, hammered from thin sheet silver with a rock crystal at its center, closely resembles pendants from Tomb 219 at Seokam-ri in Pyongyang. That cemetery belonged to the Lelang commandery, a Han Chinese administrative outpost on the Korean Peninsula, and the National Museum of Korea holds those pieces in its own collection.

A gold ornament never seen before. A round gold piece set with crystal, backed by gold foil and red and blue material, is the first object of its type documented in a Xiongnu tomb, according to the museum.

A glass cup that may be Roman. The most talked-about find is a transparent glass vessel with a handle. The museum says a Roman origin is possible, but it has not confirmed this. Researchers plan a chemical composition analysis to find out where the glass came from. If the tests confirm it, the cup will have crossed thousands of kilometers of trade routes before ending up in a grave on the Mongolian steppe.

A Giant Monument With a Tiny Room

For all its size, Tomb 160 surprised the excavators. Its burial chamber is small and shallow. At 14.5 meters deep, it sits well above the roughly 22-meter depth of comparable elite tombs in central Mongolia. Korean archaeologists suggest the reduced chamber may itself be a clue, but for now nobody knows why the builders raised such a huge monument over such a modest room.

Earlier work at the site adds more context. In 2019, the team excavated six smaller satellite tombs around Tomb 160 and found silver belt ornaments shaped like human faces. Much later, someone dug a 13th or 14th century burial into the top of the mound, which contained a hat made of birch bark.

What Comes Next

The coffin still holds teeth and hair, and researchers plan DNA analysis to learn the person’s sex and age and whether they were related to the people in the satellite tombs. The team presented its results on 6 and 7 November 2026 at the 50th conference of the Korean Archaeological Society, and a full excavation report will follow. Until then, the glass cup’s origin and the riddle of the small chamber remain open questions.

What already stands out is the reach of one steppe noble’s world. Chinese-style jade, silver tied to a Han outpost in Pyongyang and glass that may have come from Rome all ended up in a single grave in eastern Mongolia, carried there by the trade and diplomacy networks the Xiongnu helped build.

Sources

• National Museum of Korea, announcement on the Duurlig Nars Tomb 160 excavation, 6 November 2026, as reported by Yonhap News Agency: Korean Center / Yonhap report (Korean)
• La Brujula Verde: Roman glass, Chinese jade and Korean-linked silver found in Mongolia’s largest Xiongnu tomb

Image: aerial view of Tomb 160 at Duurlig Nars. Credit: National Museum of Korea.