Unseen 3rd Century BC Thracian Temple Discovered by Archaeologists beneath ‘Large Mound’ in Bulgaria’s Plovdiv

An Ancient Thracian temple from the 3^rd century BC, of a type that has never been seen before, has been unearthed by archaeologists in Bulgaria’s Plovdiv, underneath a massive man-made hill known as “the Large Mound” (“Golyamata Mogila”).

The Large Mound has been excavated for the past three summers by a team led by archaeologist Lyubomir Merdzhanov from the Plovdiv Museum of Archaeology.

The findings have been presented by Assoc. Prof.  Kostadin Kisyov, Director of the Plovdiv Museum of Archaeology.

The newly excavated Ancient Thracian burial mound is located in Plovdiv’s Southern District. Before the archaeological excavations, which have now dismantled it, it was 12 meters tall, and had a diameter of 90 meters, Radio Plovdiv reports.

The unknown Ancient Thracian temple was discovered at the base of the Large Mound.

The 3^rd century BC temple is a building with a total length of 10 meters, and made up of two rooms. The eastern room is 4 meters wide and 4 meters long, and the western one is 6 meters long and 3 meters wide.

Between the two parts of the temple, there is a pediment, i.e., a triangular gable, and a stone entrance frame.

The Ancient Thracian religious rites seem to have been perform in the square, eastern room, where the archaeologists have found the bones of seven species of domestic animals plus deer, as well as numerous pottery vessels.

“Last year, we discovered and explored only the eastern room [of the temple], which had no traces of burials, cremations, or any other corpse laying,” Kisyov said.

In his words, the construction techniques used for the Thracian temples were only typical for the region inhabited in the past by the Thracian tribes of the Odrysians (Odrysae), Bessi (Bessae), and Sapaeans (Sapaei).

The newly discovered Thracian temple dates back to the time when the ancient city of Pulpudeva, today’s Plovdiv, was captured by King Philip II of Macedon, Alexander the Great’s father, and was renamed Philipopolis.

Kisyov has told reporters that the architecture of the Thracian temple building is very well preserved, and so are all construction materials, meaning that any rescue restoration efforts could be carried out with relative ease.

The temple had a gable (double sloped) roof, and the quadrae, i.e. large rectangular blocks, that it was resting upon, have also survived. The building was constructed used a mix of clay and sand mortar.

The newly discovered Ancient Thracian temple was built of reused materials from another ancient structure, according to the researchers.

The Plovdiv Archaeology Museum director described it as a unique building among the Thracian ruins discovered all over Bulgaria.

He stressed that, unlike the newly found temple, earlier Thracian temples were built in accordance with Hellenic techniques.

According to experts from the Mining and Geology University “St. Ivan Rilski” in Sofia, who examined the ancient temple, the temple’s mortar made of two parts sand and one part clay is more robust that modern-day concrete.

“There are a combined total of three [Ancient Thracian] tombs – in [the towns of] Filipovo and Brestovitsa – which were constructing using building techniques similar to the ones used for this temple. The ancient builders had knowledge inherited from their ancestors,” Kisyov said, cited by Plovdiv Online.

“Last year, when we had the mortar tested, it turned out that this mud mortar with two parts sand, and one part clay was stronger than the concrete,” he added.

Kisyov, who showcased the discovery to reporters alongside Plovdiv Mayor Kostadin Dimitrov and Deputy Mayor Plamen Panov, noted that the Ancient Thracian builders had extensive architectural and construction knowledge.

He also said the archaeological excavations were challenging because the temple’s roof had collapsed inside it.

The archaeologist revealed that during the first season of the digs in 2022, his team found the ruins of a medieval church from the 12^th-13^th century, the time of the Second Bulgarian Empire, on top of the Ancient Thracian temple structures.

The same location also had structures from the Ottoman Empire period (15^th-19^th century).

The church from the High Middle Ages was not well preserved. Adjacent to it was a medieval cemetery.

Earlier in 2024, the archaeologists also dug up a paved road that led to the church.

Kisyov noted that the church was seeming deliberately built on top of the Ancient Thracian temple as part of a pattern of inheriting worship places.

“This speaks of continuity. The chuch was situated atop the mound because people [in the Middle Ages] knew that the spot in question had harbored a pagan temple, which had been a sacred, religious place for the local population,” the archaeologist explained, cited by PodTepeto.

“This is a very interesting case. I have huge experience with the research of [Thracian burial] mounds all over Bulgaria. This is the first time we have discovered a church on top of the [Thracian] mound,” he added.

“When [the Thracians] heaped the mound, this was still a functioning facility. The same was the case in Starosel (which is known for its Ancient Thracian tomb) – even if the tombs were functioning at the time, when the [Thracians] left the respective settlement, they took with them the remains of the deceased and the burial gifts and reburied them in the places where they settled. That is why such tombs hide very few artifacts upon their excavation [by archaeologists],” Kisyov elaborated, cited by Plovdiv Press.

The Plovdiv Museum of Archaeology director and the city mayor discussed the possibilities for creating an archaeological park in situ around the 3^rd century BC Ancient Thracian temple, which would encompass an area of 10 decares (2.5 acres) in Plovdiv’s Southern District.

The report also notes that the Large Mound that has been excavated by Kisyov’s team was the largest and last surviving Ancient Thracian mound in Plovdiv’s region.

Most of the some 100 Ancient Thracian burial mounds in Plovdiv were destroyed in the past during the construction of factories and the Kuklensko Shose road.

The Large Mound was first registered as an archaeological site at the beginning of the 20^th century by archaeologists Boris Dyakovich and Dimitar Tsonchev.

Since it is located to the south of ancient Philipopolis, the mound is believed to have been connected with a suburban settlement or villa mansion that belonged to local Thracian aristocrats.

The 2024 excavations of the Large Mound, which saw the complete exposure of the 3^rd century BC Ancient Thracian temple were funded with only BGN 30,000 (app. EUR 15,000) from the local authorities.

All in all, Plovdiv Municipality has allocated a total of BGN 600,000 (app. EUR 300,000) for archaeological excavations and research to the local museum for 2024.

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Background Infonotes:

The Ancient Thracians were an ethno-cultural group of Indo-European tribes inhabiting much of Southeast Europe from about the middle of the second millennium BC to about the 6^th century AD on the territory of modern-day Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, Greece, Turkey, Macedonia, Serbia.

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The Odrysian Kingdom was a union of Thracian tribes dominated by the tribe of the Odrysians (also known as Odrysea or Odrusai bearing the name of a mythical ruler, Odryses or Odrisis, (ca. 715 – ca. 650 AD), was the most powerful state of the Ancient Thracians. It existed from the unification of many Thracian tribes by a single ruler, King Teres, in the 5th century BC till its conquest by the Romans in 46 AD on the territory of most of modern-day Bulgaria, Northern Greece, Southeastern Romania, and Northwestern Turkey.

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According to the pre-1980 excavations, the history of the southern Bulgarian city of Plovdiv – often dubbed the oldest city in Europe – began with the human settlement on the ancient hill of Nebet Tepe (“tepe” is the Turkishword for “hill”), one of the seven historic hills where Plovdiv was founded and developed in prehistoric and ancient times.

Thanks to the prehistoric, ancient, and medieval settlement and fortress of Nebet Tepe, Plovdiv hold the title of “Europe’s oldest city” (and that of the world’s six oldest city, according to a Daily Telegraph ranking). Recent excavations, however, have disputed that title.

The hills, or “tepeta”, are still known today by their Turkish names from the Ottoman period. Out of all of them, Nebet Tepe has the earliest traces of civilized life dating back to the 6^th millennium BC, which makes Plovdiv 8,000 years old, and allegedly the oldest city in Europe. Around 1200 BC, the prehistoric settlement on Nebet Tepe was transformed into the Ancient Thracian city of Eumolpia, also known as Pulpudeva, inhabited by the powerful Ancient Thracian tribe Bessi.

During the Early Antiquity period Eumolpia / Pulpudeva grew to encompass the two nearby hills (Dzhambaz Tepe and Taxim Tepe known together with Nebet Tepe as “The Three Hills”) as well, with the oldest settlement on Nebet Tepe becoming the citadel of the city acropolis.

In 342 BC, the Thracian city of Eumolpia / Pulpudeva was conquered by King Philip II of Macedon renaming the city to Philippopolis. Philippopolis developed further as a major urban center during the Hellenistic period after the collapse of Alexander the Great’s Empire.

In the 1^st century AD, more precisely in 46 AD, Ancient Thrace was annexed by the Roman Empire making Philippopolis the major city in the Ancient Roman province of Thrace. This is the period when the city expanded further into the plain around The Three Hills which is why it was also known as Trimontium (“the three hills”).

Because of the large scale public construction works during the period of Ancient Rome’s Flavian Dynasty (69-96 AD, including Emperor Vespasian (r. 69-79 AD), Emperor Titus (r. 79-81 AD), Emperor Domitian (r. 81-96 AD)), Plovdiv was also known as Flavia Philippopolis.

Later emerging as a major Early Byzantine city, Plovdiv was conquered for the First Bulgarian Empire (632/680 – 1018 AD) by Khan (or Kanas) Krum (r. 803-814 AD) in 812 AD but was permanently incorporated into Bulgaria under Khan (or Kanas) Malamir (r. 831-836 AD) in 834 AD.

In Old Bulgarian (also known today as Church Slavonic), the city’s name was recorded as Papaldin, Paldin, and Pladin, and later Plavdiv from which today’s name Plovdiv originated. The Nebet Tepe fortress continued to be an important part of the city’s fortifications until the 14^th century when the Second Bulgarian Empire (1185-1396 AD) was conquered by the Ottoman Turks. During the period the Ottoman yoke (1396-1878/1912) when Bulgaria was part of the Ottoman Empire, Plovdiv was called Filibe in Turkish.

Today the prehistoric, ancient, and medieval settlement on Nebet Tepe has been recognized as the Nebet Tepe Archaeological Preserve. Some of the unique archaeological finds from Nebet Tepe include an ancient secret tunnel which, according to legends, was used by Apostle Paul (even though it has been dated to the reign of Byzantine Emperor Justinian I the Great (r. 527-565 AD)) and large scale water storage reservoirs used during sieges, one of them with an impressive volume of 300,000 liters. Still preserved today are parts of the western fortress wall with a rectangular tower from the Antiquity period.