"Koy-Krylgan-Kala" (4th century BCE)

North-east of Turtkul lie the ruins of Koy-Krylgan-Kala, a monument of the funerary and astral cults of ancient Khorezm, dated to the fourth century BC. It is among the principal Zoroastrian sites in Uzbekistan.

The finds allowed the conclusion that the fortress was a temple-tomb: astronomical observations were made here and rites performed. Khorezm then lived by Zoroastrianism, and even in the period of decline, when only craftsmen remained inside, the place was held sacred and ossuaries with the remains of the dead were brought here.

The name translates as the fortress of the perished rams. The plan is unusual: a circle at the base. It is one of the few structures of antiquity here to have been excavated in full.

The archaeologist S. P. Tolstov described his first sight of it: the ruins were drowned in a sea of dunes, and then from a crest there opened a wide expanse of takyr scattered with crimson-red potsherds, above which rose the outlines of a fortress unlike anything seen before. The half-ruined walls of an eighteen-sided citadel were encircled in a regular ring by an outer wall almost levelled with the ground, with the remains of nine towers. The citadel's faces, of huge square mud bricks, rose in places five or six metres and were pierced with close narrow loopholes, finished above by pairs of bricks meeting at a sharp angle.

Originally it was a round two-storey building some forty-five metres across, surrounded by a deep ditch. The main temple was enclosed by two walls with a firing gallery, standing fifteen metres from the central building.

Excavation produced a rich collection: figurines of alabaster and terracotta, ceramic urns and ossuaries, stone seals, ceramic flasks. Fragments of wall painting are of particular value, along with examples of the oldest writing in Central Asia, that of the Avestan civilisation.