Ivan The Terrible: Military Arsenal Unearthed Near Moscow

AncientPages.com - Ivan IV “the Terrible” of Russia (1530-1584) was a cruel tyrant, who never knew the meaning of moderation; he drank too much, laughed too loudly and hated and loved too fiercely.

And he never forgot anything. Ivan was definitely smart and, despite his cruelty, his reign is a great one in Russian annals. In Russia Ivan was called “Grozny”, which has always been translated to “the Terrible”, but actually means “the Awesome.”

Excavating unique medieval ruins near Moscow, archeologists have stumbled upon a private arsenal dating back to the times of Czar Ivan the Terrible.

The find was discovered outside Zvenigorod, an ancient town 30 kilometers west of Moscow, at the site of a 16th century estate  owned by Dobrynsky boyars whose representatives served with an elite military corps Ivan the Terrible established in 1550.

Digging up a large wood-paneled basement, the archeologists found a veritable arsenal of steel helmets, fragments of chain armor, sword sheathes, metal-plated belts and steel-tipped arrows.

The biggest highlights of the more than four-century-old collection were a pair of gilded steel helmets with pointed tops only slightly touched by corrosion.

“You can find such helmets at the Armory Chamber, the Hermitage and the State History Museum,” Alexei Alexeyev, the head of the archeological team from the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Archeology, told RIA Novosti news agency.

“This find offers us better insight into how medieval Russian nobility prepared for military campaigns, with each having a private arsenal in the basement,” Alexeyev said.

“Never before have we ‘seen’ the everyday life of a Russian nobleman who was the mainstay of the Russian army during golden age of the medieval Moscow state.”

AncientPages.com

source: SputnikNews

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