Uplisikhe

Uplisikhe

I decided to take an invitation from my soon-to-be-married buddy James, and go on a tourist expedition with his visiting family from Britain. We loaded into marshutkas in the early morning and drove west ninety minutes, past the home of Stalin, through hills, and down into a long broad river plain. Poofy clouds cast shadows on the fields and small villages, the derelict electric towers as inconspicuous in post Soviet Georgia as the scrubby birch trees swaying to the cool mountain wind. We saw caves in the distance. Uplisikhe, bronze age city fort.

Half way into this broad valley, the hills on one side jut suddenly out towards the river, exposing a thick outcropping of chalky sandstone-limestone with geologically revealing sea shells imbedded in its soft white layers. From its summit one looks fifteen miles upriver and fifteen miles down river, everywhere fertile fields of green-waving stalks, a broad river running straight down the valley. If I was a nomad in 1500 BC, I could have called it quits right about here, putting down my spear for a hoe.

Apparently that’s what happened, because a city of 20,000 grew up here, building an incredible labyrinthine fortress-city of cave dwellings. A secret tunnel descends through the rock to the river, emerging underwater to escape detection, from which point besieged inhabitants had a constant source of water and a possible underwater escape route. I imagined the Nautilus docking here on a submarine passage to the Caspian Sea....

As you all know, I’m not the biggest fan of tours, so I abandoned the senior citizen British tour, and ran crazily through the rocks, zig-zagging down stone troughs like a snow boarder, vaulting through arches and up worn stone stairs like a character in Indiana Jones. I really felt like I was in a movie like that. I discovered large patios carved down between solid rock walls placed in front of large altar areas with secret rooms above and behind the altar, smudge blackened walls and ceiling speaking of centuries of ritualistic sacrifice.... ah! It is no secret pagan Georgia worshipped agricultural Gods, using animal sacrifice to show their gratitude for Sun, Moon, Bull, and the other strongest gods, so my imagination was running wild.

I bounded up the worn steps to the altar area, my excitement rising, but suddenly I became aware of the lingering presence of such Gods, and felt strange to be dressed the way I was. I looked at my shoes, at my camera on my belt. I felt myself to be an invader, an out of place oddity in a sacred space. Who was I and how did I come to be here? Did I know anything about these people or their traditions, their hopes, dreams, their deepest secrets, desires, and beliefs? I closed my eyes for a second and concentrated on humility, on submissiveness, on strength but not insult, and hoped that an intentional awareness would offset the type of curses and ailments spoken of in hushed voices around the evening stove.

I noticed column stumps in what must have been the main hall of this rock-hewn temple. I started tip-toeing around, inspecting the corners for secrets, testing the acoustics of each new space. The roof is long since gone, but maybe before hand, the space rang true to the ancient laws of acoustics.

I found many other cave rooms, some of them with carved ceilings. Chancing back on the tour, I heard the guide say the dimensions of one carved church space matched Roman church dimensions and the carvings on the roof also matched Roman inset square designs, though these rooms are believed to predate Roman times. Other rooms contained big cisterns, and I noticed carved water ways everywhere in the rock for the collection of rainwater. One room also seemed to hold notches for large qevries, the 6 to 10 foot wine-bearing urns used in Georgia to this day.

Skipping up several boulders, I noticed several Georgian teenagers staring at me as I approached the newer Orthodox chapel which sits near the top of the cave complex. They spoke some english and were thrilled to quiz me: ‘My name is Levani, your name is?’ ‘I want go America, can you help me?’ ‘America is friend to Georgia, and I am friend to you, yes?’ ‘What do you think of our beautiful country?’ The teenagers were actually a large group of ten or twelve and all together they showed me another underground chapel, this one looking of later origin with its carved arches and columns. I sang chants in there, but they didn’t join me.

Coming out near the top of the large outcrop, I was slammed by a breeze strong enough to carve new caves in the cliffside. What a lookout! I could see far up the valley, far down the valley, ruins below marking where villages stood by the river side. A badly written brochure said early invaders of the Georgian valleys knew their invasion relied on conquering this cityfort, how many times did armies lay siege here, and lookouts in rough cloth, spear in hand, stare into the wind at the masses across the river?

Before leaving this imaginative playground, I made friends with the current inhabitants of the caves, twelve inch long lizards who are not slow to beat retreats into their favorite cracks but also not reluctant to emerge into the sunlight again. Their memories may be short, but they’ve probably lived here longer than any bronze age pioneer or camera toting tourist.