The pride of Kyrgyzstan – the magnificent Issyk-Kul mountain lake. Kyrgyzstan people themselves call their favorite lake the pearl of the mountains; a hot, salty, ice-free lake; a lake where swans winter; the treasury of the republic; the country's treasure trove; a repository of underwater secrets, etc. Our beautiful Issyk-Kul is clearly visible from space and looks like a blue eye, and is called the Planetary Eye.

But no descriptions and a list of the properties of seawater will give a complete picture of a high-altitude lake until you see firsthand the wonderful lake that has been praised by poets and philosophers for centuries. For thousands of years, the lake has attracted ancient travelers, scientists, researchers, poets, dervishes, artists, rulers, conquerors and numerous representatives of different peoples and tribes.

The ancient tribes revered the lake and treated it as sacred. In ancient times, the locals never swam, washed dishes, or fished in the waters of crystal Issyk-Kul. The lake was an inviolable treasure among the Saks, Usuns, Sogdians and all ancient Turkic tribes.

And from the fact that the lake was kept as the apple of the eye, it manifested itself the interest of those who considered coastal cliffs, caves and underground passages as a repository of jewelry, military equipment and household items made of valuable metals. And the proof of this is hundreds and thousands of archaeological items found near Issyk-Kul. And ethnographic expeditions to study the underwater secrets and coastal mountains of the deep lake have been carried out more than once by scientists, archaeologists, ethnographers, geographers, geologists, speleologists and other specialists for whom the lake was of scientific and research interest.

And the results were amazing. Many artifacts have been found at the bottom of the lake, indicating that ancient cities and settlements located on the Great Silk Road once flourished on the site of the lake. Household items, various tools, remains of clay household utensils, bronze, copper, silver, gold, iron products, jewelry, coins, minted dishes, stone objects, tombstones, fragments of vases, bowls, millstones and much more were lifted from the bottom of the lake. Some of these artifacts are kept in the local history Museum of Cholpon-Ata and can be seen by anyone.

To date, there are many versions about flooded cities and the remains of an ancient civilization. Scientists testify that under the waters of the lake there are ancient artifacts of more than at least a dozen medieval towns and settlements. Famous generals, in particular the famous Tamerlan and the great conqueror of states and peoples Genghis Khan, according to ancient legends, hid untold treasures at the bottom of the lake. That's how the legends say, but no matter how much people searched for these treasures, no one found them. Also, old-timers say that rich bai and manaps (tribe rulers), and there were many of them in the ancient land of our ancestors, hid their accumulated wealth under the water of the lake or in coastal rocks and mountains. So far, no one has found the treasures either, or at least no one has claimed to be there. Myths, legends…


But even today, in our modern times, there are hundreds and thousands of people who want to thoroughly explore the rocks, mountains, valleys in order to find the graves of great generals and khans, even in many encouraging articles it is written that according to the current legislation of the republic, half of the found treasure belongs to the finder. So the passions around the treasures do not subside. To this day, they are still searching for treasures and burials, excavating ancient burial grounds, mounds, and hills. Issyk-Kul still does not reveal its secrets, although it opens the veil in places... There are also individuals, such as Kuban Imanaliev, a school history teacher from the village of Sary-Bulun, Tyupsky district, who alone conducts excavations without the help of the state and sponsors, who collected a weighty collection of artifacts from the existence of ancient cities, in particular about the city of Chigu. Found fragments of ceramics, fragments of household items can tell the story of the sunken city of Chigu.

Issyk-Kul has an ancient, rich and complex history. Scythians, Huns, Usuni and hundreds of different tribes roamed around the lake; soldiers of Alexander the Great, Persians- subordinates of King Cyrus, who lost to the Saka queen Tomiris, soldiers of Tibet, the Chinese army, numerous troops of Tamerlan and Genghis Khan and many more famous and unknown generals - came here. They stopped for a rest, watered their horses, set up parking camps, built, destroyed and hid their graves. Long caravans of camels loaded with silk, handicrafts, tailors, potters from different parts of the world stopped by the lake, travelers, dervishes and wandering artists came to the lake; nomads of all tribes and peoples found their last rest by the lake. Issyk-Kul delighted, inspired, calmed, comforted and healed.

Once upon a time, the famous Russian traveler P. Semenov-Tien Shan studied an ancient Catalan map of Nestorian monks (the original is kept in Spain), where it was indicated that the relics of the holy apostle and evangelist Matthew were transported to Syria after his martyrdom in Ethiopia, and from there were transferred through Christians to Central Asia, saving the relics of the holy apostle from being insulted. So they reached the Nestorian monks and were buried in a sarcophagus at the place "Sikul" (as indicated on the map), where the monastery of the Armenian Nestorian monks was located nearby.

And according to his assumption, this is a place in the area of Kurmenty Bay, where locals often found potsherds and even fragments of ancient objects. And not far from the shore, the remains of buildings are still preserved under water. Stones with images of crosses were also found there, and Christian religious objects were found underwater at great depths, but the treasures that many are talking about have not yet been found. There is also a version that a sarcophagus with holy relics is kept under water.

During the expeditions and excavations, they found the site of a ruined monastery, catacombs and small cells of monks, which means that this version has a real basis, although in modern times enthusiasts have tested this hypothesis more than once and more than twice and their research led to the Italian city of Salerno, to the church of San Matteo, where part of the relics of St. Matthew the Apostle are kept... To this day, many people continue to believe that the relics of St. Matthew the Apostle are kept at the bottom of the lake, which means that Issyk-Kul is a place of pilgrimage not only for descendants of ancient tribes of different faiths - Zoroastrianism, Tengrianism, shamanism, but also for representatives of Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism (a huge number of objects depicting the Buddha were found on the lake), and there are even traces of Hinduism. Therefore, Issyk-Kul can rightfully be considered a crossroads of peoples and religions, a place of unification of tribes and nations, a spiritual and sacred place of power and a Lake of Inspiration and Life, and this is true.