Beglik Tash

Beglik Tash
Беглик Таш
	A view of Beglik Tash
	Shown within Bulgaria
Location	Primorsko, Burgas Province, Bulgaria
Coordinates	42°18′42″N 27°46′1″E / 42.31167°N 27.76694°E
Type	Monument
Area	6 hectares (15 acres)
Site notes
Public access	free

Beglik Tash (Bulgarian: Беглик Таш, Turkish: Beylik Taşı) is a prehistoric rock sanctuary situated on the southern Black Sea coast of Bulgaria, a few kilometers north of the city of Primorsko. It was re-used by the Thracian tribes in the Iron Age.

At the end of the 19th century, the Czech-Bulgarian historian and archaeologist Karel Škorpil produced the first scientific account of the sanctuary, which was then known as Apostol Tash.^[1] In 2002, Bulgarian archaeologists started excavations under the supervision of Tsonia Drazheva.

Etymology[edit]

The meaning of Beglik Tash is probably related to the "beglik," which is the tax on sheep collected by Ottoman authorities until 1913, and a Turkish word to describe an area made of large stones, "taşlar"^[2] – a natural rock-formation consisting of megaliths of hardened magma that erupted from a Mesozoic era volcano.^{[citation needed]}

Description[edit]

Most of the megaliths have traces of carvings for the purposes of Thracian rituals. There are also the remains of a labyrinth that visitors can pass through. A Thracian sun-clock is formed from huge stones. There is also a 150-ton rock that rests on the ground in only two places, and a "womb-cave".^{[citation needed]}

Archaeologists have found ceramic artefacts from the Early Iron Age (10th–6th century BC), classical antiquity, and the Middle Ages, as well as a man-made stone altar at the end of the natural cave which proves that it was used as a place of worship. Every day at noon, a ray of sunlight enters the narrow entrance of the cave, and projects itself on the back of cave. According to the Bulgarian archaeologist Alexander Fol some of the Thracian womb-caves had the property of letting the sunlight in only at certain times of the day, a natural phenomenon seen by the Thracians as acts of symbolic fertilization of the Earth womb or the Mother Goddess by the sun phallus of the Sun God.^{[citation needed]}

The site is an open-air museum maintained by the Burgas Historical Society. It is visited annually by 40,000 tourists.^[3] Beglik Tash is located in the vicinity of two other Thracian sites: the city of Ranuli and the fortress of Pharmakida in the Strandzha Mountains.