CENTRAL ASIA: The Central Asian Altai Republic wants the mummified body of its most famous ancestor returned, writes Daniel McLaughlin in Ongudai
Restless spirits, Anatoly Makovich warns, roam the Sacred Valley of the Altai Mountains.
"There are places here that it is considered a great sin to visit, even for our holy men. The energy and the spirits there are too dangerous," he says, above a flower-strewn valley dotted with kurgans - the stone burial mounds of his forefathers - which are now protected on the reserve that he runs.
"Every kurgan has its own spirit - there is both good and bad in them - and people here have suffered much misfortune since the Ice Princess was disturbed." The Ice Princess is the most famous ancestor of modern-day residents of the Altai Republic, where floral valleys and rushing streams blend Russia into the towering snow peaks of Central Asia.
Her kurgan was opened in 1993 by Siberian archaeologists, who were astonished by their find: the mummified body of a young woman, her 2,500-year-old skin still a-swirl with tattoos, wearing a head-dress and necklace bedecked with golden animals.
Six horses lay buried around her, spiritual companions for the next world, and a symbol of her considerable status - probably that of a storyteller or holy woman.
She was preserved by the peat and bark stuffed into her corpse, and by the remoteness of her burial place, the Ukok Plateau, about 200km south of the Sacred Valley. There, near the Chinese border, she lay encased in ice and undisturbed by the treasure-hunters who defiled hundreds of other kurgans.
Despite dire warnings from the shamans, holy men who still hold spiritual sway in the Altai's villages, the Siberian archaeologists freed the Ice Princess by pouring hot water over her body, and then flew her to their university in the city of Novosibirsk.
Word soon spread that the mummy's curse had taken effect.
The helicopter carrying her to Siberia crashed, though she was unharmed. On arrival she quickly began to decompose, forcing emergency evacuation to Moscow for treatment by the team that preserves Vladimir Lenin's embalmed body.
In the mountains where the Ice Princess lived and died, Altaians mourned her departure, and braced for her revenge.
They say forest fires and damaging winds have increased since she was removed, and that suicide rates and general illness are on the rise. Last autumn, a series of powerful earth tremors peaked in a huge quake that registered nine on the Richter scale and flattened several mountain villages.
The shamans' warnings of inevitable doom are echoed across the Altai republic, where remoteness and lack of natural resources blunted the zeal of Russian and Soviet expansionists, who left its native languages and customs largely intact.
"I was against digging her up," says Ms Olga Kurtugashova, a young Altaian who lives near the Sacred Valley, and studies at the Novosibirsk University where the Ice Princess still resides.
"I saw her there, and it was an unpleasant feeling. She may be a mummy but her soul survives, and they say a shaman communicated with her and she asked to go home. That's what the people want, too." The princess' fate is already a political issue in the Altai, where locals, emboldened by something of a resurgence in native culture, want their leaders to lobby for her return.
"We want her back," says Mr Yuri Antaradonov, a deputy Prime Minister of the Altai Republic.
"We want to make a special place for her in our museum, but people in Novosibirsk and Moscow say she is a treasure of the whole world, and should stay in Novosibirsk because we can't look after her properly here."
In his office in Gorno-Altaisk, the republic's leafy capital, Mr Antaradonov says his team already has the cash to care adequately for the Ice Princess, but another problem remains: the thousands of people who want to rebury her to appease her angry spirit.
"People don't understand what it means to rebury her," says Ms Rima Yermakova, who is leading the drive to bring the Ice Princess to the museum in Gorno-Altaisk, which she runs.
"The Ukok Plateau is so remote and there is no security there, so anyone could come over from Mongolia or China and raid her grave. She should be brought here, and we need investors or sponsors to help rebuild the museum with a special place for her. We have 50,000 other exhibits from Ukok that need proper protection too."
Ms Yermakova is scornful of officials she sees as blocking her path, and of the Russian academics who claim the princess is theirs, to be examined and displayed as they wish.
"She was a beautiful young woman, whom they dug up, poured hot water and chemicals upon, and subjected to other experiments. They did this to a real person!"
Half-way between Ms Yermakova's museum and the wind-scoured plateau where the Ice Princess was found, Mr Makovich says he is determined to protect the Sacred Valley's kurgans from desecration, and prevent the Russians from nabbing any more Altaian treasures.
"Each kurgan is unique, with its own spirit," he says, looking towards snow-dusted peaks patrolled by lynx and wolves, and where some of the world's last snow leopards prowl. "Nobody knows what will be released every time one is opened."