An Illinois attorney convinced investors to put $1.2 million into finding Genghis Khan’s tomb in 2000; expedition found 60 unopened graves and pottery that may predate the ruler, before a Mongolian PM halted the search for sacrilege

With a white beard and a magnetic persona, Maury Kravitz was like any other Chicago-based lawyer who also traded gold in his lifetime. However, he has one thing unique, his obsession with history, and he was determined that it could unravel one of the great secrets of the ages: Genghis Khan’s tomb.

Without professional training in archaeology, he studied and searched the grave of the Universal Ruler, before some unfortunate circumstances halted his work, and the Mongolian government had to intervene. In the end, however, other researchers pointed out that Kravitz, like many others who tried to find the great Mongol ruler’s tomb, was actually looking at the wrong place all along. This is the story of Maury Kravitz, the restless Chicago attorney made no stone unturned in his litime to find the feared Mongol ruler.

1994: A lawyer becomes obsessed with Genghis Khan

By 1994, Kravitz was 62 (born 1932) and had already spent 34 years studying the Mongol leader. Through reading alone, he had mastered knowledge of Khan and believed he had found a crucial clue to the tomb’s location. According to Time magazine’s 1994 profile, Kravitz claimed to have uncovered a reference to the burial site about eight years earlier, but didn't share from where he had found it.

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“Kravitz has been passionate about Genghis and Mongolia ever since he read Harold Lamb’s classic biography of Genghis 40 years ago,” John Man wrote in his 2004 book Genghis Khan: Life, Death, and Resurrection. He now “has one of the world’s greatest libraries on the subject,” Man added.

Genghis Khan died in 1227 during a military campaign, and his burial place was kept secret. According to the account of Marco Polo, who also served Genghis Khan’s grandson, Kublai Khan, the funeral procession’s soldiers killed people they encountered along the way, and the servants accompanying the ruler were allegedly buried with him.

For most accounts, the tomb was believed to be on Burkhan Khaldun, a sacred mountain located around 200 miles north of Mongolia’s capital, Ulan Bator. Khan is believed to have been born near the mountain, but the exact location in both cases is not known.

Archaeologists were skeptical of Kravitz’s claims. Nevertheless, he persuaded the Mongolian government to grant him exclusive search rights for five years, as per the magazine. “He plans to start as soon as he can raise the $5.5 million the expedition will cost,” Time magazine wrote.

As per online publication Wolverton-Mountain, he first traveled to the landlocked country in 1995 and “had signed a five-year agreement with the Mongolian Academy of Sciences” to “allow him to explore various sites and places relating to the life of Chingis Khan.”

2000: Investors put $1.2 million into the hunt

“Kravitz by 2000 had convinced a small group of investors to put $1.2 million into funding expeditions over four summers,” The Chicago Tribune wrote in Kravitz’s 2012 obituary.

After an initial fundraising attempt failed, John Woods, a history professor at the University of Chicago, joined the excavation effort.

“Although the scheme seemed strange, he was so magnetic that I couldn’t turn away,” Woods told the outlet.

2001–2002: A dangerous dig and a promising discovery

According to The Scotsman’s article published in August 2002, the expedition had obtained permission to dig at Oglogchiin Kherem(aka Almsgiver’s Wall), about 200 miles north of Mongolia’s capital, Ulaanbaatar. But the mission abruptly ended “after a string of calamities.”

A two-mile-long wall surrounding the suspected site was infested with venomous pit vipers, and expedition workers were bitten. “Cars rolled off hillsides for no apparent reason,” the outlet says.

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The final nail in the coffin for the excavation came after former Mongolian Prime Minister Dashiin Byambasuren accused the team of sacrilege at the sacred site. “I regret that our ancestors’ golden tomb has been disturbed and the purity of our burial places tainted for a few dollars,” he said as quoted by the Scottish daily. “This place should remain pure for the souls after death.”

60 unopened grave and pottery that may predates Khan

In August 2001, the expedition announced that it might have discovered Genghis Khan’s burial site. However, the team was fully convinced of their findings of Genghis Khan’s burial place.

“The location of this site is intriguing,” John Woods, the expedition’s US academic director and a University of Chicago history professor, told University of Chicago Magazine in October 2001.

The site, near Batshireet, had around 60 unopened graves within a walled burial ground. Researchers said what they found may be older than Genghis Khan’s period, “one bit of ambiguous evidence-pottery shards found on the site's surface-may actually pre-date the era of Khan.”

2012: Kravitz, dies after ‘channeling Genghis Khan’

Kravitz died on July 31, 2012, at the age of 80, from complications of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), after trying to find the final resting place of Genghis Khan till his final days.

He collected more than 400 books on Khan and the Mongol Empire, named his sailboat Temujin after the ruler’s birth name, and helped bring the search to a wider audience through a documentary made by filmmaker Bill Kurtis.

American journalist and filmmaker Bill Kurtis made a documentary inspired by Maury Kravitz, who raised over $1.2 million and was relentless in co-leading the University of Chicago-backed expeditions.

“It was more than an interest - it was an obsession. I believe he was channeling Genghis Khan,” Kurtis told the Chicago Tribune.

“Maury was the story,” he adds. “Without him, it’s just another expedition.”

2015–2016: ‘They’re all wrong,’ researchers question the sacred mountain

Since no grave of Genghis Khan was found, Kravitz’s death didn't end the hunt. Later, researchers believed earlier expeditions were looking at the wrong place all alone.

A South China Morning Post report in 2015 described Kravitz as one of the “one of the most dedicated Genghis hunters,” noting that he had spent 40 years searching around the mountains of Burkhan Khaldun.

By 2016, another researcher, Alan Nichols, quoted by the newspaper, argued that the teams concentrating on the mountain were wrong.

“That’s where all the modern guys are,” says Nichols, pointing to the sacred mountain of Burkhan Khaldun. “[National Geographic adventurer] Albert Lin is up there, Kravitz was there, the Japanese and a whole bunch of smaller searches. They’re all wrong,” he told the publication.

He claimed to have nailed down a different location for Genghis Khan’s grave, which he called “Mountain X,” without revealing its whereabouts. “For now, all I can say is that it’s somewhere within the historical Mongol empire, though the borders of China and Mongolia in those days were non-existent, since he had conquered northern China,” he added.