On January 22, an international exhibition titled “Attila” opened at the Hungarian National Museum in Budapest. The exhibition, which will run for six months, presents more than 400 artifacts related to Hun archaeology brought from 64 museums across 13 countries. The displayed objects include jewelry, refined works of artistic craftsmanship, and other material culture associated with the Huns.

Alongside the exhibition, an international scientific conference titled “The European Huns and the latest results of steppe archaeology” began on January 23 in the museum’s conference hall.

At the opening ceremony, Dr. Gábor Zsigmond, President of the Public Collection Center of the Hungarian National Museum, and András Zsolt Bíró, President of the Hungarian–Turan Foundation, welcomed the participants of the international event. Conference attendees also visited the newly opened exhibition.

In addition to Hungarian host archaeologists, scholars from Türkiye, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Mongolia, and Romania delivered presentations at the conference.

Representing Azerbaijan, Associate Professor Farhad Guliyev, PhD in History, Director of the Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology of ANAS, delivered a lecture titled “Hun finds in the archaeological heritage of Azerbaijan.” In his presentation, he emphasized that the Huns played a decisive role in the ethnogenesis of many peoples, particularly Hungarians and Turkic populations.

According to Guliyev, catacomb, stone cist, and earthen burials dated to the 4th–7th centuries discovered in Mingachevir, Qusar (Gukhuroba), Quba (Khucbala), and Shamakhi (Sandıqtəpə) yielded artifacts associated with the Huns and Hun confederations, including the Masquts and Sabirs/Savirs/Suvars.

He highlighted as a key example a gold and bronze diadem in the characteristic artistic style of Hun jewelry of the 4th–5th centuries, decorated with garnets and emeralds. The diadem was discovered in 1967 by the late archaeologist Jabbar Khalilov in a stone cist burial in the village of Khınıslı (Shamakhi district). Under an agreement with the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Azerbaijan, the National Museum of History of Azerbaijan has loaned this artifact to the Hungarian National Museum for temporary display during the six-month exhibition.

Guliyev also noted ongoing paleoanthropological research on Hun remains conducted by Hungarian scholars and discussed recent results achieved by Azerbaijani anthropologists in the same field.

One of the major outcomes of the conference was the agreement to initiate a new collaborative research framework on Hun archaeological heritage involving the archaeology institutes of Hungary, Türkiye, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan.