John
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The empire of Achaemenid Persia was inherited by its Greek conquerors, who settled and founded new cities eastwards to the Indus. The eastern satrapies of Persia are now known as Greco-India.
Because this culture seems to me important, yet largely ignored in the history of Antiquity, I will be exploring in the following weeks what we can learn of its foundation and development. This, therefore, is by way of a general introduction.
Traces of intense cultural activity once marked the routes that centuries ago joined east and west, north and south across Afghanistan. Ruins of ancient cities, such as Kapisa, in the heart of Afghanistan, and Aï Khanoum and Yemshi on the northern Afghan plains told a story of complex exchanges with other lands.
At Aï Khanoum, archeologists discovered an orientalized Greek city; at Kapisa they unearthed a treasure trove of Indian ivories, Chinese lacquers and Roman art, and at Yemshi they found motives reflecting the disparate artistic styles of India, Greece, Iran, China and the nomads of Central Asia.
The legacy of Alexander the Great
The Achaemenid Persians were the first to include Afghanistan in their empire in the 6th century BC, but a few coins found at the foot of Tepe Maranjan in the centre of Kabul were the only surviving evidence of their presence. These have now been stolen.
Alexander the Great, having crushed Achaemenid power, was the next to invade Afghanistan in 328 BC. A Macedonian who became steeped in Greek culture after his conquest of Greece, and then an oriental monarch captivated by the idealism of the East, Alexander was himself the embodiment of cultural intermingling.
Unable to quite conquer Central Asia, because of fierce resistance, Alexander colonized it. He founded several new cities there and his men intermarried, introducing Hellenism but at the same time becoming thoroughly Asianized and integrated into the local population. This cross-fertilization of cultures resulted in a multinational kingdom that bridged the disparate cultures of India, Iran, Greece and China. It’s name was Bactria and one of its cities was at Aï Khanoum, at the confluence of the Kokcha and Amu Darya (ancient Oxus) rivers in northern Afghanistan.
Aï Khanoum was the easternmost Greek city ever discovered in Asia, and before their work there was interrupted by the Soviet invasion in 1979, French archeologists uncovered a triangular metropolis with sides 1.6 km long. Inside it were many typical Greek monuments, including a gymnasium, a 6,000-seat theatre, a stadium, public baths and temples. Its Hellenistic architecture incorporated the three classical styles: Ionic, Doric and Corinthian. Some of its shrines, however, were more Persian than Greek.
– Culture: A historical junction, UNESCO
You may have noticed how my earlier posts have Alexander the Great as a focus, as we explore the little archaeology that is certain for him. Tradition, in the form of records from later centuries – that is, not contemporary to his life – are largely unsupported by the archaeology and I suggest that this is because Alexander became a venerated ‘divine man’ and the basis for mythology, rather than history. We will therefore examine the archaeology of the founding of Greco-India and see what, if any, archaeology exists there for Alexander and his conquering army.
Wine-drinking and music (Detail from Chakhil-i-Ghoundi stupa, Hadda, 1st-2nd century CE).
Tradition also holds that before, during and after the Macedonian conquest, this same eastern region was a kingdom known as Gandhara.
Pakistan is the land which attracted Alexander the great from Macedonia in 326 B.C., with whom the influence of Greek culture came to this part of the world. During the 2nd century B.C., it was here that Buddhism was adopted as the state religion which flourished and prevailed here for over 1000 years, starting from 2nd century B.C., until 10th century A.D. During this time Taxila, Swat and Charsaddah (old Pushkalavati) became three important centres for culture, trade and learning. Hundreds of monasteries and stupas were built together with Greek and Kushan towns such as Sirkap and Sirsukh both in Taxila. It was from these centres that a unique art of sculpture originated which is known as Gandhara Art all over the world.
– Gandhara Civilization, Governnment of Pakistan
We will try to see how Buddhism developed within Greco-India and impacted upon the wider world of Classical Antiquity in and around the Mediterranean. Is Buddha a historical character and if so, can we identify him from among the known figures of history? Did the development of Buddha in human form derive in any way from the image of Alexander?
The peoples of Greco-India were not isolated. As well as contact with the subcontinent of India, their Chinese and Himalayan neighbours, there were (and are) long-established trade routes by land (known now as the Silk Road) and sea (the incense, spice and gem trade). As importantly, Persia after Alexander and for some centuries thereafter, was dominated by the Hellenistic society of the Seleucids, with their great empire.
This empire connected Greco-India with Judea, Arabia and Egypt, as well as Greece and Rome, ruling from 312 – 63 BCE. This brings us to the age of Julius Caesar, Mark Anthony (83 – 30 BCE) and Cleopatra VII (69 – 30 BCE). We will see how Greco-India relates to the economics, politics, culture and faiths of Rome.
We will travel along the trade routes between East and West, visiting the Buddhist monasteries used as trading posts, see how early synagogues are related to trade and how the archaeology of good governance evolves through mythology into the faiths that are mainstream today.
The history starts most probably with the successor generals of Alexander and in the West, we will have a tight focus on the western terminus for Eastern trade goods – Alexandria – home to Jew and Greek communities, the Royal Library and the Alexandrian school.
Suggested reading:
The Caves at Aurangabad: Buddhist Art in Transformation by Pia Brancaccio
This is a study that focuses on the art and architecture of a group of Buddhist rock-cut monuments excavated on the western edge of the Deccan Plateau in India. It analyses the various cultural, historical and religious phenomena that shaped the caves at Aurangabad through the first seven centuries of the Common Era and it comments on the Buddhist tradition of the western Deccan as a whole. The result is a comprehensive work that does not address exclusively iconography and chronology, but looks beyond Aurangabad to the larger artistic and religious traditions of the Indian Subcontinent.
Dionysus and drama in the Buddhist art of Gandhara, by Pia Brancaccioa1 and Xinru Liu
This essay examines the relationships existing between Dionysian traditions of wine drinking and drama that reached the easternmost part of the Hellenistic world, and the Buddhist culture and art that flourished in Gandhara (Eastern Afghanistan and Northern Pakistan) under the Kushan kings between the first and third centuries CE. By piecing together archaeological, artistic and literary evidence, it appears that along with viniculture and viticulture, Dionysian rituals, Greek theatre and vernacular drama also became rooted in these eastern lands. Continuous interactions with the Graeco-Roman world strengthened these important cultural elements. At the beginning of the Common Era Dionysian traditions and drama came to be employed by the Buddhists of Gandhara to propagate their own ideas. The creation of a body of artworks representing the life of the Buddha in narrative form along with the literary work of Ashvaghosha, may be an expression of the same dramatic format that developed locally along with a strong Dionysian ritual presence.
Gandharan Buddhism: Archaeology, Art, Texts, Pia Brancaccio and Kurt Behrendt, editors
PDF Related posts:
- Cleopatra’s legacy: the Sacred Lotus of India
- Greco-Indian contact with Rome
- The language of Buddhist archaeology
- Dynastic power in the Greco-Roman world
- The Zen of Buddhist archaeology: earliest texts
- Hadrian’s parody
- Archaeology and identity of the first Buddhists
- Archaeology of good governance
- The god of merchandise
- Founding of Alexandria
- Alexandria on the Oxus
- Archaeology of a magical, distant land
- Persian, Greek and Roman syncretism in the Kharga Oasis
- Helios and Selene in Alexandria on the Oxus
- Archaeology of faith and trade
Silver tetradrachm of King Eucratides 171-145 BCE. The Greek inscription reads: ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ ΜΕΓΑΛΟΥ ΕΥΚΡΑΤΙΔΟΥ – “(of) King Great Eucratides”.
“Eucratides led many wars with great courage, and, while weakened by them, was put under siege by Demetrius, king of the Indians. He made numerous sorties, and managed to vanquish 60,000 enemies with 300 soldiers, and thus liberated after four months, he put India under his rule” (Justin, XLI,6)
The Greeks sure got around.
I have often wondered if, or how all these ‘divine men’ are related. The Greek philosphers holed up in Alexandria sure were inventive.
Gold 20-stater of Eucratides, the largest gold coin ever minted in Antiquity. The coin weighs 169.2 grams, and has a diameter of 58 millimeters. It was originally found in Bukhara, and later acquired by Napoleon III. Cabinet des Médailles, Paris.
Numismatic evidence suggests that Eucratides I was a contemporary of the Indo-Greek kings Apollodotus I, Antimachus II and Menander I.
According to Apollodorus of Artemita, the historian of the Parthians, he ruled over 1000 towns (Strabo xv. 686; transferred to Diodotus of Bactria in Justin 41, 4.6); and the extent of his kingdom over Bactria, Sogdiana (Bokhara), Drangiana (Sijistan), Kabul and the western Punjab is confirmed by numerous coins. On these coins, which bear Greek and Indian legends (in Kharoshti writing, cf. BACTRIA), he is called “the great King Eucratides.” On one his portrait and name are associated on the reverse with those of Heliocles and Laodice.
In Bactria, Eucratides founded a Greek city, Eucratideia (Strabo xi. 516, Ptolem. vi. 11.8). On his return from India Eucratides was (about 150 BCE) murdered by his son, whom he had made co-regent (Justin 41, 6).
In the west the Parthian king Mithradates I began to enlarge his kingdom and attacked Eucratides; the city of Herat fell in 167 BCE and the Parthians succeeded in conquering two provinces between Bactria and Parthia, called by Strabo the country of Aspiones and Turiua.
The history of Greco-India does not need Alexander to explain the archaeology directly. His successors are fully sufficient in that regard.
This archaeological find may provide an explanation for how the Greek cities and structures – such as temples and theatres – appeared in Greco-India.
Ancient ruin reminiscent of Ikea furniture
April 22, 2010
Archaeologists in Italy unearthed the remains of what they say may be an ancient temple with components inscribed with instructions for assembly.
The archaeologists are likening the possibly 6th-century temple discovery in Torre Satriano, Italy, to Ikea furniture, the inexpensive home furnishings the purchaser assembles at home, the British Daily Telegraph and the Times of London reported Thursday.
The head of archaeology at Basilica University, Professor Massimo Osanna, said that the team working at what was once Magna Graecia had found a sloping roof with red and black decorations, with “masculine” and “feminine” pieces inscribed with instructions on how to slot them together.
The director of the British School at Rome, Professor Christopher Smith, told The Times the discovery was “the clearest example yet found of mason’s marks of the time. It looks as if someone was instructing others how to mass-produce components and put them together in this way.”
Osanna said that a taste for the Grecian style among the indigenous population must have caused an industrious builder to create inexpensive do-it-yourself components similar to classical Greek architecture.
The roof was designed to filter rainwater down the decorative panels, known as cymatiums, with projections to protect the lower wall.
“So far around a hundred inscribed fragments have been recovered, with masculine ordinal numbers on the cymatiums and feminine ones on the friezes,” Osanna said, adding that the result was “a kind of instruction booklet.”
Baragiano. Bronze helmet. VI century BCE
These kits feature bronze helmets and shields, bronze Greek and Etruscan vases, ornaments of precious metal addition to traditional ceramics geometric decoration showing the funerary ideology of these elites.
Baragiano. Attic black-figure cup with a scene of fighting between Greeks and Amazons. VI century BCE
The ornaments discovered represent a true manifesto of the lifestyle and values which underpin the privilege of these aristocratic warriors and horse breeders and the ideal world to which reference was made from images of heroic battles of the Homeric tradition, which became a model for their expression of power.
Much like the instruction booklets of the Swedish home furnishings company, IKEA, various sections of the elaborate structure were inscribed with coded symbols showing how the pieces slotted together.
Shown here is one of the coded slabs:
The Swat Valley (and its emeralds) are back in the news.
Pakistan Taliban militants ‘reappear’ in Swat valley
By Syed Shoaib Hasan
BBC News, Swat valley
Thursday, 29 April 2010
Taliban militants have resumed targeted killings of local leaders in Pakistan’s troubled Swat valley, officials have told the BBC.
Pakistan’s army declared the Swat valley free of militants after carrying out an anti-Taliban operation in 2009.
A Pakistani army spokesman said three people had died in attacks over the last 10 days. Local journalists say that seven have died in 15 days.
The militants were effectively in control of the region from 2007.
In 2009, they started to expand their power across North West Frontier Province, prompting the army to launch its offensive.
When the BBC visited the site of one encounter, several local people said at least one militant had escaped after a prolonged gun battle.
They say that fears remain about the level of security provided by the army.
“Things have not improved and business is not good,” said a local restaurant owner known as Mr Khalid.
“We cannot even imagine that tourists will come here.
“How can things be better if there are still suicide bombings and people are being killed every few days?”
But despite these concerns, conditions have improved considerably in Swat since the military operation ended in July 2009.
Hotels and businesses are slowly starting to re-open.
But fear and uncertainty – heightened by the recent killings – still prevail.
Emeralds from Swat valley funding Taliban’s jihad against West
PTI
Sunday, April 5, 2009
London: The high-quality emeralds obtained from mines in Pakistan’s restive Swat valley are being used to finance the war against the West by Taliban, who smuggle the gems to Jaipur and then to the world markets, a media report said on Sunday.
Swat, which holds one of Asia’s two largest known deposits of high-quality emeralds, was virtually taken over by the Taliban after entering into a peace deal with the NWFP provincial government.
Obtained from mines in the picturesque Swat, the precious stones are smuggled to Jaipur and then transported to Bangkok, Switzerland and Israel to be sold in gem markets to fund the Taliban’s jihad against West, The Sunday Telegraph said on Sunday.
They are cut and polished into lustrous gems that adorn the world’s finest jewellery, and sold to customers who have no idea that their money may end up financing the Taliban, the paper said.
The unlicensed trade in the region’s emeralds provides the Taliban with cash to buy weapons for their struggle against Pakistan’s government.
“The Taliban use drug money for jihad in Afghanistan. The same thing is now happening in Swat. Money from emeralds is sponsoring their so-called jihad,” the report quoted Brig Mahmood Shah, former chief of security for Pakistan’s tribal areas as saying.
Militants have taken control of the lucrative emerald mines since they took control of the poor region in the north of the country under a controversial peace deal last month.
The Taliban are using the money from the sale of the emeralds to help finance attacks on NATO forces in neighbouring Afghanistan and to support their drive to extend ‘sharia law’ into more regions of Pakistan.
“We receive one third of the profit from the gems and the rest goes to the workers,” Muslim Khan, the Taliban spokesman in Swat told the newspaper.
“We know that all the minerals have been created by Allah, the mighty and the merciful, for the benefit of his creatures. We should take the opportunity,” he said.
Evidence of the militants’ growing stranglehold emerged last week in a gruesome video showing a 17-year-old girl being publicly whipped.
The report said that one newly reopened mine near the Swat capital, Mingora, had been sealed since 1998 because of a legal dispute between the government and a contractor.
Now workers use picks and shovels to dig for emeralds, excavating dozens of new pits and creating a cratered landscape.
“We have given instructions to workers to lessen the amount of destruction,” said Wahidullah Khan, a Taliban soldier at the mine.
Mines in Pakistan and Afghanistan contain about 10 per cent of the world’s total emerald deposits, and during the 1980s the mines yielded a quarter of a million carats of the stones – worth 15 million pounds in rough, uncut form.
Taliban militants recently took control of mines in the Gojaro Killay Amnavi and Fiza Ghat areas in Swat.
“They have engaged 1,000 people and the number is increasing,” a Taliban commander told the newspaper. “It is a great opportunity for the people, as there is so much poverty and unemployment here.”
“I earn at least Rs 1000 per day. When I find a stone during digging, I take it to the Taliban’s office here. It’s weighed there and my share of the price is given to me,” the newspaper quoted a 24-year-old worker as saying. He said the mine had proved a “blessing” to poor people in the area.
“If the Taliban continue selling the emeralds they will become very strong and it will be impossible for the government to dislodge them,” a government mining official in the area said.
Western Wei period (A.D. 535-557)
Ht. about 140 cm
Maijishan cave 87, southern Gansu
Maijishan Research Insititue
Emeralds are an important element in the story of Greco-India, in both the history of Gandhara and as trade goods – with a mythology attached – exported to the West.
An exhibition of artifacts almost entirely unknown in the West
Kasyapa, elder disciple of the Buddha, was one of the most popular figures in Chinese Buddhist art of this time, and was often paired with Ananda, Buddha’s youngest disciple. He is here portrayed as a foreigner. (Courtesy Asia Society, NY)
The confluence of short and long caravan trails running from Afghanistan and Uzbekistan in the west and ending in Changan (present day Xian, China) in the east was named the Seidenstrasse by the celebrated nineteenth-century geographer Baron Frederick von Richtofen–and the Silk Road it has remained. For centuries, caravans laden with silk, spices, gold, silver, and ivory wound for more than 4,000 miles through valleys and mountain passes, navigating some of the world’s most hostile environments while skirting the perimeters of the treacherous Taklamakan Desert.
During the heyday of the Silk Road, the fourth through the ninth century A.D., luxury goods were not the only commodities carried along its trails. Ideas from the world’s great religions–Christianity, Buddhism, Islam–spread from west to east along the route. The decline of the Mongols during the fifteenth century meant that travelers were no longer protected from marauding bandits and the fabled road fell into disuse–its trails encroached upon by deserts and replaced by sea-lanes, its oases abandoned.
The once great oasis emporia with romantic names like Niya and Loulan have disappeared into the desert waste, but the objects once traded, carried or manufactured along the route are now the subject of Monks and Merchants: Silk Road Treasures from Northwest China, Gansu and Ningxia 4th-7th Century, an exhibition that runs from October to January at the Asia Society in New York. (It will then travel to the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Florida.) The curators, Annette Juliano, a historian of early Chinese art from Rutgers University-Newark, and Judith Lerner, an independent scholar who specializes in the pre-Islamic art of Iran and Central Asia, have put together an unusual collection of works almost entirely unknown in the West. They focus on material from the crucially important Gansu corridor, which separates the Mongolian Plateau and Gobi Desert to the north from the Qilian Mountains of the Tibetan Plateau to the south. During the period of China’s disunity, the Gansu corridor acted as the gateway between East and West, serving as the proverbial melting pot where cultures and religions intermingled. Artifacts found along the corridor display the influence of not only China but countries such as India and Afghanistan.
Visitors to this important exhibition will be able to examine a little known period and explore the cross-fertilization of ideas from East and West. As the catalogue suggests, “the story in this exhibition–of relationships among cultures and societies through trade and religion rather than through military conquests–has a powerful message for the new millennium.” For more information, see http://www.asiasociety.org/arts/monks.html
Shareen Blair Brysac is a contributing editor of ARCHAEOLOGY. Her article on Sir Aurel Stein, “Last of the ‘Foreign Devils’” appeared in the November/December 1997 issue.
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From Kashmir to Pamir, Summer 2006: Gemmological expedition report to Ruby, Emerald and Spinel mining areas in Central Asia.
Part 4: China (Xin Jiang): Emeralds from the silk road.
By Vincent Pardieu and Guillaume Soubiraa
Introduction:
This web page presents the gemological expedition lead in August 2006 by Vincent Pardieu (then director of the AIGS Gemological Laboratory) to new emerald mines in Xin Jiang western province of China. This fieldtrip was part of the larger expedition supported by AIGS and Gubelin gemological laboratories with the help of ICA to the Central Asia with purpose to visit ruby, spinel and emerald deposits. Vincent Pardieu was seconded by Guillaume Soubiraa, a Madagascar based French gemologist, who studied gemology at AIGS Bangkok in 2006.
The Davdar emerald mining was first reported in the litterature by Dudley Blauwet in Gems and Gemology (Spring 2005, p 56-57) and three stones were studied by Elizabteh P.Quinn at GIA but Dudley Blauwet was not able to visit the deposit.
We Arrived in Xin Jiang by plane from Islamabad (Pakistan), visited Kashgar and took the Karakoram highway south to Tashkurgan in order to visit the new emerald deposit in Davdar where emeralds were first found in 2000. Until 2005 when the origin of the new material was discloded, Davdar production, mostly illegal, was reported to us to have been traded through Peshawar and Dubai. We were probably the first gemologists to reach these new mines on August 01, 2006. After one full day visiting the mining area, we left China taking the Karakoram highway south to Pakistan through the famous Kunjerab pass (4733 meters altitude) which is the world higherst border crossing. After a short stop in Sost we reached Gilgit late at night.
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Science 28 January 2000:
Vol. 287. no. 5453, pp. 631 – 633
DOI: 10.1126/science.287.5453.631
Oxygen Isotopes and Emerald Trade Routes Since Antiquity
Gaston Giuliani, 12* Marc Chaussidon, 2 Henri-Jean Schubnel, 3 Daniel H. Piat, 4 Claire Rollion-Bard, 2 Christian France-Lanord, 2 Didier Giard, 4 Daniel de Narvaez, 5 Benjamin Rondeau 3
Oxygen isotopic compositions of historical emerald artifacts from the Gallo-Roman period to the 18th century indicate that during historical times, artisans worked emeralds originating from deposits supposedly discovered in the 20th century. In antiquity, Pakistani and Egyptian emeralds were traded by way of the Silk Route. Together with Austrian stones, they were the only source of gem-quality emeralds. Immediately after the discovery of the Colombian mines by Spaniards in the 16th century, a new trade route was established, first via Spain to Europe and India and then directly via the Philippines to India. Since then, Colombian emeralds have dominated the emerald trade, and most of the high-quality emeralds cut in the 18th century in India originated from Colombia.
1 Institut de Recherche pour le Développement,
2 Centre de Recherches Pétrographiques et Géochimiques (CRPG)-CNRS, Boite Postale 20, 54501 Vandoeuvre-lès-Nancy, France.
3 Laboratoire de Minéralogie, Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, 61 rue Buffon, 75005 Paris, France.
4 Association Française de Gemmologie, 7 rue Cadet, 75009 Paris, France.
5 Compania Mineira Rio Dulce, Carrera 11, Numero 89-38, Oficio 207, Bogotá, Colombia.
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: giuliani@crpg.cnrs-nancy.fr