Академический Документы
Профессиональный Документы
Культура Документы
Introduction
The site of Ai Khanoum, in eastern Bactria, is best known for its impressive Hellenistic-
period architecture, and has attained a certain degree of academic celebrity as a remote
outpost of Hellenism in Central Asia. The remains of the city excavated by the Dlgation
archologique franaise en Afghanistan from 1964-1978 dated essentially from the very late
fourth century BC the period of Alexanders campaigns in Central Asia, or the time of his
immediate successors to around the 140s BC, when the city was violently destroyed, by
war, whether civil war or outside invasion, and abandoned by its inhabitants. Although no
substantial Achaemenid-period remains have been recovered from the site, I argue that this is
likely simply to be an accident of preservation. The purpose of this paper is to draw attention
to evidence which has long been in the public domain in order to argue the case for such an
Achaemenid occupation of the site. As well as archaeological evidence from the city of Ai
Khanoum itself, material from a regional archaeological field survey conducted in the 1970s
demonstrates the intensity with which the resources of eastern Bactria agricultural, and
mineral (e.g. lapis lazuli) were exploited from the Bronze Age through the periods of
Persian and Greek domination, and beyond. Under the Achaemenids, as in earlier and later
periods, substantial irrigation works were maintained. It is therefore highly unlikely that the
site of the later Hellenistic city of Ai Khanoum, with its strategic location, was not utilised at
this period.
In addition to the evidence from the regional survey, some material from Ai Khanoum itself
suggests that there was an earlier Achaemenid period settlement, which was razed for the
2
construction of the Hellenistic city. A few architectural elements, in their style and
workmanship, appear to have been reused from this earlier settlement. In addition, the
architectural plan of many of the citys institutions and in particular its temples and palace
find their nearest parallels in forms from other regions of the Persian empire, not from the
for the existence of these forms, and their retention into the Hellenistic period suggests also a
certain degree of administrative and cultural continuity across the regime change from the
The City
Ai Khanoum lay on the north-eastern marches of the Achaemenid empire, on the river Oxus,
in Bactria, on the present-day border between Afghanistan and Tajikistan.1 In the late fourth
century BC, Alexander the Great campaigned through the lands of the Achaemenid Persian
empire, and nominally brought regions as distant as Bactria, Sogdiana and India under his
rule.2 Alexanders unified empire, however, did not outlive him, and over the course of the
third century BC, Bactria gained effective independence from the other Hellenistic successor
states, under dynasties of local Greek kings.3 Little is preserved in Greek and Roman
historical works about the Hellenistic kingdoms of Bactria and the east in general, and until
the archaeological projects of the mid to late twentieth centuries, the major sources on the
Graeco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek kings and their history were their coins. The capital city
was Bactra, at present-day Balkh, near Mazar-i Sharif, but the archaeology of Hellenistic, or
indeed Achaemenid, Bactra is still poorly known. The best known city in the Graeco-
1
For a complete list of publications on the site, see Mairs 2011, 26-29, updated in Mairs 2013a.
2
Bernard 1982, however, refutes Bosworth 1981s arguments that Alexander campaigned locally in eastern
Bactria in 328 BC, making it unlikely that Ai Khanoum was an Alexander-foundation.
3
See, for example, Holt 1988 and Holt 1999.
3
The ancient name of the city is not known for certain, although several identifications have
been proposed.4 Excavations at the city took place between 1964 and 1978, by the
Dlgation archologique franaise en Afghanistan, but were abandoned because of the war
in Afghanistan.
The city itself is on the model of a new colonial foundation, rather than an ancient and
longstanding political and administrative centre such as Bactra. Its period of occupation
appears to have been relatively short, from the time of the initial Greek settlement of Bactria,
in the aftermath of Alexanders campaigns, through to the 140s BC, the time of the
war with Parthia and nomad invasions from the north, and also internal dynastic strife and
civil war.5
The city was vast, occupying a triangular raised upper city with a still higher citadel at its
south-eastern end and a lower city at the junction of the river Oxus with a tributary, the
Kokcha, which contained most of the citys excavated monumental public buildings, as well
as a residential district of large mansions. The dimensions of the city are large the main
street which runs along the foot of the upper city is over a kilometre in length. It was heavily
fortified. Erosion along the river banks has damaged the southern and western fortification
walls since antiquity, but walls to the north, and on the acropolis and citadel, remain.6
Ai Khanoum occupied a strategic position, at the junction of the two rivers, and was well
placed to supervise and control the resources of eastern Bactria. The plain around Ai
Khanoum had been irrigated and farmed since the Bronze Age. Eastern Bactria had
important mineral resources, such as lapis lazuli, and the river Kokcha led directly from Ai
4
On the ancient name of Ai Khanoum, see the arguments presented in Bernard and Francfort 1978, 3-15, Narain
1986, Leriche 2007, 121-124, and Claude Rapin 2003.
5
Posch 1995; Mairs forthcoming-b.
6
On the fortifications, see Leriche 1986.
4
Khanoum to the mines of the Badakshan mountains. In the city treasury, within the vast
palace complex, there were found written documents to which I shall return below
accounting for the movement of goods and revenue through the treasury. Raw materials and
crafts were also found in the treasury, including a large amount of unworked lapis lazuli. Ai
Khanoum was perfectly situated to control all these resources and routes, and was fortified
and invested in accordingly. As I shall go on to discuss, the Achaemenids had long had an
interest in the area. Given Ai Khanoums strategic position and the natural advantages
which allowed it to be fortified so efficiently it would be surprising if there had not been
not just Achaemenid period occupation of the site, but Achaemenid official interest in it.
Most of the evidence which I shall put forward for an Achaemenid foundation of some sort at
Ai Khanoum has, as I have already noted, long been in the public domain. My purpose is not
to propose anything radically new, but to draw attention to material and arguments which
merit greater attention. There are good reasons for doing so at the present time. Over the
past twenty years or so, building on the work of Pierre Briant, among others, it has become
evidence has made it increasingly clear that what is true for most of the rest of the Hellenistic
world is also true for Bactria. The evidence which has permitted this deduction relates for the
most part to the administration of Achaemenid and Hellenistic Bactria, and it comes from
7
See, for example, the studies in Briant/Joanns 2006.
5
From the treasury at Ai Khanoum, there are the ink texts written in Greek on ceramic vessels
which I have already briefly mentioned.8 These document transactions of goods and coinage
and name the officials involved, who have a combination of Greek and Iranian names.9 The
texts are fairly brief: these are not documents of the length and complexity of those we have
preserved on papyrus from contemporary Egypt. In the 1990s and 2000s, a small number of
Greek texts written on preserved skin, acquired on the antiquities market, have offered a little
more insight into the administration and regulation of legal affairs of Hellenistic Bactria.10
But the most remarkable discoveries of recent years have been the corpus of Aramaic
documents, written for the most part on skin, with a few on wooden sticks, now in the Khalili
Persian satrapy of Bactra (the documents derive probably from the satrapal archive in Bactra,
and contain rough copies of correspondence sent to a regional governor) they also document
a period of transition from Persian to Greek rule. One document, identical in all ways to its
3: in Ariavant.
In Bactra, it was very much business as usual - and this is precisely what one ought to expect
of the transition from the last of the Achaemenids to the first Hellenistic monarchs. It was in
8
Their principal publication is in Rapin 1992. They are reproduced with further commentary in Canali De
Rossi 2004 and Rougemont 2012.
9
Grenet 1983.
10
Rea et al. 1994; Bernard/Rapin 1994; Clarysse/Thompson 2007. As with the economic texts, these are also
reproduced in the compendia of Canali de Rossi and Rougemont.
11
A preliminary study was published as Shaked 2004, followed by the full publication Naveh/Shaked 2012.
6
the newcomers interest to minimise disruption and revolt, and maximise revenue, by
retaining the existing administration and those who ran it.12 The question of how long this
period of transition continued before any administrative reform or major change in personnel
cannot, unfortunately, be addressed in the current state of the evidence. To answer this, and
other questions, material from the capital city of Bactra itself would be invaluable, but such
It is in the context of these recent discoveries and insights that I would like to consider afresh
the evidence for Achaemenid interest in the site of the later Hellenistic city of Ai Khanoum.
Ai Khanoum is a problematic site in the sense that it cannot be considered as a typical city of
Hellenistic Bactria. It is unusual in being a new foundation or city which received substantial
modifications in the Hellenistic period, sufficient to utterly erase any settlement which may
or may not previously have been there. In the aftermath of the troubles of the 140s BC, the
site was destroyed and abandoned, and received only small-scale and temporary
reoccupation. The history of the city of Ai Khanoum therefore essentially only occupies in
the region of 160 years. Although I shall argue for an Achaemenid presence at the site, I
mean this only in the sense of a fortification or much less substantial settlement than the later
Achaemenid Ai Khanoum
Most of the excavators of Ai Khanoum, and those who took part in the regional field survey
of eastern Bactria, appear to have been of the view that there was an Achaemenid period
occupation of the site of Ai Khanoum, much smaller in size than the Hellenistic city, which
was essentially destroyed and replaced by the Hellenistic period building programmes and
12
Argued in Mairs forthcoming-a, Chapter 2. On administrative continuity from the Achaemenid to the
Hellenistic period, see also Rapin 1992, 268-269.
7
renovations, especially in the lower city.13 I have, of course, been reliant on the views of the
Khanoum, and in the final published volumes of the city excavations and the regional field
survey: this does not necessarily mean that there are not other structures which might be
such discussion is that of Pierre Leriche in the fifth volume of the series Fouilles d'A
Khanoum, in whose view the existence of some Achaemenid foundation on the site nest pas
douteuse, even if its nature and scale remain unknown.14 He identifies the remains of an
Achaemenid or very early Greek - occupation in several locations, including the citadel, the
northern ramparts, the wall along the bank of the river Oxus. He cautions, however, that the
degree of continuity in the ceramic record from the end of Achaemenid rule to the beginning
of the Hellenistic period makes it difficult, in places, to definitively assign material and
I shall start at the large scale, looking at the position of the later site of Ai Khanoum within
Achaemenid period eastern Bactria, proceed to examine the evidence of materials from the
site which may belong to Achaemenid precursors or continuing Achaemenid craft traditions,
and conclude by sketching how I think the old evidence from the site of Ai Khanoum can be
integrated into new arguments about the culture and administration of Achaemenid period
The eastern Bactria field survey (1974-1978) revealed irrigation works and even an outpost
of the Indus civilisation, at Shortughai, dating as far back as the late third millennium BC.15
Whatever may have been happening at the site, the plain around Ai Khanoum was certainly
occupied in the Achaemenid period, irrigated and exploited for its agricultural potential, and
13
Lerner 2003-2004 takes existence of earlier settlement on the site as patent.
14
Leriche 1986, 24; 71-72.
15
Gentelle 1989; Lyonnet 1997; Gardin 1998. On the Harappan settlement at Shortughai, see Francfort 1989.
8
for its strategic position in eastern Bactria, on the river Oxus.16 There are even architectural
remains upstream, at a different site, the so-called Ville Ronde, a site with two concentric
fortification walls. This was the most convenient crossing point on the river Oxus in the
neighbourhood: there were the steep hillsides immediately across the river from Ai
Khanoum. There were therefore apparently two separate Achaemenid period fortifications, at
Ai Khanoum and at the Ville Ronde, perhaps occupied at different periods, and further work
at both sites if this is possible would be needed to clarify the relationship between them.
At the city itself, we find two categories of evidence which might support the notion of an
Achaemenid precursor: material which pre-dates the construction of the Hellenistic city; and
elements of the architecture and material culture of Hellenistic Ai Khanoum which suggest
local Achaemenid predecessors, sometimes even with connections to models and institutions
The excavators tentatively identified some stone architectural elements from the lower city,
notably the palace complex, as re-used pieces from Achaemenid period buildings. It should
be noted that good building stone is not readily available in the vicinity of Ai Khanoum,
making it advantageous for builders to reuse old materials, where possible. For the most part,
such identifications have been made on stylistic grounds. Paul Bernard, for example,
suggests that some column bases which are visibly of different workmanship than others
might be compared to Achaemenid types, and are either re-used pieces of this sort, or
very probable that these bases attest the existence of Achaemenid-period monuments which
have not yet been located, which were dismantled by the Greeks.17
Certainly, whether or not Achaemenid buildings materials found their way into Greek
buildings, builders and artisans trained in longstanding local ways continued to work and
16
See Bernard 197, Bernard 1975, 196, on the Ville Ronde and Achaemenid settlement of plain.
17
Bernard 1973, 19-21; 120; Pl. 24.
9
played a part in creating the form of the Hellenistic city of Ai Khanoum.18 There is no major,
catastrophic break in craft production and material culture in eastern Bactria associated with
the Greek takeover in the late fourth century. At Ai Khanoum as in the plain as a whole,
local ceramic traditions continued, alongside the introduction of new forms derived from the
Greek Mediterranean world.19 Along with other cultures and political masters, the Persians
left their stylistic mark, however restricted, on the diverse repertoire of Hellenistic Bactrian
material culture.20
It is in the city walls, however, where the clearest evidence of Achaemenid precursors and
models may be seen, perhaps supporting the notion that the Achaemenid occupation at Ai
Leriches publication on the fortifications, he makes it clear that, in his view, the existence of
an Achaemenid fortification at the citadel is not to be doubted, whether or not one in addition
takes the Achaemenid-type column bases identified by Bernard in the palace as further
It appears that the first Greek occupants of the site took over an existing series of smaller-
scale Achaemenid fortifications, including the northern rampart of the lower city, the
building materials of which they reused in their own later, more substantial fortification
walls.22 The dimensions of the bricks used in each phase were different, large bricks of sides
of over 50 cm being associated with Achaemenid constructions, and at the citadel ceramics
were also found associated with proposed Achaemenid period walls which can be dated, from
18
See Guillaume 1985 on local pre-Hellenistic traditions of craftsmanship, from the materials at Ai Khanoum.
19
Gardin in Bernard 1973, 182-185, and Lyonnet 1998, 142, note the persistence of local Achaemenid period
ceramics at Ai Khanoum into the first phase of the Greek city.
20
See, for example, the comparanda treated in Francfort 1984 (worked ivory and ivory figurines, 12-13, 16;
alabastrons, 21; rhytons, 26; images of walking lions in profile on a wooden frieze, 33; thymiateria 33) and the
discussion in Francfort 2013.
21
Leriche 1986, 24.
22
Leriche 1986, 53; 71-72.
10
the comparative material of the field survey, to the relevant period.23 Both such
Achaemenid bricks and Achaemenid ceramics are, of course, only inexact dating guides,
since there was no major interruption in craft production and techniques associated with the
In analysis of the architecture of Ai Khanoum, much has tended to be made of the fact that
the city includes institutions whose form and function belong very much in a Greek cultural
milieu especially the theatre and gymnasium, the latter of which contains a Greek
inscription24 and those which are, for want of a better word, strikingly non-Greek. I
would argue that one of the most constructive approaches to the citys architecture is to try to
think in terms of the precise mechanisms by which buildings of these designs came to be
constructed at this city in eastern Bactria in the third century BC, rather than in more
abstractly art historical terms. I take my examples from two types of buildings at Ai
Khanoum which are often discussed in relation to Near Eastern comparanda, the palace and
the temples.
The palace which is sometimes known as the administrative quarter dominates the lower
city at Ai Khanoum. It includes several vast courtyards, suites of offices and meeting rooms,
two residential units and a treasury where raw goods and revenue were counted, consolidated
and packaged for shipment. Although the treasury yielded a few Greek economic texts as
well as two dramatical and philosophical texts,25 indicating that it may once have contained a
library, we know little about the precise nature of the administration at Ai Khanoum. Was it
the seat of a regional governor, perhaps, or was it ever the residence of a king? Its layout has
provoked a certain amount of comment, and been compared, generally in rather vague terms,
23 Leriche 1986, 71.
24
Veuve 1987.
25
Rougemont 2012, Nos.131-132; Lerner 2003.
11
to that of Near Eastern and Achaemenid royal and provincial palaces.26 If we actually
compare it to the layout of Achaemenid palaces at sites such as Susa or Persepolis, we find
that such comparisons are indeed true only in general terms. The Ai Khanoum palace shares
certain features, such as large courtyards, an avoidance of linearity, and the incorporation of
various official and residential functions.27 The Ai Khanoum palace also, however, has some
features peculiar to itself, and some which speak of connections with the Greek world. Its
great court is lined with Corinthian columns, the language of administration is Greek, and by
its entrance, we find the cult shrine of a man named Kineas, the citys probable founder, with
palace was designed to do, and it is not, I think, unreasonable to propose that this Greek
period construction the palace in its final form dates to the early second century BC
replicated or was inspired by a local Achaemenid period example, whose administration the
new Greek rulers of Bactria needed and wanted to perpetuate.29 I am not necessarily arguing
that the Hellenistic palace of Ai Khanoum was built directly over and reproduces an
Achaemenid palace on site. I would like to phrase my argument in more general terms: that
the set-up at Ai Khanoum under Greek rule was designed to carry on what an Achaemenid
The other buildings at Ai Khanoum which have been compared to examples from the Near
East are the temples. Unfortunately, both the main city temple, which is known as the
temple with indented niches,30 and another temple just to the north of the city walls had
been completely destroyed and cleared of their contents, so we know nothing of the gods
26
See Kopsacheili 2011 for a useful comparative discussion of Hellenistic palaces and their Achaemenid and
Macedonian antecedents. On the palace institution in the Near East in the first millennium BC in general,
Nielsen 2001.
27
These features will be discussed at greater length in Mairs forthcoming-a, Chapter 3.
28
Robert 1968. The architecture of the sanctuary is principally published in Bernard 1973.
29
A possibility raised by Rapin 1992, 277.
30
Francfort 1984; Martinez-Sve 2010; Mairs 2013b.
12
which were worshipped there, the names by which they were called, and relatively little
about cult activity. Like the palace, the initial reaction of Classical archaeologists to such
structures is that they do not look very Greek. They stand on stepped platforms, have niched
decoration along the outside of their walls, and tripartite shrines preceded by vestibules. The
niches and the steps are forms which we also encounter in the Near East and the Ai
Khanoum temples have been compared extensively to Mesopotamian temples of this sort.31
How did Ai Khanoum come to have temples in supposedly Mesopotamian form? The
obvious answer is that they represent the diffusion of a koine of religious architecture at a
time when Bactria was part of a Near Eastern Empire, that of the Achaemenids.32
There are of course problems with trying to explain the architectural landscape of Ai
Khanoum by recourse to putative Achaemenid Bactrian forebears, and that is that we do not
have the material remains of Achaemenid era temples at other Bactrian sites, and most
importantly the capital city at Bactra. So the Achaemenid hypothesis remains, at present, a
hypothesis. Nor do we have any evidence from the site of Ai Khanoum itself of what, if any,
Achaemenid period structures were present in the lower city. Any such remains, as I have
indicated, were either destroyed completely by the Greeks in the course of their grand
programme of constructions, or dismantled and had some of their stone elements reused.
There is, however, one fragment of material from Ai Khanoum which suggests the presence
of an Achaemenid administration on the site, or its continuity. With a single exception, all of
the small amount of written material recovered from the excavations at Ai Khanoum
inscriptions, economic texts from the treasury, fragments of literary texts is in Greek. The
sole exception is an ostrakon written in Aramaic script, bearing a text which contains a list of
names and quantities of grain.33 Obviously this is slim enough basis to argue anything at all,
Hellenistic one. But the very presence of Aramaic at Ai Khanoum, even in a single text, of
Achaemenid Bactria, and perhaps even its survival into the Hellenistic period, as we now
In conclusion, there are several places where we can identify evidence for the existence of an
Achaemenid period installation on the site of the later Hellenistic city of Ai Khanoum. The
areas where I have suggested that one might profitably go looking for an Achaemenid Ai
traditions (including writing). In places, there survive materials which indicate earlier phases
of occupation and construction on the site. The long history of occupation and exploitation
of eastern Bactria suggests that a site with the natural advantages of the river junction
position and high acropolis of Ai Khanoum would not have been neglected. And there are
also architectural elements of the Hellenistic city which might be viewed as survivors or
heirs of an earlier settlement. As I have already indicated, the balance of opinion among
the excavators appears to have been in favour of a relatively small-scale Achaemenid military
installation on the acropolis, with a settlement of some, unknown nature and magnitude in the
lower city. If this settlement was indeed small, it may well be the case that the buildings in
the Hellenistic city the palace and temples which seem to owe something to local
Achaemenid Bactrian predecessors were not built directly on the site of pre-existing
examples at Ai Khanoum itself, but were inspired by public buildings elsewhere, in other
Khanoum, it is important to stick to the limited evidence, and not stray too far into
supposition. What I have attempted here is an exercise is seeing how we might go about
14
looking at this problem, and what evidence might be brought in in favour of an Achaemenid
predecessor to the Hellenistic city. There is a good case for laying out the evidence at the
present time, in the anticipation of more coming to light about Achaemenid Bactria, and in
particular in anticipation of new information, from the Aramaic documents and other sources,
on the transition from Persian to Greek rule in Bactria and elsewhere in the empire.
References
Bernard 1973
P. Bernard (eds.), Fouilles d'A Khanoum I (Campagnes 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968) (Paris
1973).
Bernard 1975
Bernard 1982
Bernard/Rapin 1994
Bosworth 1981
A. B. Bosworth, A Missing Year in the History of Alexander the Great. Journal of Hellenic
Briant/Joanns 2006
F. Canali De Rossi, Iscrizioni dello Estremo Oriente Greco: Un Repertorio (Bonn 2004).
Clarysse/Thompson 2007
W. Clarysse/D. J. Thompson, Two Greek Texts on Skin from Hellenistic Bactria. Zeitschrift
Downey 1988
(Princeton 1988).
Francfort 1984
H.-P. Francfort, Fouilles d'A Khanoum III. Le sanctuaire du temple niches indentes. 2.
Francfort 1989
H.-P. Francfort, Fouilles de Shortugha : recherches sur l'Asie centrale protohistorique (Paris
1989).
Francfort 2013
H.-P. Francfort, L'art oubli des lapidaires de la Bactriane aux poques achmnide et
Gardin 1998
Gentelle 1989
Grenet 1983
16
1983, 373-381.
Guillaume 1985
Harmatta 1994
J. Harmatta, Languages and Scripts in Graeco-Bactria and the Saka Kingdoms. In: J.
Harmatta/B. N. Puri/G. F. Etemadi (eds.), History of the Civilizations of Central Asia. Vol.
2, The Development of Sedentary and Nomadic Civilizations: 700 B.C. to A.D. 250 (Paris
1994) 386-406.
Holt 1988
F. L. Holt, Alexander the Great and Bactria: The Formation of a Greek Frontier in Central
Holt 1999
Kopsacheili 2011
Gandhara: Hybridisation and Identity in the Art and Architecture of the Hellenistic East
Leriche 1986
P. Leriche, Fouilles d'A Khanoum V. Les remparts et les monuments associs. (Paris 1986).
Lerner 2003
17
Lyonnet 1997
Lyonnet 1998
compare d'A Khanoum et de Marakanda au cours des derniers sicles avant notre re.
Mairs 2011
R. Mairs, The Archaeology of the Hellenistic Far East: A Survey. Bactria, Central Asia and
Mairs 2013a
R. Mairs, The Archaeology of the Hellenistic Far East: A Survey. Bactria, Central Asia and
Mairs 2013b
R. Mairs, The 'Temple with Indented Niches' at Ai Khanoum: Ethnic and Civic Identity in
Hellenistic Bactria. In: R. Alston/O. M. van Nijf/C. G. Williamson (eds.), Cults, Creeds and
Identities in the Greek City after the Classical Age (Leuven 2013b) 85-111.
Mairs 2013c
R. Mairs, Waiting for the Barbarians: The 'Fall' of Greek Bactria. Parthica 2013c, 9-30.
Mairs 2014
R. Mairs, The Hellenistic Far East: Archaeology, Language and Identity in Greek Central
Martinez-Sve 2010
Naveh/Shaked 2012
J. Naveh/S. Shaked, Aramaic Documents from Ancient Bactria (Fourth Century B.C.E.) from
Nielsen 2001
I. Nielsen (eds.), The Royal Palace Institution in the First Millennium BC: Regional
Development and Cultural Interchange between East and West (Athens; Aarhus 2001).
Posch 1995
historischen Problemen einer bergangsphase : mit einem textkritischen Exkurs zum Shiji
Rapin 1992
Rea/Senior/Hollis 1994
Robert 1968
Rougemont 2012
Shaked 2004
Veuve 1987
S. Veuve, Fouilles d'A Khanoum VI. Le gymnase. Architecture, cramique, sculpture. (Paris
1987).