Bactrian correspondence before Alexander’s arrival

Although Bactria was part of the Achaemenid Empire until the arrival of Alexander the Great, we may find it difficult to imagine that those faraway people knew how to write and even to entertain a substantial correspondence with their Lord and Master in Persia.

It is time to think about this twice as among the treasures of the Khalili Collections, there is a group of 48 documents from ancient Bactria, all written in Aramaic – one of the official languages used at the Persian Court.

[List of supplies, year 2 of Alexander - The Khalili Collections]

I had never heard of the Khalili Collections before and found that it has been put together by Nasser David Khalili, who was born in Iran and moved to study in the United States. He started collecting art in the 1970s and brought the best pieces together under the auspices of the Khalili Family Trust. It contains a great variety of precious artifacts that are divided into eight separate categories. The choices made are very specific: Islamic Art from 700 to 2000; Hajj and the Arts of Pilgrimage covering the same period; Japanese Art of Meiji Period from 1868 to 1912; Japanese Kimono from 1700 to 2000; Swedish Textiles from 1700 to 1900; Spanish Damascened Metalwork from 1850 to 1900; Enamels of the World from 1700 to 2000; and the section what this blog is about, Aramaic Documents from 535 BC to 324 BC.

The collection of Aramaic documents consists of letters and business accounts exchanged between Akhvamazda, the satrap of Bactria with his seat in Bactra (modern Balkh) and Bagavant, the governor. This is a unique and first-time glimpse into the correspondence and the administration of Bactria and Sogdiana. It also shows how the provincial satraps acted to implement the royal decrees in all the corners of the kingdom.

The majority of these documents were written during the reign of Darius III. The oldest ones belong to the rule of Artaxerxes III and the most recent ones to the days of Alexander. This means they were penned down in times of great turmoil in Central Asia.

In antiquity, documents were generally written on papyrus, etched in stone, or carved in clay. Of these Aramaic documents, however, thirty were written on leather, and eighteen were inscribed on wooden sticks used as tallies. Two of the leather documents are of particular interest as one casually mentions the fall of the Persian Empire with Bessus. He had killed Darius III and had claimed the crown for himself while heading for Warnu (Aornos). The other texts belong to the year 7 of King Alexander’s reign and contains a long list of supplies. The tallies inscribed on wooden sticks are also unique since this is the oldest form of bookkeeping ever found.

[Tally, year 3 of Darius - Khalili Collections]

The tallies are a quite interesting feature. They consist of short wooden sticks split in two in such a way that one obtains a flat inside surface. The tree bark on the outer surface is usually removed. The inscriptions are made in a kind of standard pattern, such as “With X from Y. In the year Z of King Darius”. Except for one undated example, all tallies were written during the reign of Darius III (336-330 BC). The way this system worked was that the sender and the receiver each kept one of the two halves of the stick. The theory goes that the notches carved on the side of the stick were cut holding the two halves together. This way, each party held an identical record of the transaction, and in case of dispute, it was easy enough to put the two halves back together to prove any discrepancy.

The leather documents apparently dealt with mundane affairs, like the delivery of food rations to officials, the instruction about building fortification around a city, or the need to send soldiers from the fort to fight a plague of locusts that was threatening the crops. They also mention which animals to use for meat and which as beasts of burden. It transpires that chickens, horses, and camels were among the favorite ones.

A full study of these Aramaic Documents can be found in a catalog published by the Khalili Family Trust in 2012 under the title Aramaic Documents from Ancient Bactria.