Dating Kampyr-Tepe, Alexandria-on-the-Oxus

Kampyr-Tepe, ancient Alexandria-on-the-Oxus, whose foundations go back to the 4th and 3rd century BC, has been continuously excavated by Edvard V. Rtveladze and Alexei N. Gorin. They have concentrated on the citadel and the city proper with its striking Hellenistic entrance gate (see: Alexandria on the Oxus is at Kampyr-Tepe).

Alexander copper coins

By now, the citadel has yielded several Hellenistic coins that shed light on daily life in the city. Altogether, 30 coins of interest have been retrieved, mostly small-denomination copper coins. Two of them belong to King Antiochus I and 28 to the Graeco-Bactrian kings. Among them were rulers like: 

Antiochus I (281-261 BC)

Only two Seleucid coins were found in Kampyr-Tepe, and both were chalki (χαλκι, meaning copper) of Antiochus I, one minted in Babylonia (Seleucia-on-the-Tigris) and another one in Bactria.

Other examples came to light north of the Oxus River in places such as Afrasiab/Maracanda (see: Afrasiab, ancient Samarkand), Termez, and Bukhara.
 
Diodotus (c. 250-230 BC)
Scholars cannot agree whether Diodotus I or Diodotus II issued the coins. There are four copper coins: two dichalki, one chalkous, and one hemichalkous (half a chalkous). The chalkous was the smallest fraction of a Greek coin; in Athens, one needed eight χαλκι to make one obol. Based on their graphic design, these coins could have been issued by the mint of Bactra or Ai-Khanoum.

Tetradrachm of Euthydemus I

Euthydemus I (c. 230-200 BC)
Ten copper coins of Euthydemus I were found in Kampyr-Tepe, among which seven dichalki and one chalkous. Some of these coins have been extremely useful for dating the city’s buildings. Euthydemus I coins are the most common type found in northern Bactria, and six χαλκι are known from the Oxus Treasure (see: The Oxus Treasure, pieces Alexander must have known).
 
Euthydemus II (c. 190-185 BC)
Coins with the effigy of Euthydemus II are scarce. Some χαλκι, dichalki, and trichalki cuprum-nickel coins were found in Kampyr-Tepe, together with copper dichalki and trichalki.

Demetrius I (c. 200-185 BC)
Kampyr-Tepe has yielded one Demetrius obol and several copper χαλκι, dichalki, hemichalki, and trichalki.
 
Eucratides I (c.171-150 BC)
Eucratides is very much present in Kampyr-Tepe with seven coins, i.e., one drachm, one octuplus (a copper obol), and five obols. The obols belonged to the beginning of Eucratides’ reign when he started using his new title Megas, Great. One of these obols has been important to date when the fortified walls of the acropolis were last used as it was found in its top layer. It is noteworthy that Eucratides’ obols have also been recovered from Afrasiab/Maracanda, Bukhara (see: Alexander in Bactria and Sogdiana), and Ai-Khanoum.

Tetradrachm of Eucratides I

A bonus from Kampyr-Tepe was the find of two hitherto unknown coins of Heliocles and imitations of Demetrius I and Eucratides. Counterfeit is of all times!
 
Heliocles I (c. 139-129 BC) drachm imitation
The exact dates of Heliocles’ reign are not known. This drachm raises questions because of the mistakes in the inscriptions and the sloppy engraving of the letters. It may well be one of the first imitations.
Another drachm of Heliocles has surfaced in Takhti-Sangin, which may have been the source of the Oxus Treasure (see: The Oxus Treasure, pieces Alexander must have known).
 
Heliocles III (1st century BC) imitation
This king is so far unknown among the Seleucid or Graeco-Bactrian coins. Two coins with his bust were made according to Hellenistic traditions, but the shape of the letters on the coin’s inscription is problematic, especially the square omicron. The square version of the omicron first appears on Indo-Greek coins circulating at the end of the 2nd /beginning of the 1st century BC. The tradition continued until the last Indo-Greek King Hippostratus, who ruled over western Punjab.
It is quite possible that these coins were issued locally for Heliocles III, who shortly ruled over (northern) Bactria.
 
Demetrius drachms - imitation
Besides the abovementioned copper coins, two rare imitations of a Demetrius drachm have been unearthed. They were minted using a different die and showed distortion of the prototype. It has been possible to establish that they were issued in Bactria.
 
Eucratides obol - imitation
Among the Eucratides’ coins found at Kampyr-Tepe, one obol is an obvious imitation. The inscription on the obol is distorted and illegible, and the depiction of the ruler’s head is stylized compared to the real thing.
 
It is noteworthy that all the above finds and considerations treat coins from surface finds in Kampyr-Tepe, not from archaeological diggings. As in other Bactrian and Sogdian cities, the problem is that their remains are buried under thick layers of deposits hampering excavations.
 
Hellenistic coins unearthed from the banks of the Oxus River may suggest that the river played a significant role in the transportation and exchange of goods.

[For the above illustrations, I used my own pictures taken at the Numismatic Museum of Athens, because I lost the link to the reference photographs. We always stare at gold and silver coins, and I had no idea that copper Alexander coins ever existed. My pictures of Euthydemus and Eucratides are both tetradrachms, i.e., made of silver in Bactria].

Weather conditions during Alexander’s march East

As I so often stated, the weather conditions are not important for historians. We find only a few examples in Alexander's campaigns, like the Monsoon in India and the flash flood in the Gedrosian Desert. Still, in reality, the weather did play a vital role in his campaign in the East.

Throughout their march from Greece to India, the Macedonians must have been plagued by recurrent earthquakes that disrupted their advance or their camp. Alexander could sacrifice to the gods, but he could not prevent or control these natural disasters. 

Speaking to one of the locals in Turkey, I remember him pointing out that he preferred to be “in the open” rather than inside any building when an earthquake occurred. Being outside, he would witness boulders rolling downhill and trees being shaken, but none of the rattlings would be as frightening as when sitting inside a house or shack.

It is easy to imagine how, in Alexander’s campsites, the army tents would collapse, banging up the occupants. Frightened horses and pack animals would try to run if they were not adequately secured by their attendants. When an earthquake hit the troops on the march, they could immediately react accordingly.

Another natural threat is the wind, which may not sound so dangerous, but the situation could be life-threatening when it creates a storm.

This idea occurred to me during my trip to Iran when I skirted the Zagros Mountains. In the winter of 330 BC, Alexander marched south using approximately the same route I was following a little later in the year, i.e., in April (see: The Zagros Mountains and the Persian Gates in Alexander’s footsteps).

I was plagued by a severe sandstorm that blew relentlessly during my three-day journey. Visibility was very low as the sands from the Mesopotamian Valley in modern Iraq were carried through the air. My clothes flapped around me as if they were to be torn away any moment, while the sand was stinging my face and hurting my body. The wind whistled through the lunch place, and the sand battered against the windows.

Inevitably, my mind drifted back to Alexander as he must have known days like this. Traveling in the comfort of my air-conditioned vehicle was hard enough. However, when I stepped outside of this protective shell, I had a taste of what he experienced – if not here, certainly in other locations.

Curtius seems to be the only one to write about Alexander’s expeditions into the interior of Persia some time in Spring 330 BC, where he was troubled by heavy rain and “almost intolerable weather.” He even was stopped by heavy snow that had frozen solid; not for long, though, as he immediately started making his way, breaking the ice with a mattock, an example that his men promptly followed (see: Alexander amidst the pomp and circumstance of Persepolis).

While we take bad weather as a mere inconvenience, we cannot underestimate its far-reaching impact. That became clear after reading The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron. Byron traveled to Iran and Afghanistan in 1933, using whatever means of transportation available. The weather conditions commanded his advance to a degree I did not expect. The Macedonian army must have faced similar conditions that hampered their progress to the same extent.

Byron is hit by what he calls a burning dust-storm, a good one hundred miles east of Hamadan, ancient Ecbatana. Near Bisutun, he witnessed great spirals of dust, “dancing like demons over the desert,” stopping his car and choking the passengers. 

Wind, rain, and ice are Byron’s main challenges. He attempted to drive south from Tehran to Isfahan in early February but was stopped some ten miles out. The road turned into a sheet of ice that partly thawed and had frozen again. The scene must have been spectacular, for he writes, “At this moment the sun rose, a twinkle of fire lit the snowy plain, the white range of the Elbruz was suffused with blue and gold.” A beautiful picture, but a horrible travel condition.

A few days later, it rained for twenty-four hours. Byron was still stopped in Tehran by a “deluge of rain” in the last days of April. As he traveled further East via Damghan to Mashed, a route that approximately matches Alexander’s, “the rain fell like a bath-waste. For miles at a time the road was a river, the desert a flood, and every mountain a cataract.” The roads turned into fast-flowing rivers.

In Spring, Byron eventually reached Herat and continued due East to Kunduz. On his road to Balkh, where Alexander made camp and wintered in 328 BC (see: A view of the Karakum and Kyzylkum Deserts and Afrasiab, ancient Samarkand), Byron describes how “the rain came down in sheets. … every angle of the mountains was occupied by a cataract. … along that narrow ledge whence the red pinnacles rose into the clouds above, and whole ranges could be seen emerging from the clouds below…” A little further, he continues by saying that “the color of the landscape changed from lead to aluminum… The clumps of green trees, the fountain-shaped tufts of coarse cutting grass, stood out almost black against this mortal tint”.

Mazar-i-Sharif fared much better in the last days of May. He described how the clouds gathered on the mountains each afternoon, although summer should have set in six weeks before. People said they had never witnessed such conditions. The weather one hundred years ago was as unpredictable as today. The rain that fell before Byron’s arrival in the city was enough to close the road to Kabul for a whole month! An entire village had fallen down in a nearby gorge. Just picture Alexander having to cope with such extremes!

After Kunduz, Byron turned West, following the river of the same name to the plain of Bamyan, crossing the stream nine or ten times over wooden bridges. I doubt these bridges existed in Alexander’s days when the army had to find a way through the water. In June, Byron heard that a landslide had blocked the other side of the Shibar Pass. In fact, “heaps of liquid mud and pebbles concealing large rocks.” The travel conditions became increasingly drastic. “The crops below the road, already half destroyed by the rivers of mud, were now menaced by a further spate.”

Alexander probably took this same road in the fall of 327 BC when he left Bactria for India by the Shibar Pass (see: Alexander crosses the Hindu Kusha second time). Nobody mentions any landslides occurring, but they were undoubtedly recurrent because further down Byron’s road to Kabul, another dozen landslides prevented him from reaching the city. Was Alexander just lucky and under the protection of the gods, one wonders?

The crossings of the Hindu Kush, in turn, have been pictured very well by Steven Pressfield in his book The Afghan Campaign. He describes the pure horror and misery the army endured in their daily lives of survival (see: From Afghanistan into Bactria across the Hindu Kush). Arrian, of course, gives us the facts, but Pressfield, with his skills as a military writer, adds the human experience to the expedition.

Picking up Byron again, we read how on the road from Kabul to Ghazni – which Alexander traveled in the opposite direction to cross the Hindu Kush into Bactria – “two lorries were completely wrecked by the stream … the Kunduz ferry has overturned and sunk, drowning five women.”

Reading our history books, we are far from realizing that traveling or leading an army was a dangerous enterprise. Not only because of the enemies that had to be subdued but also because of the terrain and the weather conditions, which, as I said above, were seldom mentioned or recorded.

Afrasiab excavations: remains of a monumental public building

To my surprise, excavations at Afrasiab (ancient Greek Maracanda or modern Samarkand in Uzbekistan) by the Franco-Uzbek Archaeological Mission have revealed the burnt remains of a monumental public building from the early Hellenistic period. Based on the charred remains of millet and barley, it has been established that this must have been a granary for the Greek garrison of Samarkand.

This square building made of mud bricks is characteristic of Hellenistic times. Archaeologists have determined that it was destroyed by a violent fire, which has baked the bricks and the cereals stored inside, transforming the content into a multicolored ash dust. The heat was so fierce that the bricks have intensively hardened and, at the same time have vitrified the soil as well as the lower parts of the walls, which at the same time led to their excellent preservation.

This granary was found at a depth of 8.5 meters, underneath successive occupation layers all the way to the mosque that was under construction in 1220 when Genghis Khan massacred a great deal of the population and destroyed Samarkand’s irrigation canals. This vast complex was divided into eight separate rooms of 11.5x5.5m, each set in two rows of four. Much attention was given to the construction of these storage rooms, whose walls were made of mud brick squares of 38x38cm and probably stood 2.5 meters high of which today some 2 meters are still preserved. It seems that the roof of this granary simply collapsed at the time of the fire, together with the now parched remains of the supporting beams.

It is clear that this building was used to store perishable food. Remains of millet and barley have been identified in four of these rooms, where millet was simply thrown on the unpaved floor. Analysis has shown that this was the so-called panicum miliaceum, i.e., a common millet generally found between northern China and western Europe and is grown on irrigated land. It is a cereal that does not germinate, meaning that it can easily be stored for up to ten years. This millet played a fundamental role in people’s food staples in Central Asia and would have been ideally used in garrison life or as a life-saving food in case of siege. It is evident that barley and millet were the major food supplies for soldiers, although in Achaemenid times, the barley-gruel was eaten by soldiers and slaves as well as horses, and the rations were counted. The barley, however, is thought to have been used more as fodder for the horses rather than to feed humans, and it seems to have been stored in sacks. In many places, the floors and the walls were covered with ashes in shades of green, blue, orange, red, yellow, and grey, which may refer to other kinds of food - yet unidentified. It has been calculated that the granary of Afrasiab could hold as much as 75 tons of cereals.

Further investigation has established that the fire was a very fierce one, and researchers don’t exclude a possible explosion caused by a high concentration of gas, as we know to happen in modern grain silos. There are also indications that attempts were made to extinguish the fire or to contain it; by letting the roof collapse, they hoped to kill the fire – to no avail, as the blaze devastated the entire storage building.

Typical for early Greek occupation in Afrasiab is the use of square bricks as in the granary, which matches similar bricks found in the inner gallery of the ancient rampart and the posterns of the so-called gate of Bukhara. Till recently, no traces of Greek residential houses have been found, although their presence has been suggested by Greek ceramics found in different locations surveyed by previous Soviet research. In fact, this granary is the first proof of the earliest Greek inhabitants of Afrasiab. Future excavations will certainly contribute to a better understanding of Hellenistic Samarkand.

This information is completing my earlier post: Afrasiab, ancient Samarkand, where I’m concentrating on Alexander spending the winter of 328/327 BC within these walls and on the circumstances leading to the murder of Cleitos.

[Pictures from Academia.org]

De Kaboul à Samarcande. Les archéologues en Asie Centrale by S. Gorshenina and C. Rapin

Under the original title "De Kaboul à Samarcande. Les archéologues en Asie Centrale”(From Kabul to Samarkand) by Svetlana Gorshenina and Claude Rapin (ISBN 9782070761661), this book is being edited by Découvertes Gallimard. It is one of the rare books that treat archaeology in Central Asia in a professional way. It only has the size of a pocketbook but is stuffed with pertaining maps like Alexander’s route and Central Asia set against today’s countries, with plenty of illustrations.

After a short introduction about mainly Russian occupancy of Central Asia going back to the Tsarist era, it appears that finds from Central Asia not only wind up at the Hermitage in St Petersburg and its subsidiary museums but also in newly created museums in Samarkand, Tashkent, Fergana, and Ashkhabad, as well as in countless private collections.

The French who excavated in Afghanistan were allowed to keep half their finds which were eventually moved to the Musée Guimet in Paris, but the oriental museums of Rome and Turin got their share with parts of the reliefs from Gandhara discovered in the Swat area. Strangely enough, most collections from Western European museums have vanished unless they dwell in some lost corner of their basements. Exceptions, however, are the museums in Bern, Copenhagen, Berlin, Helsinki, and Stuttgart. We may remember Ai-Khanoum, once the capital of eastern Bactria at the confluence of the Amu Daria (Oxus) and the Kokcha Rivers that revealed how a Greek city in that part of the world looked like, establishing the relation between the Greeks and the nomads. Also, the role of the philhellenic Parthians is highlighted.

From the sites themselves, especially in Bactria, very few remains have survived simply because the cities were built with mud bricks – examples are Afrasiab, Shahr-i-Sabz, Erkugan, Bactra, and Merv.

Headlines were made with the discovery of the Oxus treasure, composed of golden and bronze objects like statues, vases, bracelets, necklaces, rings, gems, votive plaques with Zoroastrian priests, benefactors, and sacred animals. On top of all that, they found about 1300 coins ranging from the Achaemenid period to Hellenistic, probably from a temple treasury. Another exceptional discovery was the Hellenistic temple of Takht-i-Sangin, with some 800,000 artifacts from its treasury, similar to the finds at Oxus and one of the richest collections of its kind in Central Asia. The hoard counted ex-votos, instruments tied to the cult, portraits of gods and benefactors, and a plaque from the 5th century BC showing a dignitary in Bactrian dress holding a dagger, very much like the procession at Persepolis.

The book also devotes a chapter to religion, starting from early Buddhism during the Kushan Empire (including a handy map) in the first centuries AD with cities like Hadda, Tapa Sardar, Bamyan, Bactra, Dilberdjin, Dalverzine-Tepe, Shahr-i-Nau, Airtam, Adjina-tepe, Karatepe and Fayaz-Tepe, near Termez, and Balalyk-tepe. Matters change dramatically with the arrival of Islam with a high level of cultural and economic renewal.

Another turn-around happened when the Soviet Union occupied Central Asia and when Afghanistan was closed to foreigners. Today, as many of the countries in Central Asia have become independent, a revival of their national inheritance is slowly taking place, while the situation in Afghanistan is still unchanged.

Well, this book shows that there still is a great deal of work to be done on the historical sites themselves and in the larger context of reciprocal exchanges between East and West.

Afrasiab, ancient Samarkand (Central Asia 11)

[10 - In Autumn 328 BC, the head of Spitamenes was brought to Alexander. The army is being divided between Bactra (Balkh), Nautaca, and Maracanda (Samarkand) because Spitamenes had destroyed the winter provisions in Bactra. Alexander spent the winter of 328/327 BC in Maracanda-Afrasiab. Murder of Cleitos.]

Maracanda is the Greek name for today’s Samarkand, but the real name in antiquity was Afrasiab and I’m terribly excited to know that I can still visit its remains. It is an important city in Alexander’s relentless marches up and down Central Asia, one of those crossroads he just had to take. It is here that he murdered Cleitos and it is here that he received the head of Spitamenes – speaking about the irony of Fate.

Afrasiab occupies 220 hectares mostly hidden beneath an 8 to 12-meter-thick layer of soil, with at the very bottom “the adobe houses of the Sogdians” as mentioned in the Avesta. Since the end of the 19th century, periodic excavations have taken place, mostly by Russian archaeologists who moved the most precious finds to the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg; fewer items went to a newly built adjacent museum.

As I said before, this city was situated at the crossroads merchants used between India, China, and Europe, and it is no surprise to find that it was blessed with wide streets and high defensive walls, while the houses showed all the wealth that came with living in such a location. One example is to be found in the wall frescoes that have been moved to the nearby museum, a unique testimony of the rich cultural exchanges between East and West. As if to underline the extensive trade connections, we see pictures of envoys from China, Turkey, and India, all carrying precious gifts like elephants, ostriches, panthers, and weaponry. A detailed research has been done by the University of Halle in Germany – most interesting!

The entrance to Afrasiab is right next to the small but exquisite museum. My path goes straight uphill and when I reach the top, the extent of the old city reveals itself, it’s huge! Where should I start? I find no reference point to go by, maybe behind the next hill? According to what I saw at the museum, I should be able to recognize the palace from which the precious frescoes were rescued as well as the remains of the city walls. I’m walking over a stone road but can’t judge if this pavement is old or new. Suddenly the road ends near the top of a hill. Clearly, some excavations have taken place in the depth below me, but most remains have been hidden from sight by the wind-swept sands and low bushes. Strange but at the same time rather exciting as I discover the contours of modern Samarkand just above the horizon. That reminds me that it was the Mongols who leveled the proud city upon explicit orders of Genghis Khan in 1220, after which the horrified survivors chose to settle at the edge of this foothill, i.e. where today’s Samarkand is still shining.

At this point, I decide to keep to the right, towards the city walls and the palace - a pure gut feeling, but the terrain is treacherous, and a deep V-shaped valley demands a detour. The sun is low and I have to shade my eyes to find a proper path to go down and back up again on the other side. To my left I discover a large square space that could reveal the agora surrounded by straight-running hills through which the archaeologists have cut several corridors, apparently to sample the successive layers. On the agora itself, shifting sands and erosion have erased all traces of buildings or walls, it seems.

I have the site entirely to myself and thoroughly enjoy the peaceful stillness in which spirits of the past can come alive at any time. The sound of a bell followed by bleating makes me aware of a small herd of goats, cared for by a lonely shepherd who only speaks Russian. I now have reached the modern road to the airport, which triggered the discovery of ancient Afrasiab. The sun is setting ever lower and long shadows clearly define any minute change in the landscape. Unexpectedly I find the remains of the so-called palace from the 3^rd-2^nd century BC, which I recognize from the scale-model at the museum. The golden evening sun even lights up the fort. What a feast!

I realize that it must have been around here that Alexander murdered Cleitos the Black. This happened during one the banquet nights where wine flowed profusely and poets praised and glorified Alexander’s exploits, going as far as fueling the king’s pretension of divinity and denigrating his achievements in favor of his father, King Philip II. Every veteran in the assembly felt he had done more than his share – why should Alexander receive all the glory, especially when brought by a poet who never took part in any fight. These veterans (who had served under Philip) shared the glorifying words in favor of Philip, and it was Cleitos, still faithful to his old king who spoke up in the name of all of them. He not only praised Philip but also his own person, reminding his comrades that he was the one who saved Alexander’s life at the Granicus. Tempers ran high, fired by the wine and the latest hardships in hostile Sogdiana, and Cleitos’ vehement words caught on. We should not forget that Cleitos had just recently been “promoted” to satrap of Sogdiana since old Artabazus (the father of Alexander’s mistress Barsine) had requested to be relieved from his function. Cleitos resented the appointment. To him, it was a pure punishment having to spend the rest of his days in this remote country at the end of the world. Heated discussions followed, while more wine was flowing; strong words and insults filled the air. This was more than the usual Macedonian brawl and Cleitos’ words were more than passionate. Some of the Companions intervened to hush Cleitos and took him outside. Like a Jack-in-the-box he re-entered the room, sadly before the king had time to calm down. More shouts and new insults flew back and forth; Alexander called for his bodyguards. By now, he was beside himself and impatiently snatched the spear from the nearest bodyguard and ran Cleitos through. Historians all tell us how Alexander grieved for three days, refusing all food and water.

So much history has been written on the very soil I am standing on. Oh, if only the stones and the dust could talk! The fading light of this sunset with its long shadows seems to add to this eerie atmosphere. What a place to be!

My senses slowly return to the present. I have to get back but I am not sure behind which hill I can find the museum from where the road will lead me back to my hotel downtown. Is it more to the right or to the left? In my excitement, I did not set my bearings and paid no attention to the landmarks. It seems I have underestimated the distance for it is taking me more time than I thought, but drifting away to the very presence of Alexander made me lose track of time. Then I notice a cow, a nice brown animal that strangely enough commands a dozen of sheep and goats by bellowing them back to their home stable. Well, have you ever! Instead of the museum, I arrive at the cemetery next to a mosque. From there I reach the Siab River, the very one that gave its name to the city. The banks are particularly green after my stroll through barren hills and the fast-running water with the wild ducks is particularly refreshing. From here I easily find my way back.

At this stage of his campaign, Alexander had learned to spread his army in view of the coming winter months, especially now when Spitamenes had destroyed his winter provisions in Bactra. According to some sources, Alexander spent the winter of 328/327 BC in Maracanda-Afrasiab; others state that a larger force was posted in Maracanda to keep an eye on northern Sogdiana and that Alexander himself moved to Nautaca (Shahrisabz). Large detachments of soldiers were left among the natives to forage for themselves while preventing Spitamenes at the same time from getting access to any source of supplies. With the king’s troops occupying key positions in this wide web, Spitamenes had to fall into the trap sooner or later. The plan paid off. Just like Spitamenes had once betrayed Bessus, he was now betrayed by the Scythians, who had reconsidered their alliance. They simply chopped off his head and brought it to Alexander. Curtius, however, has a different story to tell. He insists that Spitamenes’ wife delivered the head of her husband to Alexander, being tired of the constant moves and the dangers she had to face all these years at his side.

Click here to read Episode 12a of Central Asia.

Alexander's March to Maracanda (Central Asia 8)

[7 - In early autumn of 329 BC, Alexander marched to Maracanda in three days and nights to see Spitamenes vanish in thin air. He re-crossed the Oxus to winter in Bactra. Arrival of reinforcements from Macedonia.]

In early autumn 329 BC, as soon as he could manage health-wise, Alexander marched to Maracanda to find Spitamenes and avenge the recent cruel ambush of his envoys. Alexander was never in for half measures, and he proved it once again, covering a good 180 miles from Alexandria-Eschate to Maracanda in three days and nights, the fastest march of his life (an average of some 45 miles a day!). He must have had an iron constitution to travel at such high speed after suffering the discomforts of dysentery and his recent wounds. The loss of the 2,000 good men in Maracanda must have hit him hard.

Spitamenes, meanwhile, had attacked Maracanda a second time, but as soon as he was informed of Alexander’s approach, he quickly withdrew. Alexander set in pursuit, but his enemy’s lead was too great. In this process, Alexander passed the ghostly battlefield where his troops had lost their lives a few months earlier and arranged for a decent burial. In his anger, he ordered to sweep the entire valley of the Polytimetus River, modern Zeravshan, still running past Samarkand. His instructions were clear: every house and every village should be taken down, all the crops burnt, and any person sympathizing with Spitamenes should be killed. I wonder how many questions the enraged Macedonians bothered to ask before killing…

These measures only put more oil on the fire with the Bactrians and the Sogdians. Most of their towns were now in ruins, the population wiped out, they had nothing to lose, and their only hopes lay with Spitamenes. Personally, I think it is about this time that the new Great King realized that warfare in this part of his empire was entirely different from his well-planned, well-drilled, and well-executed battlefields.

With the fast-approaching winter at his doorstep, Alexander left 3,000 men on guard in Bactria and retired to Bactra, where enough provisions had been stored to sustain the severe winter months. The good news must have been that the highly needed and long-expected reinforcements finally arrived from Macedonia, 22,000 fresh Greek mercenaries sent out by Antipater. A welcome boost to manpower and morale, no doubt.

I just can’t believe I have arrived in Samarkand myself, the Maracanda of the Greeks and the Afrasiab of antiquity! The very name rings like Baghdad, Babylon, or Persepolis, an unknown world as far as I’m concerned, somewhere in the Orient. No wonder that Samarkand is one of the oldest cities in the world, although opinions differ widely when it comes to dating its origins. However, we are sure that the Persian Achaemenids ruled the local tribes from the 6th to the 4th century BC. With the arrival of Alexander the Great in 329 BC, Maracanda occupied a key position and became an important business center thanks to its impregnable citadel surrounded by a more than ten kilometers long city wall, which in later centuries even kept the Arabs out. But the arrival of Islam and the hordes of Genghis Khan could not be stopped. Golden times blessed the city when Tamerlane declared Samarkand the capital of his empire that reached from the Bosporus to the Indus. Today’s treasures of Samarkand are to be found in the mosques, madrassa’s and mausoleums Tamerlane left us, unique beauties that are luckily added to the World Heritage List of UNESCO. Samarkand is also closely linked to the Silk Road, situated on the crossroad of two main routes, one running from Persia in the west to China in the east, the other running south towards India. As I said before, Alexander must have followed these same roads since they ran, in fact, on top of the Royal Roads built by the Great Kings over the centuries to connect their many palaces and to quickly move their armies through this vast empire.

No trace of Alexander is to be found in today’s Samarkand. I’ll have to go to neighboring Afrasiab, constantly inhabited until the Mongols arrived here in 1220 and leveled the proud city upon explicit orders of Genghis Khan. Those who survived these terrors fled the premises and chose to settle at the edge of the foothill, and this is where today’s Samarkand is still shining. I’ll be visiting Afrasiab, of course. [See: Part 10, Afrasiab, ancient Samarkand]

I’m walking along the Zeravshan River, the old Polytimetus River, during my visit to a Natural Reserve in that area. I am told that this is a safe haven for foxes and lynxes, a certain number of birds, but all I see are some apparently unique deer, fenced in like our deer parks. Not exactly what one would expect under the label of a Natural Reserve, but we are probably very spoiled with our western safari parks and the kind. The local guide is willing to take us to the banks of the Zeravshan River; nobody is really interested but me. Yes, of course, Alexander has been here rampaging through the thickets on his reprisal expedition after Spitamenes’ brutal murder of the Greek mercenaries around here. The path is wild and overgrown with lots of spiny plants and branches that scratch you wherever they can; not very inviting, I must say. How Alexander’s men cut their way through these dense thickets and low thorny branches makes you bow in respect because their bodies, arms, and legs must have been covered with scars. I guess these seasoned troopers were used to it, or worse. I can’t take in enough of these wild-grown shrubs and grasses, as if Alexander could dash out of this wilderness anytime before me!

A year later, Alexander is back for another sweep-up along the Polytimetus and its tributaries to demonstrate his power and that of his army. Strangely enough, and in spite of his harsh actions, legends about Alexander still flourish in this part of the country where an Alexander River (Iskander Darya) flows out of an Alexander Lake (Iskander Kül). It is believed that he built a golden dam to create the lake and that gold particles can still be panned further downstream. Another story tells how Alexander and his trusted horse Bucephalus rise from the lake with every full moon to cross the sky (Michael Wood and Frank Holt).

My path stops abruptly at the bank of the Zeravshan, at least five feet above the riverbed. All I see is a charcoal-black muddy surface plowed by deer and cattle that waded through on their way to the water near the opposite side – a shimmering rivulet, nothing more. But then, this time of the year (fall), the rivers around here are at their lowest; they swell in spring after the snow from the surrounding mountains starts melting. The Zeravshan rises at the fringes of the Pamir Mountains, and I crossed on my way from Shahr-i-Sabz and may have emptied into the Oxus in antiquity, although today, it simply peters out in the desert before reaching that far. Alexander must have seen this river also fully swollen, as he repeatedly traveled between Maracanda and Bactra (having to cross the Oxus River each time again). We have no idea of the hardships or distances out here; Samarkand-Balkh, for instance, is roughly 200 miles, almost as far as Los Angeles - Las Vegas or London - Land’s End.

Click here to read Episode 9 of Central Asia.

Alexander in Bactria and Sogdiana (Central Asia 1)

Getting ready for a tour of Uzbekistan, my thoughts inevitably turn to Alexander the Great, for this is the territory of Bactria and Sogdiana, where he spent nearly three years of his life – almost one-third of his time in Asia. That tells a great deal about the difficulties he encountered in this part of the world. Alexander's kingship lasted twelve years, of which the first two years were needed to settle the affairs in Macedonia and Greece before crossing over to Asia. This means that he conquered the mighty Persian Empire and most of the then-known world in only ten years. Consequently, the three years he spent in Central Asia are highly important in his Asian campaign.

We generally follow Alexander out of Greece, skirting the coast of today's Turkey and facing the Persian armies at the Granicus, at Issus, and finally at Gaugamela. After that, most fights seem only to be skirmishes, but I now find out that the truth is very different. In fact, I'm amazed to learn how much has happened from 330 BC to 327 BC. Those years alone are worth a lifetime experience – that is, to any ruler but Alexander the Great, of course. 

To make things easy, I situate Uzbekistan north of Afghanistan, which is well-known through the news media, but for the sake of good order, additional logistical information is required. To the southwest of Uzbekistan, we find Turkmenistan, to the north Kazakhstan, and in the east Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, both entwined with Uzbekistan like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. These borders are pretty well drawn, but that was not always the case, and definitely not in Alexander’s time. Bactria then was at the far end of the known world, where nobody “civilized” wanted to go, and where nobody really knew where it started or where it ended. Even a meticulous geographer like Strabo got confused between Bactria and Sogdiana on many occasions.

But to me, this is Alexander country all the same, and I am determined to find out as much as I can. Not an easy task, even with the help of Arrian and Curtius, who managed to give contradictory accounts using Bactria and Sogdiana randomly. As it turns out, modern historians are no more successful in their endeavors. Rivers are not exact frontiers but seem rather to bring the desert peoples together, and the same goes for mountains, where passes serve to commute between different peoples instead of separating them. In the end, I find that the analytical approach of David Engels in his “Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army” makes the most sense. Pending new discoveries, new excavations, and new theories, this is what I’ll go by.

To begin with, we have a significant number of facts and names about Alexander’s whereabouts in that remote region, but matching them with modern locations is a huge task that is still ongoing. Based mostly on Arrian’s “Anabasis” and Curtius’ ”History of Alexander,” who both used Ptolemy’s account since he participated in the campaign, I do have a series of useful facts and figures:

1. Alexander marched his army from Bactra (Balkh in today’s Afghanistan) with heavy losses through the Karakum Desert to reach the Oxus River in pursuit of traitor Bessus, who proclaimed himself king after killing the Persian Great King Darius III.

2. Alexander crossed the Oxus River (today’s Amu Darya) on his way to Samarkand, probably around Termez, although the exact location is still being debated (see David Engels “Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonia Army” and Robin Lane Fox in “Alexander the Great” as opposed to the latest discoveries made by E.V. Rtveladze)

3. Although it was Ptolemy who is said to have ridden to Nautaca to collect Bessus, taken prisoner by local warlords in late June 329 BC, Alexander also crossed the Pamir Mountains between Samarkand and modern Shahr-i-Sabz, as Nautaca is called now.

4. On the way, there is an encounter with the Branchidae, emigrants from Milete, whom Alexander massacred because of treason.

5. Alexander moved to the end of the Persian Empire on the Jaxartes River (modern Syr Darya) through the Iron Gates (the only road east out of Maracanda), over Jizzak and Uratube.

6. In July 329 BC, Alexander was building his Alexandria-the-Furthermost, modern Khodjend in Tajikistan, while taking seven Sogdian cities, including Cyropolis. Alexander was seriously wounded.

7. In early autumn of 329 BC, Alexander marched to Maracanda in three days and nights to see Spitamenes vanish in thin air. He re-crossed the Oxus to winter in Bactra. Arrival of reinforcements from Macedonia.

8. In the Spring of 328 BC, Alexander split up his army into five sections for a clean-up operation. Hephaistion sweeps the Panj River Valley, Ptolemy the Vaksh River, Perdiccas the Karfernigan, Coenus the Surkhan, and Alexander marches to Maracanda, where his generals will join him afterwards.

9. Until August 328 BC, Alexander is busy subduing the Sogdians once again. In mopping up the Polytimetus Valley (today’s Zeravshan River), Alexander probably went as far as Bukhara and even Merv in today’s Turkmenistan, where he founded his Alexandria Margiana (it seems no “Alexandria” was ever founded without the king being present).

10. In Autumn 328 BC, the head of Spitamenes is brought to Alexander. The army is being divided between Bactra (Balkh), Nautaca, and Maracanda (Samarkand) because Spitamenes had destroyed the winter provisions in Bactra. Alexander spent the winter of 328/327 BC in Maracanda-Afrasiab. Murder of Cleitos.

11. Early 327 BC Alexander attacks the Sogdian Rocks of Ariamazes and Sisimithres (= Chorienes). Arrian and Curtius disagree on the location and on the chronology.

12. Maybe the most important event is Alexander’s marriage to the beautiful Roxane, daughter of a local Bactrian warlord.

Plenty of history to track down, and I’m confident that my imagination will do the rest. After all, since no writer, neither from antiquity nor from modern times, has managed to sift out facts from fiction, I feel entitled to draw my own conclusions based on what I’m going to see – why not?

For those who are not entirely familiar with history at this stage of Alexander’s campaign, let me place it briefly into context.

It all started when the Great King Darius fled from the Battlefield of Gaugamela and Alexander set in pursuit from Ecbatana in mid-July 330 BC, covering a rough 645 km in only eleven days in spite of the summer heat – an exploit on its own. It was, however, the Bactrian ruler Bessus who captured Darius and left him more dead than alive, alongside the road to die just before Alexander caught up with him. Bessus, feeling strong and powerful by his deeds, didn’t hesitate to proclaim himself King of Persia under the name of Artaxerxes V. This meant that Alexander, although he had been victorious at Gaugamela, still had to eliminate Bessus/Artaxerxes if he wanted to be the true King of Persia.

Before winter made the high passes of the Hindu Kush impassable, Bessus crossed the mountains north into Bactria, using the policy of scorched earth in an attempt to make it impossible for Alexander to follow him. But evidently, he underestimated Alexander's determination and stubbornness!

With his 32,000-strong army, Alexander led the way, not along the shortest route across the Hindu Kush as Bessus had expected, but over the 3,550-meter-high Khawak Pass, the longest but lowest pass that provided the best chances for forage. In spite of this practical choice, he and his army had to march through snow drifts and biting winds, suffering from snow blindness, altitude sickness, and chronic fatigue, and it took them 17 days to cover the 47 miles. It is not difficult to picture everybody’s relief when they finally reached the green, fertile valleys of Bactria and made camp in Bactra (Balkh in today’s Afghanistan), where they found plenty of provisions. Because of his scorched earth policy, Bessus had all the food and forage stored within the city walls – a true bonus for Alexander as the city opened its gates to him!

After his men enjoyed a well-deserved rest, Alexander moved north towards the Oxus River in late June 329 BC, still on Bessus' trail. Instead of frostbites and bitter cold, he now was stumbling through an inhospitable and waterless desert, the Karakum. This is about where I pick up Alexander’s trail…

Click here to read Episode 2 of Central Asia