Alexandria-on-the-Tigris

Since the beginning of this year, Alexandria-on-the-Tigris has been repeatedly discussed on the internet, and I was hoping to find new information about its excavations. 

Sadly, nothing of the kind has been revealed. The articles basically confirm earlier results that mentioned a grid layout of the city with wide streets, housing blocks, temples, workshops, traces of canals, and harbor basins. 

There was nothing much I could add to my blogpost, Excavations at Alexandria-on-the Tigris, also known as Charax Spasinou, posted in May 2017, except perhaps the important role the city played as a trade hub with connections far into Central Asia. 

Alexandria-on-the-Tigris flourished in Hellenistic times and later under Parthian power. A port at the junction of the Karun and Tigris rivers on the Persian Gulf was a choice location. Unfortunately, by the third century AD, the riverbed of the Tigris had shifted further west, and the alluviums carried by both rivers led to the end of its prosperity, leaving very little for us to see. 

[Picture of Alexandria's wall from Archaeology Mag]

Today, the site of Alexandria-on-the-Tigris has very little to offer. The only recognizable feature in the otherwise flat plain is a kilometer-long ridge that has been identified as the city wall. In places, it rises up to eight meters. 

Future excavations will not happen any time soon, as the site sits so close to the Iran-Iraqi border and the Persian Gulf. Jebel Khayyaber, the modern name of the settlement, is located 50 kilometers from Basra, Iraq.

Alexander moved to Abu Dhabi

The recent opening of the Louvre Abu Dhabi has been widely advertised in the media and although this is far from the usual tourist destination it certainly seems to be worth the visit.

It is clear that the name “Louvre” is a temporary publicity for which Abu Dhabi paid $1.15 billion and their agreement will run for the next thirty years. During the first ten years of its life, the Louvre Abu Dhabi will receive artwork on loan from four Parisian museums, the Louvre, the Musée Quai d’Orsay, the Bibliothèque Nationale and the Centre Pompidou. This should allow them to constitute their own collection in the meantime.

Among the six hundred or so artifacts on display (half of them coming from France), I was pleasantly surprised to find a statue of Alexander the Great. It is the bust of Alexander Inopos from around 100 BC recovered from Delos. However, some scholars disagree and believe it to represent Mithradates VI who was a great admirer of Alexander and tried to emulate him.

I like to see this statue as a homecoming of Alexander in the Persian Gulf. So far, there is no knowledge that he himself ever went as far as the Strait of Hormuz near today’s Abu Dhabi, but his admiral Nearchus certainly passed that narrow when he brought his fleet from the Indus River to Babylon. As far as we know, Alexander himself sailed from the gulf up the Tigris River all the way to Opis (read: The Conquests of Alexander the Great by Waldemar Heckel).

Alexander’s presence in the Gulf area is generally overlooked. We know, for instance that he founded the city of Alexandria-on-the-Tigris, also called Antiochia-in-Susiana or Charax Spasinou-on-the-Tigris at the spot where the river emptied in the Persian Gulf some 2,500 years ago (see: Excavations at Alexandria-on-the-Tigris). There are traces of Alexander’s presence at Failaka, an island off the coast of modern Kuwait (see: Alexander’s Outpost in the Gulf).

On the Iraq border archaeological digs are a minefield – in every sense

On the Iraq border, archaeological digs are a minefield, is the title of a highly interesting article written by Mary Shepperson in November 2017 and updated as recently as 14 February 2018.

The modern war between Iran and Iraq ended some thirty years ago, and the conflict and its consequences have been pushed to the back of our memory and replaced by more recent (and apparently more dramatic) wars. But the fact remains that in the spring of 1987, 60,000 Iranians and 20,000 Iraqis were killed during the siege of Basra.

The reason I am pulling this out is that Mary Shepperson is looking at the damaged site of Charax Spasinou in the province of Basra, Iraq, which was founded by Alexander the Great in 324 BC as Alexandria-on-the-Tigris.

Excavations at that site are far more complex than I made appear in my previous blog, Excavations at Alexandria-on-the-Tigris, and the damage that was done during the conflicts of the 20^th and 21^st centuries is beyond description. This is well illustrated by the drone picture published in the said article:

In fact, the best thing to do is to read the full article by clicking on the link at the start of this page. It once again shows how little consideration people, entire populations, even have for their past. I believe every one of us can draw his/her own conclusions.

Excavations at Alexandria-on-the Tigris also known as Charax Spasinou

Alexandria-on-the-Tigris, also known as Antiochia-in-Susiana and Charax Spasinou-on-the-Tigris, is one of the lesser-known cities founded by Alexander the Great in 324 BC. Pliny in the 1^st century AD was still aware of this important harbor, although by then it was called Charax on the coast of the Persian Gulf at the point where the Tigris and the Karun rivers met. Today, it is much harder to pinpoint this once grand port that served as an entrepȏt for Alexander because, since that time, so much silt and alluvium has been carried down by both rivers that it is nearly impossible to find traces of this last of Alexander’s Alexandrias.

[The wastelands of Charax Spasinou today, coated in salt and the remains of military hardware. Photograph: Mary Shepperson]

It seems that Alexander settled a number of his veterans in special quarters of Alexandria-on-the-Tigris, which he named Pella after his own hometown.

Geophysical surveys revealed that entire districts were present and waiting to be explored, and soon enough, archaeological excavations revealed the presence of monumental buildings. It became clear that the heyday of Alexandria-on-the-Tigris occurred in the 1^st and 2^nd centuries AD and not during Alexander’s lifetime. Since the city was founded just one year before the death of the King of Asia, it may not have had the necessary support, more so since his successors had other things on their minds, like their own rise to power. It was only when the Seleucids had secured their empire halfway through the 2^nd century BC that their attention turned to rebuilding the city that had been severely damaged by repeated flooding. This is how it gained its new name Antiochia-in-Susiana.

The major incentive came from King Hyspaosines, who ruled from 127 to 124 BC after having functioned as a satrap earlier on under Antiochus IV Epiphanes, king of the waning Seleucid Empire. Hyspaosines founded an empire of his own, Characene, that flourished thanks to his naval superiority in the Gulf. At this time, the island of Failaka was attached as well (see: Alexander's outpost in the Gulf). Charax survived, changing hands to the Romans, who in turn were expelled by the Persian Sassanids in the third century AD. The last traces of occupation have been dated to 715 AD when it was part of the Umayyad Empire, after which Charax was finally abandoned.

For centuries, Charax was a turntable on the trade routes to Syria and the Mediterranean after passing through famous stops like Petra and Palmyra. Here, the goods were transhipped from those ships sailing in from Arabia and even India in exchange for those products traveling in opposite directions. In its heyday, Charax spread over 5 km2 and was home to a large cosmopolitan population. Alexander certainly had a good eye when it came to building new cities!

Over the centuries, the coastline has changed dramatically due to the heavy silt deposits of the Tigris and Karun emptying into the Persian Gulf. Mud has covered most of Charax’s remains, leaving only vague hints of its once so massive ramparts. Moreover, this area is now littered with debris from the recent conflict between Iran and Iraq. This is certainly not making the task any easier for any archaeologist daring enough to start digging in this utterly desolate flat.

[Magnetometry results from Charax Spasinou Photograph: Mary Shepperson]

Modern technology was brought to the rescue; at least, that was the plan. A small team of geophysicists spent nine days trudging up and down the site with their magnetometers, hoping to find some remnants of this once-so-glorious city, while at the same time, they could test the possible presence of landmines. The results of their arduous efforts were beyond expectations as they were able to discover the Hellenistic gridded layout of the city and pinpoint many of the monumental buildings. Unfortunately, you don’t always get what you expect. In this case, the monumental buildings turned out to be mere layers of ephemeral phases, and excavations were hampered by “inconsiderably-placed” dead bodies, while what seemed to be a large city wall turned out to be nothing but a large ditch lined with pots. Test trenches have so far yielded only some pottery and a few badly weathered coins.

Alexandria-on-the-Tigris, Failaka, and other towns in the Gulf area are clearly not going to disclose their treasures anytime soon, for it will take many seasons of thorough excavations to get some indication about Alexander’s legacy in modern Iraq, yet again hampered by the recent war situation.