Shushtar’s waterworks in Iran

Lately, pictures of the Shushtar waterworks in Central Iran keep circulating, underscoring that they are registered as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. More importantly, they have been dated back to the 5^th century BC and were probably initiated by King Darius the Great. 

[Picture from Wikipedia]

Localizing Shushtar on a map is one thing, but linking it to a known city or river is another matter. Then I read that the water was diverted from the Karun River using manmade canals dug through the natural rock. 

The Karun River rings a bell as I spent a night in the city of Ahwaz, not far from Susa, and could see this river from my hotel room (see: The Zagros Mountains and the Persian Gates in Alexander’s footsteps). The memorable city of Susa (see: Susa with its unique glazed brick walls), where Alexander organized his lavish wedding ceremony in 324 BC, lies no more than three kilometers away from the Karun River (Pasitigris in antiquity), and joins the Tigris River further south. In those days, these waterways were navigable and a priceless connection to the Persian Gulf. 

The above makes me believe that Alexander must have seen this intricate water complex. Thanks to a systems of qanats (see: The qanats, one of the greatest inventions of mankind), the river provided water for domestic use and irrigation of the surrounding agricultural fields. Surprisingly, the main crop was sugar cane. 

Over the centuries, the infrastructure was improved with more canals, tunnels, dams, and watermills. In the early years of the Sassanid Empire, starting in 224 AD, Shushtar occupied an island in the middle of the Karun River and became the summer capital of the kings. The city was reachable from the east, west, and south through entrance gates and bridge crossings. 

Three large dams were built by the Sassanids between 224 and 651 AD. They regulated the river and the manmade channel’s flow to supply water to the city and cultural land around it. 

The largest dam, constructed by Roman soldiers and engineers, was about 500 meters long. It dates from 260 AD, shortly after the glorious victory of King Shapur I over the Roman Emperor Valerian (see: Sassanid reliefs tell a story of their own). The dam was the core structure of the Shushtar Water System. It is said to be the most eastern Roman construction of its kind. The bridge with Roman arches supported the road that led from Pasargadae to Ctesiphon, the capital of the Sassanid Empire (now in Iraq). 

To prevent erosion, the riverbed above the dam was paved with large slabs tied together with iron clamps. 

[Picture from Tehran Times]

The pictures of Shushtar reveal how impressive these waterworks were. Later Arab conquerors defined Shushtar as one of the wonders of the world.

About decrees and multilingual inscriptions

In antiquity, news was carried by word of mouth, but legal matters and other important information were cut in stone and placed in a conspicuous spot for everyone to see. 

The majority of inscriptions are Decrees of which I can only mention a selection. 

At the Acropolis Museum, there is a stele with decrees for the construction of the temple and altar of Nike by Kallikrates, for the reorganization of the cult, and for the salary of the priestess of the goddess dated 427-424 BC (side A) and 424-423 BC (side B).

Also a stele with a series of Decrees by which the Athenians bestowed economic, commercial, and military privileges on their ally Methone in Pieria. 

It shows the goddess Athena shaking hands with perhaps Artemis, dated 430-423 BC.

Very broken but still readable is the Athenian Decree honoring Neapolis (modern Kavala) for its support in the war against Thasos and its constant commitment to her. 

In the upper right corner, we recognize the goddess Athena extending her hand towards another figure, probably the goddess Parthenos of Neapolis, dated from 410-409 BC.

A very elegant stele with a horse and an olive wreath carries an inscription in which the Athenians honored King Alcetas of Epirus for his help during their military expedition to Corcyra (modern Corfu) in 373-372 BC.

And finally, still at the Acropolis Museum, there is the long Decree of Chalkis on the island of Euboia in which the islanders were forced to swear loyalty to Athens after failing in their revolt of 446-445 BC. 

The people of Chalkis could punish their own citizens, except in cases that involved death, exile, or the loss of their rights as citizens, where the power of Athens prevailed.

The National Archaeological Museum in Athens has its own rich collection of Decrees. A good example is the honorary inscription from Piraeus dating from 347-346 BC. 

The stele honors the three sons of Leukon (depicted), king of the Cimmerian Bosporus, thanking them for services rendered to the people of Athens and allowing them to import grain free of duty.

A particular stele from 355-354BC was found near the Monument of Lysicrates in Athens. 

It honors Philiskos, son of Lykos of Sestos in the Thracian Hellespont as a public guest and benefactor of Athens. In 356 BC, Philiskos had warned the Athenians of the hostile presence of the fleet of Byzantium that threatened the city’s grain supply.

The Eleusis Museum, in turn, exhibits a decree providing for the construction of a footbridge across Lake Rheitoi on the Sacred Way from Athens to Eleusis, dated 421 BC.

Two fragments from an unidentified monument carry a Royal Decree of Alexander, which defines the limits of ‘land’, meaning the agricultural area that Philippi supervised. 

The (partial) inscription dates from 336-334 BC, just before Alexander started his campaign East. It is kept at the Museum of Philippi.

On a different level, there is a Decree sanctioning the people and city of Iasos for conspiring against King Mausolos of Caria. 

It is kept at the Louvre in Paris and dates to 370-350 BC. 

 

The Foundation Decree of Cyrene in North Africa is a covenant between the citizens of Cyrene in ca. 322 BC and those of their mother-state of Thera. 

The exact purpose is uncertain, but it is thought that the citizens of Thera, including the early settlers of 631 BC, were granted the same rights and freedoms as the Cyreneans, even though Cyrene was wealthier than Thera at the time.

Of another level is, for instance, the trilingual stele from Letoon in the Xanthos Valley found near the Temple of Apollo. It holds a public Decree authorizing the cult of the deities and establishing the provisions for its officers.
The Decree is written in Lycian, Greek, and Aramaic, which are not verbatim translations of each other. Each version contains information that is not translated into the two other tongues. The Aramaic text with 27 lines is the shortest, followed by Greek with 35 lines, and Lycian with 51 lines. Useless to point out that this stele helped to decipher the peculiar Lycian language. This unique document can be seen at the Fethiye Museum.

The story of this stele reminds us of the Rosetta Stone, which helped to decipher the Egyptian hieroglyphs and Demotic script using the Greek version carved on the same stone. The text is a Decree issued by King Ptolemy V of Egypt in 196 BC and was key to deciphering the hitherto unknown hieroglyphic signs. 

Trilingual inscriptions are not isolated cases. In ancient Persia, it was a common practice to leave inscriptions in three languages to make sure everyone in the vast empire would be notified: Elamite, Old Persian, and Babylonian. The best-known lines are carved on the cliff wall of Bisutun, where Darius I celebrates his victory over Gaumata and eight more pretenders to the throne in 518 BC, as represented above.

The trilingual inscriptions on the Palace walls of Pasargadae and Persepolis are mainly continuous reminders of the power of the King of Kings who ruled by the grace of Ahuramazda, repeating their title of Great King. These were defined in full by Cyrus the Great: Great King, King of Persia, King of Anshan, King of Media, King of Babylon, King of Sumer and Akkad, and King of the Four Corners of the World.

Perhaps the most remarkable panels are set in the spectacular landscape close to the fast-running mountain river and lovely waterfalls of Ganj Nameh, some five kilometers southwest of Hamadan. As is customary, each text starts by praising Ahuramazda and continues describing the lineage and deeds of Darius I on the left panel and his son Xerxes on the right. It reads: "The Great God [is] Ahuramazda, greatest of all the gods, who created the earth and the sky and the people; who made Xerxes king, and outstanding king as outstanding ruler among innumerable rulers; I [am] the great king Xerxes, king of kings, king of lands with numerous inhabitants, king of this vast kingdom with far-away territories, son of the Achaemenid monarch Darius." (see: The Bisutun relief of King Darius I).

I’d like to close with the impressive Monument of Opramoas in Rhodiapolis. He was a great benefactor who contributed lavishly to the reconstruction of most Lycian cities after the devastating earthquake of 141 AD. He must have been terribly wealthy, for it seems that every single Lycian city mentioned his name in thanks. The construction blocks of the Monument listing his good deeds were strewn over a wide area until, in 2016, archaeologists managed to sort them out and reconstruct the walls of his Monument (see: The Monument in honor of Opramoas of Rhodiapolis is taking shape).

Its text, the longest ever found in Lycia or perhaps even in all of Anatolia, contains 12 letters Opramoas exchanged with the Roman Emperors and Antoninus Pius in particular, 19 letters to the Roman Procurator, and 33 various documents related to the Lycian League. 

The reasons for leaving an inscription widely vary, and the list is endless. I stopped at a few of the most telling examples that caught my attention.

Persia's Historical Memory of Alexander

Robbert Bosschart has published an Updated Version 2025 to his book All Alexander’s Women, which deserves special attention.

Of particular interest is this newly reworked Chapter, Persia's Historical Memory of Alexander, where the author focuses on the Persian side of history. The Achaemenids did not have a counterpart for the Greek writers and chroniclers and relied instead on the verbal transmission of Alexander’s life and deeds by way of mouth by their storytellers.

This new information is too good to be kept hidden in the dust of time, and I am very happy to share hereafter the most important information together with some of the magnificent illustrations. 

Persia's Historical Memory of Alexander

For Persia’s own first-hand memories of Alexander perforce we have to rely on oral history: all the published testimonies available today originated from texts of local storytellers, later written down and ‘enriched’ by scribes, poets or translators.

...

Early Persian/Arab authors who included history themes in their writings, based their texts both on oral history accounts and on written documents. From Umara in the 7th century AD up to Masudí in the 10th century they used all sorts of sources, including the first Arabic translations of the pseudo-Kallisthenes’ Alexander Romance.

As times went by, the most popular versions of Alexander’s exploits became more and more sensational and sexy, big adventure tales usually known as the Iskandar-Nama, the Book of Alexander. As a result, their reports about Alexander’s reign are quite entertaining literature, but in historical accuracy ‘few and far between’.

Therefore it is interesting to find that the only text with specifically Persian memories of Alexander’s life and deeds is, again, that of a simple storyteller. Or not exactly ‘simple’, for Abu Taher al-Tarsusí describes himself as «a compiler of histories and narrator of mysterious facts». The saga that Tartusi published under the title of Darab-Nama (‘Tale of Darius’) was a written version of an ancient folk story. From the 12th century AD on it became very popular.

The oldest manuscript we have is dated to 1580 AD, in an edition illuminated with precious miniatures made in India for the Mughal emperor Akbar. Painstaking research on this and other, later versions finally yielded in 1965 the definitive edition of the Darab-Nama. In his introduction, Professor Zabiholla Safa underlined that the text is based on oral source material that is much older than the Arabic translations of the Alexander Romance. In other words, the Darab-Nama reflects Persia’s own historical memory. 

Its title is rather misleading, because only 386 of the 1159 known pages concern Persia’s glory years under the revered figures of Darius the Elder and his successor. But the bulk of the text, 773 pages long, displays an elaborate tale of how his fictional granddaughter, princess ‘Buran-dokht’, first opposes, but finally permits Alexander’s conquest of Persia. 

A unique characteristic of the Darab-Nama is that here, Alexander does not get the brilliant leading role. That privilege is reserved solely for the purely Persian personage Buran-dokht. As long as the story takes place in Persia, Alexander is even portrayed as a hotheaded, at times stupid or cowardly, and always vulnerable young man, with no special military talents. More than once, Buran-dokht has to come and save him. Only after the story has moved to foreign lands, Alexander is allowed to become a brilliant warrior and wise statesman.

The Iskandar-Nama became a popular (and often hilarious) 

adventure tale with lots of action and sex

Of course, like many other works of oral literature, the Darab-Nama has been compiled over the centuries by successive storytellers. This makes it even more impressive that in Tarsusí’s final version, the text still manages to retain Persia’s popular memory of three historical facts concerning Alexander. 

The most extensive of the three is the (re)appearance of a goddess from a legendary past, Anahita. Time and again she intervenes to promote and protect Alexander’s kingship. To begin with, as Nahid, Alexander’s secret mother, who succeeds in placing him on the throne of the Western empire called “Rum“. Then she pops up briefly as queen Aban-dokht, who becomes his lover, and presents him with the capital of Persia, Estakhr. Finally she shines forth on hundreds of pages as the divine Buran-dokht, who ends up marrying him and setting him on the throne of the empire. Which means that even in islamic Iran, popular folklore still remembered –from 1500 years back!– the goddess Anahita, her role as Giver of Kingship, and her blessing for Alexander.

The second historical fact reported about Alexander in the Darab-Nama refers to his double Persian marriage «according to core royal usage»; that is, the multiple political marriages practised by Cyrus the Great and Darius the Great in the 6th century BC. This is told as follows:

«Buran-dokht took Alexander by the hand, made him sit on the throne and saluted him as King of Iran. Then they sent messengers and letters from Estakhr to all the provinces to announce that Buran-Dokht and Alexander had married. 

The gates of the treasuries were opened, gold was distributed profusely, and with both of them installed on their thrones on equal footing, they had seven months of celebrations. In accordance with the core royal usage, Alexander was also given in marriage the daughter of King Shahush».

So here Alexander marries a daughter of king Darab and a daughter of a king called Shahush. History tells us that in Susa, in 324 BC, Alexander married princess Barsine/Stateira, daughter of Darius III, and the princess Parysatis, last daughter of a king we know as Artaxerxes III Ochus, but who was called ‘Vahush’ in Old Persian. So the «daughter of King Shahush» in the Darab-Nama evidently is the daughter of Shah Vahush, as Artaxerxes III was known to his court.

The Persian warrior-queen Buran-dokht repeatedly 

saves Alexander from his enemies. 

Here she defeats the Indian king Poros, when she grabs 

his war elephant by the trunk and overturns him.

(Miniature illustrating a Darab Nama manuscript of 1720 AD, 

now in the Statsbibliothek of Berlin)

The third popular memory of a historical fact embedded in this saga recounts Alexander’s decision to promote mass-marriages for the better integration of conquerors and conquered into one realm; a theme that takes up some 20 pages in the Darab-Nama. This is how the story goes:

Alexander and his army happen upon an island of women, and thousands of these invade the camp «searching for men». Alexander suspects that in reality they may be hostile, but soon understands they only want to make love —and then fears that his own men will “go berserk”, causing even worse problems. So he allows his wise chancellor –whose name is given as Plato— to apply a miracle-working solution.

Plato calls upon the women and asks them: «By the will of God, and so be all the Angels your witnesses, will you give yourselves in legal union to the men that will enter your city?» They agree. The storyteller concludes: «When the women were trying to seduce the men, it was the work of the Devil; but as soon as they were conveniently and legally married, it became God’s work, and Alexander could no longer be held responsible for any problems arising of their arrival».

Clearly, this is a remembrance of the mass-marriages (in reality, the legalization of de facto marriages) that Alexander organised in parallel with his double wedding at Susa in 324 BC. Out of his own purse, as Arrian reports in VII, 4, 8, he paid dowries for the Persian and other Oriental women who had taken up with his officers and soldiers, so they could be legally married.

The list totalled some 10,000 dowries, and the classical sources say that Alexander disbursed over 10,000 talents of silver for them; an amount equivalent to 150 million dollars of today. It is understandable that these marriages, converting thousands of concubines into legal wives, left an indelible memory among the Persians. 

Just as important was Alexander’s pledge that he would care for their offspring. Arrian notes in passing that he promised his veterans that their children from Oriental partners “will be educated as Makedonians”. But Diodoros tells more: he registers (in his Book XVII, 110, 3) that Alexander has set up a specific fund and appointed the necessary teachers to ensure that the 10,000 children his men have had with “women who were taken in war” will be educated “as is the right of free men”.

Alexander and his wise chancellor Plato receive Queen Sabaterah, 

who reigns over an island where only women live, 

and they all want sex with men. 

Plato will ensure that they become legal spouses.

(Miniature from the 1720 AD manuscript of the Darab-Nama)

In Book XVIII, Diodoros adds that Alexander had decided to apply his integration policy on a much broader scale:

«…he intended to establish cities and to transplant populations from Asia to Europe and in the opposite direction from Europe to Asia, in order to bring the largest continents to common unity and to friendly kinship by means of intermarriages and family ties».

Alexander’s intermarriage policy found lasting approval in Persia, as shown by the positive comment of the storyteller in the Darab-Nama on the “miraculous solution” devised by Plato. In fact, all three of Tarsusí’s historical storylines, repeated again and again in the saga, must have met with notable approval of his Persian audience. After all, no storyteller makes a living by irritating his public.

Around the year 1000 AD, the prominent court poet Farrukhi Sistaní affirmed: “The story of Alexander’s exploits and his travels has found listeners everywhere, and everybody knows those tales by heart”. So Tarsusí and the storytellers before him had to take into account that among their public, there always would be people who remembered some previous version of the Alexander Romance.

As a case in point, their public in Ghazna could perfectly well remember an Eskandar-Nama compiled around 1015 AD out of stock tales of Persian storytellers that simply copied episodes from the pseudo-Kallisthenes Romance, with some fancy (and errors) added. In that text, Alexander is the undisputed hero of the saga. But to entertain the audience, this Eskandar-nama turns him into a comical figure who not only conquers kingdoms, but also women galore. He seduces princesses, amazons, warrior beauties, servant girls, widow queens, noble dames and even fairy queens (!) far and wide. With the result that this Alexander suffers all the problems of a bumbling man with too many wives and/or concubines.

When Alexander is listening to the deathbed pleas of king Darab, who begs him to treat his family well, Roxana makes her appearance in this Eskandar-Nama. “She is still young, you could marry her,” suggests Darab. (Here, Roxana is said to be not a daughter, but one of the wives of the Persian king.) Alexander answers hastily that this is a petition he will not agree to:

“God forbid that I should desire your wife, for I already have four wives, all free women, plus 40 concubines from here and from Greece.”

Roxana is an unavoidable heroine in all the Oriental translations of Romance episodes. So she also has to appear in the Darab-Nama. Well, more or less. When introducing his top star the princess Buran-dokht, Tarsusí takes the precaution of telling his public that «elsewhere she was also called Roshanak».

In other words, despite the fact that the following 773 pages prove without a shadow of doubt that his majestic Buran-dokht has nothing in common with the insignificant Roxana, Tarsusí still thought it wise to bow –if only once– to the Alexander Romance.

For my comments on Robbert Bosschart’s Third Edition, please refer to my earlier blog post: All Alexander's Women.

How the Greeks were perceived in Asia

We are so used to looking through the eyes of the West that only a few of us are aware that among the Persians and Indians, the Greeks go under different names. 

Ever since the reign of Darius I, the Greeks were called Yauna or Yona, as documented in the inscription of Bisutun from c.520 BC. In the 5th century BC, Herodotus mentions the Yaunas in his Histories, linking them mainly to the Ionians, who lived along the coastline of Asia Minor. The historian also specifies that under Persian rule, the Ionian Greeks constituted one tax district that included the Pamphylians, Lycians, Magnesians, Aeolians, and Carians. 

Yauna may simply be a transliteration of the Greek for ‘Ionians,’ and the name surprisingly appears in Sanskrit literature and Sri Lanka’s Mahavamsa (historical chronicle) – a very long way from home! 

The name also has a corrupted form with the Assyrians, who called the Greeks Iawanu, and the Babylonians used Yaman or Yamanaya. Nowadays, Turkish, Persian, and Arabic languages use Yunan, which clearly derives from the ancient Persian Yauna. 

The Persians, as we know, did not stop their conquest of Greece at the coast of modern Turkey. They soon mounted an expedition to conquer Macedonia with its rich gold and silver mines. 

An inscription to that effect can be seen on Darius’ tomb at Naqsh-e Rustam, where the Macedonians are called the “Greeks with sun hats” based on their typical headwear. 

The same Macedonians threatened Persia in 340 BC when Philip II besieged Perinthus, a vital point on the Hellespont. In the end, Alexander the Great crossed into Asia and conquered Persia. How much of this campaign has been recorded in their literature remains vague. It is impossible that a well-organized civilization like Persia’s has not kept written records. Could we assume they are either still hidden or have not yet been deciphered? 

Alexander and his Macedonians marched on to Central Asia and even India. Ancient sources use the word Yonaka when referring to the later Graeco-Bactrians and Indo-Greeks, who became kingdoms in their own right. They were the result of those veterans left in the regions by Alexander, who built a civilization based on Greek principles. They rose to power in the late 4th century BC and ruled until the first decade of the 1st century AD. 

Yavana is the word that lived on in the medieval literature of India. It was generally used to define foreigners, but until approximately 1000 AD, they meant the Greeks. 

As always, there is so much more in a word than we assume at first sight. In this case, it ends up being a story on its own.

Alexander in a dream of Nebuchadnezzar

What’s a dream, one would ask, but in antiquity, dreams were taken very seriously. Kings and those who could afford it would have a priest or a seer to interpret them. 

It so happens that the Prophet Daniel resided at the court of King Nebuchadnezzar and was able to explain his strange vision. 

Nebuchadnezzar was king of Babylon from 605 until 562 BC. He led a series of successful campaigns, including the conquest of Jerusalem, where he plundered the famous Temple of Solomon and took the people of Judah into captivity. Among the prisoners was the Prophet Daniel, whom  Nebuchadnezzar invited to stay at his court. 

At first, Nebuchadnezzar called in his own diviners, magicians, enchanters, and Chaldean astronomers and astrologers to clarify his dream, but they were unable to offer any explanation. Then Daniel was led before the king. 

Daniel confirmed that in his vision, Nebuchadnezzar had seen an immense statue whose radiance was spectacular and frightening at the same time. Its head was made of gold, the chest and arms of silver, the lower back and thighs of bronze; the legs were made of iron, and the feet were a mixture of iron and clay. As the king looked at the statue in his dream, a stone hit the feet and pulverized the iron and clay. The entire statue made of gold, silver, and bronze was crushed and collapsed in the process. 

Following this introduction, Daniel explained the meaning of this unusual dream. Nebuchadnezzar, who conquered the world (as considered in his days), is the gold head. After him, another kingdom would rise, lesser than his. Then again, a third kingdom, a bronze one, would dominate the world. The ensuing fourth kingdom would be hard as iron, like iron that pulverizes and crunches everything. Like the iron, this last kingdom would pulverize and crush them all. 

The feet partially made of iron and partially of clay as seen by Nebuchadnezzar, meant a divided empire. It would be strong as iron. However, the toes made of a mixture of iron and clay meant that they would be strong in one part and weak in another. As iron and clay could not be bonded, the people could not unite either. 

The empires to succeed Nebuchadnezzar’s are not being named, nor are the names of the kings to come. Scholars have discussed this endlessly, but a very plausible sequence seems to be that the second silver empire would be that of Darius I the Great, followed by the third bronze Persian Empire the largest kingdom that ever existed in antiquity. The fourth kingdom was the Greek rule started under Alexander the Great that fell apart after his untimely death and was split into four kingdoms that fought each other and never bonded together (the Diadochi). 

How and why Daniel was capable of explaining this vision of King Nebuchadnezzar and how Daniel’s explanation was pasted onto the future kingdoms has been subject to endless discussions. But this is. after all, an entirely different matter, which I’ll not develop here.

Needles to say that the story comes from the Book of Daniel in the Old Testament.

About ancient seafarers

It never ceases to amaze me how far and wide ships in antiquity could travel. Those seafarers must have been very adventurous and determined to sail to unknown destinations. 

We are far more familiar with men like Vasco de Gama or Christopher Columbus discovering faraway lands than Egyptians leaving their hieroglyphs in Australia (The Gosford Glyphs in New South Wales). But for now, let us stay a little closer to home and trace some of the trade routes beyond the Mediterranean (see: The flooded remains of Kekova Island), skirting the southeastern coast of Africa, the southern part of the Arabic peninsula, and Southeast Asia. 

During his reign, Ptolemy II Philadelphus (283 to 246 BC) founded the port of Berenice or Baranis, named after his mother, Berenice I, on the west coast of the Red Sea. Over time, this city became an important trading center that was active along the east coast of Africa, Arabia, and faraway India (see: Link between Egypt and Gandhara under Ptolemy Philadelphus). 

A similar itinerary may have already existed in the days of Darius I, who built a canal between 522 and 486 BC that connected the Nile with the Red Sea (see: The Canal of the Pharaohs, the Suez Canal of antiquity). The foundation stone to mark the event was discovered in 1866 when the modern Suez Canal was constructed.

As mentioned briefly in the present post, the trading activities are based on the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, written by a Greek merchant from Alexandria between 40 and 55 AD. The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea has been discussed in detail by James Hancock in an article published in the World History Encyclopedia, which highlights the many trade routes and harbors used. The merchant’s diary is the earliest comprehensive insight into this extensive travel web. 

Once Egypt fell into Roman hands in 30 BC, trade through the ports of the Red Sea increased dramatically. The principal turnover harbors were Berenice and Myos Hormos, where the goods arrived on camel caravans from deeper inland. The ships unloaded their cargo in these same ports from where other caravans brought the incoming goods to Roman Alexandria on their return. 

Ships heading for Africa or India, known to leave between July and September, were steered through the middle of the Red Sea to avoid the dangerous coastline. Those heading for Africa passed the Horn of Africa and hugged the coast south to Rapta, near modern Dar es Salaam. This voyage took about two years to complete. The trade involved Egyptian linen, wine, glass, and metal artifacts to be exchanged for African ivory, tortoiseshell, myrrh, and frankincense. Thanks to the local traders doing business with India, the merchants could find cinnamon, Indian fabric, and fine muslin. 

[Picture from World History. PHGCPM (CC BY-SA)]

The ships bound for India stopped at the harbor of Aden and then at Qana on the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula (today’s Yemen), where they took advantage of the monsoon winds to sail across the Indian Ocean to India. Barbaricum was their first harbor near modern Karachi on the Indus River. Here, they unloaded their cargo of Egyptian linen, wine, glass vessels, silver and gold plates, frankincense, coral, and topaz. In exchange, they loaded cotton fabric, silk yarn, turquoise, lapis lazuli, indigo, nard (a kind of spikenard), and other herbs like costus and lyceum (Greek lykion). As the Romans’ confidence grew, the sailors ventured further south to Muziris on the Malabar Coast and hence to Sri Lanka. The Tamils of the island traded their pepper for gold. Black pepper seemed very popular as it constituted about three-quarters of the homebound cargo! The mainland Indians gladly offered ivory and pearls, whereas silk and semi-precious stones were brought in from as far as the Valley of the Ganges and the Himalayas. 

It is astonishing how all this knowledge and trade faded away in the Middle Ages when men like Vasco da Gama and other intrepid seafarers had to rediscover it.

An introduction to the Scythians

The Scythians are mentioned in different contexts throughout my blog, but they have never been discussed as a people. 

[Picture from World History Encyclopedia.  A map illustrating the expansion of the warrior nomad Scythians between the 7th and 3rd century BC across Asia and Europe. (Simeon Netchev - CC BY-NC-SA)]

We have to go back to Herodotus in the 5th century BC, who mentions the Scythians for the first time. The author concentrates on Ukraine, although his description might well extend to the tribes in Central Asia. When talking about the Scythians, we refer to many different tribes roaming the steppes north of the “civilized” world. Their habitat stretched roughly from the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea (north of Persia) to Central Asia and the desert of Mongolia. At this far easterly end, the Chinese protected themselves from Scythian invasions by building their famous Great Wall. 

Generally living in small bands, they attacked the cities and towns situated south of their extensive east-west frontier. After a more or less sudden devastating incursion, they would withdraw with their booty into their vast nomadic Eurasian steppe lands. Over the years, some tribes settled as farmers, but they were not interested in founding cities of their own. 

In Central Asia and Persia, the Scythians were called Sacae as both tribes shared the same Indo-European language and lifestyle. These Sacae are called Skudat, which the Persians understood as Sakâ. The Greeks, in turn, used the name Skythes or Skythai. No wonder the Scythians show up so often in history under a different disguise. 

The Persians suffered repeated attacks from the Scythians, who, even shortly, dominated the Medes in the 7th century BC. They are also known to have played a significant role in the Sack of Nineveh in 612 BC. 

As a result of Miletus’ colonization, the Kingdom of the Bosporus emerged (see: The Kingdom of the Bosporus). It reached its peak between the 6th and the 3rd century BC. During that period, the new settlers maintained strong cultural and trade relations with the Scythians. Over the centuries, the kingdom with its capital of Panticapaeum became a melting pot of civilizations as the Greeks mingled with neighboring Pontic Scythians. 

An earlier blog, A cast helmet from Central Asia, discussed a helmet found near Maracanda, in the tomb of a Sacae leader. The technique of cast helmets was customary in China, which proves that these nomadic Scythians lived far to the east. This particular helmet dated from the 6th century BC and became obsolete afterward. 

The Massagetai tribe living near the Aral Sea was also Scythian. In 529 BC, Cyrus the Great attacked this tribe, ruled by Queen Tomyris. That happened after Cyrus’ negotiation to marry her failed. She bluntly refused to submit to him. As a result, the king attacked her and her tribe, and she died on the battlefield. 

The Scythians also successfully withstood Darius the Great’s attack at the beginning of the 5th century BC. Later that century, the Pontic Scythians took possession of Thrace. 

In the 5th century BC, the Odrysian Kingdom was founded – merely a union of more than forty tribes that turned Thracia into a powerful state. The Odrysians and the Scythians had reached peaceful relations through their inter-dynastic marriages, which led to establishing the border of their lands at the Danube River. Both peoples mingled and were generally recognized as Scythians. Their agreement, however, was not meant to last as, in the end, southern and central Thrace were divided among the Odrysian kings. Eventually, Philip II conquered their land in 340 BC. The Getae ruled the northeast section. 

Alexander attacked these Getae after his pursuit of the Triballians to the banks of the Danube River in 335 BC. The Triballians had sought refuge on an island. Instead of attacking them in that awkward position, Alexander decided to isolate them and go after the Getae on the other bank of the Danube. He managed to ferry 4,000 infantrymen and 1,500 cavalry across the wide river by night. No wonder the Getae were in shock when they woke up with this army on their land and fled to the hinterland (see: Crossing the Danube River). 

A noteworthy Odrysian Thracian is Sitalces. His true origins remain relatively obscure, but apparently, he was a prince, maybe even the son of King Cersobleptes of the Odrysian Thracians. He joined Alexander’s army and proved to be a competent commander who led the Thracian javelin men on more than one occasion. The Thracians appear again at the Battle of Gaugamela. They were placed with the main body of the Macedonian troops, under the command of Sitalces once again (see: Sitalces, commander of the Thracians). Sitalces was also one of the three generals who, on Alexander’s orders, executed Parmenion in Ecbatana (see: The Philotas Affair – Part II – His judgment and execution). 

Back in Central Asia, we should mention the story of a Scythian chief named Karthasis, who offered one of his daughters – most probably one of those warlike Scythian young women - in marriage to Alexander. The King declined, but the story may well have triggered the tale of the Amazons. 

In 329 BC, Alexander marched north to Cyropolis, a city founded by Cyrus the Great. But Cyropolis was situated about 10 km away from the Jaxartes River. Alexander felt that it didn’t serve his purpose, i.e., to protect the country against the nomads inhabiting the lands beyond the majestic river. He decided to build a city of his own, Alexandria-Eschate or Alexandria-the-Furthermost (Ultima), right on the banks of the Jaxartes – the location of today’s Khodjend in Tajikistan. Shortly after starting his project, a general revolt broke out, and the entire area exploded into armed resistance, making it clear that the Macedonians were not welcome. The Scythians on the opposite shore of the Jaxartes also grew furious. Consequently, Alexander set the crossing of the river in motion. He conceived a flotilla of large rafts made of stuffed leather tent covers, rigged together and covered with a sturdy platform. These rafts could carry a heavy contingent of men and even horses. Besides, Alexander equipped them with long-range catapults, a kind of machine the Scythians would discover for the first time.

When the Scythians recovered from their first shock and surprise, they played their favorite maneuver by riding and attacking in circles. Alexander threw in a mixed force of infantry and cavalry and successfully broke the circle, sending the Scythians to retreat after being hunted down by Alexander for several miles into the desert (see: Alexandria-Eschate and Cyropolis). 

The above gives insight into the Scythians' link between Greece, Persia, India, and China. It may somehow have laid the foundation of the Silk Road as a vast trade network. 

Although the Scythians have no written records, they left us substantial archaeological evidence of their high skills in metalwork. Monumental burial mounts across the Eurasian steppe reveal high-quality jewelry, weapons, vessels, horse harnesses, belts, and other decorative items, mostly made of gold. 

Inevitably, some of these Scythian tribes, such as the Pontic Scythians, settled as farmers, while others kept roaming the vast steppes from Mongolia to the Black Sea area. In the early Middle Ages, the most westerly tribes blended in and mixed with the early Slavs.