Aigai in Asia Minor

The name Aigai immediately brings the city in Macedonia to mind, which is also spelled Aegae. It seems, however, that there is another Aigai in the province of Manisa in Western Turkey.

[Picture from Inspirock - photo by Selim Rutbil]

The city is located on the valley that runs from Magnesia (modern Manisa) to Elaia, the ancient port of Pergamon. Aigai has been mentioned by Herodotus but had no great power. Although Alexander marched through the area, his presence has not been recorded either. His successor Seleucos is, however, known to have been honored with divine attributes in Aigai. During the later reign of Eumenes I, Aigai fell under the rule of the Attalids of Pergamon. It seems that the city’s layout closely resembles that of Pergamon, which is not surprising based on their common historical background. In the second century BC, Aigai was entirely rebuilt, and in 133 BC, it became part of the Roman Empire.

In 17 AD, the region was hit by a severe earthquake, and Tacitus tells us how twelve cities were destroyed overnight. Among the affected towns, Sardes and Magnesia are mentioned but also Aigai. In any case, Emperor Tiberius contributed to their reconstruction. 

So far, the buildings exposed by the archaeologists all date back to that period, just after the mid-2^nd century AD. Excavations have revealed a 1.5 km long city wall. On the eastern side of Aigai, a three-story high indoor market has been uncovered. Its walls still stand up to 11 meters tall over a length of 82 meters. The upper floor of this overall Hellenistic building was renovated in Roman times. A Roman Macellum used by butchers and fishermen alike has also been excavated. The inside floor was made of stones placed on lime mortar to hold the water in which the fish could be stored safely. Also, two separate channels were unearthed, one that carried fresh water inside and one that transported the waste water outside.

[Picture from Inspirock - photo by Oran Onal]

Several other buildings have been identified as well, like the Agora and its west Stoa, a theater, a Bouleuterion, a Stadium, a Gymnasium, and three temples, one of which has been identified as belonging to Demeter. They all date back to the mid-2^nd century AD. Aigai was eventually abandoned in the 3^rd century AD.

About five kilometers outside the city proper, the remains of a sanctuary dedicated to Apollo were found. It stood on the banks of the river that ran around the ruins. It can easily be spotted because three monolithic columns and the six-meter-high cella walls are still standing. It has been dated to the 1^st century BC.

A Graeco-Roman Temple in Armenia

Finding a good-looking Graeco-Roman temple in Armenia is quite a surprise for it is the only remaining such building in that country.

[Picture by Vahag851]

The Temple of Garni dates probably from 77 AD and based on the Greek inscription that has been recovered, it was supposedly built by King Tiridates I of Armenia. Originally, it was dedicated to the sun god Mihr (from the Zoroastrian mythology and related to Mithra) and in the early days of Christianity in the fourth century, it became the summer residence of Khosrovidukht, the sister of Tiridates III – not bad!

Unfortunately, the construction collapsed in 1679 when the region was hit by a severe earthquake and it was only about one hundred years ago that the ruins were discovered. Between 1969 and 1975, the remains were sorted out and put back together to become the tourist attraction we see today.

The Temple of Garni was mentioned by Tacitus as belonging to a fortress overlooking the valley of the Azat River. The location was strategically very important as it was part of the defence of the Ararat Plain. Beside the temple, there are remains of a Roman bath including a mosaic floor with Greek inscription and a royal summer palace.

As to the Greek inscription belonging to the temple, scholars do not agree on the exact translation as the text has been damaged (for details, see Wikipedia).

There is, however, an other theory stating that this was not a temple but a mausoleum built around 175 AD. This idea is based on similar Graeco-Roman constructions in Asia Minor like the Nereid Monument in Xanthos and the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus; and also the fact that it is surrounded by several tombs from that same period. When Armenia converted to Christianity, pagan temples were systematically destroyed and it would be odd to find this Temple of Garni as the sole survivor. As a grave, the construction was more plausible to have survived.

Whatever the theory or the origins of this Temple of Garni, it is a very pleasant sanctuary to look at and still makes you wonder about the Hellenistic influence in that part of the world.

Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus by Justin

The full title of this book is: Justin, Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeus Trogus, Volume I, Books 11-12, Alexander the Great. Translated and appendices by J.C. Yardley. Commentary by Waldemar Heckel (ISBN 0-19-814908-5).

The content of this book is far from straightforward, although, in the end, one could simply say this is a history of Alexander the Great. But …

The complexity starts with the authors. Marcus Junianus Justinus, Justin in short, probably lived in the 2^nd/3^rd century AD. He is said to have arrived in Rome around 200 AD, where he came to know the 44 books called the Philippic Histories written by a certain Trogus. Pompeius Trogus was a prominent historian from Gallia Narbonesis, probably from Vaison-la-Romaine. Justin decided that Trogus’ history was far too voluminous and wrote his own abridged version. As a consequence, the precious original History of Trogus slowly but surely vanished.

Trogus’ name, however, survives among the great Latin historians and is mentioned together with Livy, Sallust, and Tacitus. It has been established that he was influenced by Livy and that Curtius Rufus, in turn, was influenced by Trogus. A small world, it seems.

Unfortunately, accuracy was not one of Justin’s strong points and he was not very concerned about his sources or the chronology of the events, this last point being also a weak point in Trogus’ account.

Justin’s Books 11 and 12 deal with Alexander the Great and as announced in the present title, it is this section that has been translated by J.C. Yardley – in a mere 27 pages. The great question remains: which elements come from Trogus and which were added or interpreted later on by Justin? This is more often than not an impossible task, but Heckel’s commentary tries to sort this out. He analyses every sentence and every word in a very meticulous and precise way using all possible ancient sources and consulting an enormous bibliography of later authors which are all referenced. This commentary is in fact so extensive and detailed that one could easily find all the available books ever written about Alexander the Great. By reading only the commentary, one acquires an excellent account of Alexander’s campaigns as seen by so many different scholars over the centuries.

The Introduction to this Epitome gives useful background information about Trogus and Justin, set in their own time-frame and the book concludes with a couple of very useful Appendices.

This is not exactly bedtime reading but a very thorough analysis of the massive literature ever written about Alexander the Great.

Could Alexander have known the Garamantes?

It never ceases to amaze me how much people in antiquity knew about other civilizations far beyond their own borders and apparent areas of communication. We in Western Europe like to keep our attention centered around the Mediterranean countries, where we are aware of seafarers crossing back and forth for eons. We need to learn more about what the Persians, with their repeated invasions, added to our daily lives. Still, we definitely know that Alexander the Great opened up the Eastern world to us as much as he brought Asia in touch with our civilization, which all contributed to what went down in history as Hellenistic.

When I visited the Archaeological Museum of Tripoli in Libya, my guide pointed proudly towards (primarily copies of) petroglyphs from the Libyan Desert made by the Garamantes. They lived in the Fezzan area in the southern Sahara, where they created their own kingdom. It was a Berber population that prospered from about 500 BC to 700 AD, mainly because of their clever building of "foggaras," i.e., a network of underground tunnels and shafts by which fossil water was led to the desert surface from a limestone layer buried deep under the desert sands which in the process created fertile lands and oasis.

The Garamantes are mentioned for the first time by Herodotus. He describes them as a great nation that herded cattle, farmed dates, and hunted the Ethiopians from four-horse chariots. Tacitus talks about their raids on Roman settlements along the coast, while Pliny the Elder reports that 15 settlements were captured by his countrymen in 19 BC. How exactly this Garamantian Kingdom declined is still being determined. Still, it was probably connected to a change in climatic conditions and/or the overuse of their groundwater since fossil water is a non-renewable resource (precisely what is happening now with the Great Manmade River project in Libya).

So, when I heard the name Garamantes in Libya, it only had a familiar faraway resonance, but I don't remember whether anything was said about this marvelous water management. Since I was neither interested in rock art nor in the prehistoric history of Libya, I paid no further attention to this information till last week when I saw a program on TV about the strange shafts still visible in the Sahara desert landscape, remains of said foggaras (a name given by the local Berbers). The program went into some detail about their ingenious concept and complex construction (see diagram from Wikipedia)

[photo Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Qanat_cross_section.svg]

They made it appear as something entirely unique, as if the Garamantes had invented the principle. At this stage, Alexander came to my mind.

Recently I traveled to Uzbekistan, where I stopped at a fort built by Alexander the Great near today's city of Nurata, roughly north between Bukhara and Samarkand. At the foot of this fort was a holy mosque that boosted about its sacred waters that came from the distant hills through a system of kareez or qanats, as the Arabs call them. I was told it was Alexander the Great's doing (or his engineers, most probably). Of course, I was entirely flabbergasted, for I had never heard of this Alexander fort and even less about his laying out such an intricate and sophisticated water system without which the oasis of Nur (modern Nurata) could not have flourished.

In light of the TV program, my immediate question now was: could Alexander have known about the foggaras in the Libyan Desert? Nothing is impossible, of course, but he had never been further west than the Egyptian/Libyan desert on his way to Siwah. Could he have picked up this tale during that trip, or was one of his engineers familiar with the system? Or is the story here in Nur only a legend lost in time and conveniently connected to Alexander? Quite an exciting discovery, as far as I'm concerned!

I tried to find out more on the subject. In the process, I discovered that this system is known worldwide, from North Africa to Asia, Arabia, the Mediterranean countries such as Spain, Italy, and Greece, and even in the Nazca Valley of Peru and Chili! It goes by many different names according to the country or civilization throughout the centuries. The Persian word is kariz or kareez, which is still used in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the countries of Central Asia like Uzbekistan; in Morocco, it is called khettara; in Spain, galleria, in Arabia falaj, and in North Africa, foggara or fughara. It is also known as kakuriz, chin-avulz, or mayun, while qanat maybe spelled in different ways as kanat, khanat, kunut, kona, konait, ghanat, ghundat. Pick your choice.

But whatever the name, the origin of the entire system has not been traced to any particular location. However, Persia is the area from where it probably traveled over the Silk Road across the Eurasian continent. I'm pretty amazed to read that last century there were approximately 20,000 qanats still in use in Afghanistan and about 50,000 in Iran.

[Image courtesy U. Leicester/DigitalGlobe/Google]

To add some livelihood to my astonishment, I found an article on the subject in National Geographic (Nov 2011) – although not directly. It so happened that images of more than one hundred "lost" fortresses were seen on new satellite photographs taken over the Libyan desert. These castles seem to belong to the Garamantes, a civilization National Geographic places between the 2nd and the 7th century AD. Researchers have discovered walled towns, villages, and farms thanks to these views. An early 2011 expedition found remarkably well-preserved brick walls standing up to 3-4 meters high, which previously had been erroneously attributed to Roman frontier forts. Their investigation led further to these underground canals, which enabled the Garamantes to cultivate crops such as wheat, barley, figs, grapes, sorghum, pearl millet, and even cotton!

What a fantastic world out there!

The above information has been updated in the post The qanats, one of the greatest inventions of mankind.