A cast helmet from Central Asia

As a rule, helmets are created using a sheet of metal hammered into the proper shape over a mold. As always, there are exceptions to the rule. And this helmet, which is exhibited in the National Museum of Uzbek History in Tashkent, is one of them.

[Picture from Mainzer Beobachter]

The descriptive label stated that the helmet was found near Maracanda, in the tomb of a Sacae leader. The Sacae lived in the steppes of Central Asia better known by their Greek generic name as Scythians and Sogdians. Livius has composed a thorough overview of these steppe people under the title Scythians/Sacae that provides many interesting details. By the way, it is Livius (Jona Lendering) who brought my attention to this helmet through his blog  Mainzer Beobachter.

In the book The Scythians by Barry Cunliffes, he discovers that this type of cast helmet is inspired by a technique that was customary in China. This example dates from the 6th century BC but became obsolete afterwards.

The story of this cast helmet reminds me of the Achaemenid silver bowl with hollow drop motives from the 3rd-2nd century BC that was found in China in recent years. It made headlines because it had been cast and not hammered as expected, meaning that this piece was really made in China and not imported from the West (see: Alexander's influence reached all the way to China?)

Dr Lukas Nickel from the University of Vienna, Asian Art History (previously from SOAS, University of London), had discovered that besides these bowls and the Nanyue silver box, there were about ten more of such unusual treasure boxes. They were found in different locations throughout China.

This is Hellenism with a twist, isn't it?

So far, we have a handful of artifacts with a Western design. As China has become very active in archaeology over the past decennia, the future looks very promising. Still so much remains unexplored in Central Asia and in the countries on the Silk Road.

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.

Jaxartes River and the Iron Gates (Central Asia 6)

[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.]

On my travel across Uzbekistan, I happen to drive on the road from Samarkand to Tashkent, which inevitably passes through the Gates of Tamerlane or Iron Gates, i.e. the only way to go east from Samarkand – now as it was in antiquity. This narrow passage is just wide enough to let the Sanzar River run through, flanked by a railroad and our main road. The lush grasses along the river offer good grazing grounds for a handful of cows and goats – a timeless picture, no doubt. In short, this pass is worth of Thermopylae, an easy place to defend.

It is obvious that history has been written here over the centuries and Alexander was no exception. Spirits from the past still seem to haunt the present carried by the winds squeezed at increasing speed between these steep rocky walls. On either side of the pass, these same walls once carried two Persian inscriptions; one telling about Ulugbek’s campaigns (the grandson of Tamerlane); the other about the brutal murder of Abdullah Khan, son of Iskandar Khan. Luckily both panels have been removed and placed in the care of the museum because the walls are desperately defaced with horrible screaming graffiti. Isn’t there a law against this? There is, but nobody seems to reinforce it. A dreadful sight for such a historic location!

It should be noted that there are two places in Uzbekistan labeled as “Iron Gates”. There is this one, on the road out of Central Asia to the east and there is a place south of Samarkand near Derbent which I mentioned above when Ptolemy went in pursuit of Bessus (I have not seen it for myself). Useless to mention that this adds to the confusing in locating Alexander’s path through Bactria and Sogdiana.

We drive on through Jizzak, an uneventful place. Further north we unexpectedly have to take a detour because of the intricate jigsaw puzzle borderline with Kazakhstan. The main road runs right through that foreign enclave, a complicated situation with customs and passport control we rather avoid by driving around it. We loose precious time, as far as I’m concerned for when we finally reach the Jaxartes River, of which I had such high hopes, it is pitch dark. The beams of the bridge flash by against a black void where the Jaxartes is said to run. What a disappointment that is.

This is one of the places of which we know for sure that Alexander was here and now I can’t see it! In the summer of 329 BC, he entered Maracanda, but not for long as he badly needed to secure the borders of his newly acquired empire which the Persians had set along the Jaxartes River (Syr Darya). On this occasion, he must have passed through these very same Iron Gates and the city of Jizzak to reach the Jaxartes which I didn’t see. So much for tracing Alexander in this corner of Uzbekistan!

[Click here to see all my pictures of the Iron Gates]
Click here to read Episode 7 of Central Asia .

A view of the Karakum and Kyzylkum Deserts (Central Asia 2)

[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 Persian King Darius III]

In the early morning I’m being directed to board the plane that will take me from Tashkent in eastern Uzbekistan to Urgench, approximately 300 km south of the Aral Sea and squeezed halfway between the Oxus River and the border of Turkmenistan – in fact nearly at the end of the Uzbek world.

My bi-plane is not very reassuring and looks very much like a fixed-up engine coated with successive layers of paint to cover up the presumed crust of rust underneath. I hesitate to climb on board and even ask the welcoming stewards if this plane is truly safe. Well, they are not going to deny that – after all, they will be taking off with me. I am crowded in with another twenty brave travelers. Inshallah!

Instead of the promised one hour flight, this plane takes double that time but once I have accepted that my destiny was in the hands of Zeus, Zoroaster, and Mohammed, I am starting to enjoy my ride. This being such a small plane, it has the advantage of flying at a lower altitude so that I can follow its route across the landscape below. It is like reading a map at life-size scale! The Kyzylkum, meaning Red Desert soon shows its monotonous terrain and my thoughts almost immediately drift back to Alexander the Great and his army crossing similar stretches of desert.

As so often, he has my deepest respect. Watching these endless sandy hills enhanced with rare green dots of long grasses and entirely stripped of trees, I can only have admiration for Alexander’s courage and determination when he covered the fifty miles of “pebbled desert” to reach the banks of the Oxus River after he left Bactra in the spring of 329 BC. He and his army faced unbearable heat among shifting sand dunes where daytime temperatures easily ran above the 40 degrees centigrade. There was a dramatic shortage of water and in an unforgiving attempt to quench their thirst, the soldiers in their despair broke into the provisions of wine and oil, which made things only worse. It is said that when Alexander reached the Oxus he ordered to light huge bonfires to signal his men in the right direction. Survivors went back with water to help their comrades, others simply died on the spot after drinking too much of the tempting river water. We do not know how many men Alexander lost during this journey but rumors have it that the figures ran higher than the losses he suffered during any of his battles. That should tell us a lot.

With the map on my knees, I follow the patchy desert as it unfolds under me, wondering how different this Kyzylkum can be from the Karakum on the south side of the Oxus River which Alexander crossed. I decide it has to be minimal – a different color, a different texture with more pebbles and maybe a little less “green”, but as barren and hostile as what I see here. From time to time there is a tiny lake or some marshlands but clearly not enough water for anyone to settle in the area for I see no constructions and no roads, except the straight line of the main road which I’ll take later on and which connects Nukus-Urgench to Bukhara, Samarkand and Tashkent beyond.

At last, the landscape turns green with square irrigated fields and narrow shiny canals turning increasingly larger as my plane sets in its descent. Water definitely makes the whole difference. Rows of whitish houses and high-rise buildings appear in straight lines and squares among the lush green lands till a wide meandering river appears. I’m sure this must be the Oxus flowing in lazy curves dotted with sandbanks and flanked by the fertile green parcels, cotton no doubt. Such a wide river, which Alexander has crossed on more than one occasion. I feel at least as excited about this view as when I first saw the Euphrates River. If only those rivers could speak…!

My rickety plane lands without any problem and I continue my trip by bus to Khiva, a true treasure filled with Tamerlane’s legacy which is another story altogether.

[Click here to see all the pictures of the desert]
Click here to read Episode 3 of  Central Asia