doi: 10.2143/AWE.13.0.3038736 AWE 13 (2014) 155-174

ON THE INLAND WATERWAYS FROM EUROPE TO *

JEFFREY D. LERNER

Abstract In ca. 286–282 BC the Seleucid admiral Patrocles reported that Indian goods sailed down the Oxus and across the Caspian ultimately reaching ports on the Black Sea. Some two centuries later, Marcus Terentius Varro also learned of this route. Modern scholarship has questioned the veracity of these accounts, regarding them as unfounded, or exaggerations of an insignificant commercial network. This paper re-examines the archaeological evidence gleaned from the eastern side of this exchange, at the Hellenistic site of Aï Khanoum in Bactria. It is argued that a number of items found at this city originated in the West as well as in India and even in China.

From 1964 to 1978 in north-eastern Afghanistan a Greek city known by its Uzbek name of Aï Khanoum (‘Moon Lady’, see Fig. 1) was excavated by the Délégation archéologique française en Afghanistan (DAFA). The site located along the River Oxus (Amu Daria) formed part of ancient Bactria in the Hellenistic Far East that had been conquered by Alexander the Great (329–327 BC) during his Central Asian campaign, and remained under Greek rule until it was abandoned by its inhabitants in the middle of the 1st century BC.1 The city was well placed on a fertile agricultural plain watered by an extensive network of irrigation canals, near the Badakshan Mountains where minerals and semi-precious stones, such as rubies and lapis lazuli, were mined. By the end of its existence as a Hellenistic city, Aï Khanoum (Fig. 2) had become an administrative centre replete with a palace, treasury, temples, gymnasium, theatre and acropolis among other monuments, surrounded by massive walls beyond which lay a suburban district. Inside the city at the palace treasury and the Temple with Indented Niches (temple à niches inden- tées/temple à redans) the mission unearthed a number of items imported from India, the Mediterranean and Black Sea, and the Near East, as well as others produced locally and elsewhere from Central Asia, including precious stones, jewellery, fine

* This paper was presented at the 126th Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association, Chicago, 6 January, 2012. I would like to thank Stanley Burstein and Marek Olbrycht as well as the journal’s anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions. Naturally, I am respon- sible for any shortcomings and errors that remain. 1 Lerner 2010, 66–72.

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Fig. 1: Location of Aï Khanoum.

utensils and objects made from a variety of other materials – metals, glass, coral, mother of pearl, ivory, bone, wood and asbestos, to mention but a few.2 Moreover, when Zhang Qian, the Chinese envoy and diplomat sent by emperor Wudi of the Han dynasty in 139/8 BC3 to the Da Yuezhi, returned to China in 126 BC, his report was recorded in the Hanshu, or Annals of the Former Han dynasty, and the Shiji, or Records of the Grand Historian.4 In it he remarked that he found the market of the Bactrian city of Lanshi (Bactra) to contain all sorts of goods that were

2 For an overview and catalogue, consult Rapin 1992, 143–256, 399–407. 3 See Hulsewé 1979, 209, n. 774 for a discussion on the problems of dating Zhang Qian’s expe- dition. 4 On the transmission of Zhang Qian’s account, see Loewe 1979, 13–39.

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Fig. 2: Plan of Aï Khanoum (based on the Délégation archéologique française en Afghanistan).

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bought and sold,5 including bamboo from Qiong and cloth made in the province of Shu, and was told that merchants from Daxia (Bactria) journeyed to buy them in the markets of Shendu (India), several thousand li south-east.6 So with hindsight, it comes as little surprise to learn that in one of the first publications devoted to the excavations at Aï Khanoum in 1965, a stamped amphora handle was noted among the objects unearthed from floor 1 of the propylaion.7 The curved rectangular stamp (2.7 cm x 1.5 cm) contains an image of an amphora in the centre and an inscription: to the right, êpi âgorano…, while to the left there are traces of severely effaced letters, Xa.re[ou (?). Reconstructed the inscription reads: ‘In the presence of (êpì) the clerk of the agora (âgoranómov), Khaireas (Xairéav)’. Opinions about the origin of this amphora, like others found in the city at this time, were divided: either it was made in Aï Khanoum or some other local Bactrian workshop, or it came from the Black Sea, perhaps from Sinope, or from a site located along the Near Eastern seaboard of the Mediterranean, such as from a city in Syria.8 Based on analogies, the amphora was tentatively dated to the High Hellenistic period of the 3rd century BC, although the 4th century was not entirely excluded. Finds of additional transport amphorae confirmed that the jar in fact had been imported from the West.9 Among the finds made later in 1970 near stage III of the house in Aï Khanoum’s southern residential quarter was a complete amphora (Fig. 3). It, too, is of Mediter- ranean origin and has tentatively been dated between the end of the 3rd and the beginning of the 2nd century BC.10 Finally, store room 109 of the treasury yielded two fragments of another amphora identified as a kermion with an unreadable stamped handle. In all, fragments of five such receptacles were found at the site. In addition to the one that was stamped,

5 Shiji 123 (Watson 1961, 235); Hanshu 61 3A. 6 Hanshu 61 2B–3A; Shiji 116 (Watson 1961, 293–94), 123 (Watson 1961, 235–36). 7 Inventory no. Akh 407. Bernard consulted with Virginia Grace for much of the analysis of the piece, including the reading of the inscription, its provenance and date (Bernard 1965, 635–39, no. 90, figs. 28–29); cf. Gardin 1973, 162; 1985, 454, figs. 6a–b; Bernard 1992, 388 III 7; de Rossi 2004, no. 322. The use of an amphora on stamps is a common device with or without an accompany- ing legend, as is the case, for example, with Samian ware (see Grace 1971). 8 Bernard 1965, 634–35, fig. 27 nos. 87 (AKh 140), 88 (AKh 390) and 89 (AKh 353). Sinope was famous for its exports of wine and olive oil in amphorae (Doonan 1999 for a concise overview). A compelling argument is made by Tsetskhladze and Vnukov (1992, 357–58, 363, 365, 380, 383– 86), who identify amphorae produced in Colchis and designated as ‘Variant A’ as the work of potters from Sinope in the mid-4th to 3rd century BC. Thus it is possible that if these amphorae came from the Black Sea they may have been manufactured in a Colchian city such as Phasis. 9 Gardin 1985, 460, n. 10. 10 The amphora was found in room 26, see Bernard 1971, 411, figs. 11 and 14. On the chronol- ogy that was in use at that time to date it, see Gardin 1971.

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Fig. 3: Mediterranean amphora, end of the 3rd–beginning of the 2nd century BC (after Gardin 1985, 10, fig. 10).

three others had pointed feet, and one had a two-handled neck and an oval section. They form a group of four or five amphorae of Mediterranean origin.11 Taken altogether the fragments of these receptacles suggest that amphorae were used for storing (vintage?) wine and olive oil among other commodities.12 It is speculated that wine was at least occasionally, if not rarely, imported from the West to Bactria and reserved perhaps for special occasions.13

Overland Routes The presence of foreign-made transport amphorae from the Black Sea or eastern Mediterranean poses the question of how they were brought to Aï Khanoum. After all, their shape, especially with a pointed base, was more practical for transport by

11 Rapin 1992, 113–14 with pl. 57, 304, 327. The stamp is composed of perhaps three letters (GA-?) and is referenced as N9-44 = A9-32. The three with a pointed base are classed as N9-41 to N9-43, and the two handled neck with an oval section is listed as N9-45. 12 According to Strabo (2. 1. 14, 2. 73) and Herodotus (1. 193), in Mesopotamia the use of olive oil was replaced by sesame oil. This practice thus explains the necessity of importing olive oil to Aï Khanoum. It also explains why it was stored as a luxury item in the palace treasury, see n. 8. 13 It should be noted that the vast majority of amphorae are of local manufacture based on Mediterranean prototypes and were not imported. On the use of amphorae for storing olive oil and wine, see Rapin 1992, 154–55, 254 with n. 995, pls. 63, 107.2–3 and 115; for miscellaneous remarks, cf. 57, 58, 86 and 96. Amphorae and jugs are the most common types of vase found in the treasury. For general discussions of the types of amphorae found at the site, see Gardin 1973, 161–62 (F5 Amphorae) nos.125–128, figs. 30–31, pl. 122c–d; 1985; cf. Lyonnet 1997, 130–31; Rapin 1992, 155, n. 472.

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ship than by pack animal, particularly given the long distance journey that the receptacle and its liquid contents of olive oil or wine would have endured.14 If in fact they were brought by pack animal, like camels, one can only imagine the impracticality of transporting these commodities given what must have been a high percentage of breakage. Yet the prevailing theory that seeks to explain how these vases arrived at the site favours just such an overland journey of perhaps thousands of miles, although there is no consensus as to a specific route that might have been taken.15 There are of course a number of well-documented routes in antiquity that con- nected the Mediterranean world with Central Asia. For example, one of the most famous is the account preserved by the 1st-century BC author Isidore of Charax who describes the overland journey from the Euphrates near Zeugma to Alexan- dropolis in Arachosia with numerous stations in between.16 A similar route is described by the Roman merchant Maes Titianus who ventured from the Bay of Issus in Cilicia through Bactria and to the ‘Stone Tower’ in western Central Asia,

14 Although the chronology of Aï Khanoum that Rapin adopts is too high to be supported by the evidence and needs to be adjusted downward (see, for example, Lerner 2011, 116–19), throughout its existence the Greeks of the city and elsewhere in Central Asia remained in contact with the Hellenistic Mediterranean (Rapin 1992, 295–99), as reflected not only by the appearance of ceramic types, but also the importation of olive oil (Rapin 1983; 1987; 1992, 96 and 114), and architecturally as seen in the capitals that adorned the hypostyle hall of the palace which appear to have been based on those at the propylon of the bouleuterion of Miletus (Francfort 1984, 121; Bernard 1968, 127–29 with pl. 128). While Bernard was initially inclined to date them to the first half of the 2nd century BC, courtyard B – stretching behind the pillared hall – contains several architectural repairs, of which at least one was quite significant, and all were made after the construction of the hypostyle hall. He, therefore, reasoned that a period of time was necessary for these various alterations to have taken place prior to the city’s abandonment, which he placed in the last quarter of the 2nd century BC. 15 The amount a pack animal, like a camel, might carry largely depends on such considerations as the type and quantity of food it will be expected to consume. Similarly, the amount it will carry will determine the rate at which it will march: a light load will mean that the journey will take less time to travel but it will also deliver fewer goods; a heavy load will mean that the animal delivers more goods but will arrive at the destination at a later date. These are precisely the kinds of deci- sions that were made about Turkish army camels in World War I with respect to carrying capacity, including whether the animal was male or female, and rate of travel (for example Faroqhi 1982, 537, n. 30). For an historical overview in antiquity of the camel for land transport, see Forbes 1993, 193–13; and Bulliet 1975, 141–75 for the use of the camel in Central Asia. One difficulty with assessing absolute values is their variability when adjusting for contents, such as liquids which tend to move around a great deal, sweat, leak and even spill, all of which ‘can cause frequent unevenness in load distribution’, concerns that preoccupy caravaneers and camel drivers as the ‘rule of thumb’ is not to place stress on the camel – Dr W.D. Glanzman, personal communication. For a general discussion of feeding, drinking and locomotion and loads among other topics, see, for example, Gauthier-Pilters and Dagg 1981. 16 Schoff 1914. For an assessment of the route, see Schoff 1913–15, 53–54; Auboyer 1955–56, 447.

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whereupon his agents completed the round-trip journey to the eastern city of ‘Sera Metropolis’.17 More problematic is a third overland route that purportedly ran north of Parthia and was controlled by numerous indistinct groups of nomads living in the region between the fringes of the Greek poleis of the Black Sea and ancient Chorasmia on the southern banks of the in Central Asia. The existence of this highway rests solely on the archaeological finds of nomadic and Greek pottery at Altyn-Asar in Chorasmia and on objects from India, the eastern Mediterranean and of Sarmatian type, such as beads and a bronze mirror, found in the nearby kurgans at Tuz-Gyr dated from the 5th to the 2nd century BC.18 The difficulty with accepting this proposal is that the chronology of these finds coincides with the migration of nomadic groups into this region and could thus have been brought as part of that migration rather than as the result of a trading network, or the objects could have been obtained in the region from the indigenous settled folk once these nomadic peoples had themselves become established.19 Aside from overland routes, goods were shipped by sea to and from Indian ports. A fourth trade route stems from an account from Strabo (11. 5. 8), who states that commercial relations of the nomadic Aorsi who inhabited the Tanais along the Caspian coast and the Siraces who lived along the banks of the Achardeus, which flowed into Lake Maeotis from the Caucasus, imported on camels merchandise from India and Bablyonia by way of Armenia and Media. Thus an international caravan route extended from the (Tanais) southward ‘primarily through Artaxata and along the Maeotid-Colchidian highway’ to Ecbatana where it continued to Babylonia and ultimately India. In this respect, Indian wares reached the northern Caucasus and South not through the shorter Caspian route through Sarmatia20 but by means of ‘the land route from Media and Atropatene’.21 According to the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, written probably shortly before AD 70, Chinese goods, such as silk, were transported on land through Bactria to

17 For example Lerner 1998. For a general overview of his entire journey, see Bernard 2005, 929–69. 18 On the pottery, see Tolstov 1962, 186–200, especially 187–89, 192–93. The objects from kurgan no. 19 are discussed at length by Trudnovskaya 1979, 106, 108–10, fig. 4; cf. Itina 1985, 20, n. 23. The notion that this highway existed is elaborated by Lyonnet 1997, 153–54, 160, 165–67; cf. Mutallib et al. 2001, 57-59 especially n. 43, in which the observation is made that various objects were brought along this north-west steppe route. 19 For a concise overview in English summarising the archaeological record revealing the move- ment of different nomadic groups into this region during the period when these discoveries are dated, see Tolstov 1964, 15–31. 20 On trade in Sarmatia along the Caspian route, see the studies of Olbrycht 2001a–b. 21 Manandian 1965, 50 (cf. 30–33, 47–52), who traces the route according to the Tabula Peutin- geriana; cf. Hewsen 2001, 62–65; Callieri 1999, 38–40.

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Barbaricum and Barygaza from where they were then dispatched to Egyptian ports along the Red Sea (Periplus 39–47, 64),22 while other routes led to ports through the Persian Gulf into Mesopotamia.23 Regardless of the route taken, each of these possibilities still leaves us with the problem of how to explain why amphorae better suited for transport by ship would have been brought overland to Aï Khanoum. Or better still, is there a viable route by ship to explain their appearance? After all, if the ceramic transport flask dating at least to the 4th century BC from the Kurganzol fortress in the Surkhandarya province of southern is any indication, there were alternative receptacles better suited for long or short distances for overland journeys used by pack animals.24 So the question remains: why do these western amphorae from the Black Sea or Mediterranean Sea appear in the archaeological record of Aï Khanoum?

Indian Merchants and the At some point during the co-regency of Seleucus I and Antiochus I (ca. 292–281 BC), the Macedonian general and admiral Patrocles was appointed the task of exploring the Caspian Sea (Strabo 2. 1. 15 [73], 11. 7. 1 [508], 11. 7. 3 [509], 11. 11. 5–6 [518]).25 It is from him that Strabo understood the Caspian (i.e. Hyrcan- ian) Sea to have been an inland gulf of the Ocean with the Rivers Oxus (modern Amu Daria) and Iaxartes (modern Syr Daria) discharging their waters into it (Strabo 11. 6. 1 [507]; cf. 2. 5. 14 [118–119], 11. 1. 5 [491], 11. 11. 5 [518]).26 According to Patrocles, there were a series of interconnected water routes that were easily navigable between the River Oxus and the Black Sea ‘emporion of the Colchians’, Phasis, which were used by merchants journeying from India (Strabo 11. 2. 17 [507]). Thus, the Oxus, which formed the frontier between Bactria and Sogdiana, enabled merchants carrying Indian wares brought over the Hindu Kush Mountains to sail into the Caspian Sea, whence they then navigated the Cyrus (modern Kura) and other rivers to the Black Sea (Strabo 2. 1. 15 [73]). Elsewhere, Strabo noted that the rivers Ochus and Oxus flow through Hyrcania into the Caspian. Aristobulos, who also seems to have drawn on the account of Patrocles,

22 Edited and translated by W.H. Schoff (London 1912). For an overall assessment, see Liu 2010. On the importation into the Kushan kingdom of objects manufactured in Roman Egypt, see Staviskii 1964; 1975, 302–06; 1995, 192–200; Sherkova 1991a; 1991b, especially 63–79. 23 A number of recent works dealing with this topic have recently been published, for example: Kauz 2010; McLaughlin 2010; Sidebotham 2011. 24 Swertschkow 2009, 147, fig. 6, 150. 25 Cf. Pliny NH 2. 67 [167–168] and 6. 21 [58], in which he seems to describe a sea passage that Patrocles took through the Caspian and Hyrcanian Sea to the Ocean and thence on to India. 26 For a succinct overview, see Pippidi 1968, 237–40.

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goes on to mention that a great deal of Indian merchandise was brought down the Oxus to the Caspian, from where it was then conveyed through Albania and along the River Cyrus where it eventually reached the Black Sea (Strabo 11.7.3 [509]).27 Strabo adds that in Colchis the River Phasis (modern Rioni) is navigable up to the fortress of Sarapana (i.e. the Surami Pass), from where a four-day portage takes one to the Cyrus by way of a wagon road. The city of Phasis, located on the river also called Phasis, was a two- or three-day sea voyage to Amisos and Sinope on the Black Sea (Strabo 11. 2. 17 [498]; cf. Herodotus 1. 104).28 Some two centuries later during the third war against Mithridates VI in 65/64 BC, Marcus Terentius Varro, while serving under Pompey, apparently learned of this same route. According to Pliny, it took seven days to reach the River Icarus in Bactria from India where it flows into the Oxus and that Indian merchandise sailed from it through the Caspian Sea into the River Cyrus where it could be conveyed by land to Phasis on the Black Sea in a journey lasting at most five days (Pliny NH 6. 19 [52]).29 Moreover, we learn from Ps.-Scymnus in the Periplus ad Nicomedia regem of the late 2nd or 1st century BC that in the city of Phasis, founded by Mile- sians, barbarians from some 60 nations all speaking different languages, including ‘barbarians from India and Bactria gather there’ (Ps.-Scymnus 934 [F20]).30 It is clear that whatever direction Patrocles’ voyage took on the Caspian he did not circumnavigate it, but instead seemed to have relied on informants for his description of the coast from which Eratosthenes and later Strabo (11. 6. 1 [507]) and possibly Pliny (NH 6. 15 [36–37]) drew for their descriptions of the sea. Consequently, Tarn posited that Patrocles’ journey was primarily confined to the south-west coast where timber was abundant for ship-building.31 It is, therefore, reasonable to assume that Patrocles encountered travellers who explained that merchants journeyed from India to Bactria whereupon they embarked on ships and sailed along the Oxus and Ochus into the Caspian from where they made their way to Iberia, followed by an overland trek of a few days on a wagon road that led across the Surami Ridge to Colchis and ultimately to the Black Sea. Modern opinion

27 Apparently, Aristobulos and Eratosthenes derived much of their information from Patrocles; for example, on the Caspian coast, see Strabo 11. 6. 1 (507) and Pliny NH 6. 36; cf. Arrian 3. 29, 5. 26, 7. 16. 28 In reality, there were a number of routes that could be taken once one reached the western banks of the Caspian (see Sudzuki 1975, 72–83; Warmington 1974, 26–30; Callieri 1999, 39–42; Huzayyin 1982, 87–110). 29 Pearson (1960, 164), rightly argues that the use of posse devehi only serves to highlight the possibility that the trade route was in use at this time; it cannot be taken, however, as evidence that the route was no longer in existence; cf. Braund 1994, 41; 2002, 291–95. 30 Cf. Johnston 1913, 260–62. On the city’s founding, see Asheri 1998, 271, n. 11. 31 Tarn 1901, 13–18; cf. Neumann 1884, 170–79, who had earlier arrived at the same conclusion.

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remains divided on the feasibility of a trade route between India and the Black Sea, as reported by Strabo and Pliny, between those who maintain that it never func- tioned32 and those who regard it as of a ‘casual nature’.33 For those who dismiss the use of waterways as a means by which trade of any importance was conducted and prefer to regard their use as either unfounded stories believed by naive explorers, or, at best, as exaggerations of an insignificant, irregular commercial exchange network involving small incidental items like coins and spices, we may turn to a factor that is generally overlooked.

Climate Change Beginning in the middle of the 9th century BC and continuing into the 15th cen- tury AD, the climate in north-west Europe and southern Siberia underwent a shift from the Sub-Boreal to the Sub-Atlantic due to a decrease in solar activity, in which conditions became wetter and more humid, turning semi-deserts into lush stepped landscapes allowing for ‘a high biomass production, and therefore high carrying capacity’. The onset of this climate change led to the increase of Scythian popula- tions and their ‘expansion and migration’ out of southern Siberia southward into Central Asia and westward into the Black Sea region.34 Central Asia in the 8th century BC was marked by a pluvial period in which the Prisarykamysh Delta at the mouth of the Amu Daria filled with water and over- flowed into the Sarygamysh Depression about 200 km south-west of the Aral Sea (Fig. 4). The result was the Sarygamysh Lake (also known as ‘Scythian Bay’), resem- bling a flat oval bowl measuring 150 km long and 90 km wide, situated between the Caspian Sea and the Aral Sea. Throughout this period there was a regeneration of the steppe landscape with forests lining the banks of rivers and reservoirs. From the 7th century BC to the 4th century AD the region witnessed a growth in river valleys, such as the emergence of the River Uzboi, while the entire deltaic region of the Aral Sea was filled with water. The emergence of the lake in the second half of the 1st millennium BC allowed for intensive irrigation resulting in the blossoming of Khorezm civilisation. Not until the end of this period in the 5th century AD did

32 Tarn 1901; 1951, 488–90 with 491–93; Tarn and Griffith 1952, 241; Manandian 1965, 30–33, 47–52; Naiden 2011, 4. For a critique of Tarn’s analysis, consult Pearson 1951, 80–84; Hamilton 1971, 106–11. 33 Lordkipanidze 2000, 30; cf. Lordkipanidze 1991, 135; 1996, 113–20; Gardiner-Garden 1987, 39–48; Braund 1994, 40–42; 1999. 34 van Geel et al. 2004; cf. Yu 2004; Bokovenko 2004; Pazdur 2004, 309-321; Boroffka et al. 2005, 77, 81–82; Boroffka 2010, 289–90, 294–95, 299. A concise overview that was in many respects ahead of its time is Lewis 1966, especially 472–89.

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the deltaic channels begin drying up and the Sarygamysh’s water level likewise begin to drop significantly.35 A similar climatic pattern throughout this same period has likewise been detected to the east in the Ferghana Valley36 and to the south in the Merv Oasis.37 In the last centuries BC, the Caspian Sea attained its maximum extent, causing vast territories in Central Asia to be inundated by its waters from the inflow of the Uzboi which linked the Caspian Sea and Sarygamysh Lake.38 The current course of the Amu Daria when it reaches Turkestan abruptly forms an oxbow from west to north, but at times in both the recent geological (Holocene) past and the historical past, the Amu Daria diverted itself (by sediment accumulation in its bed) or was diverted by humans westward, first filling the Sarygamysh Depression and then overflowing into the Uzboi Depression where it emptied into the Caspian Sea. This channel of the Amu Daria depending on the route that it took was variously called the Unguz Uzboi or the Sarygamysh Uzboi. Most of the time, the entire flow of the Amu diverted (or was diverted westward), leading to the rapid desiccation of the Aral Sea into which the Amu normally flows. However, there were other occa- sions when the flow was bifurcated with part continuing to Aral and part going to Uzboi,39 as had occurred in 1878 when the Amu overflowed its banks due to a large

35 Vainberg et al. 1998, 34–36, 39–41, especially the table on pp. 31–33; cf. Tsvetsinskaya et al. 2002, 369–73. 36 Gorbunova 1986, 11–17; Koshelenko et al. 1997, 64; Mokrynin and Ploskikh 2010, 37–38, 49–52, 98–99, 142–47. 37 Koshelenko et al. 1994b, 86–90; 1997. 38 Koshelenko et al. 1997, 64–65, who note that in the Hellenistic period the waters of the Cas- pian flooded two-thirds of the Pre-Caspian lowlands in the north, north-west and north-east, the and Akhtuba valleys up to , almost the entire Kura-Araksin lowland up to Erlakh, the western lowland, and the Uzboi Valley as far as the remains of Igdy. This may explain why certain fauna associated with the Caspian Sea are found in the Azov-Black Sea basin and elsewhere (Mordukhai-Boltovskoi 1964). Apparently, the area now occupied by the 101 km Volga–Don Canal was in antiquity, due to the high water level, a reality. Today the canal runs closest to both rivers from Sareptski on the Volga to the reservoir on the Don near the town of Kalach-na-Donu. 39 In ca. 2000 BC the Amu Daria ceased flowing directly into the Caspian, having changed its course to the current Akcha Daria channel (Boroffka 2010, 286–89, 294, 299). A concise hydrologi- cal and historical overview from the Neolithic to the Middle Ages is presented by Aladin et al. 1996, especially 34–38. Numerous studies in recent years concentrating on the diminishing water level of the Aral Sea have also led to a re-examination of other periods when the water level also fell, as well as the role played by the Uzboi and the Sarykamysh, especially in the historical past (see Létolle et al. 2007, 127–35; Micklin 2010, 196–200). Though somewhat dated, the work of Tolstov and Kes 1960 nonetheless remains a standard for understanding the problems of linking the geomorphological data with archaeological remains and literary sources. Increasingly, studies of the Uzboi have become a synthesis of historical, geographical and archaeological data that have provided insight into settlement patterns and human migrations in the historical past that were associated with deltaic stream migra- tions and changes in land-use practices under different geomorphological situations (for example, Kes 1979, 107; Kes et al. 1980; Vainberg et al. 1995).

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amount of snow-melt and flowed into the Uzboi, ultimately reaching Lake Sary- gamysh.40 It was at the mouth of the upper Uzboi, some 200 km north-east of the Balkhan Mountains, that the Parthians, between the 2nd century BC and 1st cen- tury AD, founded their most northerly fortress at Igdy-qala on the border of Khorezm in order to safeguard the lucrative commercial waterways from the west and south and the overland caravan routes coming from the north and east.41 More- over, excavations at the nearby settlement of Ichianlydepe (dated from the 5th to the 2nd century BC) among other sites along the lower Uzboi reveal that water flowed along this depression into the Caspian from the mid-1st millennium BC to well into the first centuries AD, as its banks were peopled with various settlements all along its lower course.42 The result is that what is now the Karakum Desert of Turkmenistan and Uzbek- istan was in antiquity a completely different landscape marked by immense forests along the Sarygamysh and Murgab Valley. On the other hand, if Strabo’s descrip- tion of the region extending east of the Caspian Sea up to Margiana is correct, then in the Parthian period it was a semi-desert. An abundance of groundwater through- out the region provided numerous pastures for nomads and their horses, including the Parni, a branch of the Scythian Dahae, from where, led by their chief Arsaces, in the mid-3rd century BC they invaded the Seleucid satrapy of Parthia and founded the Arsacid or Parthian kingdom.43 The ancient Kelif Uzboi channel, watered by the Amu and the rivers of Afghan- istan, was not connected to the Sarykamysh Uzboi. Originating at Charjui, this channel forms the southernmost branch of the Amu not far from the Hellenistic site of Mirzabek kala.44 The channel, however, is actually composed of a series of interconnected depressions that take the form of settling lakes, some of which meas- ure 2000 m in width and 3000 m in length. When filled they take on the appear- ance of a river. The Uzboi slopes in a westerly direction past the Murgab Oasis making its way into the Caspian Sea by way of the Bay of Balkhan, the same course followed generally by the Trans-Caspian Railway and the Karakum Canal.45 A line

40 Srezneffsky 1879. 41 In one of its later incarnations, the fort has tentatively been identified as the capital of the Kidarites, known as Balkhan or Bolo-Balaam (Pilipko 1972, 78–86; 1973; 1975, 78–98; Yusupov 1975, 69; 1979; 1984, 91-94; 1986, 154-207, especially 181–94, 207; Yagodin 2007, 51; contra Grenet 2002, 211). Vainberg supposes that the fortress Igdy-qala had ceased to exist by the 4th century AD (Vainberg 1999, 257); cf. Yusupov 1976, 40–46; Vainberg 1991, 129-41. 42 Vainberg and Yusupov 1981, 29–31. 43 For an overview of the early Arsacids, see Olbrycht 1998, 51–76. 44 Pilipko 1985, 47–60, 72–75, 177–78. 45 The historical importance of the Kelif Uzboi has formed the basis of an array of studies for well over a century: Rawlinson 1879, 164, 180–81; Pumpelly 1908, 297; Bartold 1914, 8, 10, 13, 17, 20,

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of seven Parthian fortresses, situated at intervals of 50 km, or a one to two days’ march, along the Kelif Uzboi, have been detected at the Merv Oasis in the Murgab Delta as part of the security afforded to travellers by caravan or ship.46 During Alexander’s campaign in Central Asia, it was along this same depression, known as the River Ochus by Classical authors, that he arrived at the Merv Oasis where he founded Alexandria Margiana in 328 BC.47

Conclusion The excavations at Aï Khanoum suggest that the city participated in regular com- mercial relations between Europe and South Asia and indirectly with China. Apart from the information gleaned from the ancient sources, the western end of this route has yielded very little in the way of objects from Central Asia and regions further east, apart from Graeco-Bactrian coins, albeit in extremely limited quanti- ties, that have turned up in the Kura Valley and other sites nearby, including Kabala and Tbilisi. Their presence, however, is not proof that they were brought by ship, as some would like to believe;48 since there was sufficient overland traffic, they could easily have been transported by caravan. The imported Aï Khanoum amphorae, on the other hand, offer our best demonstration that water transport between the Black Sea and Bactria was a regular, though somewhat limited feature of the trade and commerce that was practised throughout the Hellenistic period. One cannot help but wonder if it was none other than the Indian merchants themselves who upon their return journey from the West brought with them amphorae filled with olive oil and wine for the Greeks of Aï Khanoum.49 Unlike its overland counterparts,

71; Herrmann 1930, 286–89; Vyazigin 1946; Dzhumaev 1951, 34–43; Masson 1955, 9; Huntington 1907a, 578–85; 1907b, 330–40; Tolstov and Kes 1960, 16–17 with figs. 2–4; Daffina 1968, 365–69. The best overviews of the sources remain Spuler 1958, especially 236–46; Koshelenko et al. 1994a, 17–45; Yusupov 1995. 46 Cerasetti 2004, 40–41. 47 Notably, Curtius 7. 10. 15; Strabo 11. 6. 1, 7. 3–4, 8. 1–3, 9. 2, 11. 5; Pliny NH 6. 18 (49), 31. 75 (39); Ammianus Marcellinus 23. 6. 57; Polybius 10. 48. For a discussion on the sources, see Walbank 1967, 261–65; Koshelenko et al. 1994b, 85–86; 1996a, 125–37; 1996b, 308–17; 1997, 66; 2000, 7–10, 15; Olbrycht 2003; 2004, 211–22; 2009; 2010; cf. Olbrycht 1998, 74. Juping has hypothesised that the formal opening of the Silk Road occurred as the direct result of Alexander’s Central Asian campaign in which Aï Khanoum enjoyed a pivotal role (Juping 2009, 16–19). 48 For example Rtveladze 2010, 92–94. 49 After all, by 1600 a Mughal-Indian merchant population had established itself in an Indian community at the Russian Caspian port city of Astrakhan from where they acted as intermediaries, selling Russian goods in Iran and Iranian commodities in Russia, much like their counterparts on the Absheron Peninsula in Azerbaijan (Dale 1994, 101–24, especially 59, n. 63, 108, n. 24, 111 and 128). On the other hand, Pliny’s account was referenced in the Elizabethan period as evidence that a north- eastern passage to China existed, so the intelligence report in part reads from ‘Jehan Scheyfee, the

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however, this route lacked the state formations that would presumably have provided the security needed for it to flourish. Nonetheless, we need no longer imagine that when western imports arrived in Bactria they were brought on the backs of animals or men,50 but in boats that sailed from ports on the Mediterranean and Black Seas to cities that lined the Amu Daria in Central Asia.

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