With Alexander in India and Central Asia: Moving East and Back to West

303 Pages·2017·8.36 MB·English

by  Claudia Antonetti

ALEXANDER CONQUERED most parts WITH
of the Western World, but there
IW
is a great deal of controversy over his N
invasion of India, the least known of INIT ALEXANDER

his campaigns. In BC 327 Alexander DH
came to India, and tried to cross the IA A
Jhelum river for the invasion, but was & L &
IINN IINNDIA
then confronted by King Porus who CE
EX
ruled an area in what is now the Punjab. N
A
T
According to Indian history he was N
R CCEENNTTRRAAL ASIA
stopped by Porus at his entry into the country, but most of the world still believes that Alexander AD
L
won the battle. Fearing the prospect of facing other large armies and exhausted by years of E

AR
campaigning, Alexander’s army mutinied at the Hyphasis River, refusing to march farther east. S

I mmoovviinngg eeaasstt & back to west
Th is river thus marks the easternmost extent of Alexander’s conquests. A
Eleven papers in this volume examine aspects of Alexander’s Indian campaign, the relationship
between him and his generals, the potential to use Classical and Indian sources, and evidence
for the infl uence of policies of Alexander in neighbouring areas such as Persia and parts of E
d
Central Asia. it
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CLAUDIA ANTONETTI is Professor of Greek History and Director of the Laboratory for Greek C
l
Epigraphy at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. She specialises in the study of Greek a
u
epigraphy, the history and historiography of north-western Greece, Greek relations with the d
i
a
western Mediterranean and archaic Greek colonisation.
A
n
t
PAOLO BIAGI is Professor of Prehistory and Protohistory in the Department of Asian and o
n
North African Studies, Ca’ Foscari University, Venice. His research interests are wide-ranging
e
t
from the Palaeolithic to the Neolithic with a special interest in lithic technology, prehistoric t
i

and environmental archaeology, and techniques of radiometric dating and he has many years &

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of experience excavating in northern Italy, Sardinia, Slovakia, England, Romania, Western a
o
Macedonia, Limnos, Cyprus, Kuwait, Oman, Sindh and Balochistan (Pakistan). l
o

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i
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g
ISBN 978-1-78570-584-7 i

Edited by
www.oxbowbooks.com Claudia Antonetti & Paolo Biagi
With Alexander in India
and Central Asia

With Alexander in India
and Central Asia
Moving East and Back to West
edited by
Claudia Antonetti and Paolo Biagi
Oxford & Philadelphia
Published in the United Kingdom in 2017 by
OXBOW BOOKS
The Old Music Hall, 106–108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JE
and in the United States by
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© Oxbow Books and the individual contributors 2017
Paperback Edition: ISBN 978-1-78570-584-7
Digital Edition: ISBN 978-1-78570-585-4 (epub)
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Front cover: The mangrove swamp of Miāni Hor, Las Bela, Balochistan, close to the place where Nearchus landed.
Photo by Paolo Biagi.
Back cover: The Indus River between Sukkur and Rohri in Upper Sindh, where Alexander crossed it to visit Aror.
Photo by Paolo Biagi.
Contents
Introduction ...........................................................................................................................vii
C. Antonetti and P. Biagi
Part I: Babylon, the Upper Satrapies and the Iranian Peoples
1. “Kislīmu Day 10, Year 31, Seleucus and Antiochus the Kings”:
Greek Elements in Babylonian Sources ..........................................................................2
P. Corò
2. Aspects of Seleucid Iconography and Kingship ..........................................................17
V. Messina
3. Alexandre le Grand en Asie Centrale. Geographie et Strategie
de la Conquete des Portes Caspiennes à l’Inde...........................................................37
C. Rapin
4. The Scythians and the Eastern Limits of the Greek Infl uence:
The Pazyryk Culture and Its Foreign Artistic Infl uences ........................................122
L. Crescioli
5. Alexandre le Grand et les Russes: Un Regard sur le Conquérant Porté
depuis l’Asie Centrale ....................................................................................................152
S. Gorshenina
6. Parthia, Bactria and India: The Iranian Policies of Alexander
of Macedonia (330–323)............................................................................................................194
M. Olbrycht
Part II: From Paropamisus to the Indus Mouth and to the Persian Gulf
7. The Indian Caucasus from Alexander to Eratosthenes .............................................212
F. Prontera
8. Megasthenes Thirty Years Later .....................................................................................222
A. Zambrini
vi Contents
9. Indian Ethnography in Alexandrian Sources: A Missed Opportunity?................238
S. Beggiora
10. Uneasy Riders: With Alexander and Nearchus from Pattala to Rhambakia ......255
P. Biagi
11. From the Indus to the Pasitigris: Some Remarks on the Periplus
of Nearchus in the Arrian’s Indiké ..............................................................................279
V. Bucciantini
Introduction
This book is the compendium of papers from the international conference Anabasi:
Sulle orme di Alessandro dalla morte di Dario that was held in Venice on 16th–17th
October and 17th–18th November, 2014. The conference was organised by one of the
editors (C. Antonetti) under the patronage of the Department of Humanities (D.S.U.),
the Department of Asian and North African Studies (D.S.A.A.M.) and the School of
Cultural Production and Conservation of Cultural Heritage of Ca’ Foscari University of
Venice. The fi rst part of the conference focused on Babylon, the Upper Satrapies and
Central Asia, the second on the Indian Subcontinent and the Persian/Arabian Gulf.
Italian, Polish, Russian, Swiss, and Ca’ Foscari scholars took part in the conference,
which was attended by many university students.
The conference focused on the relationships between the Greek-Macedonians and
those civilizations in the Middle East, Central Asia and the Indian Subcontinent that
Alexander encountered during the last phase of his conquest, according to the most
recent results from research in philology, historical geography and archaeology, but
also historiography. The scope of the meeting was to verify, beyond the post-colonial
view and with a new approach to the ancient sources, the perceived view of peoples
and territories, together with any possible syncretism, hybridisation, survival or
caesura within the interrelationships in material, artistic, cultural, religious and
institutional life.
This is not the fi rst time that such a broad topic is discussed (cf. Chapter 16 – “In
the steps of Alexander and on the trail of Darius” – of the seminal book by P. Briant
(2002) From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire), and it will probably
not be the last. The Venice meeting revealed, beyond post-colonialist (Cliff ord 1988;
Mellino 2005) and ‘Reception’ studies (Vasunia 2013), the need for a wider and less
dichotomous theoretical approach to the interpretation of phenomena such as cultural
interaction and transfer (cf. f.i. Stavrianopoulou 2013; Ahuja 2016; McCarty 2016). In
our opinion, the ongoing debate of the last two decades on colonisation, identity
and cultural relationships – with the occasional exaggeration1 – among historians of
antiquity has strangely obliterated the geographic and epistemological “boundaries”
of the eastern “outskirts” reached by the Hellenic experience, namely those regions
where “Orientalism” originated, according to Edward Said.2
We are still lacking in adequate defi nitions to express the realities at hand, for
instance when we consider that the concept of Central Asia, now commonly used, was
only introduced around the beginning of the 19th century. It is a typical Eurocentric
concept, inspired by theories of environmental determinism and the myth of
nationalism (Gorshenina 2014).
viii Introduction
A special interest in this fi eld of study was reinforced when C. Antonetti took
part in the conference organised by L. Gallo and B. Genito on 5th–6th June, 2014,
at the University of Naples “L’Orientale”, entitled “Grecità’ di Frontiera. Frontiere
geografi che e culturali nell’evidenza storica ed archeologica”. That conference dealt
with multicultural contacts between the farthest geographic and cultural areas
reached by Hellenism. It was organised within an academic environment rather
similar to that of Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, where classical and oriental studies
coexist. This is an ideal prerequisite to try and reverse the national course of this
fi eld of study, traditionally confi ned to separate, non-communicating environments
and university departments, as opposed to what we can observe in other European
and extra-European academies.
The eleven papers gathered in this book deal mainly with an “Oriental” or
“Orientalised” Hellenism (Filigenzi 2012), rather than with Hellenised countries
and peoples and their “degree of Hellenisation”, which is a concept that must be
interpreted and assessed from case to case, together with its possible absence or level
of complexity.3 They have been subdivided into two main groups, the fi rst of which
regards the route followed by Alexander from Babylon to Central Asia, the second
his retreat from India toward the Persian Gulf.
In the fi rst group of papers P. Corò, after discussing the diff erent terminologies
employed by the authors, examines the characteristics and relationships between the
Greek and Babylonian worlds that, according to the cuneiform sources, became more
stable after the conquest of Babylon by Cyrus in 539 B.C. V. Messina follows with a
work that focuses on the interrelationships between iconography and kingship in
Seleucid Asia, during a period when ancient traditions interacted with Greek culture
as remarked in the portraits and other representations of the king. The latter show
the role that Alexander’s entourage played as an instrument of power.
C. Rapin analyses the route followed by Alexander and his army in Central Asia.
His research is based on both the surveys he carried out in the region, and the critical
reanalysis of the texts and cartography of ancient historians. According to the author
new hypotheses can be put forward not only on the military strategy followed by
the king, but also on the evolution of his personality. His research contributes to the
reconstruction of part of the Achaemenid economy and administration in Hyrcania
and Sogdiana.
The relationships between the Scythians and their contemporary cultures,
primarily Greek, Near Eastern, Achaemenid and Chinese, are discussed by L. Crescioli
in his report on the important archaeological fi nds uncovered from the 4th and early
3rd centuries B.C. frozen tombs of Pazyryk in the Altai Mountains. The main aim
of his study is the defi nition of the modes and routes the aforementioned cultural
infl uences might have derived from the invasion of Alexander the Great.
The personality of Alexander as it was interpreted in Russian Turkestan, where
the colonial administration did not ignore the symbolic power hidden in the king, is
critically reviewed by S. Gorshenina. She discusses the way the Russian administration
Introduction ix
managed to play with the three symbolic images of Alexander, Tamerlane and Peter
the Great. In contrast, the Russian researchers remained closely linked with European
Orientalism, its historical interpretation and reconstruction.
The contribution by M.J. Olbrycht analyses how and when the Iranians joined the
Macedonians at the core of the imperial elite, and the way Alexander organised his
monarchy mostly according to Iranian traditions. This fact is very clear between 330
and 323 B.C., when the Iranians played a fundamental role in the structure of the empire
and its army. Even the coins of Alexander that display his victories in India show that
political propaganda was a vital part of the king’s policies addressed to the Iranians.
The second group of papers opens with a contribution by F. Prontera on the geography
of the Hindu Kush, as the Greeks called the Indian Caucasus, whose designation was
discussed only after the publication of Eratosthenes’s Geography. It is followed by a report
by A. Zambrini who reports about Alexander’s arrival in India, his meeting in Taxila,
and the way he approached for the fi rst time the local Brahmin society according to
the chronicles left to us by Megasthenes. The data left by the same author are discussed
also by S. Beggiora together with others by Arrian, Strabo and Aristobulos. In his paper
the author points out that names, fi gures, social and religious practices reported by the
aforementioned Greek historians often provide us with a rather confusing and incomplete
picture, which show exotic, legendary deeds of the king.
The routes followed by Alexander and Nearchus across Sindh and Las Bela province
of Balochistan are reconsidered by P. Biagi. The author pays particular attention to
the Indus Delta and the north Arabian Sea coast, both regions from which so far
archaeological fi nds of the Hellenistic period have never been recorded. Moreover, he
concludes that at present just a few data can help understand the itinerary followed
by Nearchus along the coast from Indus River mouth to Las Bela, and a few more the
way Alexander crossed the Hab River, and the day after probably camped along the
shores of present-day Lake Siranda.
The voyage by Nearchus in Arrian’s Indiké is discussed also by V. Bucciantini, who
compares the Greek narration with that of the Periplus Ponti Euxini. She concludes that
the Homeric fl avour of some passages of Arrian’s work on India refl ect the original
description left by Alexander’s admiral and favour the reinterpretation of the Asian
expedition as an Iliadic deed.
The editors wish to thank Silvia Palazzo for her accurate scientifi c secretarial work
and the fi rst editing of the texts and Elisabetta Starnini for the correction of the proofs.
Claudia Antonetti and Paolo Biagi4
Ca’ Foscari University of Venice
Venice, 15th November, 2016
Notes
1. The bibliography dealing with these topics is vast. For a recent orientation, see the various
papers in issue 10, 2011 of Ancient West & East and Capdetrey 2012; Malkin and Muller 2012;
Zurbach 2012.