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In the aftermath of Alexander the Great’s conquests in the late fourth century B.C., Greek garrisons and settlements were established across Central Asia, through Bactria (modern-day Afghanistan) and into India. Over the next three hundred years, these settlements evolved into multiethnic, multilingual communities as much Greek as they were indigenous. To explore the lives and identities of the inhabitants of the Graeco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek kingdoms, Rachel Mairs marshals a variety of evidence, from archaeology, to coins, to documentary and historical texts. Looking particularly at the great city of Ai Khanoum, the only extensively excavated Hellenistic period urban site in Central Asia, Mairs explores how these ancient people lived, communicated, and understood themselves. Significant and original, The Hellenistic Far East will highlight Bactrian studies as an important part of our understanding of the ancient world.
This book is intended as an introduction to the archaeology of the easternmost regions of Greek settlement in the Hellenistic period, from the conquests of Alexander the Great in the late fourth century BC, through to the last Greek-named kings of north-western India somewhere around the late first century BC, or even early first century AD. The 'Far East' of the Hellenistic world - a region comprising areas of what is now Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and the former-Soviet Central Asian Republics - is best known from the archaeological remains of sites such as Ai Khanoum, which attest the endurance of Greek cultural and political presence in the region in the three centuries following the conquests of Alexander the Great. The 'Hellenistic Far East' has become the standard catch-all term for a network of autonomous and semiautonomous Greek-ruled states in the region east of the Iranian Plateau, which remained in only intermittent political contact with the rest of the Hellenistic world to the west - although cultural and commercial contacts could at times be very direct. These states, their rulers and populations, feature only occasionally in Greek and Latin historical sources. The two great challenges of HFE studies lie in integrating scholarship on this region into work on the Hellenistic world as a whole in a more than superficial way; and in understanding the complex cultural and ethnic relationships between the dominant Greek elites of the region and their neighbours, both within the Greek kingdom of Bactria and in its Central Asian hinterland.
This book provides the first comprehensive and interdisciplinary view of the relationship between the Greeks and Buddhist communities in ancient Bactria and Northwest India, from the conquests of Alexander the Great to the fall of the Indo-Greek kingdom circa 10 AD. The main thesis of this book is the assumption that, despite the presence of mutual relationships and interactions between the Greeks and Buddhist inhabitants of the Hellenistic Far East, the phenomenon known conventionally as "Greco-Buddhism" never truly occurred. The individual chapters of this book provide an analysis of the main sources for Greco-Buddhist relations, mainly textual, but also archaeological and numismatic. The methods of philological and historical research are used in combination with postcolonial approaches to the study of the Greeks in India drawing from sociological research on ethnicity and intercultural relations. It is a rich source of information for anyone interested in Greco-Buddhist relations and is a great starting point for further research in this area. This volume is a valuable resource for students and scholars working on the Greco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek kingdoms, both classicists and those working on early Indian history, as well as those working on cultural exchange in the Hellenistic world.
This is the third volume of Getzel CohenÕs important work on the Hellenistic settlements in the ancient world. Through the conquests of Alexander the Great, his successors and others, Greek and Macedonian culture spread deep into Asia, with colonists settling as far away as Bactria and India. In this book, Cohen provides historical narratives, detailed references, citations, and commentaries on all the Graeco-Macedonian settlements founded (or refounded) in the East. Organized geographically, Cohen pulls together discoveries and debates from dozens of widely scattered archaeological and epigraphic projects, making a distinct contribution to ongoing questions and opening new avenues of inquiry.
This book focuses on the fate of the Greek mythological themes, divine and heroic figures, far in the East, primarily in the area of ancient Gandhara and Bactria (today in Uzbekistan). In alphabetic order, it covers primary iconographic schemes, which the art of these areas borrowed from the Hellenistic Mediterranean. We can compare how individual typical depictions of Greek deities changed and accommodated the taste and ideas of the local populace over the centuries. Aside from this, many of the originally Greek mythological characters, including their typical attributes, became, as this book clearly shows, the basis for images of various local Iranian, Indian and other deities.
This volume provides a thorough conspectus of the field of Graeco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek studies, mixing theoretical and historical surveys with critical and thought-provoking case studies in archaeology, history, literature and art. The chapters from this international group of experts showcase innovative methodologies, such as archaeological GIS, as well as providing accessible explanations of specialist techniques such as die studies of coins, and important theoretical perspectives, including postcolonial approaches to the Greeks in India. Chapters cover the region’s archaeology, written and numismatic sources, and a history of scholarship of the subject, as well as culture, identity and interactions with neighbouring empires, including India and China. The Graeco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek World is the go-to reference work on the field, and fulfils a serious need for an accessible, but also thorough and critically-informed, volume on the Graeco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek kingdoms. It provides an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the Hellenistic East.
There is a long tradition in classical scholarship of reducing the Hellenistic period to the spreading of Greek language and culture far beyond the borders of the Mediterranean. More than anything else this perception has hindered an appreciation of the manifold consequences triggered by the creation of new spaces of connectivity linking different cultures and societies in parts of Europe, Asia and Africa. In adopting a new approach this volume explores the effects of the continuous adaptations of ideas and practices to new contexts of meaning on the social imaginaries of the parties participating in these intercultural encounters. The essays show that the seemingly static end-products of the interaction between Greek and non-Greek groups, such as texts, images, and objects, were embedded in long-term discourses, and thus subject to continuously shifting processes.
The world that Alexander remade in his lifetime was transformed once again by his death in 323 BCE. Over time, trade and intellectual achievement resumed, but Cleopatra's death in 30 BCE brought this Hellenistic moment to a close--or so the story goes. Angelos Chaniotis reveals a Hellenistic world that continued to Hadrian's death in 138 CE.