EMPIRES OF MYSTERY: Collecting Greco-Baktrian Coins By David S. Michaels With the United States having recently concluded a costly 17-year-long war in Afghanistan, it’s become almost a truism—a “factoid” if you will—that Afghanistan is unconquerable, that it defeated Alexander the Great and every other foreign power that’s ever dared to invade it. The problem with this notion: At least in Alexander’s case, it’s simply wrong. Alexander the Great wasn’t defeated in Afghanistan. In the fourth century BC, he invaded and conquered ancient Baktria—largely contiguous to modern Afghanistan—and it remained under the rule of Greek kings for the next two centuries. Yes, it was a tough and bitter slog that cost tens of thousands of lives. But define “success” however you will, 200 years of unbroken rule in a distant land has to count for something. These Greek kings even expanded their realm beyond the Hindu Figure 1: Silver Tetradrachmn of Eukratides I “The Kush and into northern India, almost unimaginably Great” (Triton XXV, lot 561) remote from their homeland. What’s more, the Greek rulers of Baktria and northern India created something unique in history—a vibrant, diverse, multinational society that fused the cultures of Europe, Iran, Central Asia and India. From Alexander’s arrival in Baktria in 330 BC down nearly to the birth of Christ, this remarkable and exotic cultural melting pot took root and thrived, until it was finally snuffed out by new invasions of outside peoples. Today, only the faintest echoes survive. The history of these distant lands has been almost entirely erased. In all the records of ancient historians writing within a few centuries of their existence, only about 600 words refer to the Greek kingdoms of Baktria and India. Their cities have been swallowed by sand and scrub. Only one thing has survived in any quantity—the coin of the realm. And what coins they left us: Gigantic gold medallions, silver multiples the size of tea plates, large silver tetradrachms with portraits nearly photographic in their realism, bronzes in all sorts of odd shapes and sizes. All testify to the great wealth of the land and the brilliance of the civilization that produced them. But coins can only tell us so much. Of nearly all these rulers, we know only their names and faces, and those so faithfully rendered that if one of them walked into the room, you’d recognize him. Beyond that, it’s all guesswork. Trying to reconstruct the history of these Empires of Mystery is like trying to assemble a jigsaw puzzle with 90% of the pieces missing.
Where On Earth? This saga takes place within a region the Greeks of the Classical age thought impossibly remote, barbarous, and entirely unsuitable to civilized life as they conceived it. It comprised several provinces, or Satrapies, of the old Persian Empire abutting the towering Hindu Kush Mountains, including Arachosia, Margiana, Sogdiana and Baktria; on the other side of the Hindu Kush, the Indo-Greek Kingdoms at various times included Gandhara, the Punjab, Shurasena, and Malla. These regions are now part of the “stan lands,” Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, as well as northern India. Though considered rugged and inhospitable, the realm included vast tracts of fertile fields, rich wildlife, navigable rivers, and immense mineral wealth, not to mention a sizeable native population in hundreds of small towns. The exact boundaries of the Empires of Mystery are hard to establish, and shifted this way and that over three centuries of Greek occupation. Though usually spoken of as a singular “Greco-Baktrian Empire” or “Indo-Greek Kingdom,” it is clear the political entities were rarely, if ever, unified, which is why this article refers to them in the plural.
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