The Cyclopean Fountain

Perhaps the Peirene Fountain could have functioned in a more secular fashion, with the ma-jority of activity there being water collection for household use, while the Cyclopean Fountain and the Sacred Spring would have been the focus of most ritual activity.

As with Kokkinovrysi and the Sacred Spring, the Corinthians manipu-lated the space around the Peirene Fountain so that it would feel natural and uncultivated rather than urban and controlled.

only the daughters of citizens or the elite were allowed access to the cult of the Sacred Spring before marriage, whereas the Kokkinovrysi shrine was open to everyone at all times

The offerings are also integral to understanding the Sacred Spring. In particular, the articulated female figurines could have been dolls, which were sometimes called nymphai, and as such, they evoke the tradition whereby girls dedicated their dolls to Artemis before marriage (Anth. Pal. 6.280).

predilection

nymphs are unattested in the epigraphic record within the city of Corinth. Therefore, the offerings, landscape, and architecture be-come very important in determining where their sacred space was located.

Without the monumentalization of the spring, identifying cult activity practiced in the worship of the nymphs is very often difficult and doubtless in some cases impossible

loutrophoroi

As a result, nymphs were thought to have a warm and sympathetic connection to mortals, which may explain their popularity.

Nymphs interact with males in matters considered masculine, such as flock-tending and extramarital sex, while they deal with women in matters considered feminine, such as mar-riage and children.

While females are welcome within these sanctuaries, in all recorded instances, the nympholept was male.

Archedamos of Thera, who carved stairs, reliefs, and inscriptions at the Vari Cave in Attica, claimed to have been captured and compelled to do the nymphs’ work.

nympholept

By the Hellenistic period, the nymphs are credited with the ability to inspire mortals through nympholepsy, a power which may have devel-oped from their connection with the Muses.12 This “sacred possession or frenzy,” referred to more generally as ἐνθουσιασμός, may have also provided prophetic powers to the victim.

For example, on a Hellenistic terracotta relief from the Polis Cave in Ithaka (Fig. 1), the nymphs hold hands as they move in a circle dance. The coro-plast portrayed each of the figures in a different position, which captures the swirling movement of dance. This whimsical votive relief highlights the active, changing, and plural character of the nymphs. These elements are repeated in the iconography of the nymphs regardless of the medium. Not surprisingly, material with imagery of the nymphs, particularly reliefs and terracottas, are often dedicated at their shrines.

Visual representations and ancient literature traditionally describe nymphs as minor goddesses, and it is their association with natural features that is highlighted.

a nymph is a deity representing an element of na-ture.

I examine the spatial organization, proximity to water sources, dis-tinctive types of figurines, and key pottery assemblages from several sacred Corinthian sites—Kokkinovrysi, the Sacred Spring, the Peirene Fountain, and the Peribolos of Apollo—to suggest that the nymphs were worshipped both within the city of Corinth as well as in more rural contexts outside of the city during the Archaic, Classical, and Early Hellenistic periods.

their rising prominence in the region has been traced by the increasing number of cave sanctuaries dedicated to them.

For instance, in Attica, the nymphs had already been present as a distinct cultic group in the Archaic period, but their popularity increased after the Battle of Marathon.

nymphs were an important and visible part of the religious lives of the ancient Corinthians from the Archaic to the Early Hellenistic periods.

The Sintashta

However, humans tamed horses a few thousand years before the Scythians existed, but also on the Central Asian steppes.

Artist’s impression of a Scythian on a horse

References:

However, during the Achaemenid period, a lot of Zoroastrianism was systemized.

Exacatved

clusters of groups

different cultures have varied in the ways they honor

References

http://www.takhtisangin.info/o-takht-i-sangin

fire temple

Map of the region.

Scythian silver drinking cup (MET)

The Legend of the Amazons

Ai Khanoum looked like the other royal cities of the Hellenistic Near East, where a new architecture had developed as early as the beginning of the third century, under the initiative of the Seleucid kings. This architecture was eclectic and was characterized by a synthesis of various influences coming from all over the Mediterranean world, but particularly from Mesopotamia and the Iranian plateau.

All the roofs were flat, as was usual in the Orient and central Asia. Very few were completely covered with tiles; rather, just two or three rows of tiles were placed along the roof edge. All the walls were constructed from mudbricks, even those of the public buildings, which is uncommon in the Greek world. The floors were made of beaten earth and covered with carpets, per local custom. Many col-umn bases were eastern in style and had a large torus on the plinth, a feature widely used in Achaemenid architecture. A campaniform base was also discovered inside the palace foundations.

The palace was a huge complex; not only did the king and his family live there, but it was also where the administrative offices of both the kingdom and the city were housed.

In assessing the extent of Greek influence, another problem is the absence of an identifiable agora.

An urban belt grew up along an ancient road that formed an extension of the main street in the countryside and along another that ran from the east foot of the acropolis to the Kokcha. This urban belt covered an area of 150 ha and was almost as large as the town itself (170 ha). Among its many archaeological remains are several large residences with courtyards.

dominated by an elite that drew its wealth from farming.

These private spaces were always provided with bathrooms, a characteristic feature of the Greek presence in central Asia.

They always in-cluded a large courtyard, which occupied at least half of the total area and was used as a private space for relaxation. A vestibule with two columns gave access to a reception room, which was the largest space in the house.

We can assume that Kineas had been the founder of the city on behalf of the king and that he died shortly after its foundation.

These aphorisms specified the main qualities a Greek man should display and were in some way a definition of Greek identity.

The heroon was another place of worship. A dedicatory inscription, from a man named Klearchos, engraved on the base of a pedestal that had been erected inside its precinct, tells us that it was known as the Temenos of Kineas.

The settlers could not establish their colony without the help of the gods, who ensured their safety and helped the new city de-velop.

Archaic founda-tions reveal that the first duty of the settlers and the man who guided them, the oikist, was to organize the physical space of the colony.

The main canal, which brought water into the city, flowed alongside this street, after entering near the north edge of the acropolis and running along its lowest slopes. This watercourse was needed to supply water to the south-ern part of the city.

This street played a structuring role in the urbanism of the city, since most of the buildings, ex-cept for the palace, were oriented along it. The same orientation characterized the Darya-i Pandj and the natural features. The decision to build the street near the foot of the acropolis rather than in the lower city may seem surprising. According to Bernard, it allowed a large space for public buildings, especially for the palace.

two rivers

Rather, it seems that the local populations themselves may have attacked the city along with the nomads and therefore that they played a major role in this event.

It was, however, under Eucratides that the city reached its apex and acquired its final appearance.

Some well-stratified coins from the sanctuary allow us to conclude that these two buildings were constructed during the reign of Antiochos I

A residential quarter in the south and several monumental public buildings, including a palace, a gymnasium, two mausoleums, a theater, a temple, and an arsenal, were discovered.

settlement was established where the val-ley is narrower and easier to protect, and this strategic position allowed control of the road that followed the course of the river.

It was strategically located at the conflu-ence of the Darya-i Pandj—the upper part of the Amu Darya River—and the Kokcha Rivers, at the southern extremity of a rich plain that was already under culti-vation when the Greek colonists settled there: irriga-tion networks had been constructed during the second millennium and the first half of the first millennium B.C.E.

Antiochos’ mother was Apama, daughter of the Bactrian nobleman Spitamenes; Seleucos had mar-ried her at Susa in 324.

Several elements considered in this article shed light on the nature and functions of the settlement: its urban organization, the division between public spaces and private spaces, and the extent of Greek influence on these elements.

The competition for per onal power led them to "rul,e and divide'~

The most mundane coins open our eyes to the way in which Greeks and non-Greeks lived on this front· er.

fortunes of father and son took a turn for the better when their military forces drove from Bactria a renegade named Arsaces, later the founder of the Parthian empire .

The fo-cus must be on Diodotus I and II, the father and son who dared to break free of the Seleucid empire beginning around 250 B,.c. Through the ex-amination of ancient texts,, archaeological sites; and, most important, the Bactrian coins, the Diododds em.erge from the shadows of Hellenistic his-tory as true heirs of Alexander.

Bronze coins, in particuJar, reveal the patterns of economic life for the0 underclasses.

Coins offered the handiest means of ancient mass communica-tion as they travded from person to person and city to city. Reading them today like texts, experts can often recover vast stretches of social,. eco-nomic, political, religious, and military history from the coins of little-known-and even unknown-kings.

Quite unlike ou own currency, most ancient coins were carefuUy designed to convey as much contemporary news and propaganda as was po sible.

In fact, the lack of written sources has forced the modern researcher to take a closer look at these coins because they provide many clues about the shadowy kings who minted them and the invisible masses who used them.

Little more than a thousand words directly about these kings can still be read in the ancient languages of Europe and Asia

Historians, moralists, economists, and poets long argued that Ale ander used the idle wealth of the Persian kings to mon-etize with Greek currency the stagnant economy of Bactria and neigh-boring regions. Just as Alexander united two worlds div[ded by ideol-ogy, so he united two contrasting economic systems into a single wonder of productiv.hy

In the field of economics., too, Bactria has been singled out as a vest case for the entire HeUenistic Age.

certain subgroups (e.g., Egyptian priests and village leaders, Syrian bureaucrats) became important and relatively powerful intermediaries between the Greek and non-Greek worlds. Such groups crossed over the cultural divide and sometimes gained status as Greek citizens.

Clearly, the answer is that the complex story of the anci.ent Bac-trians must be seen in all of its relevant contexts: Persian history, Greek history, Central Asian history, Indian history.

They eventuaUy grew wealthy on trade and turned out som.e of the most beautiful examples of Greek numismatic art ever to be found.

They had come boldly to a place once fabled in Greek literature as a nev,er-never land untouched by civiliza ion, where savages ate their own parents and the frontier teemed with ghastly creatures.

myriad of grains, grapes, p·stachios, and other products.

The moderate climate of Greece contrasted starkly with the arid conditions and extreme temperatures of Bactria.

Bactria occupied much of mod-ern Afghanistan;. its northern region,. called Sogdiana, covered parts of today's Uzbekistan and Tadjikistan.

European empires saw in Bactria the best of aH ancient worlds, a place where the ·••Greek Man's burden,, convected the A ian avages into useful political and social partners.

And the r·vers of Greece, mostly just trickles of .little consequence, could not compare with die large, life-giving torrenrs o.f Central Asia. When these Greek set-tlers left the Mediterranean world behind, they faced a difficult adjust-ment to the hot "oasis,, culture of distant Bactria.

arid conditions and extreme temperatures of Bactria.

Cutting through these mountains and desen is the Oxus River (modern Amu Darya), whose upper and mid-dle course forms the heardand of historical Bactria. Along this major riv,er and its tributaries, most notably the Kochba and Kunduz Rjvers in Bae~ tria, it is possible to sustain large populations only by irrigating the sur-rounding desert. The same is true of the Bactrus River to the west and the large Jaxartes River (modern Syr Darya) to the north. Traces of an-cient canals can still be seen along many of these precious rive s .

The Hindu Kush, separating Bactria from an-cient India

exotic etting of a Hellenistic kingdom in entral Asia, some three thousand miles ea t of Athen . Stretching ov,er mountain and desert where even today the tribesmen boa t of their de-scent from Alexander and his soldiers, Bactria occupied much of mod-ern Afghanistan;. its northern region,. called Sogdiana, covered parts of today's Uzbekistan and Tadjikistan. It wa then, as now, a .remarkably rugged and remote land.

,c,elebrated far and wide in tbe ancient world, and threads of that tale run right through the Renaissanc

In Bactria,, the heirs of Alexander cr,eated a unique civBization that touched upon the di e·rs,e cultures of Greece, Iran, India, and China.

Questions for Holt

Why might people credit King Muhammad Zahir Shah with the discovery to you believe it was really made by the king himself?

Do you know what Shangri-La means?  Why might the author choose this metaphor?

What does “Greek Man’s burden”

if

Architecture illustrates the influences of different heritages?

the page describing what student created regions should be like.

“Rock of Marpesia.”

in 2006, archaeologists discovered magnificent life- size por-traits of the famous quartet of Amazon queens, Hippolyte, Antiope, Melanippe, and Penthesilea, in a mosaic floor of the ruins of a villa under a parking lot in ancient Edessa (Sanliurfa, Turkey) (plate 1). The action- packed scenes are unusual because they show the queens hunt-ing lions and leopards instead of making war.

Amazons of Pontus were ruled by a pair of queens named Martesia (Marpesia, “Snatcher or Seizer”) and Lampeto (Lampedo, “Burning Torch”).

Gynaecocratumenoe (“Ruled by Women”)

They refused to marry, calling it slavery.

If you don’t re-turn home we will have sex with the neighboring tribe and the result-ing children will carry on the Scythian race.

Their decline began when the Greek hero Her-acles killed their queen, Hippolyte.

This powerful “queen,” declares Diodorus, enacted new laws that created a true gynoc-racy in Pontus, in which the women would always be sovereign and trained for warfare. She assigned men to domestic tasks, spinning wool and caring for children. She ordered that baby boys’ legs were to be maimed and girls would have one breast seared.

“Daughter of Ares,” the war god.

She founded Themiscyra at the mouth of the Thermodon in Pontus.

example of Zarina, who led a Saka- Parthian coalition to victories against tribes who wanted to enslave them

the Thra-cians, “the Scythians led by the Amazons,” and the Persians.

began with Herodotus (fifth century BC) and continued through the late antique authors Orosius and Jordanes (fifth– sixth centuries AD).

Arimaspea (a Scythian word meaning something like “people rich in horses”)

the depiction of shifting environ-ments around the Black Sea for the Amazons’ home bases, strongholds, migrations, and battle campaigns accurately captured the realities of nomadic life.

influenced by women who shared the same activities as men in the nomadic cultures of Eurasia.

Male archers and Amazons wearing Scythian- style costumes

Dar- e Alan, “Gate of the Alans” (Daryal Pass), after one of the nomadic tribes of Scythia. The other difficult and longer passage, some-times called the “Caspian Gates” or the Marpesian Rock

kur-gans

the Saka- Scythians, Thracians, Sarmatians, and kindred groups left no written histories.

The sequence might have gone something like this:

the idea of “rogue” groups of female roughriders roaming on their own without men— inspired countless “what if ” scenarios

Self- sufficient women were valued and could achieve high sta-tus and renown. It is easy to see how these commonsense, routine fea-tures of nomad life could lead outsiders like the Greeks— who kept fe-males dependent on males

No aspect of Scythian culture unsettled the Greeks more than the status of women.

facilitating exchange between Greece and points along the Silk Routes to Asia.

artifacts in burials from the Carpathian Mountains to northern China.

Modern historians and archaeolo-gists use “Scythian” to refer to the vast territory characterized in antiq-uity by the horse-centered nomad warrior lifestyle marked by similar warfare and weapons, artistic motifs, gender relations, burial practices, and other cultural features.

“The Greeks call them Scythians,” wrote Herodotus; the Persians called them Saka (Chinese names in-cluded Xiongnu, Yuezhi, Xianbei, and Sai).

For the Greeks, “Scythia” stood for an extensive cultural zone of a great many loosely connected nomadic and seminomadic ethnic and language groups

griffins.

Under the influence of intoxicating clouds of burn-ing hemp, they buried dead companions with their favorite horses and fabulous golden treasures under earthen mounds scattered across the featureless steppes

nourished their babies with mare’s milk.

Ac-cording to Diodorus’s sources, after a series of “revolutions” in Scythia, the Scythians were often ruled by strong women “endowed with excep-tional valor”; they “train for war just like the men and in acts of manly courage they are in no way inferior to the men.” Many of these women accomplished “many great deeds, not just in Scythia, but in the lands bordering Scythia.”

“legends about Amazons are re-flected in the grave goods of excavated Scythian tombs.”

popularity of male Scythian archers in art faded, perhaps because of their association with Persians

numerous vase paintings and inscriptions about Scythians and Thracians attest to Greek familiarity with their clothing, tattoos, and weapons by the mid- sixth century BC.

Literary and archaeological evidence points to an uneasy relation-ship between Greeks and Scythians in the Black Sea region in the sixth and fifth centuries BC, followed by a period of lively trade and mutual integration in the fourth century BC.

Many towns in Anatolia claimed Ama-zons as their founders; grave mounds and other shrines were local land-marks linked with Amazons.

Self- sufficient women were valued and could achieve high sta-tus and renown.

By the fifth century BC, seminomadic clans known as the “Royal Scythians” had come to reside in wagons or settlements clus-tered around the northeastern Black Sea– Don area, taking up agricul-ture and trade, facilitating exchange between Greece and points along the Silk Routes to Asia.

Scythian Triad

Scythia’s forests, grassy steppes, desert oases, and mountains were home to a multitude of individual tribes with their own names, histo-ries, customs, and dialects but sharing a migratory life centered on horses, archery, hunting, herding, trading, raiding, and guerrilla- style warfare.

horse-centered nomad warrior lifestyle marked by similar warfare and weapons, artistic motifs, gender relations, burial practices, and other cultural features.

convenient catchall terms to refer to the diverse yet culturally similar nomadic and seminomadic groups of Eurasia to western China.

“Although each people has a separate name of its own,” remarked the geographer Strabo, the Scythi-ans, Massagetae, Saka, and other nomadic tribes “are given the general name of Scythians.”

Thrace (another fluid geographic term in antiquity), the Black Sea, and northern Anatolia across the Caucasus Mountains to the Caspian Sea and eastward to Central and Inner Asia

an extensive cultural zone of a great many loosely connected nomadic and seminomadic ethnic and language groups

wild “Scythians” was an intim-idating notion, arousing respect laced with shivers of anxiety.

tattooed themselves with strange designs and stags with towering antlers.

Under the influence of intoxicating clouds of burn-ing hemp, they buried dead companions with their favorite horses and fabulous golden treasures under earthen mounds scattered across the featureless steppes

They dipped their arrows in the venom of steppe vi-pers, scalped their foes, and drank from the gilded skulls of their ene-mies and ancestors.

restless no-mads crisscrossed a landscape of immense empti-ness. Expert horse riders

Study Guide to Secondary Literature

“Afghanistan: Graeco-Bactrian Kingdom.” CEMML | CEMML. Accessed June 27, 2019.

[NOTE: Always credit author(s) even when citing online content.]

Image links to source.

This image is a zoomed-in version of en:Image:East-Hem_200bc_web-sm.jpg Eastern Hemisphere in 200 BCE. thumb|300px|left|Eastern Hemisphere in 200 BC. Author: Thomas A. Lessman.

Some of the best evidence we have from the Greco-Bactrian kingdom we have are coins.

Iliakis writes about the revolts by Greek and Macedonian mercenaries in the region in the 320s, who were displeased by living so far east in Alexander’s empire.

Iliakis

In which state  the largest in the history of the ancient world gold coin was minted?

Did Bactrian army had war elephants?

The land consisted largely of desert plains situated between tall mountains.

READ THIS FIRST!

This demonstrates the concept of total frontality in portraiture

the languages he chose for his north-western territories were Aramaic and Greek, as is attested in a bilingual inscription on a pillar from Kandahar in modern Afghanistan

Papyrus was a writing material made from the Cyperuspapyws, a plant that grew in the marshes and lakes of Egypt and especially in the Nile Delta. Outside Egypt it was rare, giving the region a virtual monopoly over papyrus production. Although used for writing throughout the ancient world, it has survived best in Egypt, where it has been found as cartonnage, in rubbish dumps, and in the ruins of buildings. An important reason for its survival in Egypt is the climate; the dry ground of the desert is ideal for its preservation

Many of these are civic decrees, treaties and letters from kings, in other words documents that were not primarily intended for public display.

It is to the Augustan age that we owe the only extant narratives of the hundred years or so which followed Alexander’s death, one in Greek by Diodoros, the other in Latin by Pompeius Trogus

Polybios was a member of a distinguished family from Megalopolis in the Peloponnese; he had been a high- ranking official in the Achaian League, one of the more powerful confederacies in Greece, but after the Roman victory over the Macedonian king Perseus in 168 his political career came to an abrupt end

there is Egyptian in hieroglyphs and demotic, Akkadian on cuneiform tablets from Babylonia, Hebrew from Judaea

There are no contemporary narrative histories until Polybios’ account of the rise of Rome appears in the mid-second century BC

Topics may vary - dynasties, religion, the polis (city-state), local tradition, geography - but underlying themes recur - regionalism and diversity, cultural interaction, ethnicity, change and continu- ity

Hellenistic period is as much a cultural phenomenon as a political one

Greek communities and culture settled among non-Greek populations. It is the resulting cultural interaction that offers one of the more fascinating areas of study. Its extent and nature have been the subject of considerable debate: in which direction did influence go? Or did Greeks and non-Greeks remain largely separate? What did it mean anyway to be Greek? What was the relationship between immigrant and native, between town and country? To what extent did non-Greeks, such as Iranians or Egyptians, participate in the royal administration and up to what level? The answers and approaches to such questions may change fi-om region to region

Droysen virtually invented the Hellenistic period in a series of studies devoted to Alexander and his successors

Augustus the Roman who overthrew the last of the successor king- doms with his occupation of Ptolemaic Egypt

31 BC

Augustus pursued his defeated rivals, Antony and Kleopatra, to Alexandria in Egypt

One of the few places he is known to have visited during his residence there is the tomb of Alexander the Great

If there’s no equivalent for the Unicode code point you’re trying to represent in the encoding you’re trying to represent it in, you usually get a little question mark: ? or, if you’re really good, a box.

Every platonic letter in every alphabet is assigned a magic number by the Unicode consortium which is written like this: U+0639.  This magic number is called a code point. The U+ means “Unicode” and the numbers are hexadecimal.

EBCDIC

internationalization