More than a hundred years ago, at the antique market in the Indian city of Rawalpindi (modern Pakistan), objects that were completely unusual for those places appeared - gold and silver coins of the 5th-3rd centuries BC.
They were minted in different countries - Greece and Asia Minor, in Achaemenid Iran and the Seleucid state. Some of them bore inscriptions that had not previously been found on coins.
Antiquity dealers reported that all the coins were found together - far to the north, in the ruins of an ancient city that Amu Darya washed away. In the next few years, several hundred more coins were brought from the same place, as well as art items made of gold and silver - statuettes, bracelets, hryvnias, etc. (about 200 items in total).
Photo: commons.wikimedia.org
All these finds were called the Amu Darya treasure or the Oxus Treasure. Later, scientists established that the treasure was most likely found in 1877 on the right bank of the Amu Darya, between the mouths of the Kafirnigan and Vakhsh rivers, in the Takhti-Kubad region (modern Tajikistan, the historical region of Bactria). However, despite the fact that now all items from the Amu Darya hoard are well studied, the exact place and circumstances of its discovery are uncertain and contradictory.
Presumably in 1877 it was bought by three Bukhara merchants - Wazi ad-Din, Gulyam Muhammad and Shuker Ali. On the way from Kabul to Peshawar, merchants were robbed by nomadic tribes, and only thanks to the courageous intervention of the captain of the British Empire's border service in Afghanistan, Francis Charles Burton, they received back the stolen goods - gold and silver things sewn into leather bags.
Photo: Nickmard Khoey / flickr.com
A captain with two soldiers suddenly appeared in the middle of the night in a cave, where robbers were quarreling among themselves over loot. Four of them were already wounded by that time, the rest by F. Barton put to flight. The next morning the robbers themselves came to F. Barton in the camp, as they were frightened by his threat to send troops against them. In the English camp, one of the merchants said:
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The mules were not taken from us, but the robbers cut off the pack bags and took them with them. They contained gold and silver jewelry, several vessels of gold, a golden idol, and a large jewelry resembling a bracelet. Most of the items have been found at Candiana, which flows into the Oaks; but at certain times of the year, when the river dries up, people dig and find valuable gold items among the ancient ruins of the city of Kandiana. My companions and I bought these things for fear of taking money with us.
The grateful merchants presented Burton with the most beautiful bracelet and hastened to leave the inhospitable places, heading to Rawalpindi to sell the rest of the treasure there.
Most of the items from the hoard were sold in the bazaars of British India. The artifacts were able to track down and put together the English antiquary Augustus Wollston Franks, and he named the treasure according to the ancient Greek name of the Amu Darya River - Oxus.
Photo: Marie-Lan Nguyen / en.wikipedia.org
The treasure consists of miniature models of horse carts, figurines of people and animals, bracelets, rings, coins, jugs, pendants and personal belongings. This is the most famous collection of gold and silver items from the Achaemenid era. Objects from the hoard formed the basis for the study of Achaemenid gold. In them one can trace the traditions of Persian and Greco-Bactrian art, as well as the Scythian “animal style”.
Bracelets with griffin heads are typical of the court style of Achaemenid Iran in the 5th-4th centuries BC. Bracelets of a similar shape can be seen on the reliefs of Persepolis among the objects that were sent as tribute. Xenophon wrote that the bracelets worn on the forearms were gifts to the Persian court.
A separate group among the items of the Amu Darya hoard is made up of about fifty thin gold plates. The size of the plates is from 3 to 20 centimeters. Most of the plates contain images of the outlines of human figures. Some of the figures are crudely executed, suggesting that they were of local origin or that the plates were made by a non-professional jeweler.
Photo: Nickmard Khoey / flickr.com
In the course of a long study of these treasures, scientists were interested in the question: what was this treasure for its owner? Indeed, among the items found there were no written sources (except for coins with inscriptions), so the researchers do not have a single documentary evidence.
The assumptions about the belonging of the treasures of the Amu Darya treasure arose very diverse. For example, that the treasure is the remains of a burial. But, firstly, it contained a fairly large number of coins, and secondly, many items typical for burial were missing, which were made of base metals.
Many things from the hoard were made by craftsmen who lived not only in different eras (from the 7th century BC and almost until the 2nd century AD), but also in different “worlds”. The Amu Darya treasures reflect the aesthetic ideas of both the Hellenes and ancient Eastern artistic traditions, as well as images and plots of the Eurasian steppes. But above all, the Amu Darya treasure is a treasure, since things were selected for it on the basis of value. Many of them are made of gold and silver and are real wealth.
Photo: britishmuseum.org
According to Major General A. Cunningham, head of the archaeological service in India, the items found belonged to a noble Bactrian family. One of her representatives, during the troubled time of the war between Antiochus III and Euthydemus I, was forced to leave home, taking with him all the most valuable. The danger forced him to hide precious things and coins, and he did not have to return for them.
Researcher R. M. Girshman believed that somewhere on the left bank of the Amu Darya there was a temple of the Iranian goddess Ardvisura Anahita. Therefore, he considered the Amu Darya treasures as ritual offerings of believers for two or even three centuries. When in 329 BC the army of Alexander the Great approached the temple, the treasury was taken out of the temple and buried.
Photo: Nickmard Khoey / flickr.com
There is a version, as it were, combining the two previous hypotheses that the Amu Darya treasure is the treasure of the Bactrian kings, who, along with their secular duties, also fulfilled the duties of high priests.
Most of the items from the Amu Darya hoard ended up in the British National Museum. Together with them, the museum received 1500 coins, but some scientists believe that they have nothing to do with the treasures of the Oks. Apparently, research will continue for a long time.
Used materials from the site: telenir.net