The urban phenomenon in pre-Islamic Central Asia : diachronic and synchronic approaches (7)

A number of questions are currently under discussion, both within and outside the team.

1) The stages of the city's development: what was the city in the 120 years or so of its existence before it was remodelled by Eucratides? The name it bore at that time is not known (a toponym transmitted by Ptolemy, Oskobara, "the high enclosure", may have referred only to a pre-existing Achaemenid fort on the citadel). The recent resumption of the study of ceramics from the various building sites suggests that the founders' grand design took a long time to materialize, with the residential quarter in the southern part only taking shape at the very end of the 3rd^century[1]. Moreover, even at the end of the period, the population of this colonial quarter, comprising some forty residences, cannot have exceeded a few hundred inhabitants, including domestic staff. The contrast with the theater's capacity is striking.

It seems that these questions can only be answered if we leave the ramparts. The plain immediately to the north was also receiving settlers; the additional canal dug at great expense during the Greek period allowed only a marginal gain in cultivated areas, indicative of a demographic overload. The same observations were made in the more distant plains, which must also have been part of the city's chôra. On the other hand, a fortified round town of respectable size (around 30 ha plus a part that disappeared into the river), occupied before, during and after the existence of Aï Khanoum, stood 1.5 km to the north (the same distance as between the two Nisa). The space in between was itself quite densely occupied, and the first belt beyond the Aï Khanoum rampart could even be defined as an "urban zone" (H.-P. Francfort) featuring buildings of a high social standing: large residences, a temple and mausoleums. We are led to believe that, despite its imposing appearance, the northern rampart of Aï Khanoum did not materialize the limit of the urban organism. Could it be that the majority of the first settlers lived in the city they found, the "Round City"?

2) The second question, linked to the previous one, concerns the relationship between the colonial population and the local bacterial population. Was there segregation, symbiosis or interbreeding? After a lecture given at the Hermitage by Paul Bernard shortly after the end of the years of excavation, Vladimir Livshits expressed astonishment that the Greeks were so clearly visible, but the Bactrians so little so. As an Iranist, he could only observe that, in later centuries, the situation was practically the opposite, in onomastics, language (which had retained virtually only the alphabet from Greek), administrative practices (which were directly related to Achaemenid practices) and religion (apart from iconographic borrowings), as if the Hellenic graft had not taken.

A first response can be asked of the impressions, necessarily rather subjective, given by the archaeological material. The Greek element dominates in what can be seen first and requires high-level specialists (decoration, figurative arts), but is much less visible in what requires heavy technique and manpower: architecture proper, agricultural development. It's significant that, for the execution of columns, it was deemed more expedient to revive the archaic technique of turning than to train stonemasons. The only documentation that gives us access to a situation where the two populations lived side by side is provided by the economic inscriptions of the Palace Treasury, where we see directors, all with Greek names, commanding subordinates with names that were sometimes Greek, sometimes Iranian. The existence of a parallel chancellery using Aramaic (which had been the administrative language of Achaemenid Bactria, as of the whole empire) is suggested by an ostracon found at the temple, where we find mention of one or two figures with Iranian names, a "fine" ('NŠ), and probably a "judge"(dātbarak). Could there have been, alongside Greek justice, a form of justice intended for the indigenous population and sitting in the temple (cf. Jesus brought before Caiaphas)? In fact, if we want to try and locate this population, there are several options, not mutually exclusive:

in the "Round City" (following on from the pre-colonial era) ;
in the modest interstitial habitat discovered in the vicinity of several monuments;
in the northern third of the lower town, an area that was not excavated because no alignments were visible on the ground or on aerial photographs, but which was subsequently looted as much as the rest, indicating that it was not empty; one might be tempted to place there the barracks of the enormous workforce required for the continuous building site that was Aï Khanoum in the last period of its existence;
finally, the vast acropolis, where only an Iranian-style cult podium, a few single-cell dwellings and the citadel walls have been excavated, could have housed the garrison, the vast majority of whom were undoubtedly indigenous, in a settlement pattern reminiscent of that between "fort" and " cantonment " in British India; the arsenal is located between the colonial quarter and the access road to the citadel.

In any case, if there was ever a colonial symbiosis, it ended badly. The seemingly brutal fall of Greek power was accompanied by destruction that cannot be explained by the windfall effect, as it was also aimed at symbolic targets (the palace walls, the statue of Zeus in the temple). A mass grave of 120 bodies (minimum figure) dumped in the theater could testify to a massacre or a battle. The period that immediately followed saw a brief reappropriation of the urban space by a local population controlled by a nomadic authority, who used it for their own village needs (maintenance of the water conveyance canal, "squatting" of pre-existing premises, recycling of materials).