Posted on 09/05/2021 5:43:07 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
For centuries, Bactria - a region shared by modern Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan - was part of the Hellenistic world. Conquered by Alexander the Great, Bactria became the heart of a powerful Greek kingdom. And even after the Greco-Bactrian kingdom was overrun by nomads, its cities continued to thrive. This video explores their fates.
The Lost Greek Cities of Central Asia | September 3, 2021 | toldinstone
(Excerpt) Read more at youtube.com ...
Ai Khanum with the Amu Darya River in the background. Photo credit: maxwell.syr.edu
One of fewer than 20 gold coins known from Eucratides I, “the Great,” this circa 171 to 145 B.C. gold stater highlights the Lexington Collection of Jonathan Kern. | Rare gold stater of Eucratides I features powerful image of ruler | By Jeff Starck | Coin World | Published: Jul 28, 2014
[snip] From literary sources, we can deduce that an Alexandria on the Oxus (or: in Oxiana) was founded, probably by Hephaestion, during Alexander the Great’s campaigns in Bactria and Sogdia (329-327). Possibly, this was a refoundation of an older, Persian city, and was settled with Greek and Iranian veterans, together with native serfs: this was, in any case, the normal way to found a European city in the Far East.
Perhaps, this city was identical to Ai Khanum in Afghanistan. (A more likely candidate is Kampyr Tepe in Uzbekistan.) “Ai Khanum” means “Lady Moon” in Uzbek (an alternative translation is “Face in the Moon”, because people over there recognize a female face on the moon.) [/snip]
https://www.livius.org/articles/place/ai-khanum/
Kampyr Tepe
https://www.livius.org/articles/place/kampyr-tepe/
Alexander the Great spent only a few months in Afghanistan, and managed to convert the entire region to Greek civilization.
America with all our technology spent 20 years a trillions of dollars there and utterly failed to do the same.
After the Taliban was beaten back into a few enclaves during that first year, the US should have made a deal with the rest of Afghanistan that every year we'd buy at a fixed price all the heroin they could produce, arm everyone in the country with nice cheap AK47s off the open market, and then work on the Taliban's cash sources and arms sources. Then knock off the Iranian mullahcracy, same deal, and come home.
Also, Alexander was conquering areas already under Persian rule, and he had the good sense to not uproot the practices of the Persians for the most part.
The native speakers of Aramaic, the Arameans, settled in great numbers in Babylonia and Upper Mesopotamia during the ages of the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian Empires. The massive influx of settlers led to the adoption of Aramaic as the lingua franca of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. After the Achaemenid conquest of Mesopotamia in 539 BC, the Achaemenids continued the use of Aramaic as the language of the region, further extending its prevalence by making it the imperial standard (thus "Imperial" Aramaic) so it may be the "vehicle for written communication between the different regions of the vast empire with its different peoples and languages." The adoption of a single official language for the various regions of the empire is attributed to the unprecedented success of the Persians in maintaining the expanse of their territory for the amount of time they did.
Interesting piece of history. Thanks for sharing.
Seems like this region. esprcially Tartaria is making it’s way into our consciousness lately. 200 years ago, Tartaria was the largest empire in the world. This information, for some reason, has been scrubbed from our knowledge.
Sounds like a great story for a Duck Tales episode.
Thanks for sharing a bit of history.
>> Seems like this region. esprcially Tartaria is making it’s way into our consciousness lately. 200 years ago, Tartaria was the largest empire in the world. This information, for some reason, has been scrubbed from our knowledge.” <<
So what should we know about it besides it was big? Did it produce literature I should read, art that I should look at?
That’s not just a rhetorical question. I’m willing to learn about it if there’s something worth learning.
Interesting video. I’d known, of course, that Alexander the Great’s empire had extended all the way through Afghanistan into India, but didn’t know that Greek civilization had survived in Afghanistan for hundreds of years.
It is amazing what you can find with a 2 word search; Tartarian Empire. You will find Videos and articles. I would suggest using Duckduckgo and not google.
My pleasure!
I learned about the empire from a link provided on Free Republic. https://sarahwestall.com/ Click on this and it is the first interview with the Author...
Inside the ‘Tartarian Empire,’ the QAnon of Architecture
On YouTube videos and Reddit boards, adherents of a bizarre conspiracy theory argue that everything you know about the history of architecture is wrong.
By Zach Mortice
April 27, 2021, 12:41 PM EDT
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-04-27/inside-architecture-s-wildest-conspiracy-theory
>> Tartarian Empire <<
I’ll check it out.
I wasn’t even aware that there was a conspiracy theory about it. I’ll spend a few minutes checking out the history and whatever the conspiracy is supposed to be, though.
Most of what I learned about architecture came from a undergraduate elective I took on Medieval and Renaissance Art. It was a really good course taught by a woman who’d show slides, many about the art and architecture of Italy, and by the time she finished talking you’d appreciate what she was explaining much better.
I said I’d check it out, but some of those videos on the alleged conspiracy are over an hour long. From the few paragraphs I’ve read about it, there’s not much sense in it, though, so I’m not going to spend that much time watching the videos. I wanted to see some short, historical, non-conspiracy videos.
If anyone wants to give a short account of what the motivation is supposed to be for suppressing information about the Tartarian Empire, I’d like to hear it.
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