Ancient Bactrian Seal with Elaborate Floral Pattern in White Stone

I am including the story of how I was introduced into the fascinating early history of Bactrian ornamental arts.  Contact me with questions or for invoice through the private message form at the top right of this page.

This ancient Bactrian seal has been in our collection for some years now, but it dates from long ago. It was made by a stone carver living in the Bactria of four thousand years before the present. 

The seal has been authenticated and published by Dr. Victor Sarianidi, the archeologist who has led excavations in different locations within the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex which encompasses a good part of Western Asia. 

My introduction to the ancient Central Asian pre-Alexander Bactrian culture happened on a sidewalk in Kabul, Afghanistan. My husband and I were strolling along the main shopping corridor of Shar-i-nau or The New City. We were using the day off from work to do some shopping for the household, as we were living in Kabul at the time. We turned the corner from the Chai Khana or Tea House and there on the sidewalk, a merchant from a village had opened his shop on a colorful scarf spread on the concrete walk. Fascinated by what we saw, we leaned over the ancient pieces spread before us. 

With gestures and the merchant's limited English and our limited Farsi, we understood that he had purchased the old previously buried pieces from people who had been plundering the ruins of old Bactria, the Afghan town called Balkh. We recognized the pieces as being from another age, but we knew nothing about their provenance nor what their age might be. We collected many such items such as vessels, seals and statuettes. Years later we came home and unpacked our treasures. Only much later we discovered that other people had come in contact with this merchant and others while they lived in Kabul and they had acquired more knowledge and more artifacts than we had done. 

Those collectors mentioned a Russian archeologist who had led excavations in Bactria and was still leading excavations in Turkmenistan into what he and other archeologists call the Bactria-Margiana Archeological Complex, a material culture that extended from Eastern Anatolia to the Indus Valley and from Turkmenistan to Baluchistan. These were ruined settlements that had been occupied by people who made many of the same images on their vessels and on their personal adornments.

This particular seal is notated and illustrated in Dr. Sarianidi's book Myths of Ancient Bactria-Margiana on Its Seals and Amulets, pages 238-9, figures 1270.1 and 1270.2.

It is identified as 'Seal, corrugated edges. White stone. D(iameter) 4.1 cm; 
H (thickness) - 1.9 cm. Nine-petal rosette. On the back side of the seal there are nine drilled cavities; the handle has three cut lines of decoration. One beam of the seal is broken.' 
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Bactrian Ornamental Art is Small with Mythic Images

The people in the Bactria Margiana Archeological Complex, of which Bactria was a part, built massive Bronze Age style walls around their centers of population to protect the region's ruler, the temple and a great number of the lower ranks of the people.  Shepherds, miners, farmers and such would spend most of their time outside the city walls, of course.

But for the craftsmen who served the court and the temple, their lives were contained inside the protection of the walls.  With so many people in a relatively small space, at some point there arose a practice of identifying oneself by having a mark or a symbol that could be placed on one's own goods or on sealed contents of clay vessels that were being sent to or kept for someone else.  

The Bactrians made their seals not so often as cylinders with scenic glyphs serving as the seal, but as carved flat soft stone seals or cast bronze or copper.  Fewer silver seals have been discovered.  Many of the seals were furnished with a looped handle on the back for hanging on the person of the user.   Not quite so numerous as the seals that have been discovered are the amulets, also carved in soft stone or cast in bronze or copper.  

Here is an example of a Bactrian carved stone amulet: 

Bactrian Stamp Seal Off-white Stone Bird Image, Authentic, Published

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As an example of a Bactrian cast copper or bronze seal with a mythic image of the bull or bull ox in full body and as the subject of a mythic scene told in the image, I show this one from my collection:

Because the negative impression is more difficult to discern, I will also show the modern bronze pendant for which this ancient stamp seal was the model.   

The original cast bronze mold from which this impression was made served as a religious icon, perhaps to be carried or worn by a priest of the earliest expression of Zoroastrianism. There is a myth being told in this icon. It is the myth of the serpent nursing the seeds of life from the large mythic figure of the bull. The long slithery line of bronze attached to the bull's undercarriage depicts this myth that is later mentioned in the Avestas, according to the archeologist who excavated Bactria. 

My friend, Dr. Sarianidi, the Russian archeologist and excavation director, explains the Bactrian myths as their symbols are told in the images on some of the more elaborate cast bronze seals. This is one of the seals that he saw at our house when he visited and made photos of them for his book on Myths of Ancient Bactria-Margiana on Its Seals and Amulets. 

Believe me, I would not have understood this mythic portrayal had I not sat at Victor Sarianidi's feet in my living room while he told the stories. Then in reading sections of his book many times over, I have begun to understand and dare to interpret some of my own seals. 

This one is a special one, being the graphic expression of one of the early Zoroastrian beliefs concerning the seed of life. 

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Bactria and the Later Tocharians

This blog sketches the wanderings of the Indo-Europeans who came down from the steppes above the Caspian and through the North Central part of Iran into the Margiana high desert oases, and farther East to settle along the Amu Darya.

At the same time, a group of European clans that had wandered from the steppes above the Danube crossed much of Eurasia to the Volga region and came down to settle among the Late Neolithic planters along the Yellow River in what is now called Inner Mongolia.  This is a simplification of the route that is proposed by David Anthony in his work The Horse, the Wheel and Language.  As they followed the Yellow River upstream, they built settlements and left cultural remains, finally settling so far west in Taklamakan Desert that they left their very bodies entombed as mummies as a witness to their one-time habitation there as early as about 1500 BC.   You can judge their appearance from this forensically re-structured corpse from the Tarim Basin of the Taklamakan Desert, dating about 1200 BC.

When Greeks, following the route of Alexander the Great, came into this region about the first century A.D., they began to record their observations about the people, the geography and the flora and fauna.  They found first in Bactria a Greco-Persian people speaking a language that had many of the words and sounds of their own Koine Greek language, which is the language of the Christian Bible, but is now passed out of popular usage.  From these people there descended a type that still exists.  They have the Greco Persian complexion and body structure.   And their Dari language is an Indo-European language related in sentence structure to the French language.  For the two years I lived in Afghanistan, the location of Bactria, I was able to manage a bit of everyday life in Dari.  It is quite beautiful when spoken or when written in the Arabic alphabet.

But back now to the European face and body that we see in the grave uncovered in very recent decades  among a group of bodies of this type and types mixed with the Mongol Chinese.  These are the ones that were supposed by David W. Anthony, author of The Wheel, the Horse and Language,  to have come through the Tian Shan range from the Northern Steppes into Mongolia and up the Yellow River to the Tarim Basin.  They too were found by the first century A.D. Greek travelers and were called the Tocharians.  Their language could be recognized to have much in common with the Greek language of the time, but not as understandable as the Bactrian language spoken by the Indo-European type across the Pamir range from the Tarim Basin.

Several archeologists and linguists place the Tarim Basin European types within the same group of wanderers as the Bactrians, except that they did not go to Bactria.  They ended up in the area of Swat which is located now within the country of Pakistan.   There they developed a more Hindu (Indian) culture than a Zoroastrian culture (Persian).  And then after a time, the Tocharians went North over the Himalayas and into what is now the Xinjiang autonomous region of China.  The Tocharians there became Buddhist, moving away from the Hindi culture as missionary monks came over the Himalayas from India where Buddhism was born.

All these Greco-Indo-Persians shared many similarities in the practices and symbols of their habitations as Anatolian Greeks, as Kerman Desert Persians, as the Margiana Persians, as the Bactrian Greco-Persians, and the Tocharians.  We have to remind ourselves here that the Greeks in that area of that time would have resembled the archaic and classic Greek types, not most of the modern Greeks.  They would have appeared more like somewhat paler modern Persians. But it is their culture that is the important and interesting part of their heritage, not their genetics.  Nevertheless, their remains have been tested and found naturally to be mixed with the people they emigrated into from their steppe origins.  But the tests also showed that the European genes showed up very often in their samples.

As an almost final note, we acknowledge that by the time Greek travelers came through, the Tocharians from the Tarim Basin on the East side of the Pamir range had become rulers over Bactria and the Xinjiang region.  They had established what is known to history as the Kushan Dynasty.

Ending here, I will only add that I collected several artifacts from Kabul merchants who sold the findings from unofficial excavations of the ruins of Bactria.  Contact me privately by using the private message form above. 

Travel, Trade and inter-Cultural Exchange

Reviewing and continuing from my last post, and still based on David Anthony's work The Horse, the Wheel and Language, we can explore a bit deeper into the economic activity along the route taken by the Bactrians from the steppe region north of the Black Sea and Caspian Sea to a settlement that became a kingdom in Bactria at the foot of the Pamir mountains along the Amu Darya.

By 3,500 B.C., trade routes were being blazed by early traders that instigated the movement toward the global village in which we live today.  Material goods were carried by the merchants and were acquired by different settlements, even different cultures, along the length of the route.  This development makes it much more difficult to assign the artifacts discovered in excavated ancient sites to one culture rather than the other.  But if a group of sites yield great amounts of a certain type of goods and the technology for making those goods is also found on the site, it is assumed that the complex of settlements using that type of goods to a great extent were in close cultural association.  They constitute an ethnic group with similar if not identical beliefs, rituals, societal organization and burial customs.

This is my brief explanation of how the Bactria-Margiana Archeological Complex is identified.  After all, the people in those regions left no written records until much later in their history.  The buildings, housewares, ritual objects and personal accessories were buried in the ruins of a community or in the ancient burial grounds.  However, we remind ourselves that the trade route even at this time allowed the exchange of material goods and language, and from a shared language come the metaphysical assumptions rooted in the language.   These exchanges -- at least of the material goods -- were happening in places as distant from each other as Ur in Chaldea, Bogazkoy in Anatolia, Mohenjo Doro in the Indus Valley Bactria along the Amu Darya and Kashgar in Western China.

The Bactria-Margiana culture became influential in the Bronze Age, beginning around 2,000 - 2,500 B.C., through the tin trade.  Tin mines were active in Anatolia and in the foothills of the Pamir mountains, an offshoot from the West end of the Himalayas.  The mine lay between Bactria and Kashgar, just over the Pamir in what is now the northwest region of China.  Naturally, merchants followed the even more ancient path of the migrating people of the Neolithic through the mountain pass and then the tin was passed along to various cultures within the huge geographic area now known as China.

Tin was a desired commodity because it is a necessary ingredient of true bronze and it was bronze that made tools tough enough and sharp enough to work stone into ritual vessels, personal ornaments that both decorated the household or person and stored wealth and therefore could be exchanged for other necessities.  Bronze tools and weapons empowered the user in work and in hunting or fighting.  Bronze tools held a point and a sharp edge longer than the former copper tools had done.  Bronze as well as copper could be cast in stone molds to form small copper and bronze seals or ritual and household vessels.

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Jade workers in settlements along the eastern part of this trade route were no doubt eager to turn in their bamboo, stone and bone tools for bronze tools.  Here is a jade item at least several centuries old, if not a few thousand, on which you can see what I think are the irregular diagonal traces of a hand saw that was not totally abraded to a smooth surface.  Granted the saw could have been an iron or steel saw if the piece is only several hundred years old.

My next blog entry will continue this brief and casual review of the cultural background and the influence of the ancient Bactria-Margiana people. 

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Who Were the Earliest Bactrians?

When answering such a question as 'Who were the earliest Bactrians?,' I find myself choosing which linguist, which archeologist and which writer on these subjects to use as an authority.  Seemingly the best work in English to reconcile some of the divergences among a wide array of linguists and archeologists is David W. Anthony's prize-winning work, The Horse, the Wheel and Language, 2007.

In my own much stripped down version of his very detailed and documented account of the folk migrations that occurred from about 4,000 to 1,500  B.C., I will give an account here of the people that came into what is now the Iranian Desert and also into Bactria and Margiana.  He also includes a folk migration from the same origin into the Altai mountain region to the East and then down into parts of what is now China.  But that is for a different blog.

Going back to the Bactrians' origin, let us rely on Anthony and follow his choice of linguists and archeologists that identify the area north of the Black Sea and extending eastward to the Caspian as the probable origin of an extensive cultural expression among people whose skeletons and mummified remains show physical traits of the people now called Indo-Europeans, based on the language family that connects them.  From Welsh Gaelic to ancient Sanskrit, in Iceland and in India, the languages are related through a root language that we call Indo-European.  The cultural objects from pots and ornaments to the clothes on the 3,500 year old mummies in northwestern China, we find that they wore twill woven plaid garments, and sometimes had red hair and blue eyes.  Of course, there were many that looked more like the people of Tadjikistan or northern India as well.  

But over all, the people who left the steppes north of the Black Sea and moved South and East, covering over a thousand miles in just a matter of a few centuries, and settling the Anatolian-Iranian plateau, oases in the area around the Kopet Dagh and along the Amu Darya, and finally through the steppes of Kazakhstan and southern Siberia, this easternmost branch settled the area east of the Kunlun Shan and west to the Tarim Basin of northwestern China.  With them they all carried some elements of what became the Indo-European material culture of the second and first millennium B. C.  Their metaphysical culture seemed to include a theological system of belief in the dualistic nature of the universe; a belief in the Good Force and the Evil Force.  As they created amulets to carry or to wear on their person, they shaped in clay, carved in stone, engraved on bone, wood or gemstones the figures that represented these forces.  Often they showed the forces in physical struggle on their personal ornaments and on ritual objects.  

The Bactrians showed a heroic figure, sometimes a human with an animal's head,  battling with whatever symbol represented Evil in their artistic imagination.  More often than not, the eagle or a human with a bird-like head was chosen to represent the force of Good, usually in the position of vanquishing the force of Evil,  represented by coiled or writhing serpents.  

As one example, I offer a drawing from a cast bronze miniature seal from Bactria:

after Sarianidi, 1998

In this seal iconography, we can see the eagle-headed winged human representing the force of Good and the Evil Force is represented by six or seven scaled, writhing cobra-like serpents with their crests flared being held and controlled by the hero figure.   The angelic eagle-human is in a kneeling posture, adding to the probability that this cast bronze amulet is religious art.  

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Sealing an Ethnic Identity

Stamping possessions or identifying a person's status or beliefs was important in a-literate societies.  The stamp seal or the cylinder seal could serve this purpose without a person needing to read or write.  The wearer of an amuletic seal apparently felt his role in society to be secured by such a talisman.  A seal that revealed his belief in a certain manner of worship and at the same time protected him because of that belief was an important ornament and often accompanied the wearer to his grave.

In fact, as in a modern Christian burial, the cross is worn or placed on the body of the deceased to stay with him in the casket, the ancient Bactrian seals that reveal symbols of their cultic beliefs and practices were preserved in the tombs until modern times.   It is fascinating to ponder on why so many of the Bactrian seals from four thousand years ago bear symbols that we see in Eastern and Western religions today.   For example, I offer this cross shape as the central symbol in this cast copper seal from Bactria, now in my collection: 

Ancient Bactrian seal shown here with the impression in modeling clay 

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Here is a fuller description of this particular seal. 

 My introduction to the ancient Central Asian pre-Alexander Bactrian culture happened on a sidewalk in Kabul, Afghanistan. My husband and I were strolling along the main shopping corridor of Shar-i-nau or The New City. We were using the day off from work to do some shopping for the household, as we were living in Kabul at the time. We turned the corner from the Chai Khana or Tea House and there on the sidewalk, a merchant from a village had opened his shop on a colorful scarf spread on the concrete walk. Fascinated by what we saw, we leaned over the ancient pieces spread before us. 

With gestures and the merchant's limited English and our limited Farsi, we understood that he had purchased the old previously buried pieces from people who had been plundering the ruins of old Bactria, the Afghan town called Balkh. We recognized the pieces as being from another age, but we knew nothing about their provenance nor what their age might be. We collected many such items such as vessels, seals and statuettes. Years later we came home and unpacked our treasures. Only much later we discovered that other people had come in contact with this merchant and others while they lived in Kabul and they had acquired more knowledge and more artifacts than we had done. 

Those collectors mentioned a Russian archeologist who had led excavations in Bactria and was still leading excavations in Turkmenistan into what he and other archeologists call the Bactria-Margiana Archeological Complex, a material culture that extended from Eastern Anatolia to the Indus Valley and from Turkmenistan to Baluchistan. These were ruined settlements that had been occupied by people who made many of the same images on their vessels and on their personal adornments. 

This seal bears one of the common images. It was viewed at our home by Dr. Victor Sarianidi when he was in the United States researching Bactrian material for his book Myths of Ancient Bactria-Margiana on Its Seals and Amulets. This seal was later published in this book as Number 334 on page 109 and labeled as Seal, Copper. 4.0 cm diameter. Cross with beams broadening at their ends inside indented border. The figures surrounding the cross form are birds or fish, both propitious symbols used on various artifacts found in the ruins of this culture. 

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A Tomb in Margiana and Grave Goods from BMAC Burials

My husband took this photo at the Gonur Necropolis excavation site around the year 2000.  From the side of the grave we can look into 3,500 years of history.  The Gonur Necropolis is a large site, with many burials of Margiana people from different social strata.  The social status of the deceased is determined by the manner of burial within a certain spiritual tradition.  Since burial customs are slow to change, it might be safe to assume that most of the people buried there had lived within the same spiritual tradition.  Therefore, I might not be too far off the mark to say that the deference shown to a particular corpse would signify the level of society in which he/she lived.  

The grave shown above reveals two groups of bones; the skeletons of either individual do not appear to be complete.  The age or sex cannot be determined from the photo.  This is a more capacious grave than the most common ones at Gonur.  This appears to be a small chamber tomb with a raised area for pots and plates and enough space  for a second corpse.  

There appear to be some ornaments on one of the skeleton, but they remain stuck in the earth surrounding the skeleton.  

Within the graves of the various settlements of the Bactria-Marigiana Archeological Complex, which was related in material culture and in religious practices and burial customs, we find similar ornamentation mainly in the form of beads, amulets, seals and statuettes in addition to the household items.  Unauthorized digging or surface collecting from graves in Bactria yielded the beads that are strung on this necklace: 

Ancient Bactrian Steatite Faience and Shell Bead Necklace with Symbols  Contact me through the private message form above right.

The 'grave robbers' of so many of the BMAC ruins put such beads as those above into the market place where collectors could purchase them.  

This necklace is made of ancient beads from the ruins of the ancient settlements in Bactria which is now included in the country of Afghanistan. These kinds of beads were made and worn by the people who were buried there in the ruins during the period from 2,500 B.C. to 1,600 B.C. The circle and dot design is a common symbol used to decorate ornamentation of that time in the Bactrian culture.

Ancient Bactrian Steatite Faience and Shell Bead Necklace with Symbols

 The central bead on the shorter strand appears to be made of an ivory like material, either bone, shell, or animal tooth. Notable is the hole on that bead. It was worn through so many generations that even the hole in such hard material was worn into a triangular shape by the string that held it. This is characteristic of beads worn for a very long time. There are smaller beads on the strands that appear to be of the same material. One small bead still has the shape of a molar. 

The clay bead shown in detail below has an appliqué of an eye shape that protrudes from the surface of the bead. 

Ancient Bactrian Steatite Faience and Shell Bead Necklace with Symbols

The central bead on the longer strand is early glass, called faience. It was glazed with a greenish color in ancient times and some of the color is still present.

Faience was made in very early times in this region, because Bactria was a hub of the ancient trade routes and many artisans either traveled through here or were settled in Bactria. The wandering traders brought new knowledge and techniques to the bead makers in Bactria.

Faience was usually either painted or the pigment was added before the silica was heated to melt it and form it into beads around a fireproof rod. It could also be considered a ceramic depending on the amount of refinement it went through.

There is one tiny carnelian bead that has been clouded with chemicals from the earth in which it was buried. It appears to have been painted with designs, but the patterns traced there by the chemical inclusions are permanent integral parts of the tiny carnelian.

The collector will enjoy a close examination of each bead, which probably has an interesting story to tell the person who likes to 'read beads.' This piece is not only collectible, but also wearable.

The beads have been re-strung on nylon coated steel bead wire and furnished with a bronze plated zinc clasp.

Measurements: 21 in (53.5 cm) long

Central Bead on longest strand: 14 mm x 15 mm  Contact me through the private message form above right.