Bactrian Seals and Amulets, an Introduction by Pierre Amiet

First, I might introduce my own interest in Bactria.  It began in the bazaars in Kabul, Afghanistan where my husband and I saw hundreds of obviously ancient artifacts, but we did not know where they came from, who made them, or how old they might be.  We only knew that they had lain in the earth a very long time and that they were different from the other arts we had seen in the Middle East.

We had lived in Ankara, Turkey for four years, then we made the overland trip on the map shown below, taking our time in Iran and then stopping in Kandahar before we reached Kabul, the city where merchants could sell the Bactrian artifacts that were found by unauthorized explorers of the ruins of Bactria and Margiana.  I have the region marked by the oval on the map and our journey is marked by the dark line from Ankara to Kabul, showing our stopping places.

Our journey from Ankara, Turkey to Kabul Afghanistan showing the Bactria-Margiana region in the oval

Now to explain how Victor Sarianidi, leader of the Russian excavations of Bactria and Margiana,  came to be one of my dear friends and how Pierre Amiet's writings on the Ancient History of Western Asia became interesting to me: 

After my family had put together quite a collection of various seals, amulets and grave goods from tombs, we met Victor through another collector who was in Afghanistan and Pakistan around the same time we lived there. We invited Victor to our home to see our collection and explain to us what it was, where it came from  and how the Bactrian people lived and behaved.  He was happy to do so.  My husband made clay impressions of our authenticated seals, photographed the seals and impressions and Victor examined each one, measured it and then wrote a short description and classification for publishing in his catalog: Myths of Ancient Bactria Margiana on Its Seals and Amulets.  

The introduction to the work is written by Pierre Amiet, Honorable General Inspector of the Museum of France.  The following is a synopsis of Monsieur Amiet's introduction to Victor Sarianidi's catalog of Bactria-Margiana archeological findings.  

Amiet's opening remarks concerning Victor Sarianidi's work: 

"Victor Sarianidi, excellent archeologist,...is known as an expert in field research.  Due to his excavations...we learn about astonishing fortresses of Bactria and Margiana situated on the border of the Iranian plateau and the steppes crossed by the Amu Darya river to [in-ed.] the north of of modern Afghanistan....Civilization of this "Outer Iran" formed a very original component in the immense network of the inter-Iranian exchange..."

Amiet points out that Bactria-Margiana,  this proto-Iranian (nascent) civilization, was rooted in their migration and mercantile exchanges as they came down from North of the Caspian Sea area and passed among the Elamites in the western part of Iran.  These previous connections between the Elamite and  the nearby Mesopotamian culture and the outer "colonies" of proto-Iranians probably happened before they settled in  Bactria and Margiana in the North and Quetta and Sibri [Sibi - ed.] in the South.  The latter mentioned cities are located in what is now the west central part of Pakistan.  This map may help show the locations of the  "Outer Iran" settlements of the mid-III millennium B.C.  The larger outlined area approximates the location of the northern proto-Iranian settlements and the smaller marked circle shows the southern location of other proto-Iranians. 

The people of the Bactria-Margiana culture did not produce any written documents; at least nothing with "writing" on it has been found yet.  Monsieur Amiet acknowledges the work of Victor Sarianidi in the final statement in his introduction to V. Sarianidi's book in Myths of Ancient Bactria Margiana on Its Seals and Amulets: 

"Victor Sarianidi approaches this mystery with courage and knowledge which is due to his understanding ...."

Dr. Sarianidi taught me a great deal about his interpretation of the images on Bactria-Margiana seals and amulets.  Contact me with questions or for invoice through the private message form at the top right of this page.

Festival at the Margiana Digs

Dr. Victor Sarianidi, his guest and his team of workers at the Gonur Depe excavations are in the picture below.  They are sitting on carpets spread on the Kara Kum Desert floor.  The brush piles protect them a bit from the sand and wind.  They are waiting for the nearby clay oven to bake the bread and for the steaming pot of meat stew for the festival.

Victor is the white-haired, white-bearded man; my husband, his guest, is seated to the right of Victor; to the right of my husband sits a Russian assistant; the Turkmen males, the woman cook and the child are seated on each side of the the three non-Turkmen males.

My husband, the adventurer and ardent explorer into the ancient Bactrian culture, visited the site seven times and came to know most of the people who worked with Victor Sarianidi, the leader of the Russian excavation team. Victor was also our teacher on the subject of Bactria.

I fondly recall his stories of what he had discovered about the religious practices, the burial customs and the myths portrayed on the seals and amulets of Bactria and Margiana.  One evening, as he sat in our easy chair, I perched myself on the raised hearth in our living room while he told his entrancing stories of lambs or horses given a burial beside the master who had died.  He explained that small dishes, the amulets or beads that the deceased had worn during life, and sometimes an animal would also be placed in the tomb shaped like a room in which to spend the after life.

Victor had found in the religious practices and the funeral customs the precursors of the Zoroastrian religion of later Persia and India.  As he "read" the images engraved on stones and cast in metal in ancient Bactria and Margiana, Victor saw their strong relationship to the legends written out much later in the Zoroastrian literature, the Avesta for the Persians and the Rig Veda for the Zoroastrians in India.

Since I had a background in linguistics and had done a bit of amateur archeology before I met Victor, I began to study seriously the history of the Bactria-Margiana Archeological Complex.  We had long before built up our collection of artifacts bought from Afghan merchants and from other collectors.  I am still studying the pieces and trying to interpret the images through Victor's eyes.

Victor died several months ago, but one of his last acts was to send us the last book he published.  I am therefore able to continue learning from him.

Where is the Bactria-Margiana Archeological Complex?

The responder to this question sometimes shows a region so large that it encompasses much more territory than the name would imply, since Margiana lies in the Kara Kum Desert and Bactria sits in the Northeastern reaches of what is now Afghanistan.

This map shows these areas:

Outlined border of the ruins excavated in the Murghab region of Turkmenistan and the Balkh province in Afghanistan showing the location of the ancient Bactrian ruins.

Use your zoom function to find the Murghab River in Turkmenistan, the location of Gonur North, Gonur Depe and other ruined settlements of the Margiana civilization.  The region of Balkh along the Amu Darya is the location of the ancient ruins of Bactrian settlements.

Other archeologists or experts in Bronze Age glyptics will usually offer a map much like this one:

Victor Sarianidi shows this map in his interpretive catalog of Bactria-Margiana Archeological Complex artifacts in his work Myths of Ancient Bactria Margiana on Its Seals and Amulets.  The motifs, styles and shapes of the glyptics are found to be similar among the findings by archeologists from  Crete through Anatolia and Northern Syria, across Iran and Afghanistan from the mouth of the Persian gulf to Bactria-Margiana and Baluchistan, then over the Khyber Pass and on to the Indus Valley.

Traders, travelers and imitative artisans could be the explanation for the wide distribution of similar stone and metal beads, seals and amulets.  The distinctive attribute of the Bactria-Margiana culture located in Turkmenistan and in Bactria passed on a religious legacy in the people that continued to inhabit Persia and India: the Zoroastrians.  For example, in my own collection of Bactrian stamp seals, I see in the ancient motif the suggestion of a modern mandala design:

Ancient Copper/Bronze Seal from Bactria

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Contact me if you are a collector.  I offer a RESERVE plan that allows you to make partial payments on your schedule for purchases of $300. 00 or more.  

Shapes and Styles of Ancient Bactrian Seals

This amulet bead makes a seal impression when the wearer wished to mark a possession, but probably served also as a bearer of religious symbols.  Dr. Victor Sarianidi interpreted thousands of seals yielded from the excavations of the Bactria-Margiana Archeological Complex, where he led the Russian teams for forty years.  His work Myths of Ancient Bactria Margiana on Its Seals and Amulets explores his discovery that the Bactria-Margiana culture was the precursor to the Zoroastrian religion of the later Indo-Iranians.

Many of the mythical images on the bead seals/amulets were drilled dots to create abstract "dot figures" of creatures from nature both wild and domestic, and humans in conflict with lions, tigers and dragons.  Here is an example of a three sided prism with a drilled dot image on each side.  

Bactrian three sided bead seal/amulet authenticated and published by Sarianidi

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The prism shaped beads are just one of the traditional styles created by the craftsmen of Bactria and Margiana.  Sylvia Winkelmann is a specialist in this field and her recent book on Seals of the Oasis based on the Ligabue collection describes the various shapes: 

- Button shaped seals with pierced lug

- Discs, round bifacial seals, longitudinally perforated

- Rectangular bifacial plate, longitudinally perforated

- Square bifacial seal with longitudinal perforation

- Lanceolate forms with truncated ends, longitudinally perforated

- Rhomboid bifacial seal (stepped-cross seal) with longitudinal perforation of two holes in opposite corners of the rhombus.

- Prisms with longitudinal perforation (note: the one pictured above is three sided)

The categories of "bead seals" or amulets listed here are not the only shapes we will discuss.  But since I am showing an example only of the three sided prism bead/amulet, I will not add the several other shapes we will encounter as I show in other blog posts these ancient stamp seals/amulet beads from my collection.  

The compartmented cast metal stamp seals is another distinctive product of the Bactria-Margiana culture, as are the rarer cylinder seals from the Bactrian part of the widespread Bactria-Margiana Archeological Culture (BMAC).  

Speaking of which, I will add simplified maps of the region here, first showing the location of Bactria: 

U.S. Army map ca. 2001 - the oval shows the Balkh or Bactrian province of Afghanistan

The whole BMAC region is now understood to have symbolic art similar to the archeological findings in Anatolia and in the Southwest of Iran and the Northern tip of Syria.   The yellow marked area below emphasizes the ancient settlements whose archeological findings substantiate a relationship to the findings at the digs at Altyn Depe.   

Discovering Bronze Age Bactria

Stamp Seal from our Collection of Bactrian Artifacts

published on title page of Necropolis of Gonur by

Dr. Victor Sarianidi, leader of Russian excavations

in the Amu Darya and Murghab regions of the 

Bactria-Margiana Archeological Complex.

In the mid-1970s, my husband and I had the great good fortune to live in Afghanistan for two years.  As we browsed the bazaars of Kabul, we began to find mysterious and obviously ancient carved, drilled, engraved and cast amulets and seals, in addition to miniature carvings of animals and human feet, hands and other parts.  We did not know where they came from, their age, or the civilization that must have produced them.  When we asked the merchants, they said the artifacts were from Balkh, but they did not offer more than that.  Most of our collection came out of the ruins in the province of Bactria, now located in Northeastern Afghanistan.

The ruins of Bactria had been discovered first by the residents of the towns and villages along the Amu Darya.  The artifacts may have been washed out of the ancient ruins by the occasional rains that sent water rushing down the mountain sides.  The old burial sites were then revealed and the casual explorer found interesting objects that he could take to market.  As the merchants in Kabul bought them and displayed them, only a few Westerners interested in ancient arts and culture were buying them.  We only know two other American collectors of such items; that is to say only two other collectors who lived or visited there.

I want to make clear that though I will be speaking often of my family's association with Dr. Victor Sarianidi, the leader of the Russian excavation of ancient Bactria and Margiana, Dr. Sarianidi was not a source of artifacts for us.  All his findings went to museums, not to private collectors.

Victor taught us what he had discovered about the Bactrian civilization and invited us to his excavations in the Murghab region in Turkmenistan.  Margiana, situated along the Murghab, is a part of the widespread proto-Iranian culture, closely related to the Bactrian culture.  My husband visited the digs in the Kara Kum desert on many occasions.

Here Victor leans on a section of the walls of the palace at Gonur Depe North:

The goal of this blog is to share bits of the information on Bactria and Turkmenistan that we learned from Victor's visits at our home and from his valuable publications.  I will also rely on the books based on the Ligabue collection and the recent work of Ms. Sylvia Winkelmann.

I am gratified to see that Ms. Winkelmann has given due notice to the drilled stone images that make up a large part of my family's collection.  For example:

Stone Amulet from Bactria, authenticated and published by Victor Sarianidi

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I am now in the process of downsizing our collection and will be posting many of the seals and amulets for sale.  Click on the links below the photos to see a more detailed description, price and payment arrangements that I offer.  

Both copper/bronze compartmented seals and engraved amulets in stone or faience such as these are pictured below: 

Cast copper/bronze: 

  

Ancient Bactrian Cruciform Compartmented Seal Authenticated and Published by Sarianidi  

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Engraved in white stone:     

Bactrian Stamp Seal Bird Image   Published by Sarianidi 

All the linked photographs on this page show artifacts that have been authenticated and published, most of them in V. Sarianidi's book on Myths of Ancient Bactria Margiana on Its Seals and Amulets.

  Contact me with questions or for invoice through the private message form at the top right of this page.

Ancient Bactrian Wheel Shaped Copper Seal Authenticated and Published

This ancient Bactrian artifact from my personal collection is available for sale.  Contact me with questions or for invoice through the private message form at the top right of this page.

Ancient Bactrian Copper Seal Wheel Shaped, ca Four Thousand Years Old

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This ancient compartmented bronze seal from Bactria is in our collection which was visited by the archeologist who dug up a lot of Bactria and Margiana. This stamp seal is published in his work Myths of Ancient Bactria-Margiana on Its Seals and Amulets, pp. 154-155, plate 783.  

The work is by Dr. Viktor Sarianidi and contains a great number of the seals and amulets in our personal collection that was assembled before we knew Dr. Sarianidi or the Russian excavations that he led.  

This is his description of the published stamp seal: 

Seal. Copper. D - 4.1 cm. Whorl rosette with a circle in the center. I might add here that the seal has a bar that divides the central 'hub.' 


The view below shows the top or back part of the seal with the handle for the user.

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Ancient Carved Steatite Vessel Bactria Approx Four Thousand Yrs Old

A carefully carved ancient steatite bowl probably used in life by the owner and taken to the grave with the deceased.  

Ancient Carved Steatite Vessel Bactria Approx Four Thousand Yrs Old

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An ancient Bactrian beautiful steatite dish carved into a kidney shape The olive green sets off the striations in the rhomboid motifs to good effect. The line decoration lightens the geometric shapes into a more lyrical over all design. But the piece is in excellent condition for an object that has been weathered either in the earth or exposed to the elements for at least 3,500 years and very possibly as long as 5,000 years.  

The dish is decorated all around. The culture that produced this dish is located in what is now the country of Afghanistan in the North part, in the high desert of Central Asia, nestled into the lower part of the Hindu Kush range of the Himalayas.  

The civilization that began to develop in ancient Bactria some 5,000 years ago was replaced by later inhabitants that have also been replaced, or at least their culture has developed in a new direction. But in the third millennium B.C., some 5,000 years ago, the myths that informed the culture were expressed in designs on stone amulets, seals, and vessels of various kinds. The myths were acted out in monumental temples.

This dish was probably buried along with the owner as part of his grave goods, though it might have been simply left in a room of a temple that fell to ruin due to invasion or abandonment. 

Since the Bactrians of this period did not record history in writing, we have no way of knowing how the dish was used.  

Size: 7.2 cm x 5 cm x 1.7 cm (2.8 in x 1.9 in x 0.7 in)  Contact me with questions or for invoice through the private message form at the top right of this page.