Bactria Amulet with Symbolic Rosette Cross formed by Incised Circles

             Bactria Amulet with Symbolic Rosette Cross formed by Incised Circles -- SOLD

For photos, descriptions, prices, shipping policies and Certificates of Authenticity 

CONTACT ME through the private message form above right. 

This ancient Bactrian amulet carved as a rosette with mythical symbols of incised circles in a double cross design is from a civilization dating from 3000 B.C. to 1600 B.C. That civilization was replaced by later inhabitants that have also been replaced, or at least their culture 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.

From the ruins of the temples and the extensive finds from the tombs, the temporal objects produced by the ancient Bactrian culture were excavated and have been interpreted by Dr. Victor Sarianidi in his book, Myths of Ancient Bactria and Margiana....
This particular amulet has been in our collection for some years; we acquired it from a dealer in antiquities in Afghanistan, the modern location of ancient Bactria. When Dr. Sarianidi visited our home to view our collection, he identified this amulet as Bactrian. In fact, it is similar to the seal/amulet numbered 1263 on page 237 in the book named above. Such seal/amulets were made of a white stone sometimes identified as limestone, but very much more dense and smooth than limestone objects usually are.

The design on the amulet depicted above is complex. First, the edge of the amulet is not only shaped by 13 petals, but the edge is incised with fine lines all around. Each of the circles contain another circle in lower relief; this inside circle is not round but has cogs around it, apparently six cogs, judging from the outside circles that are not filled in with earth that obscures the cogs on the small circles.

The circles on the front appear at first glance to be placed randomly across the face of the amulet/seal. But when observed more closely, we see that the design resolves into 2 crosses: one in the shape of a + while the other forms the shape of an x.

The amulet is decorated on the back around the handle with 4 circles that are more conventional for the Bactrian stone engraver: concentric circles that look like eyelets. Between the circles the engraver made simple shallow holes.

The piece was worn smooth and shiny, showing that it was worn for a long time before passing on to the grave with the wearer.

Measurements: 4 cm diameter; 1.4 cm thick.

This item is sold.  For photos, descriptions, prices, shipping policies and Certificates of Authenticity 

CONTACT ME through the private message form above right. 

Ancient Funerary Goods from Bactrian Tombs

Ancient Bactria Hemispheric Carved Stone Dish Incised Decoration

For photos, descriptions, prices, shipping policies and Certificates of Authenticity 

CONTACT ME through the private message form above right. 

From the accidental or unofficial discoveries of these ancient items eroded out or dug up from the tombs in Balkh, the ancient Bactria in Northern Afghanistan, these items were brought into the merchant stalls and sidewalk displays of the merchants in Kabul, Ghazni and Peshawar.  They finally were recognized as something very different and probably very old by the Westerners strolling through the bazaars of such mercantile cities.  They were bought in rather small quantities by many different visitors, but are now being gathered into larger private collections.  

The beads and vessels, the weapons and ritual objects of such a lost culture of the Central Asian Bronze Age, lasting from at least 2,500 B.C. to 1,600 B.C., are now becoming rather hard to acquire for the person who would simply like to have a few for his/her own interest and study.  We were introduced to these items in 1974 when we lived in Kabul for two years.  We have since acquired a small collection of beads, vessels and ritual objects.  The vessel in the photograph above reveals so much of the style of decoration used in Bactria.  

An ancient Bactrian beautiful steatite dish carved as a half circle with a slight concave curve on the 'straight' side. The olive green sets off the striations and conical engraving to good effect. The wavy line decoration lightens the geometric shapes into a more lyrical over all design. There is some wearing away where the sides join into a point. 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 on every side and along the top edge. There are many faint marks on the inside and bottom of the dish, but I suspect that they are marks by the engraving tool.

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. 

The pyramidal design on this dish, naturally enough, came to represent the ancestral mountain to the people who settled that area more than a thousand years after ancient Bactria had fallen to ruin. Perhaps it expressed the same meaning in very ancient times, as well. Since Bactria did not record its history in writing, we have no way of knowing. One added commonality with the Mongols who came to that area beginning in the 900s is that they used similar wavy lines to represent water in the ornamentation of their possessions. However much the wavy lines are used in both cultures, we do know from Sarianidi's interpretation of the myths of Bactria, that the ancient Bactrians used wavy lines mainly to represent snakes. 

Inquiries are welcome.

1 inch = 2.5 cm

Measurements: width = 4.7 cm; length = 9.1 cm; thickness = 2.3 cm 

For photos, descriptions, prices, shipping policies and Certificates of Authenticity 

CONTACT ME through the private message form above right. 

The Chimera in Ancient Bactria and Other Places

A chimera is an imagined species cross so that the offspring is born with anatomical parts from both parents.  For a hypothetical example, a horse and cow crossbred might produce an animal with a stallion’s  head and body and a cow’s rump and milk bag.  That is the kind of image that is created on the basis of the legends that have developed in many different cultures of the world.  

The Bible’s book of Genesis (Beginnings) mentions that angels mixed with the corrupt daughters of men and produced monsters.  The images of such monsters have decorated temples and tapestries, possibly from that early time forward.  Greek mythology is replete with monstrous images of supposed mixtures of gods and humans and humans with animals; often the story is of a Greek god in the body of an animal ravishing a human woman and in some cases the story even names the resulting monster and makes him into a hero or a villain. 

Excavations of palaces and tombs in Bactria have yielded many images on seals and small figurines that show chimera.  The Bactrian culture seems to have entertained the idea of such crossbreds and they took their artistic expression of such creatures to a high degree.  There may be a natural explanation of the Bactrian people’s interest in crossbreds, because their predecessors in that region domesticated the wild animals of their region.  And to their eyes, the resulting offspring indeed resembles both the ancient parents of the new grass-eating domestic animal.  The moufflon is an intermediate stage of the domestication process perhaps.  

In Victor Sarianidi’s book Myths of Ancient Bactria, page 62, No. 63, there is an illustration of a human male with a bird-like head and wings.  The seal is in our collection of seals and amulets, and was authenticated and interpreted thus by Dr. Sarianidi when he visited our collection: ‘Copper amulet, 3.5 x 3.0 cm.  Kneeling bird man with a crest on his head.’ 

If you have questions regarding this seal, leave a comment at the end of the blog entry.  I will respond. 

A more spectacular example of a chimera is this statuette in my collection.  The statuette is made of porphyry, which came to be known as the stone of nobility, since it is used in temples and palaces for the columns and for the tombs of rulers.  

It is a brownish red or maroon color and has a marbling pattern that makes it very noticeable when it is used for decoration or ornamentation.  To my eyes, this appears to represent a hybrid of a duck and a rooster. 

If you are interested in discussing this item, please feel free to comment.  I will be notified of your message and I will respond.  

For photos, descriptions, prices, shipping policies and Certificates of Authenticity 

CONTACT ME through the private message form above right. 

Gonur Necropolis Grave Goods a Cultural Legacy

The Bactria-Margiana  Bronze Age Central Asian culture lasted from about 2,500 B. C. to 1,600 B.C.  The people there developed high skills in art, especially miniature art, are still a very powerful influence in jewelry designs, and domesticated the sheep, goat and horse.

One of their legacies is the large Gonur burial grounds that cover not only a wide space of ground but at least a millennium of time and embracing different cultures'  burial customs.  Some bodies were buried in the fetal position while some others were found buried in a hole with head down.  A few bodies were found with domestic animals buried near them.  A horse with head and hind quarters missing, and a portion of a lamb's body were found alongside human burials at the same level of excavation.

I am less interested in the method of reposing the body in its resting place than I am in the personal and household items buried with some of the bodies.  Combs, beads, amulets, seals, cosmetic containers, vases and pots are common items to find still in the graves or eroded out of the graves and revealed on the surface for scavengers to pick up and take to the market place.  Such unofficial picking over of ancient ruins brought the Bactria-Margiana culture to light.  But before the official excavations began, thousands of items had been found or illicitly dug up and put on the market in the cities of Central Asia.

My own collection of such items began while I lived in Kabul, Afghanistan.  Kabul is not so far from the central settlement of the Bactrian culture, closely related to the Margiana culture.  Two items of grave goods will illustrate the similarities.  Here is a photo of a ceramic vessel in my own collection:

Ancient Bactrian Ceramic Vessel from Bronze Age Central Asia

For photos, descriptions, prices, shipping policies and Certificates of Authenticity 

CONTACT ME through the private message form above right. 

This small pot or cup resembles other vessels of that area and historical period in that it does not have handles. According to the writing of Dr. Victor Sarianidi, the excavator of several Bronze Age sites of Central Asia, in his book on Margush, Ancient Oriental Kingdom in the Old Delta of the Murghab River, the potters of that time and place were more interested in mastering the creation of various shapes of clay vessels. As a result, we see very interesting fluting and elaborate pedestals, spouts and footings on otherwise fairly plain clay vessels. Some are compartmented, others are kidney shaped, still others are tall with narrow necks. 

This particular small vessel has uniform thickness in its wall; the bottom curves seamlessly into the sides, and the rim is flared in a very pleasing way. Inside the vessel we can see traces of the impression of very fine cross hatching that may have been made by finely woven cloth.The firing of the clay was advanced in this area. The kiln was built by digging a rectangular or oval pit lined with mud bricks. This was the fire chamber. Firewood was loaded into it through a hole. Inside this chamber a wall was built that supported the upper baking chamber where the vessels were placed. Holes were drilled in the floor of the baking chamber to allow the heat to come through, but the vessels were protected from open flame and ash. 

This item is complete, undamaged, after about 3,000 years.  Measurements: Rim 2.75 inches diameter; bottom 2.5 inches diameter; 2 inches high.

It is very like the bronze vessel found in Margiana, a related settlement to the North in what is now Turkmenistan, shown in this photo from the work by Dr. Victor Sarianidi, Necropolis of Gonur, plate 87.  

Grave Goods in the Bactria Margiana Archeological Complex

Grave Goods in the Bactria Margiana Archeological Complex

When we consider the utensils, ornaments and organic remains uncovered in excavating the ancient sites of human settlement, we classify those things that have been obviously put in the tomb or pit with the human remains as grave goods.   Ancient items discovered on the surface cannot be classified at all and museums usually are not interested in them for that reason.   Beads are the items commonly found in abundance in the rubble of a ruined settlement and in the graves.  Such beads as these were found in East Iran's ruined settlements of that era.  Those settlements are related culturally to the Margiana sites, according to the archeologist, Dr. Victor Sarianidi.

Casual explorers of ancient sites have gathered such objects through the centuries, and that is how antiquities show up in merchant shops in the countries where people have lived in settlements since the waning of the New Stone Age.   Such archeological material also comes onto the market through clandestine digs, of course.  Once the items are on the market with no context with which to identify the items, again, the museum loses interest and the items pass into the hands of dealers.  The dealers display them in market places of the Middle East where these cultures first sprang up.  And from there, the travelers and collectors buy them.  When I lived in Afghanistan, where Bactria is located, I found these unidentifiable pieces in dealer's shops and only many years later learned that they came from ancient Bactria, not just the Bactrian period of Alexander the Great's conquest of Persia.

The Bactria Margiana Archeological Complex, BMAC, includes sites in East Iran.  Some of the identical cultural products found in both areas are these spindle whorls or loom weights marked with circular designs.  They were found strung with beads.  The ones shown in the photo below are from Bactria, and may date from late antiquity, having been formed in the old way.   However, since grave goods are generally better preserved than items that have been left among the general ruins, these well-preserved spindle whorls or loom weights or beads may date from as long ago as four thousand five hundred years ago.  If they were simply made in later Bactria in the ancient pattern, they could date from as recent as one thousand five hundred years ago.

The texture, weight and appearance of these pieces closely resemble ivory or a very dense bone or shell.  They are not made of stone, glass or ceramic.  According to Dr. Victor Sarianidi, who excavated a large part of the BMAC sites in Turkmenia and some in Afghanistan, ivory materials were discovered in East Iran and in Margiana.   

For photos, descriptions, prices, shipping policies and Certificates of Authenticity 

CONTACT ME through the private message form above right. 

References:

Victor Sarianidi, Necropolis of Gonur, Athens, 2007
Victor Sarianidi, Margiana and Protozoroastrism, Athens, 200-
Giancarlo Ligabue and Sandro Salvatori, Bactria, Venice, 198-
Lois Sherr Dubin, The History of Beads, New York, 1987
Robert K. Liu, Collectible Beads, Vista, 1995

Burial Customs in Ancient Margiana

For a display of my collection of archeological findings from Bactria, visit my Personal Website.

Thanks to my archeologist friend, Dr. Victor Sarianidi of the Institute of Archeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, the burial customs of one of the excavated sites in Margiana are well-documented in English in two of his published works: Margiana and Protozoroastrism, and Necropolis of Gonur.

In Gonur Necropolis, Sarianidi found two different burial rites, one in shallow pit graves with the body simply laid in the earth.  The other burial rite was elaborate, with a ritual cleansing of the grave by burning or cleansing with gypsum, a kind of white wash before the deceased was laid in the deeper pit.

The second rite described above also was found to contain partial burials.  That is, the body was brought there for burial after the bones had been stripped and often parts of the skeleton was left.  Victor was led to consider and then to decide that these rites developed over the next few hundred years into the spirituality of the Zoroastrians.   The purifying of the grave in order to protect the earth from the pollution of receiving a dead body and then the burial of the remaining parts from a body that had been exposed for time before being laid in the earth are still practiced where the Parsees (Persians) are free to practice them.  When I lived in Karachi, there was an area near the Arabian Sea where the Parsees still laid their recently deceased on raised platforms until their burial rites could be performed in the traditional way.

The ancient culture that is now called the Bactria Margiana Archeological Complex  was once a lively cultural region  that included settlements from Anatolia in Turkey to the Indus Valley and from Turkmenistan to East Central Iran.  The people in this cultural complex were not uniform in their artistic expression or in burial practices.  But they shared enough to show a strong relationship among the excavated relics of their settlements.  The archeologists variously name the people proto-Iranians, Indo-Iranians, proto-Zoroastrians, Persians, Indo-Persians and perhaps other names.  The area now bearing the widely accepted name of BMAC or Bactria Margiana Archeological Complex is also called Outer Iran.

In any of the names, there is the association with the people now known as Persians or Iranians, which still includes a huge portion of that very same area that BMAC encompassed.    Certainly Iran itself, along with Afghanistan and parts of India, Pakistan and Turkmenistan are included.  Where we see the old Iranian religion persisting into the present in communities consisting of *cradle Zoroastrians,* that is to say, people who are of that belief system by birth, we recognize language and customs that can be traced back to the time before Alexander's conquest of Persia.

In a coming blog, we will examine some of the utensils, animals, jewelry, and other important cultural objects that are buried with the dead of Gonur in Margiana in particular.

Who Lived in Bactria-Margiana?

Indo-Iranians of Early Central Asia

The earliest archeological records show that the people of the period 2,500 B.C. to 1,600 B.C. came from the West and settled in the desert oases of Central Asia.  Due to the work of the Russians' studies in comparative linguistics, but most of all due to their archeological excavations, we know that the Bactrians shared the physiognomy of the Indo-Iranians.  For that reason, the archeologist who worked the longest and dug up many of the sites, Dr. Victor Sarianidi, calls them proto-Iranians, or *preceding Iranians.*  

This post is intended to be sketchy and not scholarly.  I do not want your eyes to glaze over.  I welcome your additions to the discussion.  There is much to be added.

It almost seems that these Indo-Iranians of Central Asia came Eastward and stopped  only when they encountered the lower reaches of the Himalayas.  Just to the north of Kabul Afghanistan is Bactria, one of the richest archeological sites.  But along their path Eastward, from Anatolia, the high plateau in Turkey, through Elam near the Persian Gulf, then across the desert of present day Iran, they established  settlements along the way.   In addition to Bactria, at almost the same time, they settled in a place along the major river in Margiana, which is now in Turkmenistan.  This is now a rich source for archeological artifacts that reveal much about their mindset, their burial customs and their rites of worship.  Apart from the citadel with a temple, a palace and defensive towers in thick walls surrounding the residences, Dr. Sarianidi found a huge burial ground which he named the Gonur Necropolis.   

Excavating, cataloging and interpreting the contents of the graves occupied Victor's work for at least the last decades of his working life.  Through his work we learn about who lived in the settlement of Gonur in Margiana by studying how they died and were buried.  Amulets, beads, seals, household items and even animals were buried with or near their owner.  We will explore this in upcoming blogs.  We can begin with the personal items that were carried to the grave with the body.   Perhaps most important to the deceased were the amulets they wore in death, pieces such as this:

For photos, descriptions, prices, shipping policies and Certificates of Authenticity 

CONTACT ME through the private message form above right. 

First we know that beads much like these in the photo below were buried with the owner.  Possibly a hundred thousand Bactrian style beads were clandestinely and officially excavated and collected by museums or sold to collectors, the authorized excavations placing their finds in the care of a museum; the other kind of excavator sold his finds to the local antiquities dealer.

Ancient carnelian beads from the Bactria-Margiana Archeological Complex

For photos, descriptions, prices, shipping policies and Certificates of Authenticity 

CONTACT ME through the private message form above right. 

But apart from making the most popular style of beads from the most treasured stones along the trade routes that began to flourish in that region by 2,500 B.C., these people also developed a high culture with a ruling class, a clergy, temple worship, elaborate rituals concerning burials and monumental architecture.  

As practical contributions to the all humankind, they domesticated the precursor of sheep and goats and then bred to differentiate the species.  Above all their greatest contribution to animal husbandry was domesticating the horse.  

We will explore the burial customs in our next blog, because so much of their archeological record is contained in the Gonur necropolis in Margiana.    

References: 

Victor Sarianidi, Necropolis of Gonur, Athens, 2007

Giancarlo Ligabue and Sandro Salvatori, Bactria, Venice, 198-