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Afghanistan: Zeus / Serapis / Ohrmazd with Kushan worshipper, Bactria, 3rd Century CE. The Kushan Empire was originally formed in the early 1st century CE under Prince Kujula Kadphises in the territories of ancient Bactria on either side of the Oxus River in what is now northern Afghanistan, southern Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.<br/><br/> The Kushan kings were a branch of the Yuezhi confederation (possibly intermarried with local families) and they had diplomatic contacts with Rome, Persia and Han China. The empire declined from the 3rd century and fell to the Sassanid and Gupta empires.
Afghanistan: Kushan worshipper and the deity Pharro, Bactria, 3rd Century CE. The Kushan Empire was originally formed in the early 1st century CE under Prince Kujula Kadphises in the territories of ancient Bactria on either side of the Oxus River in what is now northern Afghanistan, southern Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.<br/><br/> The Kushan kings were a branch of the Yuezhi confederation (possibly intermarried with local families) and they had diplomatic contacts with Rome, Persia and Han China. The empire declined from the 3rd century and fell to the Sassanid and Gupta empires.
The Bactrian language is an extinct Eastern Iranian language which was spoken in the Central Asian region of Bactria. Linguistically, it is classified as belonging to the middle period of the Northeastern Iranian branch.<br/><br/> Because Bactrian was written predominantly with the Greek alphabet, Bactrian is sometimes referred to as 'Greco-Bactrian', 'Kushan' or 'Kushano-Bactrian'.<br/><br/> More than a hundred Bactrian documents, written in cursive script on leather, cloth or wood were discovered in the last decade of the 20th c. Before that the corpus of Bactrian was effectively limited to a single inscription from Surkh Kotal and the short legends on coins and seals. Almost all other texts were either illegible, incomprehensible, or both.
The Hephthalites (or Ephthalites), also known as the White Huns, were a nomadic confederation in Central Asia during the late antiquity period. The Hephthalite Empire, at the height of its power (in the first half of the 6th century), was located in the territories of present-day Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, India and China.<br/><br/> The Bactrian language is an extinct Eastern Iranian language which was spoken in the Central Asian region of Bactria. Linguistically, it is classified as belonging to the middle period of the Northeastern Iranian branch.<br/><br/> Because Bactrian was written predominantly with the Greek alphabet, Bactrian is sometimes referred to as 'Greco-Bactrian', 'Kushan' or 'Kushano-Bactrian'.<br/><br/> More than a hundred Bactrian documents, written in cursive script on leather, cloth or wood were discovered in the last decade of the 20th c. Before that the corpus of Bactrian was effectively limited to a single inscription from Surkh Kotal and the short legends on coins and seals. Almost all other texts were either illegible, incomprehensible, or both.
In the 320s BCE, Alexander the Great captured the city of Bagram and established a fortified colony named Alexandria of the Caucasus. The new town had brick walls reinforced with towers at the angles. The central street was bordered with shops and workshops.<br/><br/> After his death in 323 BC, the city passed to his general Seleucus, who traded it to the Mauryan Dynasty of India in 305 BC. After the Mauryans were overthrown by the Sunga Dynasty in 185 BC, the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom invaded and conquered Northwestern India (Present Day Pakistan) with an army led by Demetrius I of Bactria. Alexandria became a capital of the Eucratidian Indo-Greek Kingdom after they were driven out of Bactria by the Yuezhi in 140 BC.<br/><br/> Bagram (Kapisa) became the summer capital of the Kushan Empire in the 1st century, whereas their winter capital was in Peshawar. The emperor Kanishka started many new buildings there. The central palace building yielded a very rich treasure, dated from the time of emperor Kanishka in the 2nd century: ivory-plated stools of Indian origin, lacquered boxes from Han China, Greco-Roman glasses from Egypt and Syria, Hellenistic statues in the Pompeian style, stucco moldings, and silverware of Mediterranean origin.<br/><br/> The 'Bagram treasure' is indicative of intense commercial exchanges between all the cultural centers of Classical times, with the Kushan empire at the junction of the land and sea trade between the east and west. However, the works of art found in Bagram are either purely Hellenistic, Roman, Chinese or Indian, with little indication of the cultural syncretism found in Greco-Buddhist art.
The Rabatak inscription is an inscription written on a rock in the Bactrian language and the Greek script, which was found in 1993 at the site of Rabatak, near Surkh Kotal in Afghanistan. The inscription relates to the rule of the Kushan emperor Kanishka, and gives remarkable clues on the genealogy of the Kushan dynasty.<br/><br/> The Bactrian language is an extinct Eastern Iranian language which was spoken in the Central Asian region of Bactria. Linguistically, it is classified as belonging to the middle period of the Northeastern Iranian branch.<br/><br/> Because Bactrian was written predominantly with the Greek alphabet, Bactrian is sometimes referred to as 'Greco-Bactrian', 'Kushan' or 'Kushano-Bactrian'.
The Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex, also known as ‘Oxus civilization’, is the modern archaeological designation for a Bronze Age culture of Central Asia, dated to c. 2200 – 1700 BCE, located in present day Turkmenistan, northern Afghanistan, southern Uzbekistan and western Tajikistan, centered on the upper Amu Darya (Oxus), in area covering ancient Bactria.<br/><br/> Its sites were discovered and named by the Soviet archaeologist Viktor Sarianidi (1976). Bactria was the Greek name for the area of Bactra (modern Balkh), in what is now northern Afghanistan, and Margiana was the Greek name for the Persian satrapy of Margu, the capital of which was Merv, in today's Turkmenistan.<br/><br/> According to some authorities, Bactria was the homeland of Indo-European tribes who moved south-west into Iran and into North-Western India around 2500–2000 BCE. Later, it became the north province of the Persian Empire in Central Asia. It was in these regions, where the fertile soil of the mountainous country is surrounded by the Turanian desert, that the prophet Zoroaster (Zarathushtra) was said to have been born and gained his first adherents.
The Kushan Empire originally formed in the early first century CE under Prince Kujula Kadphises in ancient Bactria on either side of the Oxus River in what is now northern Afghanistan, and southern Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. During the first and early second centuries CE, the Kushans expanded rapidly across the northern part of the Indian subcontinent at least as far as Saketa and Sarnath near Varanasi (Benares) where inscriptions have been found dated to the first few years of the era of the most famous Kushan ruler, Kanishka, which apparently began about 127 CE. The Kushan kings were a branch of the Yuezhi confederation (possibly intermarried with local families) and they had diplomatic contacts with Rome, Persia and Han China. The empire declined from the third century and fell to the Sassanid and Gupta empires.
The Kushan Empire originally formed in the early 1st century CE under Prince Kujula Kadphises in the territories of ancient Bactria on either side of the Oxus River in what is now northern Afghanistan, southern Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. During the 1st and early 2nd centuries CE, the Kushans expanded rapidly across the northern part of the Indian subcontinent at least as far as Saketa and Sarnath near Varanasi (Benares) where inscriptions have been found dated to the first few years of the era of the most famous Kushan ruler, Kanishka, which reportedly began about 127 CE. The Kushan kings were a branch of the Yuezhi confederation (possibly intermarried with local families) and they had diplomatic contacts with Rome, Persia and Han China. The empire declined from the 3rd century and fell to the Sassanid and Gupta empires.
The Kushan Empire originally formed in the early 1st century CE under Prince Kujula Kadphises in the territories of ancient Bactria on either side of the Oxus River in what is now northern Afghanistan, southern Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.<br/><br/> During the 1st and early 2nd centuries CE, the Kushans expanded rapidly across the northern part of the Indian subcontinent at least as far as Saketa and Sarnath near Varanasi (Benares) where inscriptions have been found dated to the first few years of the era of the most famous Kushan ruler, Kanishka, which reportedly began about 127 CE.<br/><br/> The Kushan kings were a branch of the Yuezhi confederation (possibly intermarried with local families) and they had diplomatic contacts with Rome, Persia and Han China. The empire declined from the 3rd century and fell to the Sassanid and Gupta empires.