1000-550 BC - Bactrian Kingdom
Nothing is more evocative of the history of ancient Afghanistan as the name of Balkh as it is linked to the epic of the Aryan people. One thinks of the land of Hystaspa, Yama, and Zoroastre. What is certain is that by the third millennium B.C. the so called Bactrian civilization places itself between the septentrional cultures of Central Asia, Ouzbek, and Tadjik, and the ones from the Indus valley to the South and Iran to the West.
This country was traditionally said to have first been peopled by the descendants of Gomar, the grandson of Noah, and for some time, they were called Chomarians, and their metropolis Chomara, appellations derived, with very little corruption, from the name of that patriarch. Afterwards Bactria became the capital of the kingdom; and, according to Q. Curtius, both the kingdom and its capital were denominated from the river Bactrus, which fertilized the fields through which it rolled, and washed the walls of that famous and almost impregnable city. But the name of the river upon which Bactria was built, according to Pliny, was Zariaspa, and, according to Ptolemy, Dargidus.
It will not, however, be impossible to reconcile the accounts of Curtius and Pliny, if what the latter affirms be allowed, that the ancient name of Bactria was Zariaspe, which is also affirmed by Strabo. In the same manner the river, upon which the city was built, may have also changed its name, or borne different names in different countries. Ptolemy's account, however, is inconsistent with both; for he places the city in the interior of the kingdom, while they assert, that it was situated at the foot of the Paropamisus, the southern boundary of the country. Bactria, in latter ages, was called Balk, a name which it bears at the present day.
That there was a polity of some consequence in Bactria in the early centuries of the first millenium BC may be stipulated, and there is some evidence of this polity in contemporaneous Assyrians sources. But the precise nature of this relationship remains unclear, though the tenuous subordination to the Celestial Throne implied in the relationships of Chinese tributary states may come close. More recently, the whole matter has left mapmakers in a quandary. Most cartographic depictions of the Assyrian Empire are of a rather compact entity, centered in Mesopotamia, and venturing into Egypt briefly in 673-653 BC. A few other cartographers grant Assyria an extent in the East roughly equal to the subequent Achaemenid conquests. And some map-makers evade the issue by truncating their charts, leaving the Eastern zones off the right-hand side of the page.
Among the ruins of the residence of the kings of Asshur at Chalah, on the confluence of the Greater Zab and the Tigris, was discovered the obelisk which Shalmanesar II, who reigned from 859 to 823 BC over Assyria, erected in memory of his successes. In the tribute offered to him is found the rhinoceros, the elephant, the humped ox, and the camel with two humps (II. 320). This species of camel and the yak are found in Bactria, on the southern edge of the Caspian Sea, and in Tartary, and we afterwards find elephants in the possession of the rulers of Bactria. Hence, in order to obtain these animals for tribute, the armies of Shalmanesar must have advanced as far as the eastern tribes of the Iranian table-land.
From the inscriptions of Tiglath Pilesar II, it is clear that he advanced along the same table-land as far as the Hilmend and the Arachoti, if not as far as Bactria. Among the lands subjugated in 745 BC, he enumerates Nisaa, Zikruti, and Arakuttu. The Zikruti were no doubt the Sagartians of Herodotus, the Acagarta of the old Persian inscriptions. Arakuttu represents in a Semitic form the name of the Arachoti, the Harauvati of the Achaemenids. So far as can be judged from inscriptions, the successors of Tiglath Pilesar did not carry their campaigns further to the east of Iran, and both the sovereigns who raised the power of Assyria to its summit, Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal (681— 626 BC), made no conquests in this direction.
Bactria is supposed to have been originally the center of a powerful kingdom founded more than 1000 years before the Christian Era and exercising extensive sway throughout Iran. One of the principal arguments brought forward in favor of the existence of such a kingdom, antedating the Median rule and the Achsemenian sovereignty of the Persian Empire, such a view is the story of the campaign of Ninus of Assyria, the semi-mythical founder of Nineveh, against a Bactrian king.
At what time Bactria assumed the name and the glory of an independent kingdom, it is impossible to determine. Admitting the authority of Ctesias, which has been more than questioned, it must have been at a very early period. If the inscriptions of the Assyrians provide almost nothing about Bactria, the Medo-Persian epic poetry can give full information about the country. When Ninus, king of Assyria (late 9th and early 8th century BC), had subjugated all the nations of Asia as far as the Nile and the Tanais, he made an attempt upon Bactria, but without success. The entrance into the land was difficult, the number of warriors great, and they knew how to fight bravely. Then Ninus collected an army of two millions of soldiers, which was opposed by Oxyartes, the king of the Bactrians, with 400,000 men. When the Assyrian army came in detachments out of the passes, Oxyartes attacked and drove them back into the mountains with the loss of 100,000 men. The army of Ninus then combined, outnumbered and overcame the Bactrians, and scattered them into their cities, which Ninus took with little trouble. But Bactra, where was the palace of the kings, was large and well supplied, and had a very strong citadel in a high position, while the city extended over the plain. It resisted for a long time.
The existing history of Semiramis, said by some to be Assyria's greatest ruler, is so confounded with the religions and superstitions of the ancients that little or no authentic fact may be gleaned therefrom. According to Berosus, the Chaldean priest who lived in the time of Alexander the Great, she reigned from 1356 to 1314 BC, but more recent scholarship would date her to around 800 BC. The legends were handed down from father to son among the Syrians and imaginative Persians, till finally recorded by the more imaginative Greeks. These latter gentlemen seemed seldom to allow mere truth to stand as a stumbling block in their literary paths, but leaped it nimbly for the entertainment of an admiring world. As for poets, they ever sing of Queen Semiramis at a period of her seasoned age and wickedness, though her "devilish beauty" continued to abide with her, being wielded as an evil scepter o'er the souls of men; yet much must be forgiven in a poet, because of that strange inaptitude of truth for a friendly relationship with meter and with rhyme.
It is not quite certain whether Sammu-rammat [reigned as queen 811-806 BC, or 857 BC by another account] was the wife of Shamshi-Adad VII or of his son, Adad-nirari IV. In her character as the legendary Semiramis of Greek literature, the Assyrian queen was reputed to have been the daughter of Derceto, the dove and fish goddess of Askalon, and to have departed from earth in bird form. Semiramis became the wife of Onnes, governor of Nineveh, and one of the generals of its alleged founder, King Ninus. She accompanied her husband to Bactria on a military campaign, and is said to have instructed the king how that city should be taken. She asked to take charge of a group of mountain soldiers, have them scale the cliffs which defended the site and turn the flank of the enemy defenses. The besieged soldiers were terrified and solemnly did surrender. Ninus fell in love with Semiramis, and Onnes, who refused to give her up, went and hanged himself. The fair courtesan then became the wife of the king. All the military expeditions of Semiramis were attended with success, except her invasion of India. She was supposed to have been defeated in the Punjab. After suffering this disaster she died, or abdicated the throne.
At a later time Semiramis collected her vast army for the invasion of India in Bactria, and returned to Bactra after she had been defeated on the Indus, and had lost two-thirds of her army (II. 10). Such are the descriptions given by the epic poetry of the Medes and Persians, in the account of the rise of Assyria and subjugation of Bactria.
After the walls of the capital, and the spirit of its inhabitants, yielded at last to the repeated attacks of their numerous foes, the kingdom became a province of the Assyrian empire. The Bactrians, as auxiliaries engaged, while their governors were appointed by their conquerors. In this state of degrading dependency, Bactria remained, till the Assyrian empire was itself overturned by the aspiring spirit and the fortunate arms of Cyrus the Great.
From the the epic poetry of the Medes and Persians it follows that in the first half of the sixth century BC, in which the Medo-Persian epic attained its original form, the tradition, or at any rate the opinion, existed among the minstrels of Media that a powerful kingdom and large metropolis once existed in Bactria, the situation of which is correctly described. This kingdom possessed a strong citadel and abundant treasures, and could put in the field a large army of brave warriors. Without such a conception they could not represent the first attack of the Assyrians on Bactria as a failure, the second as successful only after considerable time and trouble had been spent, and the conquest as the last and greatest achievement of Ninus, the mightiest sovereign of Assyria, which he only performed with the aid of Semiramis.
The inscriptions of the Assyrians inform that no dominion of Assyria over Eastern Iran existed in the earliest period of the kingdom; on the contrary, even when her power was at the highest Assyria could only carry on temporary excursions into that region. The western part of the country was first trodden by the armies of Shalmanesar II.; his inscriptions mention tribute of the Medes, and from the inscriptions of his successors it is distinctly clear that only the nations of Western Iran were tributary dependants of the kings of Asshur from the period of Tiglath Pilesar, i.e. from the middle of the eighth century BC, till the period of Phraortes and Cyaxares of Media, i.e. till the middle of the seventh century BC.
Zoroaster was mentioned by Ctesias as king of Bactria at the time of Ninus, and recounted with some variations by Trogus Pompeius (in Justin), Eusebius, and others. The record seems to contain some allusion to Zoroaster, the Prophet of ancient Iran, whose patron was Vishtaspa, and whose death occurred at Balkh, according to Firdausi and others, when the city was stormed by the Turanians. For this and similar reasons Bactria is often regarded as the cradle of the ancient Magian religion.
Before the assertion that Zoroaster was king of Bactria can be admitted, all the land-marks of ancient history must be removed. Yet such is the discernment ot some writers, that this assertion has been believed. The truth is, Zoroaster did not live till many ages after, as all the oriental writers assert, such as Abulfaragius, Ishmael, Abulfcda, Shara^taui, In some ancient manuscripts of Justin, Oxyartes is found instead ot Zoroaster, which, in all probability, was the true reading. Some ignorant transcriber may have changed the name, because be found in the text, that the king mentioned was said to have been the first inventor of magic arts, (primus dicitur ones mugicns invcnisse,) and as the invention of this science has been commonly attributed to Zoroaster, he might imagine that he was restoring or correcting the text of Justin, when he was corrupting it.
The glory which the Bactrians merited, by the wisdom of their councils, and the valor of their arms, has been obscured in the depths of remote antiquity; and the exalted station which their sages and heroes might hope to obtain on the page of history, has been occupied by the more fortunate candidates for fame which future ages have produced. But considerable doubt is attached to the antiquity of the story of Zoroaster's death at Balkh; and so high an authority on Persian history as Justi disclaims the existence of a Bactrian kingdom before the time of Alexander the Great. Yet others may hold a different opinion.
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