The Ancients - The Begram Hoard: Treasures of the Silk Road

Episode Date: July 27, 2021

In the mid-20th century French archaeologists came across a remarkable collection of ancient items from Eastern China, the Indian subcontinent and the Roman Mediterranean, all in one place. In this second episode about Begram, Tristan is once again joined by the University of Freiburg’s Lauren Morris, who takes us into the details of the lacquerwares, ivory furniture, bronzes and glassware. Lauren and Tristan then explore what the hoard tells us about the global nature of this area in Central Asia during its golden age in the 1st - 4th centuries AD.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like The Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and in today's podcast, well, we are continuing our discussion with Lauren Morris from Freiburg University,

all about ancient Begram, about the Begram Hoard, this incredible ancient set of objects discovered in the mid-20th century which includes some objects created in ancient eastern China, lacquer wares from eastern China but also objects from the Indian subcontinent and also some from the Roman Mediterranean. All together at this place south of the Hindu Kush in modern day Afghanistan really emphasises the global nature of ancient history. This was a fascinating chat. In this podcast we go into the detail of the objects in this hoard, why it is so incredible, what we know from this incredible set of ancient objects. So without further ado, here's Lauren. set of ancient objects. So without further ado, here's Lauren.

Lauren, it is wonderful to have you back on the podcast. Thank you so much for having me again. No problem at all. Last time we looked at the background of Begrim in antiquity, going up to the Begrim hoard itself, and now we're going to really delve into the hoard itself and some of the objects in this hoard. I mean, first of all, just to really clarify, Lauren, as you have said in the previous podcast, but once again, I mean, this hoard is an extraordinary set of objects. And we've got objects stretching from the Mediterranean to eastern China to the Indian subcontinent. It's incredible. Yeah, we've got just about everything from across Afro-Eurasia here. It's super. Absolutely super indeed. So let's go into the objects now. And first of all, I'd like to ask about locally made goods, because in the Begram hoard, Lauren, do we have any objects

that come from the vicinity around Begram? I'm actually really glad you've asked because there are some, but they haven't spent a lot of time in the limelight for you know the reason that the obvious imports are really exciting to us and I should preface this by saying that it's actually not entirely clear where everything in the hoard was made of course but since we have some close enough comparisons for these objects from the wider region of Gandhara right so just adjacent to Begram we can be a little bit more sure about them. So there were like two kinds of goods which were certainly locally made. So first we've got about a dozen

hemispherical copper alloy bottles. And then we've got these two quite large pots made of bronze. And so both were about half a meter wide and tall. They had handles on their sides and they originally had lids, which could have been locked on with little metal rods. And in the literature, these have sometimes been called cauldrons, but I think they might have been more suitable for storing something like

grain or perhaps rather water or wine. And if we go a bit further away from Begrim itself, do we see any objects, for instance, from north of the Hindu Kush, from under Afghanistan, from Uzbekistan, from that area, Lauren? Actually, we do have one that's very clear. We have a little chunk of lapis lazuli that was found in room 13. And we don't have many examples of precious gemstones or things like that in the hoard, but we do have this one little piece. And of course, we all know that lapis lazuli was mined in the mountains of Badakhshan in the ancient world. And already by the Bronze Age, this was distributed very widely also to the Mediterranean and Near East. So we have just a little chunk at Begram.

And I think it probably speaks to being used in the context of craft production as raw materials. So going away from the immediate vicinity of Begram and from Afghanistan, then if we head further east, and this is something that I find really, really interesting, what Chinese objects have been found in the hoard, Lauren? So quite interestingly, because of, you know, the diversity of all this material, we've got only examples of one very specific kind of object produced in Han China. And that's about 10 different kinds of lacquerware. However, they had degraded a lot in the earth. So we only have little slivers and pieces that would survive to look at. And these were made around the end of the first century BC to the

early first century AD. And what are these lacquerwares? So these are vessels and receptacles. So things like cups, bowls, platters, and boxes. And these kinds of objects were made by getting lacquer, right? Which is made from the resin of the lacquer tree and applying these very, very thin layers of it over and over again onto this wooden or fiber core. And this was a really delicate and time-consuming specialized process and it involved these repeated periods of drying you have to sort of wait apply wait yeah and so these were also decorated by coloring the lacquer with black or red pigments like charcoal or cinnabar and sometimes they could have these like really special decorative elements added like gilded silver feet or handles and the fact the time consuming

process to make these objects and the fact that we find some of these objects at Begram, Lauren, does it really suggest how these lacquerwares, do we think they were seen, they were perceived as being very valuable items at that time? Absolutely. These were certainly valuable items, like not quite worth gold or jade in the mind of a person in ancient China. But we've got this first century BC Chinese text called Discourses on Salt and Iron. And this tells us that a nicely made lacquerware cup was equivalent, in fact, in value to 10 bronze cups. So really nothing to sniff at here. Absolutely nothing to sniff at indeed.

Now, you mentioned Han China, but of course Han China is huge. But do we know whereabouts in China these lacquerwares were produced, Lauren? We had a relatively good idea. Oh, good. Yeah, for once, right? So in this period, most lacquerwares were produced in state-run manufactories. And these were massive operations producing the kinds of things which could have been used in the imperial palace. And this is a very elaborate division of labor. And so two of these manufactories were located in the present-day Sichuan province in southwest China. And then there were two other state workshops also located near the Han capital

in Chang'an, so northern China. And sometimes lacquerwares actually had inscriptions. They tell us precisely when and where they were made, which is very, very useful. Unfortunately, if any of the Begram examples had once been inscribed, those parts haven't survived, so bad luck for us. Regardless though, stylistically, some of the Begram lacquerwares do look like typical products of these workshops. But what is really quite cool is that there also seems to have been a couple of private workshops operating in China at the same time, although we do know a little less about them. And so a main one seems to have been in the Guangling Princeton.

So this is today's northeastern China. And some really elaborate pieces are now attributed to this workshop. And so about 10 years ago, the archaeologist Zhang Liangren, he noticed that some of the Begram lacquer wares also look like they could have been made in some of these workshops too. Wow. I mean, if they did come from these particular workshops, Lauren, and I know it's a big if, but if they did, what could this suggest about Begram and its connections by, let's say, the second century AD? Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of open questions here, right? Because we have to think about

what were lacquerwares produced for at home? So at home, they don't really seem to have been produced for sale on open markets, although it's possible that some of them ended up being exchanged in this way. I mean, you can't rule anything out, right? But rather, it's like possible that some of them ended up being exchanged in this way. I mean, you can't rule anything out, right? But rather, it seems like when lacquerwares are found outside of China, and quite a lot are, they seem to have arrived there mostly through diplomatic gift exchanges, right? And so we actually have a good amount of similar wares that are found in Xiongnu burials, right? You know, the perennial foe of China, as well as these burials of other mobile pastoralists, you know, across the Eurasian steppe, even as far as Crimea. So it's possible

that the Lacroix's background could have arrived into Central Asia more directly as diplomatic gifts from Chinese agents, right, because, you know, in Central Asia in this period, there were diplomatic connections and military engagements between Han China and, you know, in Central Asia in this period, there were diplomatic connections and military engagements between Han China and, you know, Yuezhi and Kushan Central Asia. But the Begram lacquerwares also could have come via down the line kind of gift exchange with step pastoralists. So there's a lot of possibilities. A lot of possibilities indeed. But I love those connections that evidently were there. Now, we've gone east. We've talked about ancient China, but Begram, connections that evidently were there. Now we've gone east, we've talked about ancient China, Burst Begram, crossroads of the ancient world so let's head

south into Gandhara into the Indian subcontinent. Lauren what sorts of objects do we have in the hoard from this area of the ancient world? Yeah so I'll start with just one example of this bluish glazed pottery jug in the shape of this hybrid creature, like a bird woman called a canary. And so because of the form of this jug, you know, stylistically, iconographically, like it looks like it was made in the Indian subcontinent. However, the technology of this kind of glazed pottery, it doesn't really seem to have been common in this space at this time. of glazed pottery, it doesn't really seem to have been common in this space at this time. Instead, it was rather more common in the Iranian world, more specifically Parthian Mesopotamia. So with this jug, we might actually be looking at a really unique example of technology transfer from this space to Northwest India. So very cool. But of course, you know, the vast majority of objects in the background hoard from the Indian subcontinent were over a thousand carved ivory and bone elements featuring very elaborate designs and all kinds of different decorative techniques.

And these mostly depict women in these interior scenes. And they give this impression of this view into a private, fertile and rich world. I mean, these ivory objects discovered in the hoard, it sounds like so many different kinds, all these various depictions. Lauren, was ivory at that time in the Central Asia? Does it seem to have been very popular, very valuable also? It was very valuable. Ivory was mostly sourced from still northwest India because elephants weren't really roaming in Bactria. But of course, around antiquity, we have a lot of ivory production still in Bactria at the same time. So they're importing ivory from the subcontinent and making

things like furniture, statuettes, and belt plaques and things like that. So they're also producing things in Bactria, yes. I mean, Lauren, I'd also like to ask about whereabouts in India these Begram ivories were made and when, because I recently did a podcast on the Pompeii Lakshmi, and it's interesting to see if there might be a possible link between that and the ivories of the Begram hoard. Yeah, this is such a hard question. I don't think anyone really knows for sure, although I'm looking forward to hearing the podcast that you've just done because I think I might learn something. I can say, yeah, there are almost no comparable carved ivories which

survive from ancient India because, of course, the climate is not very favorable for the preservation of ivory in the archaeological record. But this gives a really skewed impression of this industry in the ancient world, right? Because this ivory furniture carving industry in India must have been huge, not just for local consumption, but also for export. So that's when the Lakshmi, so-called Lakshmi from Pompeii comes in, right? So probably originally a table leg, or that's my perspective. And so to figure out when and where the Begram ivories were made, one has to really look at stone sculpture instead, which is usually Buddhist, and it's from all over India. And then we can see, okay, what is it closest to stylistically?

So in terms of regional schools, you know, the big ones of most relevance are Sanchi in central India, a little bit earlier. Then we have Mathura in the north, so not so far from Agra, right, near Taj Mahal, and then Amaravati in the south. And so the problem is that the Begram ivories, they incorporate a mix of these different styles and stylistic traces of all three schools can be discerned from this corpus, even within individual pieces of furniture. And so it tends to be presumed that this corpus, even within individual pieces of furniture. And so it tends to be presumed that the northern element is stronger. I do think the southern links can't just be dismissed. You know, Sanjog Mehendale has proposed that the ivories were made by Itinerant

artists, which could explain the stylistic problem. And they could have been, according to her, carved at Begram itself, which I don't think is really entirely convincing. And so in terms of date, they were probably made, well, between the first and third centuries AD. That's pretty safe, I think. And I will leave those questions to people who specialize more in Indian art. But I think the Pompeii so-called Lakshmi does raise the question about Western India. And I have kind of wondered recently, if one of these schools might have been close to Ujjain, Udhsani, and that might be one of the places where these schools might have come together. But I think that's an open question. Well, we will see what future archaeology reveals. Amazing. So Lauren, let's delve into these ivory objects a bit more then. What sorts of objects, ivory objects, were discovered in the hoard?

Well, you know, we get the impression that these are little pieces of art or things like that, because, you know, they're so beautiful and intricate. But actually, they're all once decorated furniture, even though this furniture was found disassembled in the hoard rooms. So we've got like a series of backrests of chairs or rather thrones. And these were very elaborate and they'd been stacked up in room 13. And then in room 10, we had the remains of perhaps 13 footstools. And we know what this furniture originally looked like, despite its very chaotic presentation in the Begram Hoard, because we've got depictions of very similar kinds of furniture in the Buddhist sculpture of Amaravati in South India.

of furniture in the Buddhist sculpture of Amaravati in South India. And so besides these chair backs and these footstools, we've got things like disassembled table legs. And some of these furniture elements were actually also made of bone. And these were used alongside the ivory, actually. And this is quite interesting because bone is much easier and cheaper to source than ivory. And so it's thought then maybe perhaps these pieces of furniture could have belonged to perhaps less elite consumers, but I'm not sure this really matters actually. You know, it's not actually totally easy for most people to tell ivory and bone apart without modern scientific analysis. And then the use of bone here could just really speak to perhaps a little shortage of ivory in the workshops that made this furniture or you know maybe they knew they could just get away with it actually

ah that's interesting yes yes i guess an ancient trading is con too strong a word but the consumer is quite happy with whatever he gets or she gets i think so i think really a person looking at this furniture would not have observed the difference really. And a lot of this had been painted too, so that would have covered that up a little bit as well. Absolutely. Always must remember that many of these objects have been painted. Of course, we've lost that colour today. Well, let's move on then. Those Indian objects are really remarkable in their own right. But we've got to go on to the Roman objects.

And Lauren, we've got loads and loads of bronzes and we'll go through these bronzes. But first of all, the figurines. What are these bronze figurines from the Horde? So we've got just a couple of them, but they are quite interesting. So they're really quite generic. So we've got some little statuettes of possible a comic grotesque. We've got these figurines of horse riders and we've got some little statuettes of gods, right? And so among these gods, we've got Eros, the god associated with love. And it's not entirely surprising to see him here because for whatever reason, he was still quite popular in the visual and material culture of Bactria and Gandhara for a really long time. And he turns up as a decorative figure in all kinds of locally produced art around this period. And then we've got a couple of interesting figures which point very strongly to an Egyptian provenance.

So one is a cast figurine of Serapis Heracles. And this is like a hybrid version of the Greco-Egyptian god Serapis. And he's associated with the sun and fertility. And here he's mashed up with our legendary hero, Heracles. And then we have another Greco-Egyptian god, Hippocrates, who's associated with silence and secrecy. And so perhaps these figurines might've first been imported as objects of religious devotion. So we've got Serapis, Heracles, Hippocrates turning up elsewhere as little figurines in Bactria and Gandara at the time. So it's possible they were religiously charged, it's possible they weren't. And by the time they ended up in the Horde, it's possible then that this religious meaning had been sort

of pulled away from them. So they changed over time, their significance. And so we see this when we see this little statuette of Hippocrates, right? So originally he's meant to be pointing at his mouth because he's the god of silence and secrecy. But the example of Begram, his lower forearm had fallen off in antiquity and then someone had repaired it. So they actually repaired it, in fact, incorrectly. So he's pointing at his head instead. And so I think this shows like a nice little process of forgetting a loss of understanding over time and then someone sort of best approximated what they knew about this god. A religious bronze object, no longer a religious bronze object. And I've got in my notes for the next bronze item, and forgive me if I say this completely wrong, Balsamaria. Lauren, explain to me all about this.

So this is another little group, but they're quite interesting because they're found commonly across the Roman Mediterranean. And so these are little bronze jars with lids on them, and these were made in the shape of the busts of gods, right? So we've got two depicting Athena, we've got two depicting Hermes, and one of Ares. So Greek gods that would have been, you know, totally recognizable in the Roman world, you know, perfectly understandable. And the idea that they were called Balsamaria, it's kind of a convention because there's been quite some debate about what they were used for. So Balsamaria implies that they were used for balsam, right? This resin. And in fact,

they may have been used to store perfumed oil, perhaps incense or even spices. And it's thought now that they could have been set on the table or carried around at banquets in the Roman world to add sort of more scent into this heady atmosphere of feasting. Right. And maybe they'd once been used in this way at Begram too. We don't know. But by the time they ended up in the hoard, I think they'd been in the stage of reuse, right? I think they'd been kept as part of reference material for craft production. So moving on from these bronzes onto other bronzes, because there seem to be some other types of bronzes, such as two-handled basins. Yes, yes. This is a group of quite wide

ditches, around 30 centimetres wide, and they had these two handles and they were set in a ring foot and they were mostly really homogenous. And so these are examples of a very widely distributed kind of object in the Roman world. So we see them very commonly at Pompeii, for example. But sometimes they're also found well beyond Roman imperial frontiers. And so a group is actually even being found in South India at Kholakhpur, which is quite cool. And so naturally at Begram, we have a whopping corpus. We have over 30 stacked together, and it's not really clear which workshop they were produced in because they're a slightly unique type. But nonetheless, in the Roman world, these kinds of basins are sort of

generally thought to have been used for ablutions in banqueting contexts. But I think at Begram, they might have just been used as tableware. Ah, interesting, the change of their use. And on to one of the most awesome labelled bronzes that I've ever heard of. The bronze aquariums. Stay with us. What are the bronze aquariums, Lauren? These are two totally unique devices, which are made mostly from worked bronze. And one is circular, one is rectangular. And we can really only call them aquariums because we don't have another name for them. So I can say, though, because of their technical and iconographic qualities, they must have been produced in the Roman Mediterranean. And even though their function isn't totally clear, I would describe them as devices for

entertainment and perhaps they were meant to be interacted with during feasts. And what do these aquariums depict? So the first one, the circular one, right, is it's quite well preserved. So we have a good vision into what this device looks like. So the first one, it's got this bronze dish on the bottom with some little pins, and then it's got a flat bronze circular plate, which sits on top. And then that bronze dish, it depicts this aquatic scene, right? We've got a gorgon's face at the center and it's surrounded by fish and aquatic creatures. And these aquatic creatures, they've got moving parts. And these

parts are primarily the fins of the fish and they were cut from little pieces of bronze and they were attached to the main body of the dish with rings. And then these little weights hung down from these rings below the decorative plate. And so then this plate had been embellished with polychrome paint, which is a very unusual decorative technique in Greco-Roman bronzes. And then a wooden ring sort of sat around the top of that plate. And then there was like a flat piece of glass on top with a decorative Roman bronze on top. So very, very elaborate. But altogether, the imagery on this main decorative plate, right, it looks like it might have depicted the myth of Perseus rescuing Andromeda.

But I think the most important thing that it displays actually is that of the ocean. So populated by all kinds of sea creatures, which would be totally foreign to a consumer at Bear Graham or wider Central Asia. And indeed, you know, the second aquarium, although it wasn't really well preserved, would be totally foreign to a consumer at Bear Graham or wider Central Asia. And indeed, you know, the second aquarium, although it wasn't really well preserved, it actually only depicted different kinds of marine fauna, so primarily fish. And indeed, you're quite right when we do think where these are found, right in the centre of Asia, hundreds and hundreds of miles away from the oceans, from the Mediterranean and all that to have sea creatures on that is awesome

catastrophic warfare bloody revolutions and violent ideological battles i I'm James Rogers and over on the Warfare podcast, we're exploring the vast history of ferocious global conflict. We've got the classics. Understandably, when we see it from hindsight, the great revelation in Potsdam was really Stalin saying, yeah, tell me something I don't know. The unexpected. And it was at that moment that he just handed her all these documents that he'd discovered

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stacked along a wall and room 13 and these are casts formed in positive relief. So their designs are, you know, sticking out to face us and they depict all kinds of things. So we've got Greco-Roman gods again, we've got Dionysiac, mythological scenes, kind of genre scenes, vine leaves, you know, really the whole smorgasbord of classical imagery. And so casts like this were probably pretty common in certain workshop contexts in the Hellenistic and Roman Mediterranean, you know, used as reference

material. And, you know, some examples do survive today. So a very comparable corpus to those of the Begram examples were found in New Memphis in Egypt. And so these casts would have been made from plaster being poured into like a negative matrix. So casts would have been made from plaster being poured into like a negative matrix. So that would have been made from clay, wax, bitumen, and that negative matrix had been taken itself from a design elsewhere. So perhaps an original design or quite likely antique metalware that a workshop might have had access to. And tell me about this Hellenistic link to these plaster casts. Lauren, I've always got me about this Hellenistic link to these plaster casts. Lauren, I've always got asked about the Hellenistic link.

What is this Hellenistic link? So the Hellenistic link is that some of these vessels that the Begram cast might have been made from were perhaps made in the Hellenistic period. The originals could have been from then. And so that's why it makes the Begram plaster cast so difficult to date. Yeah. And so these casts are so interesting because they tell us about how imagery and iconography

in both the Hellenistic and Roman world could move across these really vast spaces. And it's quite important to mention here that these casts weren't used for mechanical replication of imagery and motives. So like people weren't taking impressions directly from them, but again, they were used as sources of inspiration, as reference material, and craftsmen could have had them on hand and used them as needed. And actually another Hellenistic link, we find similar kinds of plaster casts already in Central Asia in the Hellenistic period at Aichanum. And then we also have them in a workshop that was producing terracotta figurines in Old Tormes just prior to the Kushan period. So there is also like

a longer Hellenistic history of the use of these kinds of casts as, again, sources of inspiration in Central Asia. And I guess the Begram hoard just shows a continuation of that practice in craft production. It does indeed. We'll be getting back to that Hellenistic link in due course, don't you worry. But first of all, there is another area of the Begram hoard, another set of objects, which is the enamelled glass objects, because we have some striking examples of this from the hoard, don't we, Lauren? So yes, we have some amazing examples of enamelled glass from the hoard, right? So I should mention that there's a lot of Roman glass found in this hoard, and it's mostly

all tableware, and there's over 180 pieces. So this is absolutely enormous. And in this corpus of glass, we have just about everything Roman luxury glass production had to offer, especially in the first and second centuries AD. And so the enamel group is really important. There were at least 14, maybe 17, it's hard to say, very fragmentary, problematic documentation. But these glass vessels were primarily goblets, so drinking vessels, and they're all different sizes and they're made from colourless glass and so this enamel feature is produced by powdered colored glass which was then applied to the surface of the colorless vessel and then fired on so it's really vibrant very bright and it stays very nice

for us to look at today and so the background group is actually so important for this kind of glass because yes it was produced in the Roman Mediterranean. And probably this group was produced in Egypt, we would say, for a number of reasons. But the Begram corpus is sort of the main body of reference material for this kind of glass, which is kind of insane, actually. We're speaking about Egypt and this link. I mean, Lauren, are there any particular examples of this enameled glass that you'd like to highlight? Oh, there's fabulous ones, right? I mean, we think of the Egyptian link

because there is one, for example, which has this sort of neo-Egyptianising scene. So that's sort of quite on the nose for us. But we've got all kinds of things. We've got people gathering garlands, you know, making these to hang for a festive occasion. We've got depictions of gladiators, the same kinds of guys we would see on Pompeian war paintings. the Iliad, you know, Achilles and Hector fighting in battle in two different friezes. And we know exactly who they are because they were labelled as Achilles and Hector in Greek. So it's very convenient for us. That's so incredible. And I love the fact that you can find a depiction of a gladiator in Central Asia around about the second century AD. And Lauren, one other glass

example I'd like to ask about is the Pharos glass. What is this? Oh, yes. This is sort of one of the big famous people of the Begram glass. So this Pharos goblet, it's this glass goblet, right? It's colourless and it's got this really high relief decoration and it depicts what is probably the lighthouse of Alexandria. And then on the other side, it's got three different kinds of ships. And this is just a totally unique piece of Roman luxury glass, like an excellent example

of the achievements of the industry. And it has prompted so much debate about when it was made, because we mostly have such high relief glass turning up in late antiquity of the third and fourth centuries. They've sold the famous diatretza, right? And it's just simply unclear precisely how it was made. So it could have been made from a very thick kind of blank, you know, so very thick walls. And then someone was, you know, minutely cutting away this very elaborate decoration, or it could have

been made by somebody applying sort of blobs of molten glass and then sort of cold working it. There's different options and it's kind of still subject to debate. That being said, what is so wonderful about this vessel is that it was probably made in the late first or early second century AD. It was certainly a product of an Alexandrian workshop because we have our lighthouse of Alexandria and it was probably made to be something like a super posh souvenir. If that image is that of the lighthouse of Alexandria I just really want to hammer this home because I find this fascinating that image could be an image of one of the seven wonders of the ancient world which is astonishing in its own right to have a contemporary-ish image of it. Well, let's now talk about this link with the Roman Empire. I mean,

at this time, do we have any evidence of there being regular contact, of there being contact between the Kushan Empire and the Roman Empire? We kind of do, but it's really hard to interpret. So we've got like some Roman gold coins turning up in Buddhist stupa deposits in the Kushan period. So these were buried with relics in these sacred objects of worship, which is quite cool. And we've got occasional bits and pieces of Roman glass vessels at places like Halcyon and Bactria and Taxila and Gandhara. But genuine imports from the Roman Mediterranean are really rare. There's really nothing comparable to the Begram hoard so far. And this just is surely to do with the biases of our evidence. So if we looked a bit more into like rich urban context

in Central Asia, the archaeology of them, we'd probably find some more. But regardless, right? So our evidence is complicated because our texts don't really help us much either. So our most important source for Indian ocean trade routes at the time, the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, which was written in Greek in the first century AD, basically doesn't know who the Bactrians are. So the author mentions like a port in Northwest India and he says, oh, you know, there's some people beyond that, including a very warlike people, the Bactrians. So great. And then we've got some passing references in later Latin biographies of Hadrian and Antoninus Pius.

So, you know, of the second century AD, but written much later. And these mention, you know, Bactrians paying homage to the emperors. So, I mean, it's difficult to interpret these, you know, maybe they're kind of hagiographic, maybe there's a kernel of reality. It's possible that the Kushan kings and Roman emperors cultivated some kind of long distance diplomatic relationships and however, just simply just isn't insistent upon that point. And, oh, you know, we've also got the phenomenon of Gandharan Buddhist sculpture, which flourishes in this period in the region of Gandhara, right? And this drew on a very wide ranging vocabulary of styles and imagery from

the Greco-Roman world as well. And so there's been a lot of debate about the mechanisms by which these visual features from, you know, the Roman imperial period ended up in this distant body of art. So was it through imported objects like those at Begram? Was it through things like the plaster cast or the like pattern books? And, you know, recently this idea that Roman craftsmen could have traveled to Gandara too, it's kind of been recently rehabilitated on the basis of art historical analysis. So it's kind of complicated and there's a lot of different possibilities. And I must say though, yeah, so the Romans, they weren't like dying to get to

Central Asia in many ways, and they weren't totally aware of this as a space, but the Greeks really were, right? And so there's a lot of nuanced ways we can talk about the Greek and Central Asian cultural encounter in the Hellenistic period but you know the fact of the matter is the period of Greek rule in this space they introduced settlers new cultural and religious practices so they introduced the worship of certain kinds of Greek gods and rituals that were familiar from the Hellenistic world. They also introduced really, and like, you know, gave the use of coinage a real push, Hellenistic style coinage, and they used the Greek language too. So even though that period of Greek rule was very brief,

it left very profound traces in Central Asia's visual and material culture. And this really still extended into the Kushan period. So even later in this Kushan period, right, hundreds of years later, we've got the Greek language that was still used on coins and inscriptions until the second century AD in Bactria. And that's when the Kushans decided to, you know, switch to the use of Bactrian as their sort of main imperial language, right, which is the local Middle Iranian idiom. And then when they did that, they still used the modified Greek script. And keeping on that memory of Greek rule and how strong it still seems to be at this time of the Roman Empire, it feels like it kind of goes into

that idea. When I asked you this question, then when we look at the appeal of these Roman objects in the Begrim Horde, what do you think the appeal was for the elites of the Kushans in Central Asia for having these Roman-like objects? Yeah, so I think there was this really long-standing social memory of Greek rule in this region. And it's interesting to think about how people living in the Kushan period might have remembered this Hellenistic period and its odd Hellenistic kings. And for centuries, coinage followed models of Hellenistic coins. And again, they used the Greek script and monuments of the Hellenistic period would have been, you know, very visible and engaged with in the physical landscape. So we

had like monumental stone blocks from a Hellenistic period at Balkh, right, which were reused for a canal in the Kushan period. And what's quite interesting is like politically the Kushan kings, whatever their ethno-cultural origin, they didn't style themselves as Greek or Hellenistic. You know, instead, they explicitly styled themselves as Iranian kings in their vocabularies of power. So in their dress, portraiture, language, titles, epigraphy, all really Iranian, emphatically so. And so a number of scholars have thought that there might be some kind of, you know, de-Hellenization policy under the Kushans. And politically, there's some merit to that, but still ideas about Greekness were linked with these old Hellenistic kings and associated with real prestige. And so because of phenomena like this, and just as we talk about

Greco-Roman culture, and we have from the 21st century, a difficulty drawing a line between Hellenistic and Roman imperial material culture in the Mediterranean world, I think that Roman objects at Begram would have essentially been seen as Greek too rather than really emphatically Roman distinctly so. And so a lot of the gods, mythological scenes and imagery, these would have been, you know, roughly familiar to elites in the Kushan period. And so, you know, gods, for example, we've got Hellenistic gods, which end up being syncretized with local deities in this period. So Heracles becomes the Buddha's

bodyguard, Vajrapani in Gandharana, which is just super, like what a life of Heracles. But we've also got some Kushan coins around the same period, second century AD, which also have Heracles on them. And he's our friend. He's exactly who we know he is. He's nude. He's got his club. He's got his lion skin. And there's a Bactrian legend written in the modified Greek script again, which literally says Heraclo, Heracles. So he's unmistakably this Greek demigod. And in ways like this, I think it's very easy to imagine that elite consumers in Kushan Central Asia would have read these Roman items as essentially associated with Greekness. Loving that link

once again, back to the Hellenistic Greco-Bactrian kingdom. And so if these Roman objects were being read as Greek and hearkening back to that Greek past rule in that area of the ancient world, it begs the question, I must ask, we've covered all these incredible objects. Lauren, what do we think this hoard is? So that is the big question, subject to a lot of debate, and I can tell you what I think it is, right? You go for it. So I think it was an intergenerational collection of goods that was accumulated by elites. And the character of these goods speaks to two sort of main functions of use that they had, not exclusively, but two main ones. And so the first one is a really large scale elite feasting with tableware,

ornate furniture, things like this. And then the second is accumulation of material for inspiration in a workshop, even though we have no idea what was made in that workshop. It could have been metal work. It could have been other kinds of goods. We have no idea. And so it's also important to underline that the hoard objects had been stored somewhere else before they were deposited in this building at Site 2, within which they were found. So this building had just been a rich house in the lower city. It was a mansion. And the hoard objects had been its reception rooms, right, at the core of the house. That being said, the primary storage location of these objects before they were put into these rooms is just not clear. So the number of objects is way too large, I think,

to speak to consumption in just one local mansion. Remember, over 180 glass vessels. So this begs the question, you know, maybe had they been stored originally in a palace? Well, such a palace, if it existed, should have been on the citadel, that when Roman Gershman looked there, it appeared that any ancient structures had been raised for their building materials. So we just don't know. And so the people who collected the

Begram hoard objects, they could have been local elites like a rich governor who we have evidence for at the time, or they could have been royal elites who summered in Kapisha without King Kanishka. And we just have to accept that we don't know the answer. But by the time the hoard was, you know, assembled and abandoned, presumably when the city was abandoned to, you know, mid third century or later, I want to reiterate that I think a lot of these objects were in terrible shape. So there's evidence, for example, that this ivory furniture had been falling apart, disassembled, Plaques from certain ensembles were found in piles in the wrong room. And other objects were basically antiques. Like the Chinese lacquerwares would have been hundreds of years old by the time they were put there in the hoard rooms. And wonderfully,

we have an example of one of these Chinese lacquerwares, an example of a prestigious luxury good from one side of Eurasia jammed on top of a glass jar that was presumably made in the Roman Mediterranean. So you have to wonder what these people, what they were thinking when they were putting this stuff together, assembling it and depositing in the hoard rooms. So what is at least clear to me is that these objects were still seen as very, very highly valuable, even if they were in kind of bad shape. And, you know, no, we don't have gold, silver or precious stones in any kind of quantity like our regular kinds of hoards. But these items were old and rare and acquired from across the known world at the time. Old, rare and acquired from all across Eurasia. It's awesome.

from all across Eurasia. It's awesome. And does this really emphasize, is Begrim and its hoard a great example through which to understand this interconnected global nature of the ancient world? Absolutely. I think it's the best example we had. And I think it's so exciting because it's been misunderstood, in my opinion, for a really long time. So a number of scholars have viewed this material as parts of the product of overland transit trade across the so-called Silk Road, right? And so they were either then goods that were, you know, requisitioned in kind as customs duties or a merchant stock which was abandoned. But this idea, it speaks to a bigger, longstanding historiographical construct. And that is the idea that the Kushans were the middlemen of the Silk Road, getting rich from the profits of controlling overland transit trade between Rome and China. And I think the picture that we've discussed here is way more exciting.

It shows this incredibly dynamic cultural environment with elites in the Kushan period very intentionally acquiring very specific, prestigious and luxury objects from across Eurasia, and they integrated ideas from these distant spaces into their local craft production and feasting habits. And so I think it's just such an important shift of emphasis to see the Kushans not just as middlemen, but active consumers driving long distance trade in these goods. But I think another example of what the Begram hoard does is it shows the messiness and difficulty of writing history, right? So it's attracted hundreds of articles, books, exhibitions, dissertations, including my own. And, you know, someone in the future will say something much cleverer than I can. I have no doubt about that. But, you know,

as I've picked apart the evidence and put it back together with the surviving documentation, I've just highlighted this key narrative that the Kushans aren't the middlemen of the Silk Road, and this material tells us about consumption in Kushan Central Asia. But that's just one story. material tells us about consumption in Kushan Central Asia, but that's just one story. So through this material, we're actually looking at this entangled sum of hundreds and thousands, in fact, of stories of life across ancient Eurasia. We've got all these layers of experiences, not just of elites, but craftspeople, officials, traders, all kinds of people from both sides of the continent. I think that's absolutely right lauren whether it's the vinderlander tablets or whether it's in central asia when the archaeology

can reveal more can tell stories of people who lived some 2 000 years ago that's what makes it really really special sometimes and you kind of highlighted it there lauren but shall we say that the begram hoard it's a wonderful microcosm through which to really start getting an insight into the enthralling, it is enthralling, ancient history of Central Asia, whether it's Bactria, whether it's the Ahram Begram, whether it's Gandhara, the Xiongnu, Sogdia, just that awesome history, ancient history of Central Asia. Absolutely. I mean, something I always think is that the Begram Hoard has something for everyone. But, well, I mean, the incredible

ancient history of ancient Central Asia, what an interconnected history. The Begram Hoard is such a symbol of that. And where else but in ancient Afghanistan can you find a Chinese lacquerware bowl jammed on top of a Roman glass jar? That's a good question to end it on, Lauren. I mean, you and other scholars like yourself, whether here in the UK or in Europe or in Afghanistan or in the East, it seems like there's a growing amount of you now and you're all doing incredible work trying to figure out more about Central Asian antiquities. Your mission to shine more light on this. Absolutely. I've been thrilled to see that there's such growing interest in the last decades in this time and space. And my personal small contribution to that is to, I have a blog, which is called Central Asian Antiquity, and it sort of aims to gather,

you know, recent publications, exhibitions, and kind of news about conferences to try and pull this information together and make it more accessible. Lauren, this was a wonderful chat. Thank you so much for shining a light on this awesome set of objects of ancient history. And it just goes for me to say, thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the podcast. My absolute pleasure. Thank you.