Stone Foot Variations
It became apparent at the Beyond East and West conference in Münster that specialists in the material culture of distant regions of the Hellenistic world have been engaged in a process of circular reasoning To explain how this came to be so, it may be useful to examine our scholarly biographies I began my own academic life working on Hellen-istic Egypt When I first began to conduct research on HellenHellen-istic Bactria, and within that more specifically on the city of Ai Khanoum, it was natural for me to look to oth-er regions of the Hellenistic world for comparanda, to help me undoth-erstand complex cultural and ethnic interactions in a region whose material culture was less well pre-served, and where there was very little epigraphic, documentary or historical evidence I recall my PhD supervisor at Cambridge, Dorothy Thompson, telling me about her visit to Nemrud Daǧ, and recommending that I look at the publications of sculpture and inscriptions from the site, as a route into thinking about how religious syncretism worked in practice This was long before the recent flurry of publication on Hellenistic Commagene and Nemrud Daǧ, so I was reliant on the work of Theresa Goell, in par-ticular the publication of her excavations by Donald Sanders 1 I found Nemrud Daǧ was indeed a productive route into thinking about how cultures and ideas interact on an intimate, practical level, in a man of mixed descent’s construction of his own public identity The way I came to conceive of Ai Khanoum was heavily influenced by what, from the then-available publications, I understood about Nemrud Daǧ
Others have been engaged in similar processes Not necessarily with the same sites – Nemrud Daǧ and Ai Khanoum – and in the same direction – from West to East – but seeking parallels, historical or structural, between contexts of complex cultural
inter-1 Sanders 1996
action in different parts of the Hellenistic world 2 In addition to Commagene, my in-terpretations of Bactria have been influenced – even determined – by my experience in working on multilingualism in Hellenistic Egypt While I would maintain that the comparative study of different regions of the Hellenistic world is immensely produc-tive, there are some interpretative issues which we must take on board If my reading of Ai Khanoum derives in part from others’ readings of Nemrud Daǧ, then it matters where the publications I read on Nemrud Daǧ in turn took their inspiration from If someone then takes my work on Ai Khanoum and uses it in their interpretations of Nemrud Daǧ, they should be aware of the Commagenian source of some of my ideas about Ai Khanoum At the Münster conference, it was amusing to find that many of us were turning to each other’s material for interpretation of our own There is a danger in assuming that scholars working on other regions have everything figured out I would like to state for the record that I do not
What would it be like to come to this material fresh? In a lecture at the University of Melbourne in April 2019, I undertook an experiment 3 I showed the audience the following image, with no information on archaeological context, and asked for their reactions
Fig. 1 Foot of the Cult Statue from the Temple à Niches Indentées at Ai Khanoum, from Bernard 1969, fig 15–16
I initially told them nothing about how this piece had been interpreted in the past Col-leagues, who approached the exercise in the ludic spirit in which I instigated it, gave me some excellent food for thought Could we assume the gender of the statue, for example? What was the design on the sandle strap? Someone, not entirely unseriously, suggested an octopus In itself, they found little to support the interpretations which this piece has borne in the context of the main temple of Ai Khanoum
2 See, for example, Clarysse – Thompson 2007 and van der Spek 2009, who directly address the problem of how valid Ptolemaic Egypt is as a model for Hellenistic Bactria
3 I would like to thank Melbourne colleagues for their hospitality, and for being such good sports
For scholars of Hellenistic Central Asia, in contrast, it is impossible to come to this stone fragment fresh, with no preconceptions It was discovered in 1968, during the fourth season of excavations at Ai Khanoum, in the cella of the main temple of the city, the temple à niches indentées/temple à redans For the excavators, the discovery of this temple brought some major interpretative problems Until this point, the focus in media coverage and scholarly publication of Ai Khanoum had been on the ‘Greek’
character of many architectural elements From the public’s point of view, these were dramatic and out of place in Afghanistan From a scholarly perspective, they were long-awaited confirmation of the ‘missing link’ between the Graeco-Roman world and the art of Gandhāra, which Alfred Foucher famously, and from bitter personal experi-ence, considered a ‘mirage’ 4 The temple yielded “des riches renseignements,” but many of these were unexpected, “du triple point de vue de son architecture, de la statuaire et des objets qu’il abritait” 5 The excavators were confronted, far more directly than hitherto, with the question of how Ai Khanoum, its material culture and religious prac-tices, fit into a wider world The architectural format of the temple, and comparisons which were drawn with Dura Europos and with Mesopotamia, have been extensively discussed6, but less attention has been given to the foot fragment of the temple’s main cult statue
Paul Bernard’s reading of the foot follows on directly from his discussion of the
‘Mesopotamian’ style of the temple plan, and is a stark contrast: “La statue de culte qui se dressait sur la banquette de fond de la cella figurait en effet un dieu d’aspect grec Grecque cette statue l’était aussi par sa technique et par son style” 7 He draws parallels with examples of acrolithic statues from the Mediterranean world In Bernard’s 1969 analysis, quality of production, and fidelity to Greek styles, means that the sculptor must himself have been Greek: “Le superbe modele que nous offre le fragment de pied nous enseigne aussi que le sculpteur travaillait bien à la grecque, et je dirais même, devant la perfection du travail, qu’il ne pouvait être que grec” 8 (This conflation of style of workmanship and ethnic identity is not something that many would now agree with ) Bernard then offers an interpretation of the statue fragment which has passed into much subsequent literature as read: the design on the sandal is a winged thunder-bolt, implying a Zeus, and the dimensions of the temple make a seated statue more likely than a standing one 9 Bernard muses (“je songerais volontiers”) – not states – that the statue may be an enthroned Zeus of the kind depicted on Graeco-Bactrian
4 Foucher – Bazin-Foucher 1942/1947, 73–75 5 Bernard 1969, 327
6 For a comparative architectural perspective on the temple, see Downey 1988, 63–75 7 Bernard 1969, 338
8 Bernard 1969, 340 9 Bernard 1969, 340–341
and Indo-Greek coins, holding a sceptre in one hand and an eagle or small Nike in the other
Fig. 2 Ai Khanoum God with Feet of Marble, article in the Guardian in 1969
As we shall see, Bernard’s views evolved, but this initial publication was very influen-tial It was even reported, with a reproduction of the foot, in the Guardian newspaper in 1969 10 In this popular report, Bernard’s careful suggestions are turned into fact:
10 See also Mairs 2014, 20–21
“This massive foot of fine Greek workmanship is almost all that remains of the deity nearly three times life size which once presided over the temple at Ai Khanoum, on the frontier between Afghanistan and the Soviet Union
This temple surprisingly was constructed after the oriental fashion, and only the sculpture was Greek […] The divinity itself, which may have been an oriental one, was probably given the features of Zeus, since the fragment of this magnificant sandal he wore was orna-mented with a winged thunderbolt ”11
The foot from the temple has played an important role in wider discussions about cul-ture and identity at Ai Khanoum In a broad sense, such discussions are about resolving apparent contradictions: what do complex intersections and juxtapositions of artistic styles say about the identities – cultural, ethnic, social, religious – of the people who created such juxtapositions? More recent interpretations of the city, and in particular of the temple à niches indentées, tend to focus less on such apparent ‘contradictions’
and more on how the city functioned as a whole: the emphasis is on flexibility and polyvalence rather than contradiction 12 Early attempts to resolve these apparent con-tradictions looked for other examples of the coming together of disparate styles and religious practices Nemrud Daǧ has long been brought into such discussions
By 1970, as the diverse range of cult practices performed within the temple and its sanctuary became more evident, Bernard’s views had evolved in the direction of seeing the statue as representing an assimilated or syncretised deity:
“la représentation de foudres ailés sur la sandale du pied colossal de la statue de culte nous avait l’an dernier suggéré l’idée que la divinité adorée dans le temple pouvait être un Zeus À l’appui de cette hypothèse nous invoquions le témoignage des monnaies gréco- bactriennes où ce dieu occupe une place prééminente La présence d’une statue de style grec dans une architecture non grecque nous paraissait enfin pouvoir s’expliquer par l’as-similation du dieu grec à une divinité orientale Ces suggestions retent, au terme de cette nouvelle campagne, conjecturales ”13
As always, his conclusions remained cautiously argued, and subject to revision In 1974, he introduced the Zeus-Oromasdes of Nemrud Daǧ as model for a possible solution: a syncretised Zeus-Ahura Mazda in the temple of Ai Khanoum:
“Faute de la moindre inscription, faute de la moindre figurine votive, nous en sommes toujours réduits aux conjectures sur l’identité de la divinité a qui appartenait ce sanctuaire Les foudres ailés qui décoraient les sandales de la statue de culte suggèrent un Zeus, mais l’architecture purement orientale du temple ne serait pas explicable s’il était été destiné à
11 Gillie July 30, 1969
12 See e g Martinez-Sève 2010a; Martinez-Sève 2010b; Mairs 2013; Mairs 2014; Martinez-Sève 2014 13 Bernard 1970, 327
un dieu purement grec Pour réconcilier ces deux donnees, on est amené a supposer une divinite gréco-orientale, un Zeus qui serait en même temps son equivalent iranien, Ahura Mazda Un tel syncretisme sous la forme d’un Zeus-Oromasdes existe dans le panthéon gréco-oriental des rois de Commagène et le rapprochement, malgré son eloignenent géo-graphique et chronologique, donne quelque force a cette hypothèse ”14
Since this time, Nemrud Daǧ has frequently appeared in the literature on Ai Khanoum, and more specifically on the stone foot from the temple Frantz Grenet, for example, makes reference to “la religion syncrétique de la Commagène” in his own arguments for a Zeus-Mithra in the Ai Khanoum temple 15 A Nemrud Daǧ-inspired Zeus-Ahura Mazda or Zeus-Mithra is accepted without much further comment in many treatments of the material 16 More recently, Laurianne Martinez-Sève and I have both argued for the god of the temple having a fluid or polyvalent identity, influenced by these earlier interpretations which were in turn inspired by Nemrud Daǧ17
It matters greatly, then, that views about Commagene have changed over the past few decades I have taken the foot of the statue from Ai Khanoum as a specific example, but Commagene is also a frequent point of reference or comparison for others who work on Central Asia There are much wider implications to changing views about Commagene When I was first asked to participate in the Commagene conference by Miguel John Versluys, he said that “ideally we would like you to address specifically how the processes of bricolage and glocalisation we see in Commagene compare to Bactria – and what implications this has for our views on material and ideological ex-change in Hellenistic Eurasia” 18 I realised that I had in fact been thinking about this my entire career Hellenistic Commagene – and more specifically, Nemrud Daǧ – has always been central to how I conceive of Hellenistic Central Asia The idea that oth-ers might take my Commagene-inspired ramblings on Bactria and apply them back to Commagene itself was deeply worrying
What I would like therefore to offer in the remainder of this chapter is not a com-parative study of Commagene and Bactria, but an experiment in what happens if we directly impose gleanings from one case study area to another I offer two ‘Stone Foot Variations’19: short analyses of the fragment from the Ai Khanoum temple, according to different scholarly paradigms I shall refer to these as:
– Commagene I Based on Goell – Dörner 1956 and Goell 1957 This interpretation focusses on the rehabilitation of the monuments at Nemrud Daǧ from their
repu-14 Bernard 1974, 298 15 Grenet 1991, 148 16 E g Rapin 1992, 120
17 Martinez-Sève 2010b, 13; Martinez-Sève 2014, 274; Mairs 2014, 87 18 Email 5 July 2017
19 Inspired, naturally, by John Ma’s Black Hunter Variations (Ma 1994), although I shall be keeping to English
tation as “the ugly caprice of a bombastic monarch ”20 It introduces terms such as
‘syncretism’, ‘hybrid’, ‘fusion’ and ‘hub’ (considerably earlier than many may be aware such terms were used of Hellenistic material culture) It positions Comma-gene ‘between East and West’ and examines the coming together of three styles or identities: Greek, Iranian and local Greek architectural terminology is used There is an emphasis on the landscape of Commagene, and routes of procession – Commagene II Based on Versluys 2017, and to a lesser extent on Brijder 2014
This also aims to rehabilitate Commagene, as a “marginal cultural backwater ”21 It situates Nemrud Daǧ more firmly in its regional and chronological context, including examining the Hellenistic stage upon which Antiochos makes his state-ments about kingship and identity It makes a distinction between personal iden-tity and artistic style Commagene’s connectivity is emphasised, and it is placed in a ‘global’ framework
This is also an experiment in scholarly bricolage, since I have pieced together a collage of direct quotations from the works cited above, and others, to compose ‘new’ texts about the Ai Khanoum fragment In this, I have been in part inspired by Robin Coste Lewis’ Voyage of the Sable Venus: a poem constructed entirely from titles and exhibition descriptions of depictions of black women in Western art 22 Direct quotations are in italics, and words which I have added – paraphrasing earlier publications, or inserting details specific to Bactria and Ai Khanoum – are in regular type