the Great. Alexander - Into the land of bones : Alexander the Great in Afghanistan

Into the Land of Bones

In honor of beloved Virgil

O degli altri poeti onore e lume

Into the Land of Bones

Alexander the Great in Afghanistan

Frank L. Holt

With a New Preface

Foreword by Peter Green

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Berkeley Los Angeles London

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous contribution to this book provided by the Classical Literature Endowment Fund of the University of California Press Associates, which is supported by a major gift from Joan Palevshy.

University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England

First paperback printing 2006
2005, 2012 by The Regents of the University of California
ISBN: 978-0-520-27432-7

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Holt, Frank Lee.

Into the land of bones : Alexander the Great in Afghanistan / Frank L. Holt.

p. cm.(Hellenistic culture and society ; 47)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13: 978-0-520-24993-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Alexander, the Great, 356323 B.C. 2. Afghanistan

History, Military. I. Title. II. Series.

DF234.57.H65 2005

939.6dc22 2004024131

18 17 16 15 14 13 12

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

In keeping with a commitment to support environmentally responsible and sustainable printing practices, UC Press has printed this book on Natures Natural, a fiber that contains 30% post-consumer waste and meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper).

For James Lafayette and Catherine Roberts Drinkard, Loving in-laws who gave me the gift of a lifetime

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

MAPS

FOREWORD

Peter Green

In the spring of 328 B.C.E., near the heavily silted Oxus River in Bactria, Alexanders friend and senior officer Ptolemy, having been commanded to sink a well for safe fresh water, instead struck a dark, odd-smelling, viscous liquid that neither he nor his men had ever seen. Feeling that this strange phenomenon might be ominous, he summoned both the king and the royal soothsayers, who duly pronounced that the effusion was indeed a gift from heaven, but that it portended troubled times. Here, says Professor Holt, is an ancient prophecy that we may well endorse, since the liquid was petroleum, one of the prime moving forces of modern history. Ironically, this glum but all-too-accurate forecast is the very first reference to oil in western literature.

Among much else that stuck in my memory when I first read Into the Land of Bones at the time of its original publication, this episode made a particular impression on me, since oil, along with Islam, has of course been almost the only major new factor driving events in the Middle East since Alexanders day, and in AfghanistanAlexanders Bactriahas had less direct influence than elsewhere. Indeed, what continues to amaze me most about Holts truly magisterial narrative is the degree to which the problems confronting Alexanders invading Macedonians there, two and a half millennia ago, remain identical with those currently at issue for the occupying U.S. forces today. Even what Holt, in his new preface, refers to, accurately, as the messy endgamethe post-war scramble that has already begun (though we hear little or nothing about this in the media) for control of Afghanistans vast mineral reserveswas going strong in the Hellenistic period following Alexanders death, with a mining boom that quarried Bactrias mountains to extract the ore that went, as he tells, to make literally tons of currency.

The geography, of course, changes least of all: even the rivers hemmed in between the Hindu Kush and the high Pamirs are largely defined by that wild and rocky landscape. Now, as in Alexanders day, the borders are, as Holt nicely puts it, nominal, not natural... porous to such a degree that rebels can easily drift across and regroup among friendly brethren. How to tell whos winning the war? Amid all the parochialism, tribalism, fierce independence, and mutual hostility, with local warlords playing their own game (Holts learned much about those Alexander had to deal with from their modern equivalents, as well as vice versa), to work out whos an ally, whos an enemy, especially when theyre liable to suddenly switch from one to the other as profitability dictates, has always been a bewildering business for the invader. All this Holt examines in a cool, fast-moving, fact-packed narrative that shifts with knowledgable ease between the activities, and frustrations, of Macedonians, Victorian imperialists, Americans, and Russians, all struggling with a situation in which, as Sebastian Junger famously put it, fighting Afghans was like nailing jelly to a wall; in the end there was just a wall full of bent nails.

Holts extraordinary book is best known, naturally, as a splendid practical lesson from the past for the present, a lethal demonstration of how First World military men and politicians, especially when confronted by a culture they regard as primitive, tend, fatally, not only to think of violent hammer-and-anvil tactics as the answer, but to persist in that belief long after their ineffectiveness has been made clear. (Perhaps it is on that basis that it has been incorporated into the curriculum of the new National Military Academy of Afghanistan: it would be interesting to know what the Academys cadets make of it.)

But Into the Land of Bones is much, much more. It offers the best account yet written, incisive and compelling, of a crucial stage in Alexanders career of conquest, when unprecedented defeats inflicted by an elusive enemy led him to adopt what can only be described as total war, which resulted, for the Macedonians, in huge occupation forces, endless rebellions, and dangerous military exhaustion, psychological no less than physical. It gives a heart-rending description of the wanton destruction, by warfare, modern religious zealots, and, worst, antiquity looters, of Afghanistans ancient cultural heritage. It points out exactly how even the great coin-hoards that survive have been ruined as evidence by being split up and traded on the international market. It showcases the innovative way Holt has refined his numismatic and other evidential skills to probe and illuminate dark periods of GrecoBactrian history. Its scholarship, never paraded, is stellar, and the use to which that scholarship has been put goes far to refute current gibes at the alleged uselessness of studying antiquity. It is written with elegance, style, and wit. It is, in short, well on the way to becoming a classic, and this updated edition comes in good time to help its recognition as such.

PREFACE

ALEXANDER AND AFGHANISTAN
SINCE AUGUST 2004

Numbers often numb us, but they have an inescapable precision that mere words cannot match. Consider, for example, the headline War Grinds on in Afghanistan compared to the figure 2,665and counting, the number of coalition deaths in that conflict since Into the Land of Bones first appeared in print. This second preface can only, sadly, confirm in stark numbers the predictions of the first: The experiences of Alexander the Great, though long ago, still resonate, and they suggest that Americas resolve will be sorely tested in that truculent land. Even now, three years later, the war is not over. Since those words were written, this has become the longest war in U.S. history and coalition deaths in Afghanistan have increased 15-fold. In addition, at least 13,993 American troops have been wounded there since August 2004, compared to 349 previously. Civilian casualties reached record highs in 20102011.