How the Kushan Empire Spread Buddhism Via the Silk Road

Episode 6: Kushans, Sacae and the Silk Road

Barbarian Empires of the Steppes (2014)

Dr Kenneth Harl

Film Review

In this lecture Harl describes how the Tocharians, under pressure from the Xiongnu (who were under pressure from China) pushed the Sacae to migrate west and south.

Harl believes the Sacae were present on the central steppes from the beginning of the Iron Age (900-600 BC) and likely domesticated the Bactrian camel used on the Silk Road. The Sacae had a close trading relationship with both Sogdiana**  and Bactria (with its dense settled cities) in Transoxiana. The latter was conquered by Alexander the Great in 329 BC. Alexander’s successors set up a Greek kingdom in Bactria that issued Greek coins and relied on trade with Sacae nomads for its prosperity.

In 145 BC the Sacae began migrating from the central steppes into Transoxiana, sacking cities and torching fields as far east as the Greek cities Alexander the Great founded in India.

The Tocharian-speaking Kushans are discussed at length in India’s ancient Buddhist texts. We know a little about their emperors from the coins they issued and the Rabatak Inscription erected by the Kushan emperor Kanishka (127-147 AD). In addition to likenesses of their emperors, Kushan coins feature a variety of Greek, Hindu and ancient Persian gods.

The Kushan, largely responsible for extending the Silk Road into India, eventually conquered and controlled the Indus Valley and the western part of the Tarim Basin. Their construction of Indus Valley cities and Buddhist monasteries led to the translation of Buddhist texts from Sanskrit into vernacular languages. This, in turn, led to the spread of Buddhism along the Silk Road into Central Asia.

The Kushan are also well known for their art, which is a composite of Greek and Indian styles. Although they were tolerant of all religions, the Kushan were great patrons of Buddhism and the first to produce images of Buddha in human form.

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*The Yeuctzi, a nomad tribe just north of China, maintained a cavalry of 100,000 – 200,000 mounted archers. It was this tribe the Han dynasty sought to ally with in their battles with the Xiongu.

**Sogdiana was an ancient Iranian civilization in present-day Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan known for both cultivated farmlands and Silk Road caravan cities.

Film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/video/5694984/5694998

How Scythian Nomads Influenced Early Greek and Persian Civilization

Episode 4 Scythians, Greeks and Persians

Barbarian Empires of the Steppes (2014)

Dr Kenneth Harl

Film Review

This lecture concerns the Iranian speaking nomads of the western and central Eurasian steppes. The Scythians controlled the latter from Early Iron Age (800 BC) to 300BC. The fifth century BC Greek historian Herotodus, who encountered them in the Greek colony Olbia*, was the first to write about them.

He described the Scythian federation as consisting of Inner (Royal) Scythians and Outer Dependent Tribes. According to Harl, this method of governance dates back to the Bronze Age Yamnaya Proto-Indo-European (steppe) culture (2000-1800 BC). The Royal Scythians summoned the Dependent Tribes when they went to war and also controlled the trade flowing down their rivers.

Some of the Dependent Tribes grew grain along the shore of the Black Sea, which the Royal Scythians sold it to the Greeks. Slaves and flax, timber and amber (all pilfered from from Baltic forest peoples) also featured in nomad trade with the Greeks. Greek elites were also really fond of with intricately worked Scythian jewelry and leather and woodwork. Scythian warriors also served as mercenaries to early Greek kings and successors to Alexander the Great.

These trade routes, later taken over by Turkic speaking Khazars and eventually the Mongolian Golden Horde, persisted until Russia conquered this region in the 16th century.

Herodotus describes in detail (later confirmed by archeological findings) the horse sacrifices that accompanied royal Scythian burials. Fifty horses (and riders) would be sacrificed and stuffed to accompany royal personages to the afterlife. He also describes warrior princesses (the source of the Amazon myth) who interacted freely with male warriors and princes.

The Scythians also interacted with Asia Minor and Mesopotamia from the Bronze Age on. After the Persian** king Cyrus conquered the entire Middle East in the the 6th century (see Prehistory: The Persian Empire Conquers Mesopotamia, Egypt, Libya, Kushan, the Indus Valley, and the Early Greek City States), he mounted a disastrous military expedition against them.

Alexander the Great also engaged in military skirmishes with them following his conquest of Persia. He eventually gave up trying to conquer them and set up Greek-style cities along his northern frontier to regulate their trade and collect taxes.

The Scythian federation collapsed in the third century BC, overrun by the Sarmatians. They had been pushed west by the Xiongu as they were driven west by Han Chinese armies.***

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*Olbia was on the northern shore of the Russian Black Sea.

**According to Harl, the Persians were descended from Iranian-speaking nomads who moved south with their horses and their composite bows to assimilated into the settled Mesopotamian population.

***See How Steppes Nomads Influenced Eartly Chinese Civilization

Film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/video/5694984/5694994

The Intellectual and Cultural Influence of Ancient Athens

Episode 19: Greek Gods, Philosophy and Science

The Big History of Civilizations (2016)

Dr Craig G Benjamin

Film Review

The ancient city-state of Athens created one of the richest and most influential cultures in Western history.

They adopted the Phoenician alphabet (adding vowels to it) to create a written Greek language and they adopted papyrus from the Egyptians to preserve their ideas in books.

In addition to geometry, astronomy, philosophy, physics, engineering, drama and medicine, the Athenians introduced the modern concepts of reason and logic. Prominent Greek philosophers included:

• Thales (born around 600 BC) – asserted the entire physical world could be worked out through reason and mathematics and correctly determined the approximate shape of the earth and its orbit around the sun.
• Pythagoras (born 570 BC) – led a religious cult that used mathematical proportions to understand musical harmony and the movement of the planets and stars.
• Democritus (born 460 BC) – theorized everything in the universe is made up of atoms.
• Hippocrates (born 460 BC) – the first physician to to systematically classify illnesses based on points of similarity and difference.
• Socrates (born 470 BC) – asserted knowledge can only be obtained through constant questioning.
• Plato (born 427 BC) – (most famous disciple of Socrates) deduced planets move in a circular pattern around the sun and that day and night result from the Earth spinning on its axis.
• Aristotle (born 384 BC) – Plato’s most famous pupil, founded the Lyceum and taught Alexander the Great. More focused on data than Plato, he studied and documented the physiology of all animals, and expounded on ethics, virtue and good character.

In this lecture, Benjamin also discussed the Greek gods and their origin myths, as well as the Cult of Dionysus and  efforts by Athenian to channel the Cult’s drunken and lascivious behavior into lavish open air theatrical events. Seating as many as 20,000 people, these events featured plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles and other playwrights.

The film can be viewed free on Kanopy with a library card.

https://pukeariki.kanopy.com/video/greek-gods-philosophy-and-science

Prehistory: The Persian Empire Conquers Mesopotamia, Egypt, Libya, Kush, the Indus Valley and the Early Greek City States

Cyrus the Great, first emperor of Persia

Episode 17 Oxus Civilization and Powerful Persia

The Big History of Civilizations (2016)

Dr Craig G Benjamin

Film Review

According to Benjamin, the dry climate and lack of river valleys in Central Asia limited prehistoric settlement to a handful of agrarian villages around desert oases. Anau (in modern day Turkmenistan) and Oxus were two of the region’s ancient cities. Anau, which traded with Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley, collapsed around 2400 BC. Oxus, which emerged around the same time as Anau, consisted of clusters of settlements around oases in Afghanistan and Turkmenistan. Associated with the early use of soma,* it was the fifth largest ancient civilization on Earth. It would be absorbed by the Persian empire in the first century BC.

The latter arose on the Iranian plateau east of Mesopotamia around 559 BC, when king Cyrus overthrew the Medean king and united Mesopotamia, Egypt, Libya and Kush. Between 521 and 486 BC, Cyrus III expanded the Persian empire to include the Indus Valley, the Balkans, Thrace and Macedonia. He appointed 23 local governors (satraps), who created administrative networks made run by local subjects.

Persia required all subjects of conquered territories to pay tribute (tax) to Persia as well as submit to conscription into the Persian army. Other tax revenue included customs duties, sales tax and rent on royal properties. In return, the emperor provided farmers with seed grain and fruit seedlings, subsidized cottage manufacturing and explorers, built ports and 8,000 miles of roads and dug a canal connecting the Red Sea and Nile.

The Persian empire was the world’s largest to that date. It started to decline during the fifth millennium when a number of conquered Greek city states rebelled. Following Persia’s conquest by Alexander the Great, his Greek successors systematically dismantled the Persian empire.

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*Soma was a combination of cannabis and opium used in Zoroastrian and Hindu religious ceremonies. According to the Greek historian Herodotus, during the 5th century BC the Scythians poured soma on hot rocks in their steam baths and inhaled the vapors.

The film can be viewed free on Kanopy with a library card.

https://pukeariki.kanopy.com/video/oxus-civilization-and-powerful-persia

The History of Ancient Egypt

Egypt’s First Pharaoh Menes

Episode 9 Divine Rule in the Black Land

The Big History of Civilizations (2016)

Dr Craig G Benjamin

Film Review

Benjamin briefly covers the founding of Egypt’s First Dynasty by Narmer (aka Menes), around 3000 BC when he unified Upper and Lower Egypt founded Memphis, the first Egyptian city. The period 3100-2600 BC was characterized by continual conflict with its southern neighbor Nubia. After Egypt gained control of upper Nubia, Nubian males formed a large proportion of the Egyptian army and intermarried with Egyptian women.

The massive pyramids on the Giza Plateau were built during the Fourth Dynasty (2613 -2494 BC) as tombs for their pharaohs. Pyramid building declined during the Sixth Dynasty (2345-2181 BC) owing (Benjamin believes), perhaps due to climactic changes that reduced food production* and the onset of civil war.

The Egyptian empire reached its zenith during the New Kingdom (the 18th, 19th and 20th dynasties 1515-1150 BC). During this period, Egypt’s pharaohs ruled over a population of four million people and a territory comprising modern day Syria and Palestine.

By the 14th century BC, the Egyptian pharaohs had adopted bureaucratic templates devised by the Sumerian kings Sargon (founder of Akkhadian Empire in the 24th century BC) and Hammurabi (who brought nearly all of Sumer under Babylonian rule in the 18th century BC). Egypt’s rich agricultural system, based on the Nile and a complex system of irrigation canals, also played a big role in the stability of the Egyptian empire.

Benjamin focuses special attention on the reign of the boy pharaoh Tutankhamun (aka King Tut), whose tomb was discovered in 1922. Ascending the throne at age nine in 1332 BC, he and his advisers reunified Egypt by restoring the sun god Amon as the supreme god. This allowed Egypt to successfully wage war against the Nubians and assimilate their territory. 

Genetic testing reveals that King Tut’s parents were brother and sister. He was born with a number of birth defects, including cleft palate, scoliosis and club foot. He died, with no heirs, at age 19, the last ruler of the 18th dynasty.

Under Ramesses II (1279 – 1213 BCE, Egypt had a brief respite from continual war after he negotiated a peace treaty with Hittites who controlled Mesopotamia to the north. Following his death, Egypt was invaded and occupied first by Libya, then by the Nubian rulers of Kush, and finally by the Assyrians who ruled Mesopotamia.

The Assyrians continued to rule Egypt until the 26th Dynasty (663-525 BC) finally expelled them.

In 525 BC, Egypt was conquered by the Persians and in 332 BC by Alexander the Great. It would continue to be ruled by foreign powers (the Roman, Ottoman and British Empire) for 2,000 years.

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*It’s estimated that construction of a single pyramid required 84,000 workers to work 80 hours a year for 20 years. Archeological evidence suggests they weren’t slaves (as is commonly believed) but received wages for their labor.

 

 

 

https://pukeariki.kanopy.com/video/egypt-divine-rule-black-land