Lands of Asia layouts (Eng) 26.11.21

3.1
specimens of these are from the 2nd century BC. Aramaic script, along with Greek,
was used on imitations of Antiochus coins that were minted in Samarkand Sogdia
in the late 3rd or early 2nd century BC. Some scholars believe that these legends are
in fact in Sogdian script and language, but it is impossible to determine this because
they are so short.
Coin legends usually give the name of the king and his title, which was in fact
usually conveyed, not in Sogdian, but by the Aramaic ideogram MR’Y, just like
the second title found on the coin legends, MLK’, which was also in Aramaic. It is
therefore premature to speak of the replacement of the Aramaic script by the local
Sogdian and Khorezmian script in the last centuries BC. However, it is a well-known
fact that somewhere around the 3rd to the 2nd century BC, previously uniform
Aramaic writing became fragmented into a number of varieties: ‘Jewish square script’,
Palmyrene and Nabataean. In Central Asia, local written languages based on Aramaic
emerged and replaced both Aramaic and Greek scripts only later.
We can trace this process by studying the evolution of the language of coin legends
found in the ancient regions of Transoxiana. Evidently, Greek was the dominant
script on the coins of Bactria and, partly, of Sogdia in the 3rd–2nd centuries BC. This
is not surprising, since from the end of the 4th century BC and up to the beginning
of the 2nd century BC or the second half of the 2nd century BC, Sogdia was subject
to political and military domination by the Greeks.
However, there have been few discoveries of Greek inscriptions in the territory
of Transoxiana. Among those found are six inscriptions from northern Bactria: a
dedicatory inscription dating from to the 3rd–2nd centuries BC on a votive altar
from Takht-i Sangin that reads: ‘Atrosokes dedicated [his] vow to Oxus’; inscriptions
dating from the 2nd century BC on fragments of a few vessels from Kampyrtepa,
indicating measures of weight and liquid – 15 drachmas and 7 hoi, as well as a Greek
word/name ΚΛΕΘ[…]; an inscription on the fragment of a khum from the Kushan
period found during excavations in Garav-Kala.
Numerous inscriptions in Greek dating from the 3rd–2nd centuries BC have
also been found on different items such as potsherds, papyrus and stones at the site
of Ai-Khanum. The two inscriptions found in the mausoleum of the city ruler or
of a highly venerated person are also especially notable. The first one declares that
Clearchus, a younger pupil of Aristotle, inscribed the sayings copied by him from
reliefs in the temple of Apollo, and the second one actually contains fragments of
these philosophical sayings.
It is interesting to note that during later excavations of another structure at this
site – the palace – papyrus manuscripts from the 3rd–2nd centuries BC were found.
These are the oldest such specimens to have been found in Inner Asia. According to
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