The discovery of the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex, in the mid-Twentieth Century AD by Soviet archaeologists, rivals the Tomb of Tutankhamun, the ruins of Pompeii, and the Terracotta Figures of China’s first Emperor, as one of the most remarkable finds in archaeological history, It was not widely known, however, until the collapse of the Soviet Union in the AD 1990s. Before then, the Cold War Iron Curtain had kept scholars from the Communist Bloc and the West from communicating properly. The BMAC, as it is known, was one of the most complex civilisations of the Chalcolithic and Bronze Ages. Like their neighbours in Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, and Egypt, the Bactrians were among the first to adopt urban living. Their great sites – Altyn Depe or Gonur, for example – may be less famous than Ur, Mari, Harappa or Mohenjo Daro, but they were nonetheless marvels of the age. Each had an organised street-plan, with designated areas for the elite and the commoners. Within these cities, the Bactrians engaged in a unique artistic tradition which, while importing some themes from Mesopotamia, is nonetheless a distinctive aesthetic unparalleled elsewhere in the ancient world. The Bactrian love for composite figures, made from contrasting stones (usually light-coloured calcite and dark-coloured chlorite, supplemented with jasper), resulted in some of the most unique sculptures in history, affectionately known as the ‘Bactrian Princesses’ and ‘Scarfaces’. The Bactrian skill in metalworking produced elaborate tools, ceremonial weapons, and delightful animal figures. And Bactrian ingenuity, fuelled by her unique position on the grasslands between Asia, Europe and Africa, may well have resulted in one of the greatest inventions in human history: the wheel. It is from the BMAC, after all, that we find the earliest known representations of wheeled vehicles, pulled by oxen or donkeys, and used to transport Bactrian goods vast distances overland.

But while we have discovered much about Bactrian life, there are numerous puzzling enigmas which remain. Perhaps the most significant is the question of Bactrian religion. The spiritual world of the Bactrians is almost totally unknown. The only hints are available from their artistic output. The two main types of figurative sculptures, ‘Bactrian Princesses’ and ‘Scarfaces’, have been interpreted as religious motifs. The ‘Princesses’ are considered an offshoot of the supposedly universal ‘Great Goddess’, a hypothesised ancestor to the female deities of Indo-European religion, which was apparently worshipped by our Palaeolithic and Mesolithic ancestors in the form of so-called ‘fertility figurines’ and ‘Venuses’. However, the prehistoric figurines are notable for their emphasis of the generative organs; there is no evidence of ample breasts, hips or buttocks, nor of an exaggerated pubic triangle, in ‘Bactrian Princesses’. Indeed, these figures are clad in a thick, tufted, woollen cloak (kaunakes), which hides the shape of any and all intimate areas. If the ‘Bactrian Princesses’ are indeed goddesses, then it would appear they had evolved significantly from the ‘Great Goddess’ of previous millennia. Indeed, there is no reason to think that all ‘Bactrian Princesses’, which come in a variety of styles and forms, represent the same deity. The second class of figures, the ‘Scarfaces’, are monstrous giants with ophidian skin, bearing a large scar across one eye, an empty socket for the other, nails holding closed their lips, and an empty vessel held on its side under one arm. These figures are considered by some to be a representation of chaos, an equivalent (due to his scaly skin) of the dragon that appears in the Chaoskampf myths of most cultures (i.e. the struggle, often a physical conflict, between order and chaos). The figure’s deformities, and the nails closing his lips, are considered to be ritual signs of his defeat, rendering the fearsome figure harmless; the container under his arm is thought to be emptied of the life-giving waters which he held to ransom before he was overcome. His ritual enemy in the Chaoskampf is postulated to be either the ‘Bactrian Princess’ herself, or else another (very rare) style of Bactrian composite figure, depicting a youthful male.

Further evidence of deities may be given in a token now held in the Musée du Louvre (AO 26073), which depicts a man and a woman apparently in conversation. Associated with both of these figures are celestial motifs; the man has a moon, and the woman a sun. Paralleled in Mesopotamian iconography, these images may represent Bactrian adoption of the goddess , and the god . Alternatively, it may suggest a parallel but independent tradition existing in the Oxus River valley. But while these figurative artistic representations seem to offer some narrative clues as to the BMAC’s religion, a further class of Bactrian finds result in more questions than answers. Aniconic idols, in other words, objects believed to be religious idols which do not bear the form of a human, animal, or other object, appear in three main forms. The first, and most common, are the disc idols, near-perfect circular slabs of stone, with a single shallow gulley running across the centre, splitting the surface in two. Next, and probably closely related to the disc idols, are columns, with the same gully in the top, which taper from a thick foot to a narrow neck. And finally, there are aniconic ‘idols’ shaped like flat-bottomed eggs, with holes through the narrow end. These items could well be ritual tent-weights, for pulling the guy-ropes taught.

This stunning idol, produced in a translucent green banded stone, falls somewhere between a disc idol and a column idol. Formed of a cylinder with a pronounced entabasis (swelling at the centre of the vertical sides), and with a gully running all around, across the flat surfaces and down the horizontal edges. It is significantly smaller than either the traditional disc idols or the column idols. The purpose of this idol, and indeed of the other aniconic idols, is entirely unclear. Their designation as /idols’ comes from the tendency of archaeologists to ascribe as religious or spiritual anything that cannot be readily explained. There is, however, a recorded example of an aniconic idol in which one was disc-shaped and one was column-shaped. This was the Chinese bi disc and cong column. In the Chinese system – which dates from the Neolithic – the bi was associated with the sky and the cong with the Earth. In the Chinese cosmology, the soul had two aspects, the hun, a spirit which left the body after death, and ascended into the sky, versus the po, which was trapped forever in the corporeal body. This sky and Earth dualism is paralleled in this soul conception. There is nothing at all to suggest that the Bactrians believed anything similar, but the instructive example of the Chinese bi and cong at least shows possibilities of the symbolism imparted by some Bactrian aniconic idols.