It is always unnerving when Google Maps says that it’ll take six and a half hours to your destination, 22 km away. Is the road really that bad, or is it a glitch in the mapping algorithm? We faced this dilemma late in the day, having already been on the road for 10 hours, in sweltering heat. But the destination in question was Takht-i Sangin, one of the most important historical sites on the Oxus, so we decided to take our chances and see if Miskola’s driving skills could prove Google wrong. If we did get stuck there for the night, it would be the end of the world: we had a 4×4 full of camping kit, after all.
Takht-i Sangin is an archaeological site in southwest Tajikistan, overlooking the Oxus and, these days, the barbed wire fence demarcating the border exclusion zone. There’s one small guard tower and an occasional Tajik soldier patrolling on foot. Because of the sensitivity of the location, would-be visitors have to get a permit to come, and ours were checked by an army officer in a truck, who happened to be passing the other way.
Turning off the main road towards Takht-i Sangin, we passed through several villages, strung together by an unsurfaced but fairly smooth track. We made good time, and though Google’s estimate of our arrival time still seemed wildly inaccurate, we reached the point where if necessary it would be feasible to walk. Once the last house was behind us, though, the quality of the track deteriorated significantly, becoming steep and rocky as we climbed a small pass.
We stopped at the top of the pass: we couldn’t not. The sun was already low and the Oxus stretched out before us, glittering in the late afternoon light. Whereas a few days ago, confined by steep-sided gorges, the river had been fast and angry, here in gentler terrain, it was broad and calm. In the shallow-bottomed valley there was also space to farm, so there were pockets of dark green irrigated land below the dusty mountain slopes.
Descending towards the river, you reach a point where the road becomes a loose concept and you have to pick your own path through the boulders. The driving became physically and technically challenging; Miskola did a fantastic job managing not to ground the car. We knew which way we were heading, as in the distance we could see a corrugated roof, and there was nothing else marked on the map.
We pulled up immediately in front of Takht-i Sangin, just before the border fence. Unsurprisingly given the difficulty of getting here and the time of day, there was no one else around: it was just us and the ghosts of the past.
Takht-i Sangin has been excavated several times in the past century, and a large section of its centrepiece — the Temple of the Oxus — remains open to the air. Although the main finds have been taken away to museums, the original layout of this Graeco-Bactrian temple is clear from the base of the columns, substantial sections of walls, and even part of what I’d guess is an altar.
Archaeological evidence suggests that Takhti-i Sangin was constructed in the Hellenistic period, after Alexander the Great’s conquest of Central Asia in the 4th century BC. The temple in the middle of the citadel dates from around 300 BC and was dedicated to a Graeco-Bactrian god, Oxus. There was a Greek-style sacrificial altar, and a large number of votive offerings, and the temple remained in use until it was sacked by the Kushans and then, a few centuries later, abandoned completely.
Due to the multiple periods of excavation at Takht-i Sangin, the finds have been widely dispersed, including to London. We were able to see some of them in the National Museum of Antiquities in Dushanbe, however, and there are copies of some items from the Oxus Treasure (see below) in the newer National Museum. Most beautiful are the ivory carvings, and also the clay and alabaster sculptures of people, some of which are still colourful with their original pigments.
The Oxus Treasure is a gold hoard thought to have been found at Takht-i Sangin in the late 19th century. It includes around 180 gold and silver items, plus a further 200 coins, from the Achaemenid period, so some of it is older than the temple where it was amassed. There are miniature gold chariots with horses, statuettes of human figures with intricate costumes, and large numbers of votive plaques. The treasure seems to have been found in the 1870s and was sold by locals to Indian merchants. British officers including Sir Alexander Cunningham (the first Director of the Archaeological Survey of India) got wind of the hoard and tracked down as many of the items as they could, in bazaars and from dealers, mostly in Afghanistan and Pakistan. They sold or bequeathed the items to the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum, where you can still see them today.
It’s clear from the huge area of uneven ground around the temple that there are numerous structures still under the surface, some excavated and re-covered to protect them, others untouched. We were losing light fast as we explored, but could still see the numerous pot shards scattered on the floor, some patterned and all easily 2,000 or more years old. I felt absolutely at peace here, for the first time in a very long while.