Investigations at Alexandria-on-the-Tigris, aka Charax Spasinou
Robert Killick was awarded a BISI Research Grant to
conduct preliminary
investigations at Charax Spasinou. You can find out about the first season of
survey in the report below.
Few names from the ancient world
resonate quite so loudly in the modern era as that of Alexander the Great. When
in spring 2015 we were invited by the State Board for Antiquities and Heritage
to work at a city founded by Alexander, we could scarcely refuse. One year on,
we have just completed our first season of survey at Alexandria-on-the-Tigris,
known later as Charax Spasinou. That we were able to respond so swiftly to the
request is entirely due to the generous support of, among others, Baron Lorne
Thyssen-Bornemisza at the Augustus Foundation, the State Board for
Antiquities and Heritage, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and, of course,
BISI itself.
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| Along the ramparts at Charax Spasinou |
Alexander sailed down the Eulaeus
River from Susa in 324BC, and came to its confluence with the Tigris. At that
time, access to open water and the Gulf was also close by. The strategic
advantage of the place was obvious, and so Alexandria-on-the-Tigris was
founded. Unfortunately, Alexander didn’t realise just how prone to flooding the
entire region was (and in fact remained so until the construction of the
Hindiya Barrage in the 1950s). After devastating floods, the city was twice
re-founded, once as Antiochia in 166BC and again in 141BC as Charax Spasinou.
As the latter, it became the capital of the Kingdom of Characene and a major
trading emporium, exchanging goods with India, Palmyra, Petra, and onwards to
Rome.
The remains of Charax Spasinou
(modern Khayaber) lie some 40 km north of Basra. The ramparts rise to four
metres above the plain, complete with bastions at regular intervals. To the
south, the old course of the Eulaeus River is clearly visible and we estimate
that the remains of the city are spread over an area of about five square
kilometres. Debris from the Iraq-Iran war still litters the archaeological site
and some areas have been badly disturbed by old military installations.
Erosion, agricultural activity and looting continue to be threats.
Working at such a large site
presents some interesting challenges. How do you survey and map such a large
area, for example? Even with our modern surveying instruments, this would be a
lengthy and arduous task. Fortunately, the use of a drone combined with mapping
software provided a solution. Flying at a height of 100 metres, our drone took
5,000 photographs over nine days, covering an area of some eight square
kilometres. These images are now being compiled into a digital elevation model
which will be used to generate topographical maps, including a contour map and
shaded relief maps.
Finding out how much archaeology
is left at Charax after two thousand years of repeated flooding was another
challenge. Here geophysics came to our rescue: armed with a caesium
magnetometer, one of the world’s leading experts, Dr Joerg Fassbinder, with his
team from the University of Munich, surveyed over eight hectares in ten days.
The results were beyond expectations: entire districts of the city were
revealed below the surface, including substantial public buildings and
residential houses. The orthogonal plan produced by the survey clearly reflects
the original lay-out of the Hellenistic city, one which was retained in
succeeding periods.
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| The Hellenistic town grid and large buildings are clearly visible on this geophysics plot |
An evaluation trench placed
across one of the district boundaries found a ditch with mud-brick walls
running parallel on both sides. A puzzling feature was a row of Parthian torpedo
jars set upside-down in a solid layer of clay. The tips of the bases had been deliberately
and neatly cut away, leaving entry holes at the top. Two further evaluation
trenches found walls belonging to two of the large buildings that showed most
clearly in the magnetometer survey.
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| A row of Parthian torpedo jars lining a ditch |
The logistical challenges of
working at Charax are substantial, but these preliminary results have more than
repaid the effort. Our mission for the future will be to implement a comprehensive
research and excavation strategy that will do justice to this important
Alexandrian city.
Robert Killick
Honorary Fellow, Manchester University
