Lost World of the Golden King: In Search of Ancient Afghanistan by Frank L. Holt (review)
- Lost World of the Golden King: In Search of Ancient Afghanistan by Frank L. Holt
Writing history from coinage is an old sport and well practiced on the Greek coinage of Bactria in southern Central Asia. The history needs refreshing from time to time, and Holt, in good command of the material, is able to look at it in a different way—explaining, for example, that so many inscriptions are not quite right because some dies must have been engraved by non-Greeks more at home with Greek art than with the Greek language. He sets such observations in his deep knowledge of the historical and archaeological sources for the period, which are also very well summarized here for anyone new to the subject. And although much of the abundant material was not formally excavated under the eye of a scholar, Holt’s book demonstrates how wrong it would be to pretend to ignore it, even if it is not without the puzzles of possible forgery. Holt’s is not so much “processual” or “cognitive” archaeology as it is the application of a good eye, knowledge of sources, and historical imagination—traditional foundations for good scholarship. Central Asia, Greeks in the east and India, the Alexander legacy, are all now hot subjects, and the evidence is not easy to assemble and summarize, so this book marks a major step forward.
Sir John Boardman is Lincoln Professor of Classical Art and Archaeology emeritus at Oxford University and a fellow of the British Academy, which awarded him the Kenyon Medal in 1995. Editor of the Oxford History of Classical Art, his other books include The Diffusion of Classical Art in Antiquity; The Greeks Overseas; The History of Greek Vases; and The Relief Plaques of Eastern Eurasia and China: The “Ordos Bronzes,” Peter the Great’s Treasure, and Their Kin. He received the inaugural Onassis International Prize for Humanities in 2009.
