The classical world came to Afghanistan with Alexander the Great
Between 329 BC and 327
he conquered the area before moving into India
But he left behind him settlers, cities that he'd founded
and of course being Greeks they expressed their culture
The Greek legacy is so strong because their art is so divinely beautiful
The legacy of Greek art reached Afghanistan
by sea and over land and came up
into the places where Alexander had formerly ruled
Aï Khanum was a city that was founded by one of Alexander the Great's generals in 300
BC
It was really the furthest outpost of the Greek Empire
We know so much of it from a Greek site, of a big city
on the banks of the River Oxus, miles away from Greece
as far as Tasmania from London one feels
It had Greek statuory, it had a theatre
it had a gymnasium
This is the director of the gymnasium
found at the far end of this building
he is very much of the tradition of Greek sculpture
and he would have probably paid for the gymnasium in the city of Aï Khanum
It was here that the culture of Greece
met with the local culture of Bactria
and thus formed this fusion between Greece and Bactria
This figure here is the statue of Heracles
who later became Hercules
His body is not as idealised as he would have appeared in Greece
These two female figures often accompany Dionysus
In Greece they are depicted as very much human
two female human figures
but here in the far flung corner of Bactria
they've become almost bestialised
they're almost like little animals, they have horns
and they have a skin which is almost like an animal skin
We have the single most amazing monument I know
the most amazing thing in London at the moment
Well it's a big claim but I'll explain why
It's the base inscribed of what would have been
a display of 150 little one line sayings
from the seven wise men of the world
on how we should behave
They're not very dramatic
When you're young study hard
When you're a young man be sober, very good advice
When you're old be wise, die without pain
And that was found in the central shrine of the city
Unfortunately the area became involved in the civil war
and the war with the Russians
And indeed there was a mortar place just by the city
lobbing rockets to people on the other side of the River Oxus
And when that was over the site was cross-ploughed
by people with bulldozers, thinking that they could find treasure
This of course is disastrous, it destroys all the stratigraphy
and the wonderful things that could have been found
for Afghanistan of the future
I have been to Afghanistan, I've been three times
It breaks my heart to think of what is happening
to some of the most wonderful people I've know in my lifetime
But you have to see the setting
you marvel at how an army thirty, forty thousand strong
could have been brought into this area
by the Great commander Alexander
Once you see the landscape
or once you stand as I once stood
on the join of the Oxus and ---- river
you simply think I'm dreaming