The Foreign Service Journal, April 2003

Karakum Canal built nearby in the 1950s. He predicted the rest would collapse within 10 years and gave the Great Kyz Kala only 20 years to stand. There appears to be little interest in preserving this one-of-a-kind monument. Ignorance and Neglect As happened to most empires throughout history, the Seljuk empire eventually succumbed to a more ruthless conqueror, in this case, the Mongols. At the time, Merv was considered one of the most splendid cities of Islam, boasting a then-unheard-of population of about one million inhabitants (including Christian, Jewish, and Buddhist minorities). The Mongols are credited with slaughtering the entire city. After killing most of the men, they offered safety to the remaining families if they would surrender the city. When they did, they forcibly marched all of them out into the surrounding desert “for a temporary stay.” They then watched as hundreds of thousands of women, children, and older people died of dehydra- tion, sunstroke, and starvation. Merv had been effec- tively annihilated. It is said that the Mongols piled the skulls of the dead in several-meter-high hills all around the charred city. Indeed, one just has to scratch the surface at the Merv archaeological site to unearth human bones. After the defeat of the Seljuks, the subsequent dynasty moved its capital to a city they named Urgench, which presently straddles the Turkmen-Uzbek border. In pre-Soviet days, it was a whole city, belonging to the Khanate of Khiva and boasting a series of splendid medieval Islamic monuments, mainly burial chapels of imposing proportions. With their arbitrary slicing up of Czarist-era Turkestan (roughly speaking, another name for the whole of present-day Central Asia), the Soviets cut right through the city. They left all of the ancient sites in Turkmenistan (now renamed Kunyurgench; i.e., “old Urgench”), and built an abominable concrete- slab proletarian chicken coop of a city on the Uzbek side, now called by the ancient name of Urgench. Kunyurgench is definitely worth a respectful visit, while Urgench is best honored by avoiding it. Where neglect is slowly destroying the hauntingly beauti- ful Kyz Kalas in Merv, sheer ignorance has already obliterated half of the medieval Fortress of Amul, just outside the industrial- ized city of Chardjou, also on the Turkmen-Uzbek border. Tore, my official guide, sighed as he described how he had played on the site as a child, when it was at least twice as large. Where has all of the mud brick architecture gone? Into a brick factory built on the fortress site. When I visited, other children were playing on it, clam- bering to the top and exploring orifices that look like entryways to former dungeons. Though the once proud Fortress of Amul is no longer much to look at, it demonstrates the fragility of archeological sites and the wisdom of preserving historical heritage. A Lost Civilization In the middle of the forbiddingly huge Karakum Desert — Turkmenistan’s “inland sea” of sand, covering most of this California-size country — lies the lost civi- lization of Margiana. Dating to the Bronze Age, the win- somely named city-state is believed to have been Alexander the Great’s capital while he was in Turkmenistan. When the Murghab River — on which Margiana, situated in the river’s delta, based its livelihood — changed course, the city was abandoned. Margiana is a bumpy, two-hour ride in a military jeep through the desert from the nearest inhabited settlement. The ride was well worth it, however, for stretching before us were miles of foundations, streets, occasional ovens, and burial grounds. Pot shards were plentiful. My then-8-year-old son Emmanuel found the scattered human skeletons awesome. One can literally dig for skulls at every step. Talk about a place for a Halloween party! Archaeologists have found numerous sculptures of the tutelary goddess Anahit, reputed to bring good luck and particularly to increase the erotic enjoyment and fertility of women. Male priests, who drank a potent narcotic from ceramic pots studded with animal sculptures, worshipped her. Fascinating examples of both sculptures and pottery can be seen at the Mary Archaeological Museum. F O C U S 54 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / A P R I L 2 0 0 3 The Erk-Kala Fortress is a sixth-century B.C. edifice reconstructed during Merv’s Greek period by one of Alexander’s generals, Antiochius.