Alfred Charles Auguste Foucher (1865–1952), was a French scholar, who argued that the Buddha image has Greek origins. He has been called the "father of Gandhara studies", and is a much-cited scholar on ancient Buddhism in northwest Indian subcontinent and the Hindu Kush region.
Ai-Khanoum is the archaeological site of a Hellenistic city in Takhar Province, Afghanistan. The city, whose original name is unknown, was likely founded by an early ruler of the Seleucid Empire and served as a military and economic centre for the rulers of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom until its destruction c. 145 BC. Rediscovered in 1961, the ruins of the city were excavated by a French team of archaeologists until the outbreak of conflict in Afghanistan in the late 1970s.
The National Museum of Afghanistan is a two-story building located across the street from the Darul Aman Palace in the Darulaman area of Kabul, Afghanistan. It was once considered to be one of the world's finest museums. There have been reports about expanding the museum or building a new larger one.
Haḍḍa is a Greco-Buddhist archeological site located ten kilometers south of the city of Jalalabad, in the Nangarhar Province of eastern Afghanistan.
Sir Gaston Camille Charles Maspero was a French Egyptologist and director general of excavations and antiquities for the Egyptian government. Widely regarded as the foremost Egyptologist of his generation, he began his career teaching Egyptian language in Paris becoming a professor at the Collège de France. In 1880, he led an archaeological mission to Egypt, which later became the Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale.
The Guimet Museum is an art museum located at 6, place d'Iéna in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, France. Literally translated into English, its full name is the National Museum of Asian Arts-Guimet, or Guimet National Museum of Asian Arts.
Indo-Greek art is the art of the Indo-Greeks, who reigned from circa 200 BC in areas of Bactria and the Indian subcontinent. Initially, between 200 and 145 BC, they remained in control of Bactria while occupying areas of Indian subcontinent, until Bactria was lost to invading nomads. After 145 BC, Indo-Greek kings ruled exclusively in parts of ancient India, especially in Gandhara, in what is now present-day the northwestern Pakistan. The Indo-Greeks had a rich Hellenistic heritage and artistic proficiency as seen with the remains of the city of Ai-Khanoum, which was founded as a Greco-Bactrian city. In modern-day Pakistan, several Indo-Greeks cities are known such as Sirkap near Taxila, Barikot, and Sagala where some Indo-Greek artistic remains have been found, such as stone palettes.
Pierre Lacau was a French Egyptologist and philologist. He served as Egypt's director of antiquities from 1914 until 1936, and oversaw the 1922 discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings by Howard Carter.
Fulgence Fresnel ( FRAYN-, FREN-el, -əl or fray-NEL; French:[fylʒɑ̃sfʁɛnɛl]; was a French Orientalist. He was brother to the noted physicist Augustin Fresnel. Fresnel was an Orientalist scholar who led one of the first archaeological teams to excavate in Mesopotamia.
Takht-i Sangin is an archaeological site located near the confluence of the Vakhsh and Panj rivers, the source of the Amu Darya, in southern Tajikistan. During the Hellenistic period it was a city in the Greco-Bactrian kingdom with a large temple dedicated to the Oxus, which remained in use in the following Kushan period, until the third century AD. The site may have been the source of the Oxus Treasure.
Afghanistan is uniquely situated as a throughway of cultures throughout its history due to it geographic placement in South Asia. Afghanistan's location lends porous borders to trade routes between the East and West, while the Silk Road providing a vector for Buddhism and Hellenistic culture and even Egyptian influences from the west, renders an amalgamation of culture and art. Perpetual invasion and conflict has rendered a cyclic continuum of renaissance and destruction of art and culture in Afghanistan.
The Kandahar Bilingual Rock Inscription, also known as the Kandahar Edict of Ashoka and less commonly as the Chehel Zina Edict, is an inscription in the Greek and Aramaic languages that dates back to 260 BCE and was carved by the Mauryan emperor Ashoka at Chehel Zina, a mountainous outcrop near Kandahar, Afghanistan. It is among the earliest-known edicts of Ashoka, having been inscribed around the 8th year of his reign, and precedes all of his other inscriptions, including the Minor Rock Edicts and Barabar Caves in India and the Major Rock Edicts. This early inscription was written exclusively in the Greek and Aramaic languages. It was discovered below a 1-metre (3.3 ft) layer of rubble in 1958 during an excavation project around Kandahar, and is designated as KAI 279.
The Kandahar Greek Edicts of Ashoka are among the Major Rock Edicts of the Indian Emperor Ashoka, which were written in the Greek language and Prakrit language. They were found in the ancient area of Old Kandahar in Kandahar in 1963. It is thought that Old Kandahar was founded in the 4th century BCE by Alexander the Great, who gave it the Ancient Greek name Ἀλεξάνδρεια Ἀραχωσίας.
Claude Rapin is an archaeologist and historian specializing in Central Asia, with special attention to Afghanistan and Uzbekistan. He is Director Emeritus for research at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) and is associated with the Mission archéologique franco-ouzbèke de Sogdiane.
Nagara, also known as Dionysopolis (Διονυσόπολις), was an ancient city in the northwest part of India intra Gangem, distinguished in Ptolemy by the title ἡ καὶ Διονυσόπολις 'also Dionysopolis'. It also appears in sources as Nagarahara, and was situated between the Kabul River and the Indus, in present-day Afghanistan. The site of Nagara is usually associated with a large stupa called Nagara Ghundi, about 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) west of Jalalabad near Tepe Khwaja Lahori, south of the junction of the Surkhäb and Kabul rivers, where ancient ruins have been found.
The French Archaeological Delegation in Afghanistan was created in France in 1922 at the request of the Afghan government and King Amanullah Khan to commence archaeological studies in Afghanistan. After a break in research during the Second World War, work resumed around 1946-47, until it was closed by the pro-Soviet Afghan government on December 15, 1982. Some notable 20th century French archaeologists who were part of the delegation include Jules Barthoux, Daniel Schlumberger, and Paul Bernard.
The royal necropolis of Byblos is a group of nine Bronze Age underground shaft and chamber tombs housing the sarcophagi of several kings of the city. Byblos is a coastal city in Lebanon, and one of the oldest continuously populated cities in the world. The city established major trade links with Egypt during the Bronze Age, resulting in a heavy Egyptian influence on local culture and funerary practices. The location of ancient Byblos was lost to history, but was rediscovered in the late 19th century by the French biblical scholar and Orientalist Ernest Renan. The remains of the ancient city sat on top of a hill in the immediate vicinity of the modern city of Jbeil. Exploratory trenches and minor digs were undertaken by the French mandate authorities, during which reliefs inscribed with Egyptian hieroglyphs were excavated. The discovery stirred the interest of western scholars, leading to systematic surveys of the site.
Tapa Shotor, also Tape Shotor or Tapa-e-shotor, was a large Sarvastivadin monastery near Hadda, Afghanistan, and is now an archaeological site. According to archaeologist Raymond Allchin, the site of Tapa Shotor suggests that the Greco-Buddhist art of Gandhara descended directly from the art of Hellenistic Bactria, as seen in Ai-Khanoum.
Paul Bernard was a French archaeologist, best known for excavating the Hellenistic site of Ai-Khanoum in present-day Afghanistan between 1964 and 1978. In his role as director of excavations, Bernard wrote several treatises on the excavations on the site. He also produced the accounts of Ai-Khanoum that had the most influence on the scholarship on the city: foremost among these was a 1982 article in Scientific American titled 'An Ancient Greek City in Centra Asia', which presented the city as a Hellenistic colony in Central Asia. His emphasis on the Greek traditions of Ai-Khanoum have influenced all subsequent accounts of the Hellenistic Far East.
The Ai-Khanoum plaque is an ancient Greco-Bactrian disk discovered at the archaeological site of Ai-Khanoum in Takhar Province, Afghanistan. This Hellenistic city served as a military and economic center for the rulers of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom until its destruction c. 145 BC. Rediscovered in 1961, the ruins of the city were excavated by the French Archaeological Delegation in Afghanistan (DAFA) until an outbreak of conflict in Afghanistan during the late 1970s. Among the structures excavated by the archaeologists was a sanctuary called the 'Temple of Indented Niches', in which the disk was found. The disk is held in the collection of the National Museum of Afghanistan in Kabul.
