Hellenistic city (possibly Alexandria Oxiana) occupied between the 4th century and clOO bc, Ai Khanum stands on a naturally defensible site at the confluence of the Oxus and the Koktcha in Afghanistan. The city comprises a citadel, acropolis and lower town, protected by mud-brick walls and ditch. The lower town has an administrative centre, a residential quarter and an open area with few, if any, buildings. In the administrative centre, excavations have revealed an imposing complex containing a courtyard with a peristyle built of columns with pseudo-Corinthian capitals. On one side of the courtyard is a vestibule with Corinthian columns and beyond it is a large rectangular room, perhaps the bouleuterion (meeting-place of the city council). Nearby is a 4th-century funerary chapel known (according to an inscription) as the Temenos of Kineas. Kineas, it is suggested, may have been the founder of the city, shortly after Alexander the Great conquered the region in 329 bc. In the same general area, the excavators discovered the so-called temple à redans, a building of Mesopotamian type. At the foot of the acropolis is a cemetery. The finds from Ai Khanum, which include an inscription stating that one Clearchus erected a transcript of the precepts at Delphi in the Temenos of Kineas, indicate the persistence of a strong Hellenistic element.
The Macmillan dictionary of archaeology, Ruth D. Whitehouse, 1983Copied