Watch Eurasia online: Episode 2 Quest for the Forgotten Alexandria

Is it myth or reality ? It has always been said that Alexander left a string of some seventy cities in the wake of his conquests – all named Alexandria in his honour. However, none of these legendary cities was ever found, except for Alexandria in Egypt and, naturally, generations of archaeologists have been searching for them… In 1961, Mohamed Zahir Shah, who was then King of Afghanistan, discovered a Corinthian capital while he was out hunting. It was the first evidence of a yet unknown cal site : Ai-Khanoum. Ceramics and fragments were unearthed as well as hundreds of coins marked with names of Greek kings and Greek inscriptions. Gradually, it became evident that this city – separated from the Mediterranean world since the 3rd century BC – had been colonised by Greeks who continued to speak their own language, use their own scriptures. They had lived in harmony with the peoples of Central Asia: the Bactrians, Scytes Sogdians and Tokharians. It was like entering the Greek universe 5000 km from Greece… A virtual reconstruction of Ai-Khanoum takes us back through time and history to the forgotten Alexandria.

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