John Stathatos: Daedala

DAEDALA

The survival of a Greek city high in the mountains of Central Asia, inhabited by descendants of Alexander the Great's Macedonian troops, has been a staple of the romantic imagination for decades. Sadly, archaeological and epigraphic research have between them pinpointed the sites of Alexander's major settlements in Bactria and India: Alexandria Eschate (Alexandria Ultima) on the Jaxartes is associated with Chodjend, and Alexandra Marghiana with Merv. Thanks to the pioneering excavations of Schlumberger and Bernard, Ptolemy's mysterious Alexandria Oxiana can now confidently be identified with Aï Khanum on the banks of the Amu Darya.
Nevertheless, the Alexander-descent legend of the “White Kafirs“ of Kafiristan is given some credence by the persistent reports of the city of Daedala in the Paropamisadae (Hindu Kush). The story is confused by the apparent existence of two sites of that name, both with connections to Crete. Strabo and Ptolemy identify Daedala as a district in the Rhodian Peraea bordering upon Lycia, while Curtius and Stephanus place it in or near Bajaur, by what Justin describes as the Daedalian Mountains. The answer seems to be that there existed both a Lycian district and an Afghan city by the same name; Stephanus connects them with Crete and with Daedalos the master-craftsman, stating clearly that “there is another Daedala, a city of Cretans and Indians” in Menander's Indian kingdom.
Most sources agree that Daedala was an Indo-Cretan city, one which probably grew out of a settlement of Cretan mercenaries. Intriguingly, we hear also of another Cretan settlement in the same region, Asterousia on the road between Alexandria-Kapisa and Ghazni; given that Asterion was one of the appellations of Minotaur, it may be permissible to identify Asterousia with Daedala, the city named after the builder of the labyrinth. It is certain that labyrinths and bull-worship both appear at Daedala; Isidore of Charax makes veiled allusions to mazes and sacrifices, and Daedala is mentioned with abhorrence in the Milindapanha, or Questions of Milinda - Milinda, it will be remembered, being the Indian name of King Menander.
Daedala appears to have been the cradle of an unholy mixture of Cretan and Hindu mysticism, the dark obverse of the fertile Graeco-Buddhist synthesis which gave rise to the cultural flowering of Ghandara. A possibly corrupt Chinese translation of the Milindapanha dating from the 4th century provides some additional information on the cult, which had clearly developed an elaborate ritual of human sacrifice; this was a kind of sacred hunt through a labyrinth which offered victims a single, slim chance of survival. A later source, the Pseudo-Aristeas, writes of “the dark and twisting passages of the underground temple, each of whose seven halls have seven doors, behind all of which except for one wait the priests with their strangling cords; but one door of the forty-nine leads up into the light”.
The city vanishes from history by the time of the fall of the Kushan kingdoms, as does all trace of its precise location; but in his memoirs, Brigadier-General Sir Alexander Cunningham remembered seeing the sign of the bull's head and of the double-headed axe carved high up a rocky mountain side in the Minjan Valley. ~