Fair warning: as Classics teachers this book is only of the most tangential interest to Latin, Greek or Classical Civilisation syllabuses. It is certainly interesting to those fascinated by the politics and challenges of 19th century archaeology and the more obscure aspects of Alexander's conquests.
The tome is a beautiful one. Seductively bordered in gold with lettering of the same and the pale marble image of a shattered bust of Alexander against a white background, the cover hints at mystery. The 328 pages include helpful maps, and colour images of paintings and photographs of the main characters, locations and discoveries in the story.
It must be clear, first of all, that this is not a book about the familiar Egyptian Alexandria. This is not even a book about the discovery of one of Alexander the Great's auto-eponymous cities. This is, in a way, only loosely about the act of searching for the rumoured city, renamed by Alexander according to myth, and nestled in the Hindu Kush. There are, further, no detailed descriptions of the archaeology, no extended scenes describing the discovery of artefacts and the items themselves are granted little examination or discussion beyond the alluring conclusion that Buddhists and Greeks lived together, learned from one another and that another language was discovered.
Instead, this is a narrative woven in the shadow of a rather nebulous Alexandria - the search for the city being less integral to the story than the politics and vices of the East India Company. The search is a coordinating theme to the politics and machinations of the time and, if this is about Alexandria, this Alexandria is as obscure to the reader as it is to the protagonist Charles Masson.
Charles Masson (born James Lewis), after defecting from the army of the East India Company, found his way to Afghanistan and after a shaky start, learning the vital skills of deception and braggadocio, started to discover coins and curiously Greek-influenced Buddhist figures somewhere in the vicinity of Bagram Airport. These artefacts set him on a search for the fabled city of Alexander. Aided, abetted, and often hindered by a wide cast of characters, Masson amassed huge amounts of materials that, taken by the East India Company, were largely sold off or lost until the British Museum finally gained control of the collection. Richardson takes time also to follow the perspective of ‘the second Alexander’ Alexander Burnes, the Scottish explorer and diplomat as it coincided and connected with Charles Masson. Richardson also writes from the perspective of Claude Wade, the spymaster who blackmailed Masson into informing the East India Company about the business of the Afghan court of Dost Mohammad Khan.
But this book is essentially about Masson - a story of his love for Afghanistan, his dealings with its rulers and the iniquitous actions of the East India Company.The story illustrates the origins of Afghanistan's conflict with Britain - the incompetence, stupidity and greed of the British and how the excitement of acquisition blended with an ephemeral interest in explanation and the early logic of archaeology. One might even argue that to an extent Richardson has fallen into Masson's own fault - writing a ‘condemnation of British imperialism, the East India Company and the invasion of Afghanistan’ (p.184) over the elucidation of Masson's discoveries.
It is, however, a masterful and very readable narrative that weaves countless sources together, garnered from across the world, and intertwines them with ruthlessly attested fancy and speculation. Richardson is a writer who consistently twists the reader with anxiety by making ominous pronouncements: ‘then, at the last minute, Masson made one of the greatest mistakes of his life’ and despite the ferociously academic sourcing, Richardson often uses a TV journalistic voice ‘… like many other stories about Charles Masson, it may not be entirely true.’
Nonetheless, it is quite impossible not to love Edmund Richardson by the end of this book and the curators of the British Museum just as much. The latter for their painstaking and methodical collection of Charles Masson's work and Richardson for a masterly renaissance of Masson's reputation and character and for the insight and compassion that made him weep for the dead explorer in a London library nearly 200 years later and all his efforts to bring to life ‘despite the best efforts of almost everyone involved’ and the author's own cancer, the ‘true story’ of Charles Masson.
Open access
