Takht-i Sangin

'Throne of Stone'") is an archaeological site located near the confluence of the Vakhsh and Panj rivers, the source of the Amu Darya, in southern Tajikistan.

[4] Another significant Greco-Bactrian site, Ai Khanoum, is also located on the Panj river, a little over a hundred kilometres to the east.

[5] Lindström proposes that the settlement and its temple functioned as the central religious site for the worship of Oxus for the whole of Bactria.

[6] The temple is surrounded by a massive mud-brick wall with tower-like projections at the corners and in the centre of each side.

[7] A propylon (gateway) in the east side of this wall leads to a large courtyard containing dedications and altars, measuring 44 metres north-south by ca.

[12] Somewhere between 5,000 and 8,000 other votive offerings in gold, silver, bronze, iron, lead, glass, plaster, terracotta, precious stones, limestone, shell, bone, ivory, and wood have been found.

[6] After the sack, the rest of the site was abandoned, but the temple remained in use until the third century AD, with the Kushans continuing to dedicate weapons, especially arrowheads, in very large numbers.

[6] In the courtyard, excavators recovered a small stone base surmounted by a little bronze statuette of a Silenus, perhaps Marsyas, playing the aulos, with a Greek inscription reading "[in fulfilment of] a vow, Atrosokes dedicated [this] to Oxus."

[4] Lindström calls the combination of Greek mythological figure, a man with an Iranian name, and a local Bactrian deity "a mixture of influences that is characteristic of ... the Hellenistic Far East.

[4] Igor Pichikyan and Boris Litvinsky began major excavations of the temple and surrounding site in 1976, under the aegis of the South Tajik Archaeological Expedition, a branch of the Institute of History, Archaeology, and Ethnography in the Academy of Sciences of the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic.

Ionic pillar, cella of the Temple of the Oxus, Takht-i Sangin, late 4th - early 3rd century BC. [ 8 ]
Takht-i Sangin, plan of the Temple, with surrounding walls. [ 9 ]
Head of a Greco-Bactrian ruler with diadem, Temple of the Oxus, Takht-i-Sangin, 3rd-2nd century BC. This could also be a portrait of Seleucus I . [ 14 ]