City
Antio[c]hia Tharmata
Merv oder Termez (Barrington)
Listen to the story
Antiochia Tharmata stands alone on the map, linked to no road, and its place near the Ganges delta once suggested a harbour in India. It was probably the Antioch founded before 280 BC by the Seleucid king Antiochus the First, on the site of a town from Alexander the Great's time that nomads had destroyed; the Roman writer Pliny and the Greek geographer Strabo both tell of it. Merv and Ai Khanum have been proposed, but later research again favours Termez on the Oxus in Uzbekistan, where excavations since 1964 have uncovered a mighty Kushan citadel, sanctuaries and a palace.