With the monuments of the Achaemenians, that is with the last monuments of the Ancient Orient, we should like to compare the monuments of the Macedonians, that is the first monuments of the new Greek Orient. But, paradoxically, while we possess Achaemenian monuments of the first rank, extraordinarily well preserved, such as the facades of the royal tombs, the relief at Bisutun, and above all the many reliefs at Persepolis, we still cannot find, on Iranian soil, one ruin, one work of art, tht may safely be said to belong to the time of Alexander or of the Diadochi, and we are able to mention only a few fragments of Seleucid and Bactrian architecture. To turn from Achaemenian Iran to Macedonian Iran is to leave a world of stable and well-defined forms for a world deeply shaken by a revolution, the effects of which only become dimly apparent to us two or three centuries later, in the arts of the post-Macedonian period.

Let it first be said that from the purely Greek character of the coins of the Macedonian kings it would be unsafe to deduce that architecture, sculpture, and painting, in the countries ruled by these sovereigns, were purely Greek too. There is no doubt that these arts flourished in Iran, under the Macedonian masters; Greek cities existed from Media and Persis to bactria and "White India," and they must have had the kind of official buildings, whether sacred (temples) or secular (an agora, gymnasia), that necessarily belonged to a Greek city: they surely had their residential districts, and outside the walls, their cemeteries; and palaces for their Seleucid viceroys or satraps, and for the Bactrian kings, must have existed. But of all that, almost nothing has been found.

The sites of some of those cities have been identified, such as Laodicea in Media (Nihavand) and Seleucia on the Eulaios (which is Greek Susa). Excavations undertaken in that last city have yielded a few objects, but no architectur. If we except Persepolis, two recently discovered sites alone throw a feeble light on Graeco-Macedonian architecture in Iranian countries. The first of these is Ikaros, a Greek establishment discovered and excavated by a Danish mission at Failaka, a small island in the Pesian gulf. The excavators have supposed that its foundation might go back to Alexander; but the only approximately dated objects to be found, an inscription reproducing a letter from a Seleucid king, and a hoard of coins, are dated from the second half of the 3rd century BC. The most noteworthy monument is a small temple in antis, Greek in its plan as well as in its architectural decoration (Ionic capitals, acroteria adorned with palmettes), but nevertheless showing column bases with falling leaves, clearly in the Achaemenian tradition.

The second site, nowadays named Ai Khanum, has only been known since 1964 and the excavations have just begun. It is a city of eastern Bactria at the meeting point of the Oxus and one of its main tributaries, the Kokcha, in the province of Taliqan (northern Afghanistan). The Greek name of that city, the date of its foundation, are still unknown. Its destruction is supposed to be due to the Saka invasion, traditionally dated about 130 BC; the site was never reoccupied. The town, surrounded by strong walls, consists of an acropolis and a lower town. The main feature of the layout are discernible. In the lower town, in particular the trace of a street starting from the northern gateway and nearly 1,700 m. long, clearly forms the main axis of the city. The outlines of several public monuments of large size and of squares and courtyards in between are also apparent. A propylaeum giving access to one of those yards has been excavated. The excavation of other monuments, whose nature still remains uncertain, is in progress.

-The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 3(2): The Seleucid, Parthian, and Sasanian Periods, ed. Ehsan Yarshater (NY: Cambridge UP, 1983), 1031-1035.