Nisa, Turkmenistan: The Parthian Royal Fortresses and Central Asian Empire

How did a band of steppe horsemen become the rulers of an empire that stretched from the Euphrates to the Indus and held Rome at bay for centuries? Part of the answer lies in two eroded earthen mounds at the foot of the Kopet Dag mountains, a short drive west of Ashgabat. These are the Parthian fortresses of Nisa, Turkmenistan, one of the earliest royal seats of the Arsacid dynasty, where excavators have found palaces, a circular hall of uncertain purpose, ivory horns carved with scenes from Classical myth and thousands of wine receipts written on broken pots. On Day 8 of our small group tour through Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, the group drives out from the capital to see them.

Where Nisa, Turkmenistan, sits in the story of Parthia

Nisa lies beside Bagyr, about 18 kilometres west of central Ashgabat, on the strip of foothill land below the Kopet Dag. That foothill country, as our article on Ashgabat and the making of a modern capital explains, has carried settled states for more than two thousand years. UNESCO, which inscribed the Parthian Fortresses of Nisa on the World Heritage List in 2007, describes Parthia as a major power from the mid-third century BC to the third century AD.

There are two sites, not one. Old Nisa, the royal citadel, is a tell of about 14 hectares with a roughly pentagonal plan, enclosed by an earth rampart with more than 40 towers. New Nisa, about 1.5 kilometres to the northwest, is a larger walled town of about 25 hectares whose walls still stand up to 9 metres high, according to the evaluation prepared for UNESCO by ICOMOS. Almost all excavation has concentrated on Old Nisa, and it is the citadel that visitors see. For the place of the Parthians among the other great powers of the region, our overview of the great empires of Asian history gives the wider frame, and our four-country journey through the Stans sets this stop within the whole route.

From steppe nomads to a royal dynasty

The Parthian state began in a moment of weakness for the Seleucid kings who had inherited this part of Alexander’s empire. According to the ancient-history reference site Livius, around 245 BC the Seleucid satrap of Parthia, Andragoras, rebelled while the young Seleucus II was occupied in a war in the west. In the confusion the Parni, a nomad people from the Central Asian steppe led by a man named Arsaces, overran the province. By 238 BC they had added the district of Astavene, and over the following years they took the rest of Parthia and Hyrcania, beat off a Seleucid counter-attack and came to be known as Parthians.

Arsaces I, who reigned until about 211 BC, became the founder of the Arsacid dynasty, and tradition credits him with founding Nisa, though the evidence for its earliest phase is thin. Livius notes that the chronology of the early Arsacid kings is less well understood than that of their Seleucid or Roman contemporaries, and Livius places his capital at Hecatompylos. What Nisa offers is not a coronation scene but a material record of how a nomad leadership turned itself into a court.

Mithradatkert: the fortress of Mithradates

The site’s royal name comes from the dynasty’s greatest conqueror. ICOMOS records that one of roughly 2,700 inscribed potsherds found at Old Nisa names the place Mithradatkert, the fortress of Mithradates, after Mithradates I, who reigned in the second century BC. Under him and his successors, Arsacid rule came to stretch from the Indus to the Euphrates. UNESCO’s case for Nisa rests partly on that reach: the Parthian Empire became a major rival of Rome and checked Roman expansion eastward, and Nisa is the symbol of that power.

The ancient geographer Isidore of Charax, ICOMOS notes, refers to the city as Parthaunisa, an administrative and economic centre of the Arsacids. The tour page describes Nisa as reputedly the royal necropolis of the Parthian kings, while noting that it has not been established whether the fortress was a royal residence, a mausoleum or both. That uncertainty runs through every building on the citadel.

The buildings of Old Nisa

Old Nisa was built on a natural hill levelled with layers of packed earth, known as pakhsa, and its main buildings sit in a central complex and a northern complex, divided by paved streets and two water pools. Excavation began in 1930, in the Soviet period, and ICOMOS estimated in 2007 that about 40 per cent of the buried structures had been exposed. Since 1990 an Italian team from Turin has continued the research.

The building with the Square Hall covers about 1,000 square metres, with walls 4 to 5 metres thick and halls of up to 400 square metres, and it was rebuilt several times. Nearby, the Round Hall is a circular room 17 metres across, plastered with ganch and ringed by a gallery of brick half-columns; according to a 2005 report on the Turin excavations in Current World Archaeology, it was roofed with a mud-brick dome, and a fragmentary clay portrait of Mithradates found there suggests the building may have honoured Mithradates himself, the king whose name the fortress bore. Whether it was a temple, a mausoleum or a shrine to a heroised king, ICOMOS notes, is still debated.

The Italian team also uncovered the so-called Red Building, about 40 by 40 metres, with a central columned hall of 16 by 17 metres and a frieze of stone slabs that once decorated its facade. A tower-like building on a platform about 20 metres square carried wall paintings of battle scenes. In the northern complex, ICOMOS identifies a large square building holding the royal treasury, with a wine store in its northern part.

Ivory horns, marble goddesses and wine receipts

The finds from Old Nisa show a court that drew deliberately on the Greek world. The 2005 Current World Archaeology report describes about 40 ivory horns, some perhaps used for drinking, with friezes of Classical mythological scenes around their rims. Marble statues include a figure known as Rodogoune and another called the Goddess of Nisa, alongside fragments of a royal throne. ICOMOS describes the overall scheme as Hellenic-style decoration on a local architectural base, and UNESCO counts the meeting of Central Asian and Mediterranean traditions among the site’s outstanding values.

The humbler finds may be the more revealing. Encyclopaedia Iranica, counting those from the royal wine storehouse alone, describes more than 2,000 of these ostraca, inscribed potsherds dating to the first century BC, written in Aramaic script. Most are short notes of wine deliveries whose totals were later copied into a permanent record, and dozens record long leases of royal vineyards around Mihrdadkerd, the Parthian form of the fortress’s name. They show a dynasty of steppe origin running estates, stores and accounts in Aramaic script.

Where are the finds from Nisa now?

According to a 2005 report on the Turin excavations, finds from the Round Hall and Red Building, including the ivory horns and marble statues, are preserved in the National Museum in Ashgabat. The tour page does not list a museum visit for Day 8, so ask a Tour Specialist if seeing them matters to you.

How far is Nisa from Ashgabat, and how long does the tour spend there?

Nisa is about 18 kilometres west of central Ashgabat, and the tour visits it on Day 8 as part of a full day in and around the capital. The tour page does not give a set time at Nisa, so ask a Tour Specialist how the day is paced.

How physically demanding is a visit to Old Nisa?

The tour as a whole is rated Level 3, Moderate to Challenging, and the tour page says participants must be in excellent health, extremely mobile and live an active lifestyle, with up to six hours a day of continuous strenuous, moderate to fast-paced activity over varied terrain. Old Nisa is an earthen citadel on a raised natural hill, with its excavated buildings spread across a mound of about 14 hectares. If you have questions about climbing or uneven ground, raise them with a Tour Specialist and, for health matters, with your doctor before you travel.

Nisa after the Parthians

The Arsacid dynasty fell in AD 224 to Ardashir, founder of the Sasanian empire. Nisa was partly abandoned but did not disappear: ICOMOS records that it was annexed by the Arab caliphate in 651, prospered from the ninth to the twelfth century and was later besieged and destroyed by the Mongols, while New Nisa remained a town through the Middle Ages. What survives at Old Nisa is therefore a Parthian citadel seen through later centuries of erosion. UNESCO notes that the present shape of the mounds is the result of natural decay rather than the original appearance of the capital, and ICOMOS warns that exposed mud-brick walls erode under humidity and winter frost.

Nisa and its neighbours

Nisa belongs to a chain of Central Asian capitals that the tour follows. The day before, the group visits Koneurgench, the medieval capital of Khorezm, which the tour page describes as the capital of the Khorezmshahs and a UNESCO World Heritage listed site. Two days later, after a further day in Ashgabat and a late flight to Mary, the tour reaches Merv, where, ICOMOS noted in 2007, the Parthian levels had not been scientifically investigated. Further afield, ICOMOS compares Nisa with the Parthian-era cities of Hatra, Ashur and Dura-Europos in Mesopotamia and Syria, a reminder of how far west the dynasty’s world reached.

For broader orientation to Turkmenistan itself, our guide to Turkmenistan for curious travellers covers the country beyond its Parthian past.

Reading an empire from two mounds

Nisa does not reward a quick look. Its walls are earth, its palaces are outlines, and its most beautiful objects are in a museum. What it offers instead is evidence: a round hall whose purpose is still argued over, Greek myths carved for an Iranian court, and the accounts of a royal wine store. Together they show a nomad dynasty becoming a state, at the edge of the mountains that divided it from its rivals.

Travelling in a small group of up to 16 travellers with an Odyssey Program Leader, you see Nisa between the medieval capital of Koneurgench and the oasis of Merv, which is the right company for it. If you would like to study the route’s landscapes and history in that way, our 28-day Stans tour includes Nisa on its day in and around Ashgabat.