The Lost Valley of Iskander

Abstract

The belief that a lost Greek legacy could be discovered in remote regions of Central Asia has long been popular in Western culture. This paper delves into the adventure tale ‘The Lost Valley of Iskander’ by American pulp fiction author Robert E. Howard (1906–1936). The story unfolds in Afghanistan during the peak of the Great Game, and involves a concealed valley where the descendants of Alexander’s army have endured across centuries with their ancient culture and ethnic purity intact. I contextualize ‘The Lost Valley of Iskander’ as an exemplary literary reflection of the European (and American) preoccupation with the presence of Alexander and the Greeks in Baktria and India, highlighting the racial stereotypes Howard employs to juxtapose the ancient Greeks to the surrounding ‘barbaric tribes’. At the heart of Howard’s story lies the conflation of Classical Greece and contemporary western Europe. On a broader scale, my paper addresses the impact this preoccupation had on modern scholarship (both colonialist and anticolonial historical narratives related to ‘Hellenistic’ Baktria and India). I contend that in the depiction of the Greco-Baktrian kingdoms as European or ‘Western’, scholarship, travel writing, and adventure fiction mutually informed one another.