IMPOSSIBLE FABLES · AD 97 · THE PAMIR PASSES
The two empires meet
In AD 97 the Han general Ban Chao sent the envoy Gan Ying to find Rome, and Parthian sailors turned him back at the Persian Gulf with tales of a two-year sea. The two greatest empires of the age never met. This is the fable where the atlas folds the map once, and a nineteen-day mountain pass joins Roman Syria to the Tarim Basin.
You are reading the timeline that almost was · notes marked THE RECORD are real history
AD 97 · THE PAMIRS
No bridge of causes leads to the timeline recorded here. The atlas files it among the fables, where the question is not how but what then. In the year 97 the general Ban Chao, master of the Tarim Basin, sent his envoy Gan Ying west to find Da Qin. That was the Chinese name for an empire known only as a rumor of honest kings. It called itself Rome. Between the two lay Parthia, and whole deserts, and a sea said to eat two years of a man’s life. In this timeline the atlas folds the map once, along the Pamirs. A pass that should open on Parthian caravan country opens instead on terraced vineyards and a milestone counting the miles to Antioch. Gan Ying walks nineteen days and comes down into Roman Syria, the first man to cross from one half of the world into the other.
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