| Court art of Sogdian Samarqand in the 7th century AD | |||||||||||||
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Southern wall
In the right half of the southern wall, the murals are preserved only very fragmentary. The image below depicts what remained from the main figure, a rider of enormous size (more than doublesized compared to the other figures):
Above: In the upper left of the image are traces of the horse's head and neck. Its tail, hind of the body, and legs of yellowish colour can be seen in the right centre.
Below: Of the rider himself remained only lower parts of his clothes in rich ornamented red silk, furthermore a bowcase and a sword in a golden scabbard. To the right of the sword is a saddle blanket decorated with pearl roundels:
Once more we have to mention the new French reconstruction of the southern wall (at afrasiab.org). There the line of preserved parts runs obviously wrong because it excludes the knee of the great rider. However, the knee is clearly indicated (cp. left centre of the above image).
Al'baum saw in this rider the ambassador of Chaghaniyan who is mentioned in the main inscription from the western wall. But it seems very unlikely that a person of comparatively inferior status may have absolutely dominated the paintings of the entire wall. In our opinion we must see in this figure a royal person, most probably king Varxuman himself. A. M. Belenickii and B. I. Maršak took the same view already in 1981.
Back to main text (southern wall)
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