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Court art of Sogdian Samarqand in the 7th century AD

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The delegates of group A2 (page III): What do they do?

As we have seen, the persons 2, 3, and 4 carry necklace(s), clothing and armament (or at least a decorated weaponry-belt). All this makes the complete outfit of a high-ranking male person, and certainly it was meant to be a gift to some high-ranking male person, too. Doubtless we have to take the combined gifts as an symbolic set.

With this we have a good argument against B. Maršak's central these: He compares the gift-bearers with other Sogdian murals where donors pose close by divine images. These donors offer little fire-altars, precious dishes and necklaces. But nowhere they carry a symbolic set of gifts as in our case and therefore figures 2-4 do not move to meet a deity but a human ruler.

image after Pugatschenkowa and Chakimov (1988)

In our opinion the Afrasiab murals operate on several restricted spots with very sophisticated symbolic formulae. This is not only to see with figures 2-4 (above), but also on the northern wall's depiction of the Chinese princess.

Read more on figure 4

Back to group A2 (page I or page II)

Back to main text (western wall)


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