Saturday 3 January 2015

More about the restored Sogdian wall painting that seems to show a group of foreign ambassadors

Quite recently I published an article from the Korean Government about a Sogdian wall painting from the 7th century.

In 1965, a new mural was discovered in the Afrasiab Hills where an old palace was located. This wall painting was presumed by historians to have been produced during the reign of King Barhuman in the year 655 during the Sogdian Kingdom. It has attracted global and academic attention as the painting shows a group of people that seem to be foreign ambassadors. Historians suggested that two of them on the right of the west wall seemed to be from the Goguryeo Kingdom (37 B.C.-A.D. 668), sparking heated debate on the history of international relationships across Asia in ancient times. 

Marita Rohde visited the Afrasiab Museum in Samarkand in 2012 and sent me this picture below of how the wall painting  looked like at that moment.
If you compare this picture with the following picture which resulted from the examination with some cutting-edge devices, the differences are quite stunning.
To say it more simple, without modern techniques one would never be able to discover the identity of the two persons on the right and how they looked like!
Thanks very much Marita for your reaction.




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