Sogdian art

Sogdian art refers to art produced by the Sogdians, an Iranian people living mainly in ancient Sogdia, present-day Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan, who also had a large diaspora living in China. Its apex was between the 5th and 9th centuries, and it consists of a rich body of pre-Muslim Central Asian visual arts. New finds recovered in the past decades allowed scholars to achieve a better understanding of Sogdian art.
Sogdians are best known for their painting, although they excelled also in other fields, such as metalworking and music. Their metalworking, which influenced the Chinese, is sometimes confused with Sasanian metalwork. However, characteristics of Sogdian metalwork, differentiating it from Sasanian metalwork, have been established; for example, with respect to Sasanian metalwork, the designs of Sogdian vessels are more dynamic, and their productions less massive. They differ in technique and shape, as well as iconography.
The Sogdians loved to recount stories, and their art is much "narrative" in nature. They lived in houses on whose walls they hung wood carvings and painted refined murals. Because the purpose of the Sogdians was to convey narrative, they would include only the essentials, setting the scene with lines, blocks of color, and a few landscape elements, creating an "easy-to-read two-dimensionality that helps advance the progress of the depicted tale."

Overview

Sogdian art was produced chiefly in Sogdia. The best known examples of Sogdian art are found at Pendzhikent and Varakhsha, in ancient Sogdania. These towns were once principalities in Sogdania. Sogdian culture was a distinct culture with its own features, but it received influence from different streams, notably Sasanian culture, and post-Gupta India. In turn, Sogdian culture influenced neighboring cultures, like Chinese culture.
For their dwelling places, the Sogdians preferred to produce paintings and wood carvings. Sogdian wall paintings are bright, vigorous, and of remarkable beauty, but they also tell about Sogdian life. They reproduce, for example, the costumes of the day, the gaming equipment, and the harness. They depict stories and epics drawing on Iranian, Near Eastern and Indian themes. Sogdian religious art reflects the religious affiliations of the Sogdians, and this knowledge is derived mostly from paintings and ossuaries. Through these artifacts, it is possible to "experience the vibrancy of Sogdian life and imagination."
Sogdian art ceased with the Islamic invasion.

Painting

There are recurring elements distinctive of Sogdian art that appear in Sogdian metalwork, clay and wood sculpture, as well as throughout mural painting. Sogdian artists, and patrons, were very attentive to social life, displaying it in their works. Thus, banqueting, hunting, and entertainment are recurrent in their representations. The Sogdians were storytellers: they were passionate about recounting stories, and the interiors of their abodes were decorated with narrative paintings.
The Sogdians also came into contact with different foreign cultures, because of their commercial activities. They were aware of cultures different from their own culture and accepted them, as is shown in their works. They had a "unique vision of the divine and afterlife", and their religious art was extremely diverse. Thus, the "interconnectedness with other Eurasian cultures is especially apparent in Sogdian religious art."
Many Sogdian paintings were lost or destroyed in time, and the land was subject to invasions from Turks, Hepthalites, Arabs, and Mongols. Only a few Sogdian murals have been rediscovered so far.
The Afrasiab murals, now in the Afrasiab Museum of Samarkand on the Afrāsiāb mound, was discovered in 1965 when the local authorities decided the construction of a road in the middle of Afrāsiāb mound, the old site of pre-Mongol Samarkand. These murals were probably painted in the middle of the 7th century AD. They stretch over four walls of the room of a private house. Three or four countries in neighbouring Central Asia are depicted. On the northern wall there is a Chinese scene, with the Empress on a boat, and the Emperor hunting; on the Southern Wall, Samarkand, the Iranian world, with a religious funerary procession in honor of the ancestors during the Nowruz festival; and India is shown on the eastern wall. These murals are evidence of the Sogdians' desire to depict the world around them.
The Penjikent murals are another known example of Sogdian painting, discovered in Panjakent, and now on display at the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, and in the National Museum of Antiquities of Tajikistan in Dushanbe.
These murals are the earliest known Sogdian murals, dating to the late 5th to early 6th century AD. In them, scenes of festivals abound. It is also thought that the narrative of the Iranian Shahnameh and the epic cycle of Rostam is mirrored in a series of murals at Penjikent dating to the first half of the 8th century. There are divinities in the Penjikent murals whose identity is unknown. Among them is a goddess with four arms sitting on a dragon in one version, and on a throne supported by dragons in another. In a third version she is seated on a lion and holds the moon and the sun in her hands. This goddess was also depicted in other private houses. Another deity with blue skin was identified with Shiva. The Penjikent murals are evidence of the Sogdians' desire to depict the mythological and supernatural world. There is a dramatic painting called the Mourning Scene, depicting women bending over the deceased and cutting their hair in sorrow. To the left of the mourning women there is also a female figure with several arms, whose halo suggests she is a divinity. Beside this divinity, another figure with a halo is dousing a torch as they kneel down. There are several interpretations of the scene, with most scholars believing the figure with several arms to be Nana. The Zoroastrians avoided displaying grief due to their beliefs, and this painting further shows how Sogdian Mazdaism diverged from the traditional Sasanian Persian tradition.
The Sogdians' desire to portray the supernatural and natural worlds "extended into portraying their own world." However, they did not "represent their mercantile activities, a major source of their wealth, but instead chose to show their enjoyment of it, such as the scenes of banqueting at Panjikent. In these paintings we see how the Sogdians saw themselves."
The Varakhsha paintings are another known example of Sogdian painting. They were discovered in Varakhsha, in the fortified country palace of the Bukhara rulers. Varakhsha was an important Sogdian center. The so-called Red Hall of the palace was probably decorated in the late 7th century. It consists of a painted frieze in two registers. Today only low portions of the upper one survive, but a large part of the main frieze was preserved. In the upper one, there is a procession of real and imaginary animals saddled and mounted by divinities. In the main frieze, a god riding an elephant battles against monsters against a red background. The latter image is thought to derive from Hindu iconography. This assumption is based on the elephant mount and the turban worn by the god. However, it is clear that the artists of Varakhsha had never seen an elephant. The elephants have small proportions, are stubby, have "pawlike legs, and tusks that grow from their lower jaw." Further, they are saddled like horses.
The Varakhsha paintings survived the Arab invasion, and some of them endured up to the time when the region became definitively under Muslim rule. There are figural and ornamental stuccos found in Varakhsha, one depicting a mouflon ram. They probably date to after the Arab invasion, because the Sogdians usually used clay, while stucco was a medium preferred by the Sasanians. It is likely that the use of stucco was introduced with the Arab invasion after they conquered Persia.
The production of paintings stopped in 722 AD with the invasion of the Abbasid Caliphate, in the Muslim conquest of Transoxiana, and many works of art were damaged or destroyed at that time.
Beside the production of paintings, the narrative desire of the Sogdians is prevalent also in funerary artifacts, such as carved and painted stone beds and sarcophagi of Sogdian emigrees who worked and died in China. This narrative purpose meant that "Sogdian artists would include only the essentials. Lines, blocks of color, and a few landscape elements to set the scene create an easy-to-read two-dimensionality that helps advance the progress of the depicted tale." This style's origin may be seen in two bone plaques found in Orlat, Uzbekistan, on which a war scene is depicted. This artifact, the Orlat Plaques, was found in the tomb of a nomad, and is considered a masterpiece of Sogdian art. In it, Sogdians of Samarkand are depicted intent in repelling nomadic attacks, which were a real threat for Sogdians. According to Mode, this plaque is a very early manifestation of the narrative imagery which characterizes Sogdian art.

Sculpture

In Panjikent a painted frieze with elaborate figures of humans, dragons and sea creatures was found. In it are "Hindu makaras, or combinations of land and sea beasts; Greco-Roman hippocamps, or fish-tailed horses; and human-headed anguipeds whose 'legs' are serpents. Such marine imagery seems odd for landlocked Panjikent, but it may refer to an imported myth or a view of an alternate afterlife."

Ossuaries

The Sogdian ossuaries were made with molds, that were pressed on baked clay. Because the molds were later reused by less experienced artists, some later ossuaries are of a quality that is inferior to the originals.
With the decoration of ossuaries, the Sogdians expressed their wishes for the afterlife. As per Mazdaism practice, the body of the deceased would be excarnated and the bones then placed in a container, the ossuary, which was then put into a naos. Ossuaries were generally made of terracotta. The lid can be flat, pyramidal, or domed. They were often covered with slip, used like paint. Almost all decorations have to do with the soul's journey in the afterlife, and portray religious tenets and practices. The 7th/8th century ossuary from Mulla kurgan has a pyramidal lid with a couple standing beneath moon and sun and carrying a branch on each side, while a priest is depicted on each of the ossuary main body's side. The figures on the lid may be dancing, thus "alluding to the pleasures of paradise, a place of music and song."
There is a more complex composition that is the subject of a number of fragmented ossuaries spread from Bukhara to Samarkand, which date from the late 6th century to the early 8th. The Durman Tepe ossuary displays incredible attention to detail. The Durman Tepe ossuary is of good quality, especially when compared to the work of later, less experienced artists who reused the moulds, and comes close to the original. The identity of the figures depicted on it hasn't yet been established.
The Shahr-i Sabz Oasis ossuary depicts, like several others, the journey of the soul to paradise, with each low relief figure conveying a specific part of the journey. This ossuary presents the Zoroastrian eschatology, with death, judgment, and final destiny of the soul.