Sogdian Archaeology

Co-authored with Ruth Young. Simultaneously published as ‘Zentralasien 500 v. Chr.-600 n. Chr.’ In Dumont Weltatlas der Kunst, heraus. John Onians. Köln: Verlag Dumont, 2004. Reprinted in The Art Atlas, ed. John Onians. London: Laurence King, 2008.

The Bugut inscriptions from the First Turkic Khaghanate in Mongolia are primary sources for the Turkic history, as well as for the history of Sogdian and Mongolian languages. The field research that has been conducted on the bilingual Bugut inscription was quite limited, but the last one has finally solved the mystery of the unknows side of the Bugut inscription. About details please see Yoshida's publications (on Sogdian text,) see Maue and Vovin's article (on Brahmi side).

The Türgesh – one of the 10 “tribes” of the On Oq federation of the Western Türk – succeeded the Western Ashinas-Türk as an imperial power in the Western Central Asian steppes. Although the Türgesh Empire was relatively short-lived – it thrived for only about 20 years under their energetic khagan Sulu – it played an important role in the concert of great powers during the first half of the 8th century, largely on a par with Tang China, the Umayyad Caliphate, Tibet, and the Eastern Türks. The Türgesh are particularly known for having posed a serious threat to Umayyad rule in Mawarannahr and Eastern Khorasan/Tokharestan, inflicting several major defeats on Muslim armies in the 720s and 730s C.E. After the death of Sulu the Türgesh Empire quickly disintegrated, giving way to the immigrating Qarluq as the new dominant power in the steppes north of the Tianshan.

Keywords: mid-6th–mid-8th centuries ce; Chinese Empire; Eurasia; imperialism and conquest; nomads; steppe

Asya, Orta Doğu ve Anadolu’ya kadar ticari anlamda mekik dokuyan ve mahir diplomat özelliği taşıyan Soğd’lar, ipek yoluna hakim olan devletle birlikte egemenlik altına girmişlerdir. Ancak bu egemenlik bir asimilasyondan ziyade, gitmiş oldukları veya boyun eğdikleri toplumlara kendi kültürlerini taşımışlardır.

Jeremiah 16, 14-15 describes another exodus that is said to be incomparably greater than the Mosaic Exodus from Egypt to Canaan.
“Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that it shall no more be said, The LORD liveth, that brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt; But, The LORD liveth, that brought up the children of Israel from the land of the north, and from all the lands whither he had driven them: and I will bring them again into their land that I gave unto their fathers.”
In this essay I trace the migration track of the Yuezhis/Sarmatans/Alans/Alemanns/Catalans to Europe and try to found that this migration process is not far from the Great Exodus of the Israelites of Jeremiah 16, 14-15.

This study focuses on a large and luxurious, house-shaped sarcophagus in the collection of the Xi’an Municipal Institute of Archaeology (Xi’an, Shaanxi province, PRC) that was made in the capital city of Chang’an in 579 CE for a Sogdian merchant couple—Wirkak and Wiyusi—and decorated with an array of originally painted and gilded bas-reliefs of biographical and religious scenes concerning their lives and Zoroastrian beliefs about the afterlife. During the past decade, the religious carvings of this funerary monument have been subjected to a number of studies that introduced Manichaean interpretations to a set of isolated motifs whose Zoroastrian identification offered greater challenges. Through a systematic contextual analysis, the authors of this study (1) examine the individual motifs in question and (2) consider them within their overall scenes. Based on literary and artistic evidence, the authors demonstrate not only that the previously-hypothesized Manichaean explanations do not hold up to critical assessment, but that their respective motifs harmoniously fit within the overall Zoroastrian eschatological complexes consistent throughout this remarkable work of art. These newly identified details are essential to better understand the Zoroastrian iconographic program of this sixth-century sarcophagus. Since its images date 300 years before the earliest surviving substantial Zoroastrian literature, this work of art is highly significant for the study of Sogdian religion and culture, as well as Iranian studies in general. The sarcophagus of Wirkak and Wiyusi therefore provides critical, visual documentary evidence for a popular version of Zoroastrian eschatology that exhibits many points of contact with the later “orthodox” Zoroastrian literature of Iran.

When examining Alexander the Great’s conquest of the region of Sogdiana (encompassing most of modern day Uzbekistan) it is clear Alexander managed to successfully conquer and control Sogdiana due to his extraordinary mix of attributes and an intuitive sense of how and when to employ them. The successes achieved during the campaign were due to Alexander’s imaginative policy towards the Sogdians, which could be at times brutal or accommodating, his sharp sense of cultural and situational awareness, and his building campaign in Sogdiana that would create a makeover of that civilization. In turn, these feats left a lasting influence from his death to the present. Alexander’s legacy is evidenced through coinage, the history of the colonies he planted in the region, and the remembrance and cultural references within Uzbek society today.

The present article summarizes the first field season of new investigations at the Devor-i Kampirak in Bukharan Sogd in 2011. In the first part we give a detailed description of our topographic survey, documenting a total of 15 sectors of the Kampirak in the western, eastern and – possibly – the northern fringes of the oasis.

The second part deals with the results of our excavations: at Sector 1 and at Sector 12. The profile at Sector 1 only revealed a pakhsa monolith, perhaps a platform of some non-preserved superstructure. In Sector 12 we observed a peculiar building technique: a sand-gravel pile was at both sides stabilized by a very coarse wall consisting of mortar and little irregular pakhsa lumps. The space between these two walls was filled with loose gravel. Only for the upper parts of the wall mudbricks were used (46-49×30-33×9-10 cm). A similar building technique has been observed at the Devor-i Kundalang near Rabat-i Gaziyon in Samarkand Sogd. Excavations at Section 12 also revealed a semi-circular bastion. The erosion layers of the bastion and the wall contained a significant number of diagnostic ceramic fragments suggesting the late 4th and 5th century as the original date of construction of the Kampirak in the delta area of the Zerafshan oasis.

In the third part we discuss observations resulting from a new topographic plan of the site Shakhri-Vayron. It shows that the center of the site is formed by a quadratic structure with four round towers at each side. This resembles a type of castles known from Chach, Ustrushana, and Samarkand Sogd, dating to 4th-5th centuries. However, the central structure at Shakhri-Vayron (measuring ca. 65 x 65 m) is 2-3 times larger than these small castles. While there are good arguments to finally reject the equation of Shakhri-Vayron with Tawawis-Arqud (which must be identified with the major site of Khodja-Buston) it is noteworthy that the central structure at Shakhri-Vayron is comparable in size with the “citadel” at Kafir-kala, the rural residence of the Ikhshids of Samarkand. Could the central structure at Shahri-Vayron originally also have functioned as a rural residence of the lords of Tawawis-Arqud, before it was later turned into a fortress in the system of the Devor-i Kampirak?

(222 plates of illustrations will be in special file. The pages' numeration is special for each big chapter. For real book numeration move the cursor to the right border of each pages / 222 таблицы иллюстраций будут в специальном файле. Нумерация по техническим причинам – отдельная для каждого большого раздела. Подлинную нумерацию стрнице в книге можно выяснить, подведя курсор к правой границе каждой страницы).
ABSTRACT:
In this book, you will find a complex research of the clothes of Iranian-speaking peoples beginning from their appearance in the world politics and in the written sources of the 7th–6th cc. BC and up to the Islamization of Iran and Transoxiana in the 7th–8th cc. AD. The accessories of the costume (except belts), the military costume, the rulers’ crowns and the costume materials themselves are not the subject matter of the text; but the hairstyle and sometimes tattoos are being under consideration. The first three chapters are devoted to analysis of the main periods of pre-Islamic history of the Iranian world (the time bounds being different for different regions): [1] the Achaemenid-Scythian time (the 7th–6th cc. BC — 4th–3rd cc. BC, for Transoxiana—up to the mid. of the 2nd cc. BC); [2] the Parthian-Sarmatian time (the 4th/3rd cc. BC — the 3rd/4th cc. AD); [3] the Sassanid and Early Medieval time (the 3/4th — the 7/8th cc. AD). The sections of these chapters deal with materials on the 13 peoples: (1) the Persians of the Achaemenian time; (2) the Early Scythians; (3) the Scythians of the “classic” period (the 5th–4th cc. BC); (4) the “Pazyrykians” of the Altai; (5) the Chorasmians (for all the 3 periods); (6) the Parnes—Parthians of Iran; (7) the Sarmatians and Early Alans; (8) the Yuech-chihs / Kushans of Bactria; (9) the Sogdians (the 2nd and 3rd periods); (10) the Indo-Scythians of Gandhara; 11) the Persians of the Sassanid time; (12) the Khotano-Sakas of Southern Xinjiang (the 2nd and 3rd periods); (13) the Tokharistanians (with other ethnic elements). As far as each of the above-mentioned peoples is concerned the above-stated ideas are analyzed and new materials (including unpublished ones) are taken into account, the details of many depictions are defined and the data on peoples are generalized for the first time. First of all, we have studied the costume of these 13 peoples, which gives the most abundant and many-sided information on the costume as clothes in real life are a mass phenomenon and can be studied productively and correctly only in big series (in case of single depictions rare costume elements and the looks of gods of foreign origin are mistakenly taken for typical ones).
The main tasks of the book are: 1. The reconstruction of the look of the ethnic clothing complex for each of the above-mentioned peoples: the silhouette, the cut (the information about the latter is limited) and the decorative prin-ciples, the last task being the most labour-intensive. The results allow of a reliable attribution of many artifacts from museums and private collections. 2. Eliciting the aesthetical ideal of different ethnic groups reflected in the costume; the analysis of the depictions of supposed representatives of a certain people in the art of other countries for defining the degree of the authenticity in the costume depiction and its representativeness for this ethnic group. 3. The comparative analysis of the costume of each separately taken synchronous people in each of the three main historical epochs; the analysis of the costume of each ethnic group in different periods for defining the character of the costume evolution and heredity. 4. The retrospective eliciting of the look of the original costume of the most ancient Iranians and the “costume” traces of the Iranian penetration to the west of Iran. 5. Eliciting the type of the costume contacts of ancient Iranian-speaking peoples and the difference in their importance. 6. The analysis of the summarized data on the least studied significant functions of the costume aiming at eliciting the specificity of the Iranian world and some of its peoples.
We suggest a complex approach including following elements: (1) dealing with all kinds of sources alongside ob-serving the most possible scope of facts on each studied people (in case of a technical impossibility, the representative statistic excerpts are studied); (2) the proper selection of the costume décor remnants from burials under analysis (only the accounts and publications of high quality are used) excluding significantly fragmented and stylized depictions and, for some regions, images of gods; (3) the analysis of the material according to the linguistic and ethnic principles—not a regional one (which is not typical for modern research on the costume history); (4) considering all the main costume attributes of the ethnic group as a single costume complex that reflects the specificity of the people; 5) the description of the costume of each ethnic group according to the common program in chapters 1–3; (6) considering ethnic complexes against the background of the synchronous neighbouring ones and both earlier and later ones up to their successors in the 19th–20th cc. AD (otherwise the rightfulness of most conclusions is difficult to guarantee); (7) the analysis of costume evolution of separate ethnic groups under the influence of different factors; (8) compiling a special summary tables on the costume of each people (each drawing in them not being an exact copy of a definite depiction, but given in the most appropriate foreshortening without unnecessary details interfering with perception).
MORE INFORMATION: 2nd Internet ed., Moscow: X-lab, 2011: http://www.narodko.ru/article/yatsenko/eurazia/ .

CONTENTS:
PREFACE 5
CHAPTER 1. The Achaemenian-Scythian time (7th/6th cc. — 4th/3rd cc. BC) 29
1.1. The Persians 29
1.2. The European Scythians 47
1.3. The Pazyryk culture of the Altai Mountains 83
1.4. The Khorasmians 102
The main conclusions 106
CHAPTER 2. The Parthian-Sarmatian time (3rd cc. BC — 3rd/4th cc. AD) 112
2.1. Parthian Iran 113
2.2. The Sarmatians, the Early Alans and the “Late Scythians” 131
2.3. The Yuech-chihs/Kushans 170
2.4. The Khorasmians 187
2.5. The Indo-Scythians 192
2.6. The Sogdians 197
2.7. The Khotano-Sakas 201
The main conclusions 207
CHAPTER 3. The Sasanian and Early Medieval (Pre-Islamic) time (3rd/4th–7th/8th cc. AD) 212
3.1. Sasanian Iran 213
3.2. The Sogdians 231
3.3. Tokharistan and the neighboring regions to the South 247
3.4. The Khorasmians 262
3.4. The Khotano-Sakas 266
The main conclusions 274
CHAPTER 4. The mechanisms of the costume contacts and
the ways of evolution of the costume of ancient Iranians.
The symbolism of costume 279
4.1. The mechanisms of the costume contacts 280
4.2. The ways of evolution of the costume of various peoples 314
4.3. The sign functions of the costume 322
The main conclusions 362
CONCLUSION 364
APPENDIX. The suggestions on the methods of fixation and description of the costume relics
in burial complexes 367
Glossary 370
BIBLIOGRAPHY 371
Abbreviations 416
List of Iluustrations (in English)          418
List of illustrations (in Russian) 423
Illustrations 435-657
Summary                    658
Contents                      663

(Colour illustrations for CD-ROM version you can see after black-white variant)
Colour combinations in the costume of peoples in the Iranian World reveal their traditional character: red, white and blue, with rarer use of yellow, black and green. It reflects ancient Iranian colour symbolism rather than the contents of dye-stuffs. The influence of the Achaemenid Empire on other Iranian peoples includes the use of multi–coloured and, partly, striped fabrics and continued into the period of the Sasanian Empire when the concept of decorating cloth with medallions. Multi-coloured fabrics are not typical for Iranian costume and the costume of many other Iranian peoples in the Parthian period, which can be explained through Greek aesthetic influence.

SCHOLARSHIP ON THE VISUAL CULTURES of ancient and early medieval Eurasia has recently benefited from art history’s renewed interest in questions that transcend political and cultural boundaries.1 Issues of cross-cultural interaction, however, have not enjoyed from art historians working on the ancient and early medieval worlds a level of critical attention commensurate with the number of problems arising from the material. As a result, many of those who work in the arts and cultures of the Mediterranean, Near East, and Asia have found themselves drawn closer together, but without a common vocabulary or debate with which to engage.

The organizing goal of this volume is to highlight these theoretical considerations and provide a forum where art historians of the ancient and medieval worlds can explore these problems of cross-cultural interaction with greater rigor. It does not intend to provide a comprehensive theoretical overview or art historical survey of Eurasian artistic interchange, nor an overarching theory. Rather, it aims to contribute critical perspectives drawn from premodern visual cultures to the wider theoretical conversation. The papers contained herein critically evaluate some of the most important problems encountered in the material: the cross-continental movement and selective appropriation of objects and motifs through trade; the impact of new ways of seeing, being seen, and acting introduced by these objects; the role of art and ritual in negotiations of power among empires; and representations and self-portrayals of ethnicity and gender within and beyond dominant visual cultures.

To order: http://www.asia.si.edu/visitor/arsorientalisVolumeOrder.htm

Sogdian artists constantly adopted external religious iconographies from Mesopotamia, Greece, and India to represent local deities without major problems. Apparently, they did the same in their colonies abroad and especially in Buddhist Dunhuang where the main cultural milieu was Chinese. Two deities represented on a paper fragment from Dunhuang have been puzzling scholars since the 1990s. They present very strong Sogdian religious elements that, however, should be studied within the framework of Sino–Uighur art and culture of the Western Regions and Dunhuang. Many scholars considered the two deities both to be women. This article discusses the possibility that they actually represent a couple despite their aspect. Only one of them is a woman who can be identified with Nana. The other deity is probably Tish who was Nana’s husband and corresponded to the Avestan rain god Tishtrya and, in the Mesopotamian cultural sphere, to Nabu. Nana and Nabu formed a divine couple in Mesopotamian religion. Nabu was in origin the patron of scribes and corresponded to Greek Hermes and Egyptian Thoth. He was also connected to the planet Mercury that Chinese artists represented as a woman. Nana and Tish formed a powerful icon that Sogdians reproduced on inexpensive material that could be easily transported and possibly invoked as protectors of the family.

Abstract

The Khaganate (or Qaghanate) of the Türk, centered in the Central Eurasian steppes, was one of the hegemonic powers in Eurasia during the second half of the 6th and the first part of the 7th centuries C.E., exerting suzerainty over large parts of the Eurasian continent. The constituent hallmark of the empire of the Türk was the principle of collective sovereignty, vesting legitimate rule over the Türkic realm in the Ashinas lineage. This tradition – like other ideological as well as structural key features of their polity – the Türk inherited from their various predecessors in the steppes, notably the Xiongnu and the Rouran. Türk rule had a long-lasting impact on imperial ideologies and structures of governance in Eurasia down to the time of the Mongol Empire. Like the pax Mongolica in the 13th century, the unification of territories under Türk rule, from Manchuria in the east to Crimea in the west, resulted in a considerable increase of trans-cultural economic and diplomatic exchanges across Eurasia.

Keywords: mid-6th–mid-8th centuries CE ; Chinese Empire; Eurasia; imperialism and conquest; nomads; steppe

"Despite nearly two centuries of fascination in the scholarly world with the history of Sogdian culture there are still many under-researched areas. In particular, the history of the dissemination and inculturation of Christianity among Sogdians is one such area, which despite material and textual witness has not been studied autonomously. Instead, it has been incorporated into a broader discourse of the geographical-historical spread and enculturation of Christianity into the Central Asian landmass.
The existing studies on religions in Sogdiana have represented Sogdian society as a mosaic of religious communities with Zoroastrianism as a main religion which overshadowed the historical and socio-cultural significance of other religions such as Christianity among the Sogdians. This dissertation contends that Christianity among Sogdians, both in their native country and in the Diaspora, had a significant presence and that Sogdian Christians were instrumental in both inculturing Christianity as well as transmitting it to other ethnic groups.
This argument emerges from contextual and comparative ‘case studies’ of diverse material culture and textual evidence affiliated with Sogdians and Christianity. The evidence covered in this dissertation collectively constitutes a unique source supplying information about aspects of ‘Sogdian Christianity,’ such as its material and textual manifestations and its interrelationship with both its immediate cultural milieu and wider Christian oikoumene. In what follows, this dissertation will try to explain, through the testimony of the material and literary evidence, that Christianity among the Sogdian people had a footing in the local context and was expressed in local material and textual culture.
"

Draft for the workshop: “Linking the Mediterranean. Regional and Trans-Regional Interactions in Times of Fragmentation (300 -800 CE)”, Vienna, 11th-13th December 2014 (see: https://www.academia.edu/9238221/Linking_the_Mediterranean_Regional_and_Trans-Regional_Interactions_in_Times_of_Fragmentation_300_-800_CE_)

While Michael McCormick in his “Origins of the European Economy” has highlighted the dynamics of connectivity between Western Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean after the fall of the Western Roman Empire and thus also ultimately confuted the thesis of Henri Pirenne on a destruction of the unity of the Mediterranean in this period, a similar approach towards the connections within the Eastern Mediterranean and beyond would provide equally significant results for the “Origins of Eurasian Economy”. In my paper, I will focus especially on the mobility of individuals, objects, technologies and ideas between the spheres of Byzantium respectively Persia and Central Asia and the “Far East”, traditionally connected with the master narrative of the “Silk Road”.
The notion of the “Silk Road” suggests linear routes between two localities, while recent scholarship has illuminated the “multiplexity” of commercial, political or religious ties among places on the local, regional and trans-regional level. Within these complex and dynamic networks over several spatial and temporal scales emerged processes of religious, intellectual or artistic diffusion.
I survey some selected developments and intensities of long-distance connectivity, especially from the perspective of some important intermediary regions, for the period between 550 and 850 CE. Second, I focus on what C. A. Bayly in his “Birth of the Modern World” (2003) has called the lateral and the vertical dimension of phenomena of “global” diffusion and exchange: the spatial range of mobility and communication of individuals and objects which connected localities and clusters of localities along the “Silk routes” – and the vertical dimension of the impact of the material and immaterial artefacts of these exchange in the respective local societies. Finally, I link these observations with some discussions on the character of exchange and socio-economic integration in the Roman and Post-Roman world as well as with some general models of connectivity.

More and more foreigners, who were usually called as Hu people by Chinese, started to migrate along the Silk Road and eventually live in Central Plain area after the 2nd century BC. The exotic culture coming with Hu people had continuous influences towards ancient Chinese society, relative historical discussion has always been the hotspot in the study of Chinese early medieval history. After the discovery of Yuhong's tomb in 1999, together with the excavation of Lidan, Kangye, Anjia, Shijun and Anbei's tombs in the following years, our knowledge of Hu people's lives in ancient China had been widely extended. All the tomb occupants' burial dates and foreign immigrant identities were clearly recorded by their epitaphs. These new archaeological materials, especially the exquisite line carvings or reliefs decorated on their funerary furnishings (stone coffin, couch or house-shaped sarcophagus) set in the tomb chambers, had rapidly opened another new field of medieval Hu people study, especially the iconographic analysis. In this paper I will focus on other details reflected by their epitaphs and contexts, try to synthesize them and reconstruct the operation of their funerals, which will eventually achieve some new interpretation of the mortuary activities of Hu people in late 6th century. Comparing with the contemporary Chinese tombs, two biggest discrepancies of the six aforementioned tombs, especially the four ones of Northern Dynasties (Lidan, Anjia, Kangye and Shijun), could be also observed in the absence of conventional wooden coffin and pottery figures, suggesting huge ideological and practical difference in the funeral rites. The lack of wooden inner coffin indicates the possible fact that the sponsors of the foreigners' funeral, likely their descendants who were the second or third generation of foreign immigrants, were probably still sticking to their own funerary traditions. Judging from the archaeological evidence of later period, traditional funerary rites had already been carried out during foreign immigrants' funerals at least from the beginning of Tang dynasty (7th AD), wooden coffin and pottery figures were widely accepted and used in their tombs. Therefore, the time from Northern Qi (550-577 AD) and Northern Zhou (557-581 AD) till Sui dynasty (581-618 AD) should be a crucial period for the assimilation of foreign immigrants in China. Fire altar, whether Zoroastrian or not, was actually the only visual evidence to define the deceased as Zoroastrians. In the same time, there is no reliable trace indicating once they carried out Zoroastrian funerary practices. This self-contradiction was really perplexing, therefore, the eclectic style of their religion suggests that what they believed was at least not the orthodox Zoroastrianism from ancient Persia any more. I prefer to consider the whole scene presented on the stone funerary furniture is some kind of recreation , which assembled existing themes provided by widely spread pattern book, the limited information of the occupants' life experience was just taken as the initial basis during carving the represented scene. Along with emphasizing on the relative relationship and similarities among them, despite accepting official award from the central government sometimes, we also cannot ignore the fact that most of the funerals were personalized and private. The tomb complexes were the relics of the contradictions which reflected Hu people's attempts of trying to integrate into the Chinese mainstream society, in the same time, still keeping the obscure memories of their variable religion and homelands. After the finish of their institutionalization in the Tang dynasty (618-907 AD), also because of the reinforced control of the management of funerals from the central government, these few number of isolated cultural islands were rapidly flooded by the ocean of local traditions.

In the art of Chinese and Chinese Sogdians of the mid. 6th – mid. 8th cc. the general features of the Sogdian costume are trustworthily reflected by the main iconographic schemes and it can be easily explained. First, we deal with the people well known and significant enough for the customers. Second, the costume in traditional societies was an effective analogy of future passports and certificates of identity giving to the viewer the most important information of the owner of the garment. But in Chinese Sogdian art we see some important costume details unknown in the Sogdians' motherland. The poses here are often less canonical and more variable than in Sogd, they are less official and more intimate, we can feel the author's personal attitude; it gives a possibility to see more rare details. Sometimes the differences in the costume were caused by different subject plots. On Early Tang burial terracotta the costume of Sogdian merchants reflect the influence of traditions and demands of Chinese population with whom they lived and worked alongside.

This paper reconsiders the existing accounts of Qutayba b. Muslim's campaigns in Bukhārā in the context of the region's historical topography. It proposes a new yet more coherent reconstruction of the course of events during these campaigns. The resulting new narrative highlights how difficult this first step of the conquest of Mā warāʾ-al-nahr was for the Arab armies.

Aside from references in literary sources, evidence for Sogdian Christianity exists by virtue of material (coins, architecture, censers, pendant crosses) and textual (manuscripts) remnants. However, this article exclusively examines numismatic evidence and aims to enquire what can be said about the history of Christianity in mediaeval Sogdiana between the 5 th and the 9 th centuries. The article will focus on Sogdian coins displaying Christian iconography, especially the cross. The Christian semantic of the cross in Sogdian coins is analysed on the basis of a comparative art historical examination with other regions where the cross was used as a conventional symbol for Christianity. Rather than concentrating on its monetary value, the prime interest will be on the historical, socio-cultural and religious contexts of Sogdian coinage and its representative role in relation to Christianity.