 foreshortened bodies and large heads with a withdrawn expression on their faces and wear tiaras, hats, or hoods sewn to their cloaks. When the cloaks are sleeveless, they are worn over straight, long-sleeved robes instead of draped garments. All the figures hold a piece of fruit, a symbol of fertility. Statuettes of the 3rd–4th centuries from the fortified town of Tali Barsu, to the south of Samarkand, depict Syavush, the god of annual death and spring rebirth, as a musician. Statuettes of women flutists, riders, animals, and the Iranian semihuman-semianimal demigod Shah Gopat have also been discovered there. In the 7th and 8th centuries, sculpture, whether in clay or alabaster, was highly developed at Pendzhikent, a site some 40 miles (60 kilometres) east of Samarkand, where Indian influence was often felt.The earliest of Turkistan's mural paintings (painting, Western) have been found in its eastern section. Those at Niy date from the 2nd century AD, those at Miran from the 3rd. The inspiration for both stemmed from Rome, whereas Buddhism provided the impulses for the slightly later murals at Bamiyan and Kizil. In the eastern zone the paintings were designed as backgrounds for sculpture, and, as in western Turkistan, they were executed in tempera. Some very high quality murals recently discovered in western Turkistan are dated slightly later. The oldest ones, which are extremely fragmentary, are from the Varakhsha, a princely residence to the northeast of Bukhara, now lying in the desert; they date from the 3rd to the 4th century AD. Murals discovered at the beginning of the 20th century at Samarkand, which are almost contemporary with those at Varakhsha, have been lost. The importance of these murals is wholly eclipsed by the slightly later works discovered recently in Sogdiana, such as the 7th-century works at Varakhsha. Some of the rooms in the main apartments of the Varakhsha Palace (which consisted of several detached buildings) are decorated with high-relief alabaster stucco panels and carved woodwork, as well as with paintings. Benches are inserted into the walls of one room, the area above them divided into two registers, or horizontal rows, both painted red. In the upper register was a procession of animals, little of which survives, and, in the lower, splendidly attired hunters seated on elephants pursued spirited leopards and creatures of the griffin family.Some 200 miles (300 kilometres) east of Samarkand, in a once fertile, now desert tract of land, the ruins of the great feudal castle of Mug survive. Among the objects excavated there was part of a wooden shield with the painted figure of a rider (State Hermitage Museum), which foreshadows a type commonly found in Islāmic Persian book illumination. Mounted on a splendidly caparisoned horse, he wears a tunic of local cut and is equipped with a long sword, two daggers, two bows, and a quiver full of arrows. He is wasp-waisted in the manner of figures depicted in murals of Varakhsha and Pendzhikent.At Pendzhikent, a site close to Mug, and some 40 miles (60 kilometres) east of Samarkand, Sogdian architecture can be seen to advantage. The desert-engulfed city contained several large temples (temple) built of rectangular adobe bricks and blocks of beaten clay. The bricks were used for vaults and domes, while the flat sections of the roofs were made of rafters supported by wooden pillars or piers, some of which had been set in stone bases. Many of the more important houses were two-storied. A square room measuring 26 by 26 feet (eight metres by eight metres) had served as a temple sanctuary. Although, in a series of rooms connected to it, some fragmentary religious paintings survived, the paintings in another temple are better preserved. They depict the death, the Sogdian burial rite, and the rebirth of a youthful Syavush. More than 50 figures of this vast composition survive, some representing Sogdian noblemen, some a group of Turks. A number of the Sogdians are seated cross-legged in the Oriental manner and hold gold and silver vessels of Sāsānian shape in thre