atuettes of local Parthian deities and of Greek gods, bronze and iron weapons, burnished and painted pottery, glass, and cast bronze animals, such as griffins. The most significant of these treasures, however, is a series of ivory horn-shaped drinking vessels, or rhytons. Some are embellished with paste inlays and precious stones, others have a carved frieze or band encircling their open ends. One rhyton (State Hermitage Museum) has a frieze of a procession that includes a Greek god. Conceived in the purest Hellenistic style, the frieze contrasts sharply with the rhyton's horned, lion-griffin-shaped terminal ornamentation, which is admirably modelled in the round, in accordance with the Scytho-Altaic tradition.The kingdoms of western Turkistan and AfghanistanSkill in irrigation, with the resulting expansion in agriculture, encouraged urbanism and the growth of states, changes that coincided with the rise of nomadism. While the nomadic cattle and horse breeders took over the steppelands, the culturally distinct states of Sogdiana (part of Uzbekistan and much of Tajikistan), Fergana (the greater part of Uzbekistan), Chorasmia (the Tashkent region), and Bactria (mainly Afghanistan) were established. At times independent, at other times reduced to vassaldom, the first three states were centred on rivers—Sogdiana around the Zeravshan and Kashkadarya, Fergana on the lower Syr Darya, and Chorasmia on the Amu Darya's basin. (The earliest references to these states are to be found in the Avesta, the principal scriptural work of the Zoroastrian religion, and in the inscription cut by order of the Persian king Darius I [reigned 522–486 BC] on the face of the rock of Bīsitūn in the Kermanshah province of Iran.) Bactria extended from the Syr Darya to the Hindu Kush (southern Tajikistan and Afghanistan) and is rich in unexplored mounds. Excavations at Balkh show that its first inhabitants settled there when others were doing so at Afrasiab (Samarkand) and Merv.The political and economic changes that developed in the 4th century BC, following the Macedonian Greek king Alexander III the Great's conquest of these states and their incorporation in the Seleucid empire, and the conquests made, in turn, by the Parthians, Arabs, Turks, and Mongols are reflected in the regions' arts. The city of Alexandria-Kapisu Bagrām, founded by Alexander the Great, became the clearinghouse for India's (India) western trade. India's religious beliefs, especially Buddhism, and the scriptural style that evolved in Gandhāra (Gandhāra art) (an area situated between the Qondūz and Indus rivers in the lower Kābul valley of northwestern Pakistan) and Mathurā (Mathurā art) (in the Punjab region of northwestern India) followed along the trade routes and reached not only Bactria but also, at times, Kashmir, Tibet, China, and even the remote oasis towns of the Tarim Basin in Sinkiang. At the same time, Seleucid (Seleucid kingdom) support resulted in the introduction of Greco-Roman art forms in Bactria, Kapisu, Taxila (Rāwalpindi), Gandhāra, Mathurā, and, after 30 years, even into Seistan.Sogdiana (Sogdian art), with its capital of Afrasiab, was already noted for the sophistication and number of its towns when Alexander the Great conquered it in 328 BC and opened it up to Greek soldiers and administrators, and eventually to Roman traders. The Sogdians resented being governed by Alexander's successors, the Greek kings of the Seleucid dynasty. It is difficult to establish their relationship with their Seleucid suzerains and still more so with the later Kushans, but there is ample evidence to show that neither group of conquerors hindered the rise in both Sogdiana and Chorasmia of a local feudal nobility and class of rich farmers.A considerable amount of secular and religious pottery sculpture (Western sculpture) dating from the early Christian era to the Arab invasion of the 8th century has been found at Afrasiab. The more interesting examples consist of statuettes of clothed women, some of them representing Zoroastrian (Zoroastrianism) deities such as Anahita. They have