. The earliest wooden caryatids (caryatid), or columns in human form, are found at Pendzhikent. The caryatids in the form of women have their hair elaborately dressed, and, although nude at the waist, they wear boleros, as well as close-fitting, heavily trimmed skirts and splendid necklaces of Indian appearance. Once again, these figures recall those on Bagrām's ivory plaques and Buddhist statuettes of the 1st to 5th centuries.Fergana produced much pottery of quality, but, as yet, there have been no finds of comparable importance to those in Sogdiana. Its arts appear to have paralleled the developments in the more prosperous, more heavily populated, and more highly urbanized state of Chorasmia (later Khwārezm). Chorasmia's defensive architecture was particularly notable. Its great citadels and palaces (palace) were enclosed by two lines of walls strengthened by massive towers that were fitted with lookout posts and firing slits and topped by archers' galleries. Chorasmian entrance gates were labyrinthine in plan. Many of these splendid buildings have disappeared beneath the desert's encroaching sands. Toprak kala, recently excavated, near Tashauz, is thought to have served not only as a citadel but perhaps as Chorasmia's capital until about the 7th century. Defended by stout walls, the palace of sun-dried bricks was equipped with three lookout towers. The ground floor of this two-storied building acted as a foundation for the living rooms and storerooms above. Many of the rooms were adorned with sculpture: its most impressive room, the Hall of Kings, had niches fitted with grills ranged along the tops of its walls to hold statues of Chorasmia's rulers and notables; the Alabaster Hall contained many sculptures executed both in the round and in relief; a Hall of Victories contained statues of kings seated in the presence of a goddess of victory; statues of warriors carrying shields adorned the Warriors' Hall. All of the Chorasmian (Khwārezm) figural works are so lifelike that it is evident that portraiture had reached a high state of development by the 3rd and 4th centuries AD. Surviving decorations in the fortified manorhouse of Teshik Kala display the palmette, rosette, lotus, and ace-of-spade motifs that the Seljuqs (Seljuq) later carried westward to Anatolia and beyond in the 11th and 12th centuries.The most Hellenized of these states in western Turkistan and Afghanistan was Bactria. Its fine coinage, for example, was distinctly Hellenistic in style, and Bactrian silversmiths were often influenced as much by Roman as Greek Hellenistic metalwork. Alexander the Great annexed Kābul to Bactria and founded Alexandria-Kapisu, a city astride the Indian caravan route, to serve as the province's capital. The multiracialism of Kapisu's population is reflected in the origins of the objects found there. Imports included articles from India, China, and the Greco-Roman world, especially from Syria. Artistic conventions characteristic of all these countries blended with the local Central Asian ones, with the Indian conventions predominating, to create Bactria's own distinctive style in sculpture, whether in alabaster, stone, ivory, or wood. Its mural paintings are wholly Buddhist in content, but they often contain features that link them to Fundukistan in India and the Sāsānian Persian world.The decorative arts were highly developed in Bactria. Many of their sun-dried-brick houses were large enough to include several reception rooms, which contained many luxurious decorative objects.Potters (pottery) remained attached to animal forms derived from nomadic art. The large production of votive statuettes, especially representations of Anahita and Syavush, may be partly attributed to the belief that Zoroaster was born in Balkh. This tradition was also evident at Merv until the Arab invasion of Central Asia. The Bactrians mastered the technique of working metals at an early date. A 4th-century-BC lion-griffin (British Museum) in cast bronze is descended from a Scytho-Altaic prototype, and so, too, is a pair of slightly earlier gold armlets