HEPHTHALITE HUN CAVALRYMAN (5th century AD), based on the murals of the Cave of the Painters from Kizil, in western China’s Xinjiang region. I included the Gyerim-ro dagger, found in an ancient Korean tomb of the Silla kingdom, but believed to be of Central Asian origin, possibly eastern Hunnic, not only because it is decorated with garnet cloisonné (a technique that the Huns introduced to the Germanic tribes of Europe) but also because there are parts of an almost identical dagger found in Lake Burabay (northern Kazakhstan), near the territories where the western Huns of Attila roamed. Similar daggers are also depicted in the murals of the Buddhist caves of Kizil. The sword is an interpretation of the murals of Kizil using an eastern Hunnic quillon from the Al-Sabah collection and a Chinese jade scabbard slide.
THE HEPHTHALITES were part of the steppe nomads known in ancient Indian sources as the “Hunas”, distant relatives of the Huns that invaded Europe and the Roman Empire. The Hephthalites ruled from Bactria (today northern Afghanistan), but also controlled Sogdiana and part of the Tarim Basin. They also won some battles against the Sassanian Persian Empire. Another branch of the Huna peoples, that might have even been a subgroup of the Hephthalites, were the Alchon Huns, who crossed the Hindu Kush and conquered much of India, contributing to the collapse of the Gupta Empire and the decline of Buddhism in South Asia as a result of their destructive raids. Despite being animistic and shamanistic themselves, under the rule of the Hephthalites two colossal Buddhas were carved into the side of a cliff in Bamiyan, Afghanistan, which were destroyed by the Taliban in 2001. JFoliveras, digital painting
Thanks to Eran ud Turan, for giving me permission to use his lamellar armour and his replica of a Bactrian rug from the Al-Sabah collection: https://www.patreon.com/eranudturan
Something to appease Steve’s itch for anything Central Asian.