During the construction process, ancient wall paintings were accidentally discovered. Construction work did not cause them much harm. In fact, the upper part of these murals was destroyed already in the 10th-11th centuries, and for this reason it is impossible to make a complete reconstruction of them. The main cycle of paintings adorned the walls of the room 1, which is now known as the “Hall of Ambassadors”.
In room 9, only a small part of the murals, which depict a divine couple under an arch, escaped destruction. Separate fragments of murals were found in rooms 2 and 3. During the excavations of the Soviet period, which were carried out from the late 1970s to the early 1980s, several pre-Islamic images of plants and architectural elements were found on the walls, and later the paintings dating back to the Islamic period were restored. Today, most of them can be seen in the museum Afrasiab, some of their fragments were transferred to the Samarkand Archaeological Institute and the Tashkent Historical Museum.
You can learn more about the topic in the book-album "Sogdiana - the heart of the Silk Road" (volume XXXV) in the series "Cultural legacy of Uzbekistan in the world collections".
The main sponsor of the project is the oilfield services company Eriell-Group.
