Caravan kings: exploring ancient Uzbekistan

The land that makes up what is today Uzbekistan was a crucial part of what 19th-century German geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen described as the ‘Silk Road’. Of course, there was not just one single trade route connecting Europe and East Asia, nor was silk the only thing being traded. Various movements came to transform the culture of ancient Uzbekistan, as explored in a new exhibition in the Musée du Louvre, The Splendours of Uzbekistan’s Oases. The migrations of Saka, Sarmatian, Kangju, and Yuezhi nomadic populations, and invasions of the Huns (in the 3rd-5th centuries) and of Turkic peoples (6th century), all shaped the societies of the cities that developed around oases in the