Place · site

Surkh Kotal

Surkh Kotal is an archaeological site in Baghlan Province, northern Afghanistan, where a hilltop dynastic sanctuary of the Kushan kings stood. French archaeologists excavated it from 1952, uncovering monumental stairways, royal statues and a long inscription in Bactrian written in Greek script, which was key to understanding the Kushans' language.

Surkh Kotal
Image: Afghanistan in the Early 1960s · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons

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Kushan EmpireGovernance

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Cite this entry
APA
The Epoch Institute. (2026). Surkh Kotal. In The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/surkh-kotal
MLA
“Surkh Kotal.” The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia, The Epoch Institute, 2026, https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/surkh-kotal. Accessed .
Chicago
The Epoch Institute. “Surkh Kotal.” The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. 2026. https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/surkh-kotal.
Harvard
The Epoch Institute (2026) ‘Surkh Kotal’, The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. Available at: https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/surkh-kotal (Accessed: ).

Last reviewed October 2026Random entry ↻