Each portrayed a scene from the khaganate’s rich, brutal, glorious past: the centuries spent as a nomadic horse-people in the grassy steppes of the continent’s eastern lands; the emergence of the first khagan, a warlord who unified the scattered tribes into a conquering force that took the continent piece by piece, wielding cunning and strategic brilliance to forge a sweeping empire; and then depictions of the three centuries since—the various khagans who had expanded the empire, distributing the wealth from a hundred territories across the lands, building countless bridges and roads to
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