Afghanistan is uniquely situated as a throughway of cultures throughout its history due to it geographic placement in South Asia. Afghanistan's location lends porous borders to trade routes between the East and West, while the Silk Road providing a vector for Buddhism and Hellenistic culture and even Egyptian influences from the west, renders an amalgamation of culture and art. Perpetual invasion and conflict has rendered a cyclic continuum of renaissance and destruction of art and culture in Afghanistan. Historicity of Afghanistan's art Much of Afghanistan's art can be traced back through the invasions, occupations and dynasties that so frequently have ravaged the country. Afghanistan has been a crossroads of cultures that make up the colorfully robust and dynamic foundation of Afghan art. These civilizations include, but are not limited to the empires and kingdoms that comprise Afghanistan's political origins as a modern state. The more renowned, larger regional empires include the Achaemenid Empire, the Macedonian Empire, the Indian Maurya Empire, the Islamic Empire and the Sassanid Empire. Like the empires, Afghanistan's transient and nomadic kingdoms and dynasties that rose to power (see Greco-Bactrians, Kushans, Hephthalites, Turk Shahis, Saffarids, Samanids, Ghaznavids, Ghurids, Kartids, Timurids, Mughals, Hotaki dynasty and Durrani dynasty), helped shape the development of Afghan art as well as its preservation and destruction. Soviet invasion/occupation The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979 and exacted a staunch interpretation of art that stifled creativity in the 1980s during the Soviet backed regime in Afghanistan from 1979-1989. Throughout this time thousands of pieces of art were pillaged, looted or mysteriously disappeared during the ten year occupation. During the Soviet era, from 1979 through 1992, and the initial rise of the Taliban, only one archeological excavation was carried out in Kabul at Tepe Maranjan. Destruction of ancient archeological sites Hadda and the Stupa-monastery complex of Tepe Shortor In the first years of the Soviet occupation several ancient sites, previously explored by French and Afghan archeologists, were ransacked by the pro-Russian government and destitute villagers. The ancient sites included in the ransack and pillaging, which ultimately would continue through and even after the Taliban regime, were the stupa-monastery complex of Tepe Shortor, Hadda, Ai Khanoum, Bactres and Tepe Marandjan. Famous for its intricate Graeco-Buddhist sculptures and reliefs, the archeological site Hadda is in Gandhara an ancient state in what is now north-eastern Afghanistan, 10 kilometers from the present day city of Jalalabad (adjacent the Khyber