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The cultural interactions between India and West Asia were long-lasting. Startling visual parallels between Mauryan and Persian imperial palace architecture appear with little evidence of how such imagery traveled across continents. One clue is this rare gold Achaemenid rhyton, a horn-shaped drinking vessel. Highly portable, objects of this type served as diplomatic gifts or w ere part of the luxury trade between the empires. The circulation of such objects in India could have provided models for the lion capital exhibited nearby. Imperial objects were at once valuable and highly vulnerable.