At the beginning of the era of the Great Kushans, probably under the second of them, Vima Taktu(alias Sôter Mégas) (c. 90-110), the citadel was surrounded by a small fortified urban site, also roughly rounded in plan. The excavation of the Kushan State has made it possible to revise certain conceptions of Kushan cities that had previously been the reading:
- The street network: based solely on the city of Dal'verzintepe (see below, lecture of February 20), G. Pugachenkova had attributed to them a labyrinthine network designed to improve internal defense. In fact, Kampyrtepa had a regular internal layout, although not in accordance with the Hippodamian scheme: two main streets with a bazaar at their intersection, one of which leads to the citadel entrance and the now-defunct landing stage, and a radial network of secondary streets delimiting blocks of uniform width (19 m), each of which leads to a tower.
- The rampart: it has sometimes been suggested that the Kushan ramparts were mainly ostentatious, and that their archways in particular were not functional. This is undoubtedly true in some cases (e.g., the Surkh kotal temple enclosure), but not in Kampyrtepa, where everything was designed for maximum defensive efficiency. In known Kushan ramparts, the parameters (wall thickness, dimensions of towers, etc.) are very regular, proof of the intervention of a centralized body of military engineers.
