On Display, The Fruits Of Afghan Altruism

"This is the most important gold treasure ever found in Asia, maybe the world," said Christian Manhart, an Afghanistan expert at UNESCO, the United Nations' cultural heritage agency. "No one knew what happened to it," he said. Rumors were rampant that it had disappeared, fueled by the appearance on the black market in the 1980s and '90s of similar gold items, apparently raided from nearby tombs at Tillya Tepe. "It's really a miracle that it survived," Manhart said.

On Wednesday, visitors to the Guimet Museum viewed items from the hoard, glittering gold pieces that testified to Afghanistan's rich, historic culture: brilliant medallions of Athena and Aphrodite, magnificent adornments showing cherubs riding dolphins, a panther mauling an antelope, and a love scene with two people riding what appears to be a cross between a tiger and a dragon.

Hiebert cited two artifacts as among his favorites: a pair of turquoise-encrusted, gold boot buckles, each with a chariot covered by a parasol being pulled by a Chinese dragon; and a gold dagger with a Siberian bear carved on the handle -- "a masterpiece of art and gold workmanship," he said.

Taken together, the exhibit illustrates Afghanistan's key place at the crossroads of Europe, the Middle East and Asia, along the famed Silk Road. Several pieces in particular show the influences of India and China and Hellenist vestiges from the 4th-century B.C. reign of Alexander the Great.

Despite the keyholders' efforts, experts say, much of Afghanistan's art and cultural heritage did fall victim to the almost continuous warfare that has ravaged the country since the Soviet invasion. The era between the Soviets' 1989 withdrawal and the 2001 U.S. invasion was particularly brutal. First, rival militias bombed the capital and looted its riches to fund their fighting; then the fundamentalist Taliban waged a systematic campaign to destroy Afghanistan's art troves on religious grounds.

The National Museum in Kabul was particularly hard-hit. It was rocketed numerous times, looted by guerrilla groups and finally visited in 2001 by Taliban and al-Qaeda members who smashed its statues with sledgehammers. According to UNESCO's Manhart, about 70 percent of the museum's 100,000 artifacts were stolen or destroyed.

But the museum guards and curators had spirited away the most valuable artifacts for safekeeping, according to Hiebert. They were "hidden in boxes around Kabul, some covered with mud and dented, some with the locks broken, but despite being 2,000 years old, in excellent condition."

Details of who took this initiative remain cloudy -- many of these people, museum officials, prefer to remain anonymous. "Somebody selected the very finest pieces to be preserved -- I mean the 700 to 800 objects on display that were the masterpieces, the flagship pieces," Hiebert said. For instance, he said, "there were 40,000 coins, and 38,000 are gone, but the 2,000 that were preserved are the very finest pieces."

Many of the artifacts that went to the presidential palace were put in a German-made vault that withstood numerous efforts to crack it, according to Manhart. These included an attempt in 1996 by Afghan warlord Ahmed Shah Massoud to bomb it open before he retreated from Kabul as the Taliban took the city.

Statues and other treasures were secreted in the basements of the culture ministry and the national bank. Elsewhere, more subtle tactics were used. One curator applied watercolors to cover human figures in the museum's painting collection.

The keyholders kept their mouths shut, even though the head watchman at the museum was tortured. The museum director, Omara Khan Massoudi, went without pay for 20 years and sold potatoes in the Kabul market to support his family.

"The guards at the palace who were tortured and Mr. Massoudi, they are the real heroes," Manhart said.

"With their knowledge, they could have taken objects to Europe and sold them for a very high price, but they didn't," Manhart added.

"The curators and keyholders were so intent on maintaining the country's cultural heritage," Hiebert said. "It's all due to the bravery of the Afghan people. I would love to know where that spirit comes from and how we could clone it."