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Afghanistan's Lost Treasures

A exhibition of Afghanistan's ancient artistic treasures will begin a 17-month tour of the United States in May 2008. Washington's National Gallery of Art will be the first venue for the landmark show, organized by the museum and the National Geographic Society, in cooperation with the National Museum of Afghanistan, Kabul.

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"Nowhere in antiquity have so many different objects from so many different cultures -- Chinese mirrors, Roman coins, daggers from Serbia -- been found together in situ," Viktor Ivanovich Sarianidi, the Russian archaeologist who made the historic find at Tillya Tepe in 1979, wrote in National Geographic in 1990.

As recounted in that article, he was the leader of a joint Soviet-Afghan project that had been digging among ancient ruins in the region, off and on, for nine years. In 1978 he spotted a bit of painted potsherd on a nearby hillock.

They dug beneath it. They uncovered a confusing site, as layers of villages from about 300 B.C. were lying atop the ruins of a massive edifice of walls and turrets more than 1,000 years older. That edifice had been built and collapsed and rebuilt, and apparently sat unused for more than 600 years. And amid these ancient ruins, they made a remarkable discovery: Tombs, from perhaps the 1st century A.D.

"Soon a grave emerged from beneath our picks and scoops. Staring at us were the hollow eye sockets of a skull, a young woman between 25 and 30, perhaps a princess," he wrote.

Layers of gold and jewelry lay about her collapsed skeleton. Nearby, five more graves were unearthed, the remains of a well-to-do nomadic family, apparently all of whom died at the same time.

It was a historic find, but civil war and the Soviet invasion were closing in. Sarianidi got the artifacts from the first six graves to Kabul before war broke out. He left in February 1979. Two more graves had been discovered, but were "apparently looted" by the guards hired to guard them, he wrote. "Artifacts similar to the ones we discovered have turned up for sale."

He photographed the items he had found in 1982 in Kabul, but they were not seen again.

In the intervening years, the national museum was bombed. Tons of Afghan artifacts turned up in Europe, traded on the black market. The Taliban, which did not allow graven images, destroyed more than 2,500 pieces of artwork in the museum. Archaeologists figured Sarianidi's historic find had been sold off, melted down or destroyed.

Also missing were artifacts from Begram that had been unearthed by a French and Afghan team in the 1930s. Digging north to south along the site of an ancient city, archaeologists discovered a series of rooms. Two of them were bricked off in ancient times. No one knows why. There is a sepia-toned photograph from 1937, taken at the entrance of chamber known as Room 10, the mud wall twice as tall as a man in the doorway. Inside was a warehouse of ancient trading goods: ivory carvings, statues, figurines, jewelry, glassware, from all over the ancient world. At first thought to be a treasure hoard of a royal family, it is now believed to be simply the warehouse of a trader, storing goods between expeditions.

The find was thrilling in its day, but again, war intervened: World War II ended the dig. The artifacts were shipped to the national museum in Kabul and duly lost.

It turns out they were in the footlockers in that vault in the Afghan presidential compound, the same place the goods from Tillya Tepe were taken. A small society of "tahilwidars," or keyholders, had kept them safe, never saying a word about the treasure. Omara Khan Masoudi, the director of the national museum, was one. After the country was stabilized, they informed Karzai, and the world found them again.

"To me, this exhibit isn't just about archaeology, it's about keeping culture alive, about real heroism in hiding and saving these artifacts," Hiebert says.

Well, of course. Every story, even a 2,000-year epic, has to have a lean-jawed hero. Those guys never say much.

Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures From the National Museum, Kabul, featuring 228 artifacts from four sites, is at the National Gallery's East Building on the Mall through Sept. 7. Open Monday-Saturday 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Sunday 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Free. Call 202-737-4215 or visit http://www.nga.gov.