THE exhibition, inaugurated Tuesday evening, offers a dazzling display of more than 200 artifacts from ancient Afghanistan. They include ivory furniture, statues, glassware, bronze pieces, and a profusion of gold items including bowls, daggers and jewelry, often decorated with semi-precious stones. The show was officially opened by Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai. The exhibition curator, St John Simpson, says the geography of Afghanistan, with its high mountains, passes, plains and valleys, “has enabled a succession of cultures over the past 4000 years to engage with the very different cultural regions of Central Asia to the north, South Asia to the southeast, and Iran and the Middle East and the Mediterranean, to the west.” The artistic creativity arising from these cultural encounters are reflected by the artifacts on show. At the same time, the exhibition is a testament to the dedication and courage of Afghans working to save their country's culture during the three decades of fighting and instability that followed the coup of 1978 and Soviet invasion of 1979. They managed to secretly hide and safeguard, at considerable personal risk, treasures from the National Museum. President Karzai writes in the exhibition catalogue: “Miraculously, our cultural inheritance was preserved and protected by a brave and selfless group of Afghan heroes. A single piece of gold would have been a ticket to escape the war and destruction that afflicted our country, but not a single piece was lost.” The exhibition is on loan from the National Museum of Afghanistan. A delegation of eight Afghans participated in the opening, representing not only the National Museum but also the Institute of Archeology, Kabul University and the office of the Attorney General. The items on display were discovered during archeological excavations between 1937 and 1978. One of the most extraordinary finds was made in northern Afghanistan in 1978 by a team led by Russian archeologist Viktor Sariandi. The local Uzbek name of the site, Tillya Tepe, means Hill of Gold. On top of the 4000-year-old site, the archeologists unearthed six graves dating from the second quarter of the first century AD. In the graves a man and five women were buried together with more than 20,000 objects of gold and semi-precious stones. The six had been nomads, and the objects were their portable wealth. Buried with one of the women was a splendid gold crown, in the form of a headband bearing five trees decorated with flowers. The design was eminently suitable for a nomad, as it could be dismantled and folded when not in use. The design and craftsmanship of the Tillya Tepe artifacts show a vigorous, indigenous Steppe style of art, with Greek, Central Asian and Iranian influences. There is jewelry with designs of cupids, dolphins, and mythical beasts , inlaid with semi-precious stones. A pair of pendants showing a “dragon master” incorporates gold, turquoise, garnet, lapis lazuli, carnelian and pearls. There are coins, daggers and sheaths, a headdress ornament in the form of a ram, and a golden tree. The find of precious objects at Tillya Tepe is known as the Bactrian hoard, after the ancient land of Bactria in what is now northern Afghanistan. In the catalogue, Sariandi describes how he and his colleagues discovered the hoard, “a treasure of such artistic and descriptive richness that to speak of it was already to begin to understand that distant time”. The gold of Bactria shook the world of archeology. It was compared by critics to the treasures of King Tutankhamun's tomb in Egypt. But during the years of violence and turmoil, the Bactrian hoard vanished from sight and many assumed that it has been stolen or otherwise lost. But in fact museum personnel had secretly hidden it in the presidential palace's Central Bank treasury vault in 1988. National Museum director Omara Khan Massoudi writes in the catalogue: “Only the museum staff who had brought the objects to the Central Bank knew the hiding place, which kept the objects safe from terror, violence, civil war, and the Taliban.” Some other artifacts were hidden in the Ministry of Information and Culture. In 2003, Karzai unexpectedly announced the discovery of museum boxes in the presidential bank vault. After a full inventory of the contents had been made, it was announced to relief and excitement the following year that the entire collection of Bactrian gold was safe. In 2006 the touring exhibition of the Bactrian hoard and other National Museum artifacts began. Unseen wonders The British Museum has made a major addition to the exhibition, in the form of twenty formerly lost fragments of intricately carved and colored ivory inlays from Begram, which are on display for the first time. The ivories, dating from the first century CE, were stolen during the looting of the National Museum between 1992 and 1994. They were recognized by a generous, but so far publicly anonymous, individual in Britain who acquired them specifically so as to gift them back to the National Museum. They have been conserved at the British Museum on behalf of the National Museum, and as part of the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Art Conservation Program. (Bank of America Merrill Lynch is the sponsor of the exhibition.) Simpson has written a book entitled “The Begram Hoard: Indian Ivories from Afghanistan”, published later this month. The exhibition already has a substantial display of artifacts from Begram. The city is in a strategic location, linking northern Afghanistan with the Kabul region, and it was the site of the ancient Kushan summer capital of Kapisa. In 1937 and 1939, French archeologists found in two sealed storerooms hundreds of luxury goods imported from China, India and the Roman Empire. The objects represent one of the most spectacular finds of goods traded along the Silk Route in the first century CE. In addition to intricately carved Indian ivory furniture, the artifacts included Roman glass, and Chinese lacquerware. The oldest treasures on show, dated as early as 2200 BC, come from Fullol Tepe. In 1966, farmers discovered a buried hoard of gold and silver near a mound outside the village of Fullol in north eastern Afghanistan. The area had grown wealthy in ancient times, partly due to trade in the blue stone lapis lazuli. The exhibits on show include fragments of three gold vessels including one carrying a design of bearded bulls, which was common in ancient Mesopotamia. The discovery of the ruined Greek city of Ai Khanum, meaning “Moon Lady”, is attributed to King Zahir Shah. While the king was hunting in marshes near the Oxus River in 1961 a villager showed him a carved stone. Recognizing its significance the king reported it to French archaeologists working in Afghanistan. Subsequent excavations revealed the city, which had been abandoned since around 130 BC. In Ai Khanum, Greek art merged with local traditions, creating a distinctive Greco-Bactrian style. The exhibits include a Corinthian capital, gold ingots from the palace treasury, statues, a goblet depicting figures harvesting dates, and a gilded silver ceremonial plate depicting Cybele, the mythical Greek figure. The Conservative MP Rory Stewart has a particular interest in Afghanistan and is executive chairman of the Kabul-based Turquoise Mountain charity. Speaking to BBC Radio he praised the aesthetic qualities of the artifacts in the exhibition. Some might have assumed that the nomads of 2000 years ago were primitive people, but within their tombs was evidence of “an incredible sophistication of tastes. These are not, despite all the gold, vulgar people: they are people who are great connoisseurs,” he remarked. Stewart sees the exhibition as being very important. He stressed that “Afghans have a very strong sense of pride in their national identity”. One of the things that has gone wrong in development in Afghanistan is that “we don't pay tribute to the sense that this was once a center of civilization – not a victim, not a charity case, but a place that gave, and can still give, things to the rest of the world.”
