The E-Sylum:  Volume 7, Number 47, November 21, 2004, Article 1

AFGHAN COINS AND OTHER TREASURE FOUND

  On November 18 the Washington Post published an article
  describing a trove of museum artifacts, including coins,
  which were inventoried recently after 25 years of hiding.

  "They were priceless artifacts, and the Kabul Museum curators
  wrapped them carefully, some of them in pink toilet paper,
  others in newspaper, and put them in metal boxes. Then
  government people, eight to 10 of them, signed pieces of
  paper that were glued to the locks. No box would be opened
  unless all the signers were there.

  That was a quarter-century ago, during the Soviet occupation.
  But the pact held through the warlordism of the late 1980s
  and 1990s, through the xenophobic rule of the Taliban and
  the American invasion.

  Many feared the treasures were lost forever, but yesterday
  archaeologist Fredrik T. Hiebert announced that a just-
  completed inventory showed that all but a handful had been
  recovered from hidden caches in Kabul's presidential palace
  complex and other "safe places."

  "The museum director said, 'Won't you look at these other
  boxes?'  " There were six of them, Hiebert said; then there
  were 20, then 80, then perhaps 120.

  In them they found more than 2,500 more objects, including
  2,000 gold and silver coins depicting Afghan royalty back to
  500 B.C., a collection long regarded as looted and missing.
  Next came plaster medallions, ivory water goddesses and
  intricately carved ivory plaques from the 2,000-year-old
  Kushan culture.

  In all, the boxes contained 5,000 years of Afghanistan's
  history.. ."

  "Beginning in 1979, the museum was shelled, lost its roof,
  its windows, its door," Hiebert said. "All the inventory
  cards were destroyed by fire, and the museum was looted."

  "The art market was waiting for stuff to start appearing,
  but it never did," said Ohio State University historian
  John Huntington, who photographed much of the Kabul Museum
  collection in 1970. "Where was it" Nobody knew."

  Full Story

  Wayne Homren, Editor

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