Afghanistan's Treasures Come to Washington

On May 25, the National Gallery of Art's newest exhibit, "Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul," will open to the general public. I was fortunate to get a sneak-peak this morning when the museum opened its doors to the press for a preview of the exhibit and the 228 artifacts on display that date from 2200 BC to the 2nd century AD. These pieces include bronze and stone sculptures, gold jewelry, and painted glassware that demonstrate "a synthesis of Greek, Roman, Persian, Indian, Chinese, and Siberian styles," a result of the country's centralized location on the famed Silk Road. They truly are the crown jewels of Afghanistan.

As beautiful and interesting as the artifacts are, the story of how they survived the decades of war and violence in Afghanistan is just as amazing. Here's Roger Atwood's explanation in the June 2008 edition of National Geographic:

First came the Soviet invasion in 1979, followed about ten years later by a furious civil war that reduced much of Kabul to ruins. As Afghan warlords battled for control of the city, fighters pillaged the national museum, selling the choicest artifacts on the black market and using museum records to kindle campfires. In 1994 the building was shelled, destroying its roof and top floor. The final assault came in 2001, when teams of hammer-wielding Taliban zealots came to smash works of art they deemed idolatrous. When they finished, more than 2,000 artifacts lay in smithereens.

Throughout those dark years, Massoudi [the director of the National Museum of Afghanistan] and a handful of other museum officials kept quiet about the hoard of museum artifacts - among them the crown jewels of Afghanistan, the famed Bactrian gold - that they had hidden in vaults under the presidential palace in 1988, as the Soviet occupation gave way to civil war. Researchers the world over despaired of ever seeing the objects again, thinking they'd been sold piecemeal into the illicit antiquities trade or destroyed by the Taliban in their final, iconoclastic frenzy.

By October 2003 - more than two years after U.S.-led forces toppled the Taliban regime - most of the key holders had disappeared or had fled Afghanistan. Massoudi felt it was time to see if the objects had survived the war. When a team of locksmiths wrenched open the safes that month, every last piece of the Bactrian gold was there, trussed in the same tissue paper in which the museum staff had wrapped it. Five months later, researchers opened a set of footlockers stashed in the same underground vault and made another jaw-dropping discovery: priceless 2,000-year-old ivory carvings and glassware that had been excavated in the 1930s from a site known as Begram and given up for lost. Massoudi's staff had cloistered those away too, and they were remarkably well preserved.

So if you are in the DC area between May 25 and September 7, make sure to check out the exhibit. For more information, click here. It will also be traveling to San Francisco, Houston, and New York. It is an amazing story out of a country that has suffered so many setbacks over the past few decades. A banner hangs outside the National Museum in Kabul that reads "A nation stays alive when its culture stays alive." There's hope yet for Afghanistan.