Paris – The mystery baffled archaeologists for more than two decades. What happened to 22,000 pieces of gold – jewel-encrusted crowns, daggers and baubles from an ancient burial mound – that had apparently vanished from Afghanistan in the 1980s?
With the country mired in wars and chaos, rumors swirled. Had the 2,000-year-old gold treasure trove been spirited away to Russia, or sold on the black market, or melted down? Many assumed it was gone forever. This tale, though, had a happy ending.
The Bactrian gold, as it is known, went on display this month at Paris’ Guimet Museum. The treasure, and a host of other masterpieces, had been saved by a mysterious group of Afghans who patiently kept them hidden away underground, at great personal risk.
The group was known as the “key holders,” because they held the keys to the basement vault on the grounds of the presidential palace where the gold and other museum treasures were hidden during troubled times, archaeologists and curators said.
“Over the last 20 to 25 years, during food shortages and money crises, this handful of people … could have sold these collections … but they never once sacrificed their own cultural heritage,” said Fredrik Hiebert, an archaeologist with the National Geographic Society.
Visitors to the Guimet Museum’s exhibit can see 220 Afghan treasures. The exhibit is expected to go on tour, and Hiebert said officials were in talks to bring it to the U.S. Security is still not tight enough to take it to Kabul’s museum.
