Smithsonian Magazine

Richard Covington (September 2008). Lost & Found: Ancient gold artifacts from Afghanistan, hidden for more than a decade, dazzle in a new exhibition. Smithsonian Magazine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/lost-found-7605081/

Fashioned into cupids, dolphins, gods and dragons and encrusted with semiprecious stones, the Bactrian pieces were excavated in 1978-79 from the graves of six wealthy nomads—Saka tribesmen from Central Asia, perhaps, or the Yuezhi from northwest China—at a site called Tillya Tepe ("Hill of Gold") in northern Afghanistan. The 2,000-year-old artifacts exhibit a rare blend of aesthetic influences (from Persian to Classical Greek and Roman) and a high level of craftsmanship. The diadem, a five-inch-tall crown of hammered gold leaf, conveniently folds for travel, and a thumb-size gold figure of a mountain sheep is delicately incised with curving horns and flaring nostrils.

Viktor Sarianidi, the Moscow archaeologist who led the joint Soviet-Afghan team that uncovered the graves, compares the impact of the find to the 1922 discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb. "The gold of Bactria shook the world of archaeology," he writes in the exhibition catalog. "Nowhere in antiquity have so many different objects from so many different cultures—Chinese-inspired boot buckles, Roman coins, daggers in a Siberian style—been found together in situ."

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The oldest pieces in the National Gallery exhibition, which date from 2200 to 1900 b.c., were found in Tepe Fullol, also in northern Afghanistan, in July 1966, when farmers there accidentally plowed up a Bronze Age grave, then began divvying up the priceless artifacts with an ax. Local authorities managed to salvage a dozen gold and silver cups and bowls (along with some gold and silver fragments), which they turned over to the National Museum. Jean-François Jarrige, director of Paris' Guimet Museum and a Bronze Age specialist, says that the bowls are connected to the craftsmanship of what is known as the Bronze Age Oxus culture, which existed within a large geographic area in Central Asia encompassing what is now Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. The geometric "stepped-square" motifs on one goblet, for instance, resemble designs uncovered in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, and the gold itself likely came from Central Asia's Amu Darya River (known in antiquity as the Oxus). But although these bowls have something of a local character, says Jarrige, "they also show signs of outside influences...in particular the representation of bearded bulls reminiscent of a generally recognized theme from Mesopotamia." The designs on these bowls, write the curators, "include animal imagery from distant Mesopotamian and Indus Valley (present-day Pakistan) cultures, indicating that already at this early date, Afghanistan was part of an extensive trade network."

Musée Guimet. Afghanistan, les trésors retrouvés. 06 décembre 2006,30 avril 2007