Le
trésor perdu des rois d’Afghanistan (ISBN
2-268-03977-3) translates into The
Lost Treasure of the Kings of Afghanistan and is written by Philippe Flandrin,
journalist and war correspondent.
This book may well be the most complete work
about the history of Afghanistan .
In a most pleasant and comprehensive way, the auteur manages to mix Afghanistan ’s
recent history with that from antiquity. After an introduction to the times of Cyrus
the Great and Alexander the Great,
he seeks and finds the transition to the days of the Graeco-Buddhist art.
The catalyst agent in opening up the country of
Afghanistan in recent time was, in fact, its last king, Mohammed
Zahir Shah who ruled for forty years. Unhappy about the British
interferences in the 19th and early 20th century, he
turned to France
for archaeological expertise. He himself had studied in France and this
created obviously a natural bond. The king was deposed in a coup in 1973 and
soon afterwards the Soviets invaded the now Republic of Afghanistan .
Political changes always prevail on the way of life in any country and in Afghanistan
where tribal powers were still very strong the archaeological teams had soon to
withdraw. Well, we all remember how the Taliban “liberated” the country from
the Soviets and in the end imposed their own religious ideas.
Philippe Flandrin takes us by the hand and
leads us through the mazes of Afghanistan ’s
stirring history as it has been forged over the centuries. People like Cyrus,
Alexander, Genghis
Khan and Tamerlane
have left their marks, followed by Buddhist and Chinese travellers on the Silk
Road.
He starts his book with the first discoveries
of sites like Ai-Khanoum,
Tillya Tepe and Hadda,
including the hardships the archaeologists encountered and the opposition from
the local people – generally strong Islamic believers who smashed and destroyed
many of the human statues as soon as they were unearthed. Tribal elderly had their
say as even the king could not overrule or control them. Many wondrous finds
have thus disappeared before reaching Kabul . Half of
the artifacts that made it were entered into the newly built Museum of Kabul
and the other half was shipped off to France finding a home at the Musée
Guimet in Paris. And luckily so
for soon after the Soviet occupation the Museum of Kabul was plundered. The gorgeous
statues from the Gandhara
era were destroyed and the smaller pieces slowly but surely found their way to
the illegal markets, mostly through Peshawar in Pakistan . This is being detailed in
the second part of this book. A very sad episode indeed.
The third and last part of this interesting
book discusses the world of legal and illegal art trading worldwide. The
conclusion is that most of the precious finds from Ai-Khanoum,
Begram, Tillya Tepe, Hadda and other key excavation sites of Afghanistan have simply
vanished. The sites themselves have been
trampled or bulldozed and all that remains of the Museum of Kabul
is a skeleton building; nobody really knows what became of its rich collection.
The gold, jewels and coins from the excavations had been locked up safely in
the vaults of the Central Bank in Kabul and it
was a miracle to find these pieces intact when a team of local and
international experts and archaeologists laid eyes on them in 2004. This
treasure was luckily saved and is now part of an exhibition that is travelling around the world as it would not be safe in its homeland (see: Bactrian
Gold, The Hidden Treasures from the Museum of Kabul).
It is a sad story that clearly illustrates how the
Afghans have been nearly entirely stripped of their history – a story much less
known than that of the destructive path the IS has left behind in neighbouring
Iraq and Syria but the drama in Afghanistan is at least as devastating and radical.
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