About the TreasureIn the summer of 2003, Afghanistan announced the

discovery of several museum boxes in the presidential bank vault in Kabul. Inside these boxes were priceless artefacts rescued after being hidden 14 years earlier by National Museum workers during

the chaos of civil war.

This crown, wrought of solid gold, was collapsible for easy transport by ancient nomads. In 1978, a Soviet-Afghan team of archaeologists uncovered a series of tombs for a nomadic chief and five women, dating from the 1st century BC or the 1st century AD, when nomadic Kushan tribes from the

north dominated Bactria. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan closed down the excavations a year later. The team took its finds to the National Museum in Kabul, where they were stored and later hidden without ever being put on

exhibition.

A land rich in art and history, Afghanistan has yielded archaeological wonders. Yet items that

survived thousands of years barely survived the last three decades of Soviet

conflict, civil war and Taliban rule. Quick thinking by staffers at the National

Museum in Kabul preserved a number of important

items, which are now on tour. This ornate dagger

dates from the 1st century AD. It was found in 1978 at Tillya Tepe in north-central Afghanistan, where graves associated with a nomad chief were discovered.

The artefact is part of "Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures From the National Museum,

Kabul," .

A ceramic jug from Begram, in eastern Afghanistan, is in the shape of a kinnari - half human, half bird. It dates

from the 1st or 2nd centuries AD.

Eros and Psyche are depicted on a circular medallion from the 1st century AD, found in Begram. The piece is part of the exhibition

"Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures From the National Museum, Kabul" organized by the National Geographic Society and the National

Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., in cooperation with the National Museum of Afghanistan, Kabul.

An ivory plaque from Begram depicts women standing in gateways. It dates

from the 1st or 2nd centuries AD.

This glass goblet from Begram, in eastern Afghanistan, depicts figures harvesting

dates. It's from the 1st or 2nd centuries AD.

This fragment of a gold bowl, containing Mesopotamian motifs, dates from around 2500 BC, during the Bronze Age. It

was discovered at Tepe Fullol in northern Afghanistan.

The goddess Cybèle is represented on this gilded silver ceremonial plaque from the beginning of the 3rd century

BC. It was discovered in Aï Khanum in northern Afghanistan.

A ram, made of gold and dating from the second quarter of the 1st century AD, was found in a tomb at

Tillya Tepe in north-central Afghanistan.

A "dragon master" is depicted in a pendant from the 1st century BC, found at the nomad chief's tombs in Tillya Tepe. The piece is made of gold and decorated with turquoise, garnet, lapis lazuli, carnelian and

pearl. Such pieces remain today because they were hidden away in the 1980s by staffers of the National Museum in Kabul. “What kept them

safe,” says Fredrik Hiebert, an archaeologist with the National Geographic Society, “was the code of silence.” The exhibition travels to

San Francisco's Asian Art Museum in October.

A bronze mask of Silenus from Begram.

An ivory statue from Begram. (1st or 2nd century A.D.)

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