KABUL, 30 August 2003 — Afghanistan’s legendary Tillya Tepe Bactrian gold hoard is safe and sound after lying hidden in a bank vault for the past 14 years, President Hamid Karzai said yesterday.
The priceless collection of gold ornaments dating back some 2,000 years was safely stored in a presidential palace vault throughout the civil war and Taleban regime. “Fortunately the gold exists. We opened one box and saw the gold,” Karzai told reporters minutes after the vault was opened yesterday morning for the first time in more than a decade. “Everything is safe and in its place ... God may want our treasure to get even larger than it is now.” Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani, central bank governor Anwar Ul-haq Ahady, Justice Minister Abdul Rahim Karimi and other experts were inspecting the hoard before resealing and locking the treasury, he said.
Much of Afghanistan’s rich cultural heritage was destroyed or looted during the 1992-96 civil war and under the Taleban, who notoriously destroyed the ancient Buddha statues in central Afghanistan’s Bamiyan valley. “We need to take stock because there are some very valuable manuscripts and particularly our major collection of gold coins from Tillya Tepe, or the ‘Golden Hill’,” Ghani told reporters earlier this month when he revealed that the priceless antiquities were safe.
“This collection, after Egypt, is probably one of the most important collections of antiquities,” he said. Ghani said the vault had not been opened in more than 14 years despite efforts by the Taleban to force staff to reveal the code. They were beaten almost senseless ... but resisted and did not reveal the code,” he said.
The collection was unearthed in northern Afghanistan in 1978 during the excavation of ancient burial mounds by Greek-Russian archaeologist Victor Sariyannidis, just prior to the Soviet invasion.
The tombs near Sheberghan held around 20,000 objects, including gold coins and jewelry. Present-day northern Afghanistan was the former kingdom of Bactria, which was conquered by Alexander the Great in 327 BC.
