This was used to buy a tractor a pump and generators -
Posted in General on 21. Jul, 2010
This was used to buy a tractor, a pump and generators – not to mention landmines.Over the past three years, the people of Mir Zakah have extracted more than a ton of coins and artefacts from the well – and sold it all for a pittance. One Mir Zakah man complained recently to a visitor, “Dealers have come from Pakistan and other countries, but we’ve lost out on this I’ve only got 30,000 rupees back so far Some lads accuse our elders of taking our share. A government archaeologist was dispatched from Kabul who found that the well contained a treasure trove of over 1,800kg of gold, silver and bronze coins, some dating back to fourth century BC. All of this was in due course moved to the National Museum in Kabul.After the Afghan communist government fell in April 1993, the guards posted at Mir Zakah drifted away, and the elders of the local tribe, suspecting that there might be other treasures around the well, decided to go into business for themselves. In the Fifties, the women of Mir Zakah – a barren mountain village in the south-eastern province of Paktia where the farmers’ only crop is cumin seeds – were complaining that they kept drawing up flaky metal lumps when they drew water from the well.
Dozens of important sites were discovered, yielding not only magnificent treasures – the largest Greek coin ever minted, for example – but also proof that, 11,000 years ago, man’s earliest civilisations, along the Tigris-Euphrates rivers and in the Indus Valley, had links through Afghanistan. In Tillya- Tepe in northern Afghanistan on the Silk Route into China, Soviet archaeologists found evidence that the caravanserais were much more than simply centres of trade: they were culturally and intellectually rich societies. It seems that it was only after Buddhist artisans beheld statues of Greek gods in Afghanistan that they thought to depict Buddha in human form. (Until then, he had always been symbolised by a riderless horse, an umbrella or footprints.)One of the most fabulous finds in Afghanistan occurred by accident.
Then, after the Second World War, the French hold on Afghanistan loosened. Italian, British, Japanese, Soviet and American expeditions all poured in. For several decades, they quietly enriched their knowledge and their museums, while other Oriental scholars lobbied in vain for permission from the Afghan monarchy to dig in Afghanistan. “They tell me that they are saving these objects from being destroyed in Afghanistan, that their rich collectors will take care of them,” he told me ruefully Perhaps they will. But, unlike the many treasures pilfered from various peoples by 19th- century European explorers, these objects will be taken care of not in the public domain of a museum, but in private, beyond the reach of scholars.THE FRENCH, in the early Twenties, were the first to realise that great archaeological treasures lay hidden inside Afghanistan’s savagely beautiful deserts and mountains. Unfortunately, as SPACH representative Brigitte Neubacher explains, “We just can’t come close to the prices that most of the big dealers in Peshawar and Islamabad are demanding.”When dealers bring him pieces that are genuine, Professor Dani tries to persuade them to donate them to a museum He rarely succeeds. Usually, they want to know if their Peshawar contact has sold them a fake.Professor Dani is a member of the Society for the Preservation of Afghanistan’s Architectural Heritage (SPACH), a group trying to break the chain of greed and corruption by buying back stolen treasures, with financial help from the UN.