Art Daily
12/02/2003
By Sonni Efron
[Printer Friendly Version]

KABUL - Five basements of the National Bank of Afghanistan have stored during the last years a fabulous secret: dozens of boxes with works of art from the collection of the Kabul Museum. The boxes contain hundreds of works that are several hundred years old. These works were thought to be lost after years of war.

The Afghanistan government is keeping this find a secret while it decides what to do with all the sculptures, jewels, coins and ceramics.

The Kabul Museum, where the works came from, is partially destroyed and cannot old these works anymore. The Afghan government presided by Hamid Karzai is thinking about organizing a traveling exhibition to main cities in Japan, Europe and United States to gather  funds to reconstruct the museum.

This is the reason the works are kept at the National Bank. Some of the boxes stored there have the label "Bagram Treasure," which was a fantastic collection of Roman, Greek, Egyptian and Chinese art that came from the silk route commerce. Bagram is a city a few kilometers away from Kabul founded in the 2nd century. An archeological excavation brought on 1939 around 1,800 pieces.

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