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Hiding history

A mysterious group saves some of Afghanistan's treasures.

By Associated press
Published December 13, 2006

PARIS - The mystery baffled archaeologists for more than two decades. What happened to 22,000 pieces of gold - jewel-encrusted crowns, daggers and baubles from an ancient burial mound - that had seemingly vanished from Afghanistan in the 1980s?

With the country mired in wars and general chaos, rumors swirled. Had the 2,000-year-old gold treasure trove been spirited away from the Afghan National Museum to Moscow during the Soviet invasion, or sold on the black market, or melted down?

This tale, though, had a happy ending.

The Bactrian gold, as it is known, went on display this month at Paris' Guimet Museum. The treasure, and a host of other masterpieces, had been saved by a mysterious group of Afghans who kept them hidden underground, at great personal risk.

The group was known as the "key holders," because they held the keys to the basement vault on the grounds of the presidential palace where the gold and other museum treasures were hidden, archaeologists and curators said.

"Over the last 20 to 25 years, during food shortages and money crises, this handful of people ... could have sold these collections instead of going hungry, but they never once sacrificed their own cultural heritage," said Fredrik Hiebert, an archaeologist with the National Geographic Society.

The major threat came from the hard-line Taliban regime, which in 2001 destroyed much of the country's pre-Islamic art in the belief it was idolatrous or offensive to Islam.

The identity of the key holders is not public knowledge, and it is not clear how many there were.

[Last modified December 13, 2006, 01:35:59]