Ancient Buddhist Paintings From Bamiyan Were Made Of Oil, Hundreds Of Years Before Technique Was 'Invented' In Europe. [Via MonkeyFilter.] [more inside]
posted by homunculus on Apr 24, 2008 - 23 comments

The fascinating story of how a lone security guard in Afghanistan managed to ensure the safety of the Bactrian hoard.
posted by stbalbach on Nov 14, 2003 - 3 comments

A story that only gets stranger and sadder. A gold-masked mummy, whose sensational discovery last year sparked an ownership row between Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan, has turned out not only to be a modern fake but also the apparent victim in a macabre murder mystery.
posted by lagado on May 25, 2001 - 3 comments

'I Feel A Great, Personal Loss' Conservationist Rakhaldas Sengupta spent nine years restoring the world's tallest Buddha statues...
This has been covered by MeFi before but Sengupta has a perspective on the statues that hasn't come to light yet. To think that the Taleban is destroying these 1700 year old statues breaks my heart. I hope I never understand the reasoning of religious zealots.
posted by gen on Mar 9, 2001 - 8 comments

Archaeologists wonder where Afghanistan's antiquities have wound up, if they still exist. There is not much left to see inside Kabul Museum these days. Once a priceless repository of ancient Buddhist, Persian and Greek artifacts, during the civil war the museum changed hands several times and in the process was looted of nearly everything in the collection. Not only did Afghanistan's war claim 1.5 million lives, it also swallowed up the country's history.
posted by lagado on Dec 30, 2000 - 0 comments