On Display, The Fruits Of Afghan Altruism -- By John Ward Anderson

PARIS, Dec. 6 -- Mountainous and isolated, caught for centuries between competing empires along one of the world's great trading routes, Afghanistan has always been a place of legends. Twenty-eight years ago, another one was born. It was then, on the eve of the Soviets' 1979 invasion, that a small group of Afghans put love of art and country above all else and hid many of their country's cherished national treasures. These museum guards, curators and other antiquities lovers became known as the "keyholders" because they held the keys, literally and figuratively, to a priceless fortune in art, including 22,000 pieces of gold known as the Bactrian Hoard. And they pledged never to give up their secret. Years turned into decades, and Afghanistan became a failed state, the battleground of a succession of warlords, drug lords, tribal chiefs, terrorists and Islamic fundamentalists. They included Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, which ordered the destruction of any art with a human likeness and in March 2001 blew up two giant stone Buddhas in Bamian. On Wednesday, the fruits of their silence went on display at the Guimet Museum in Paris. It began exhibiting more than 220 artifacts from the Afghan National Museum, including masterpieces of gold and ivory that have never been seen in public and that a few years ago were believed lost forever. The most astonishing part of the exhibit, "Afghanistan, Rediscovered Treasures," is the Bactrian Hoard -- a collection of about 100 artifacts totaling more than 22,000 pieces of gold, some smaller than a teardrop, that is considered one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of the 20th century. It has never been shown in public. The pieces date back about 2,000 years. They were discovered in 1978 by Russian archaeologist Viktor Sarianidi while he was excavating the burial site of a nomadic royal and five of his wives in Tillya Tepe, northern Afghanistan.