A new exhibition at the British Museum features more than 200 priceless objects from the National Museum in Kabul that were feared lost or destroyed in the conflicts which have plagued Afghanistan.
Afghan president Hamid Karzai has described how the artefacts, which range in age from Bronze Age to 1st Century AD, "were hidden throughout Kabul, in dry wells, and behind false walls".
"Miraculously, our cultural inheritance was preserved and protected by a brave and selfless group of Afghan heroes," he said.
The collection in the British Museum's exhibition includes Bronze Age gold artefacts and Greek pottery, including this fragment of bowl dating from 2000 BC.
Many of the items were discovered by a group of Soviet and Afghan archaeologists in the 1970s, just before the outbreak of the Afghan war, at a site known as Tillya Tepe, or "hill of gold".
They unearthed six graves containing some 20,000 gold items. Their importance, explained exhibition curator St John Simpson was as "portable wealth, worn on the body - a metaphor for nomad wealth".
In the 30 years of conflict following a coup d'etat in April 1978, many of Afghanistan's national treasures were destroyed, damaged or looted. The National Museum was itself hit by a rocket in March 1994.
"Sadly, many people were making fortunes out of looting antiquities," explained Rory Stewart, who founded the charity Turquoise Mountain. "It's one of the fundamental tragedies in Afghanistan... systematic looting, hill after valley."
"All the places which these objects come from, if you visit them now, are full of warlords scouting around, digging stuff out of the ground," he said.
In 2001, the Taliban regime which then ruled the country decided that all images must be destroyed. A special group was charged with this task and obliterated about 2,500 works of art.
Afghanistan: Crossroads of the Ancient World, is on display at the British Museum, London, from 3 March to 3 July 2011.
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