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August 5, 2008
Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul
It wouldn't be a trip to visit my sister and her crew if I didn't get to the National Gallery! Mother wanted to see a show sponsored by the National Geographic Society called Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul. You can tell it was a National Geographic show because there were so many WORDS in the free brochure - available for download in PDF format! Click and see all the pictures I'm talking about. I've ordered the catalog, but it was way too heavy to lug back to NoVa on the Metro.
The show concentrates on the ancient gold work that was quietly preserved through the Soviet and Taliban eras of Afghanistan by being locked in safes in the cellars of the presidential palace; there was some fun video of a very excited crowd of Afghan museum folks cutting open the safes and taking the stuff out of boxes. This is framed by gutwrenching scenes of boxes of shattered stone sculptures, each topped with what looks like a xerox of a pre-revolutionary catalog page for future reference. A former director of the museum explains that this destruction was intentional - not related to the (accidental?) shelling of the museum during the Soviet invasion.
The show has a lot of individual objects, but it really isn't all that big, because those objects are ensembles. There are some stunning ivory plaques which originally decorated wooden furniture and there are the grave goods from 5 graves - if you add up all the little things in the show you might get into the low thousands, but 100 gold appliqué beads = 1 thing for me.
The material is all from Bactria, the northern rim of Afghanistan and the area eternally involved in East-West trade along the Silk Route. There were a few objects from around 2000 BC that show obvious Mesopotamian iconographical influence - if not actually Mesopotamian manufacture. One was a gold cup with repoussé bulls - bearded bulls like the harp box at Ur.
Then we leap to about 300 BC - yup, not a lot of supporting information there - but the treatment of a city founded by Alexander the Great was really splendid. The site was excavated after King Zahir Shah was shown a limestone Corinthian capital while on a hunting trip in 1961 and told someone to go explore the area. There was a brilliant 3-d walk through of a reconstruction of the city and palace. The remains were very, very Greek, as one would expect - including things like dedicatory statues of a gymnasiarch and torsos of beautiful youths. There was a splendid gilded silver plate with Cybele entering a city - great fun!
All of my favorite items in the show came from the city of Begram, a city that grew rich from Silk Road trade. The huge photographic mural of the ramparts was awe-inspiring - I'm sure merchants were glad to get there. The material from Begram was preserved in a mysterious accident - it was all found in two adjacent rooms sealed in antiquity. Since they seem to be much of the same era they might represent a store of trade goods. There were two or three rather normal glass beakers, Roman, with remarkable painted surfaces. I've really never seen anything quite like them - the paintings are very much like the style of late Antique manuscript painting. I don't think I've ever seen painted Roman glass.
The ivory furniture panels were also found in the Begram rooms. They may well have been manufactured in north India, not only because of the material but also because of the iconography. The carving was wonderful - lively, erotic, fun! The wall text suggested that the chair was for a woman or for women's quarters or some such. Their reconstruction of the original piece as a large, backed bench used all the parts and was pretty convincing.
Most of the gold (and let's face it, that's always the big marketing point) was from a find of 5 graves - one male grave and 4 female graves circling it. The reconstructions of the original clothing were interesting, but the gold was splendid. And there was a lot of it! The most gorgeous piece is definitely the one on the cover of the brochure - one of a pair of hat pendants showing a man (divine or royal?) dominating two dragons.
my verdict: Beautiful stuff, but not enough to be worth a trip from outside the metro area. If you're already here, go.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at August 5, 2008 7:50 AM