By Wayne Sayles – Ancient Coin Collecting

In browsing the web site of Saving Antiquities For Everyone (SAFE), an advocacy group for archaeologists and Nationalists, I recently found something surprising that caught my attention. On the organization’s page appealing for donations, is a sidebar about Ai Khanoum. This mysterious ancient city in Afghanistan was discovered in the 1960s and excavated by French archaeologist Paul Bernard between 1964 and 1978.

During the ensuing Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the site was heavily pillaged and was also damaged by military action and occupation. During the 1990s, according to the eminent historian Osmund Bopearachchi, the site was further devastated by “systematically planned illicit digs.” Bopearachchi published the sad tale of destruction in Afghanistan in his article “Vandalized Afghanistan” which first appeared in March of 2000 in the Indian periodical Frontline, and was reprinted in 2002 in Nomismatika Kronika the journal of the Hellenic Numismatic Society (comprised of private collectors, dealers and professional scholars). Much of the history of Ai Khanoum was lost during these two disastrous decades. SAFE quotes Bopearchchi’s comment about systematically planned illicit digs and illustrates the tiny infomercial with a rare tetradrachm struck by Diodotus during the reign of Antiochos II.

But, did they tell the whole story? Well, not really. They neglected to point out that Dr. Bopearchchi lays the blame for this devastation squarely where it belongs, on the political and religious zealotry that turned all of Afghanistan (not just ancient sites) into a waste land. Ironically, SAFE’s sidebar illustration tells more of the story. The tetradrachm by Diodotus is known and preserved (and yes recorded) today because it is in the hands of a private collector. Bopearchchi describes how huge hoards have found their way to the bourse of Peshawar in Pakistan, many of them apparently being melted down for the silver content, others migrating to collectors in “Japan, Britain and America”. A few local collectors, like Aman ur Rahman and Khurshid Ahmad Khan, saved some of the most important pieces from oblivion. They not only saved the coins, they collaborated with Dr. Bopearachchi on his important survey of Pre-Kushana Coins in Pakistan. Were the markets of Peshawar not mined by these collectors, even more of Ai Khanoum’s and Afghanistan’s history would have been consumed in the melting pots.

Of course this is not the sort of thing that SAFE really wants to highlight, so I doubt we will get that little sidelight to history in a SAFE sidebar. Nor will we hear that some archaeologists have actually advocated destroying ancient artifacts after they have been recorded. Why? Because they lack space to store them and destruction is deemed preferable to private ownership. Speaking of storage, one of the constant themes in anti-collector diatribe is that coins in private collections are not available for research and their “provenance” is usually not known. This is, in the first case, not true as there are scores of private collections published in the numismatic record (as well as online) and some of those publications are like the Bopearachchi study in the sense that professional scholars worked hand-in-hand with private collectors to produce them. The Levante Collection is a prime example, though only one of many. In the second case, private collectors are often better stewards of coins than institutions are and invaribly extract more useful information about the past from an unprovenanced coin than an archaeologist does from a perfectly measured find spot.

The hot buzz word these days is PROVENANCE. It is often suggested by archaeologists that without provenance an artifact loses its meaning and value. That is such a shallow argument that it really does not deserve a counter, but what about the recording of provenance? That surely does have some value when it is possible and practical to do so. Does the diligent recording of provenance by archaeologists give us a superior record of the past? Well, perhaps in some cases but certainly not in all and maybe not in most. Publication of archaeological site data is excruciatingly slow, if at all, and is normally not accessible to the general public without going to a major university or research center. The Swedish Institute at Athens reveals just how deplorable the situation can become. When attempting to develop the Database of Archaeological Material from Swedish Excavations in Greece (DAMSEG), the often hushed “museum basement” assets came under review. In their report on the process, which is in itself a laudable undertaking, they point to a widespread but rarely acknowledged problem that continues to grow as excavation material is now stored mainly in low budget, under staffed, regional state museums near the excavation sites in most countries. With typical Swedish candor, the report states: “What those who went into the storage found must have been chaos, for masses of archaeological material had lost its provenience and could often not be identified as coming even from a specific excavation, where publications did not exist. It turns out that some material was also lost… When all identifiable material had been taken care of, several tons of non-descript pottery fragments were dumped into the bay and what looked worthwhile keeping, was stored for the future.” We could hope that the Swedish experience were an isolated occurrence, but alas it is not. The President of the Association of Cypriot Archaeologists in a scathing assessment of Archaeology in his homeland wrote “”We dash everywhere in Cyprus to dig and then we dump things. If you don’t have space, don’t dig.” And there are similar reports, by archaeologists themselves, from virtually all countries where objects from the past are excavated. We might call them “Ethical Archaeologists.”

Now, back to Afghanistan, there is one more detail that ought to be mentioned before I close this already lengthy post. In the Spring of 2005, the ACCG advanced a proposal to the Government of Afghanistan that the guild launch a concerted effort within the hobby and trade to recover coins known to have been stolen from the Kabul Museum. This was a project to be funded entirely by the guild with no cost whatever to the Afghan people. Our overture was initially embraced with enthusiasm by Embassy personnel and a representative of the ACCG met in person on more than one occasion with the Afghani Cultural Attache, Mr. Elmi, in Washington. As the details began to solidify, the embassy indicated that it would be necessary to coordinate with the home Ministry of Culture. At that point, communication ceased and the project ran up against a stone wall. No explanation was ever given, but it was more than obvious what had happened. Cooperation between a collector advocacy group and a source country Ministry of Culture was radically inconsistent with the Collector = Looter stance that Nationalists had developed as doctrine. One can easily see why the government of Afghanistan would not want to become embroiled in a political tug of war between collectors in America and the U.S. State Department or the American archaeological community.

Yes, there is a lot more to the story of Afghanistan’s archaeological nightmare than just a mention of the looting, but SAFE did at least get it right in the sense that the losses are a monumental tragedy.

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