Legendary Treasures Unearthed

When we see the poverty of today's Afghanistan, we forget that it had a long and splendid past.
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Legendary Treasures Unearthed
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An ancient treasure is buried in an underground vault. A group called the "key holders" guards its secret. The treasure trove includes the legendary Bactrian gold. What sounds like an Indiana Jones movie is a true story: A decades-old Afghan mystery has been unearthed, and is now on display in a Paris museum.
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It was a mystery of legendary proportions. When a 2,000-year-old treasure trove went missing from Afghanistan's National Museum in the 1980s, the rumors abounded: Did the Soviets take it? Was it looted and sold on the black market? Were 22,000 pieces of gold, jewel-encrusted crowns and magnificent daggers melted down and traded for weapons?
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As it turns out, none of these plausible scenarios ever happened. Instead, a mysterious group of Afghans had stowed the so-called Bactrian gold underground and guarded its secret for over two decades of war and chaos. This month, some of the artifacts are on display at the Guimet Museum in Paris.
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http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,454380,00.html