This beautiful golden pendant has an adventurous history. It...

By: vivian on quarta-feira, agosto 31, 2016

This beautiful golden pendant has an adventurous history. It was part of a hoard, including about 20,000 artifacts. Many of them were gold and silver. Found inside six undisturbed nomadic burials, the tombs were from the 1st century CE, built into an existing “hill.” What the mourners probably had not known was that the “hill” was actually  the earth-covered remains of an even earlier archaeological site – this time a fortified Iron Age mud-brick temple. Now comes the adventurous part. The hoard was initially found by an Afghan-Russian team in 1978. But the hoard and its 20,000 artifacts disappeared following the Soviet invasion.  They were feared stolen, looted, dispersed on the black market. But in fact, it had been carefully hidden away for safety during the invasion and subsequent war. The whole thing reappeared in 2004.

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