Buried treasures
Artefacts being unearthed at a future Chinese copper mine in Afghanistan are shedding light on the relationship between the spiritual, economic and political concerns of ancient Buddhist societies. As Lynne O'Donnell reports, they may also offer useful pointers for the future of the troubled country
Abdul Qadir Timori describes the moment he discovered a rare, perfectly preserved, 1,500-year-old wooden statue of a Buddha in the ruins of an ancient monastic city in eastern Afghanistan as one of the most joyous of his life.
As director of archaeology at Afghanistan's Ministry of Information and Culture, Timori was leading the excavation of a Buddhist temple on an arid mountainside not far from Kabul.
"On all four sides of the temple, there were Buddha statues that would have stood at four to five metres. Unfortunately, only the legs remained; the upper-body and head parts had been destroyed due to the passage of time," he says. "We also found a reclining Buddha there.
"I went to work cleaning the spaces between the legs of all these statues when my hand suddenly touched wood. As I turned this wooden object and started cleaning it … I was so overjoyed that I nearly stumbled off the hill. I shouted to my colleagues nearby and beckoned them to come and see the most exquisite find - the first wooden Buddha ever found in Afghanistan."
What Timori found that day in mid-2010 is, in fact, the only known example of a wooden seated Buddha from antiquity to have survived intact anywhere. It dates back to some time between the 5th and 7th centuries, when its resting place was a wealthy and powerful hub of Silk Road trade and manufacturing established and run by Buddhist monks who had come to this barren mountainside to dig for copper.
The carving is of a robed Buddha sitting cross-legged on a lotus throne in meditative prayer, right hand in the gyan mudra position with the palm facing out. Solid, heavy and in almost immaculate condition, it measures 20cm from the tip of the halo around the curly haired head to its ornately carved base.
"Similar wooden statues may have been found in places like India and Sri Lanka but we believe that the Mes Aynak Buddha is perhaps the oldest of its kind that's so far been found anywhere," Timori says. "The reason it's in such good shape and intact, in my view, is because it rested in the small space between the legs of two larger, clay Buddhas without much pressure on it during all that time."