Free Republic

Under the Russians it was barely glimpsed. The Afghan communists allowed only peeks. Through the years of civil war and Taliban rule, its existence was kept secret by a few museum and bank workers, even as other priceless pieces of Afghanistan's cultural history were destroyed. Now, what is known as the Bactrian gold - 20,600 pieces of gold jewellery, funeral ornaments and personal belongings from 2000-year-old burial mounds - has emerged from hiding intact, a shimmering example of the heights scaled by ancient Afghan culture. For years the gold was feared stolen, lost or melted down by the different forces...

THE mound lies just beyond the oasis town of Sheberghan in northern Afghanistan, on the plain that slips south to the Hindu Kush and north to the banks of the Amu Darya, or Oxus. This was once Bactria, where the Hellenic world briefly touched and intertwined with the worlds of the Indus and the Siberian steppe. Greeks prospered here for a century or so after the death of Alexander the Great, in 323BC, and then were driven off. The mound is anonymous now, barely noticeable from the road. It stands three metres (ten feet) high, 100 metres in diameter, lopped...