Today’s Enlightening Entertainment will be presented in Dari, English, French, and German, with subtitles in Arabic, Aulacese (Vietnamese), Chinese, English, French, German, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Thai.

Welcome, loyal viewers to the continuation of our program about an exhibition that features the Bactrian Gold of Afghanistan. The exhibition, “Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures,” is a selected collection of the National Museum of Afghanistan and is currently on display in Bonn, Germany.

The findings of the excavation site, Tillya Tepe, are some of the most exciting treasures of this exhibition. Tillya Tepe means “golden mound” and dates around the time of Christ’s birth. In 1978-79 Russian archaeologist Victor Sarianidi and his team discovered the more than 20,000 objects mostly made of gold and silver which belonged to nomads.

These finds belong to mid-first century BC, the first century B.C. And these are the finds which were extracted from six burial sites in Sheberghan. And now a small number of them are brought to this exhibition, every one of which owns a different ornamentation.

The treasures of Tillya Tepe reveal the close connection that the nomadic people had with Greece, Rome, China and southern Russia.

All of a sudden you look at this gold and say, “Oh, my goodness, it’s a mix of East and West.” And that’s what you see in these collections: true art. As we go through the collections, you’ll see many amazing things. They were wearing these solid gold anklets, and as we studied the inventory in this, we learned things by handling these objects that we could never have learned from looking at photographs of some of these things. Each weighed two and a half pounds a piece.

What we are looking at here is a very interesting economic aspect. This is actually the nomadic banking system. Think about the definition of a nomad, right? Nomads have no houses; thus they have no banks. They carry all their wealth with them. They were, each person, each individual, these six nomads, was wearing about 20 pounds of gold. That is truly an amazing thing.

One of the sophisticated objects of Tillya Tepe is the “Ornament for the neck of a robe.” Intended to be sewn to the neck of a gown, it has small tubes for thread soldered to the reverse of the double crescents.

What pieces do you like most? Can you tell our viewers something about them?

Which pieces? It is difficult to make a selection because there are many beautiful pieces. Perhaps the most spectacular, the most unexpected, is the crown of the famous princess of Tillya Tepe; how it is very floral, very elegant, very pure and at the same time, very special indeed. It is the single crown of this type that has been found, though it evokes another world, even the Far East, as a matter of fact.

Dr. Hiebert was also impressed by the beauty of the crown of the nomadic princess.

We have such a large number of remarkable objects. I look at the exhibition and I try to imagine, what is my favorite object? And every day I have a different object. But let me tell you about a few that I think are truly unique and tell the story of Afghanistan. We have a series of gold objects from northern Afghanistan that are 2,000 years old. And this crown is a wonderful piece of artwork. It has points on the crown that look like trees.

Well, it’s a nomadic crown, so that when it was found they realized that it actually could come apart. You could take the points off the top like trees, and put them in a pouch and fold up the band and you could put it in a pouch. I could just imagine the nomadic princess, who would be wearing the crown and decided to gallop off to some other side, would put her crown in her pouch, gallop off and then put it back on her head. It would be marvelous to see her put her crown back on in the fields of northern Afghanistan.

We’ll continue our exploration of this remarkable exhibit of Afghan art when we return. Please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television.

Afghanistan was a crossroad for all the civilizations, from the Achaemenid, from Greece, from India, Buddhism, Roman, and of course Islam. In every those facts are one common is the culture. Every one of us has the beauty of it.

Later on they made all these pieces of art with the influence of course from other cultures but also from the local. So you can see in Tillya Tepe, there is an Aphrodite, but that Aphrodite doesn’t look like an Aphrodite of in Greece, the clothes, the face is local.

Welcome back to our feature about the Afghan heritage that is on display around the world in an extraordinary exhibition. We just heard about the treasure of Tillya Tepe, which reveals works of art of incredible beauty and craftsmanship.

And he had these beautiful boot buckles that he was wearing, one on each side of his boots. And I remember these pictures from the National Geographic article, and I remember saying, “Ah, these are Chinese.” Look at them very carefully, you see, on each piece you see a chariot, and there is kind of a Chinese looking guy riding in a chariot, and the chariot is pulled by two dragons. The chariot has a parasol, very typical of the Han Dynasty, So we said, “Check off, this is education of China.”

By the time we saw this piece and actually handled it and turned it over, we realized, “No, this is also made in Afghanistan.” Same Afghan gold, same Afghan turquoise, not just one barrel, but all the barrels, objects were exquisitely made for them in Afghanistan. Here’s another one of my favorite pieces.

There is a “Necklace with a cameo” and it shows a head in profile. The helmet is typical of one worn by Graeco-Bactrian kings. Other beautiful and even more refined necklaces are also displayed. Further, we see a “Small cylindrical lidded box with Greek inscription” and a “Brooch in the form of a five-petalled blossom.” Beautiful pendants and hair ornaments are also to be seen. Often times animals are depicted, like in the “Pair of bracelets in the form of antelopes.”

This is not like King Tut’s gold. These are objects that they wore during life and were interred with when they were buried with it. And what beautiful pieces they are as well. These are hair pieces. And the beauty is they take influences from East and West. This is a famous hairpiece called, “The Dragon Master.” You see it, there’s a man holding back two dragons. And, it’s from ancient Near East.

Professor Nazar Mohammad Azizi told us about one special bowl that had been found.

And especially in Tellya Tepe of course there are some objects very special, with the influence of the Greek… For example, we have a golden bowl from Tillya Tepe in this exhibition. On the brim of this bowl there is written: CTA MA. CTA MA is a, like you say, a kind of weight in Greece. For example 1 kilogram, 2 kilogram or a half kilogram. CTA MA is not the name of the artist, but instead a measure of weight. And that is very precious.

This golden belt consists of eight sections of a flexible band of braided gold chains. Between the gold chains there are nine medallions. All nine medallions show the same image: someone sitting on the back of a panther with a bowl in his hands. But the reliefs vary in detail from medallion to medallion. Each was made separately and then soldered on. This belt, unlike others that have been found, belonged to royal authority.

Afghanistan is a very rich culture and very rich country because of its natural resources. It’s a country that has high mountains and vast deserts, and in between the mountains and the deserts they have minerals and they have wonderful places for farming. It’s an area of natural richness that has attracted people for literally centuries. They export all sorts of items from Afghanistan in the past, as today.

From very earliest times, people have been interested in the minerals of Afghanistan. Northern Afghanistan for example, is one of the only known locations of the beautiful blue stone Lapis Lazuli. It was exported far and wide. It was exported all the way to Egypt thousands of years ago, and it was exported in very large quantities so that even the Great Mask of King Tutankhamun was covered in the stones from Afghanistan. That’s just one example.

Of course, it was rich in so many other minerals and metals as well. It has that native wealth. It also had enough agricultural potential and so many resources that in the past, many great cities grew and the population of Afghanistan was quite large 4,000 years ago, 3,000 years ago, 2,000 years ago.

I am very happy to organize this kind of exhibition. Most of people showed their interest, from the beginning of this exhibition in five countries, like France, Italy, Netherlands, United States, Canada. Many people will have visited that exhibition, even more than one million people. This is a key of cultural activities that as you know now are the way to the globalization.

I think that the world is too small. It is really important to have very close cooperation together. Organizing of this kind of exhibition is really important, that people have to know about the past of our race, country, and also they can compare.

We always wish our activities to always exist with other countries as well, and theirs with us. We always carry this hope and desire that cultures go together step by step. Which (archeological) finds do you love the most? I… All of our finds are infinitely valuable to us, we don’t differentiate between them. Whatever culture in which work has been done is very invaluable.

Thank you for your company today. Next week, on Tuesday, August 31, we will continue the last of our 3-part program. Now, please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television for Words of Wisdom, after Noteworthy News. May art bring us closer together.

Thank you for your company today. Next week, on Tuesday, August 31, we will continue the last of our 3-part program. Now, please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television for Words of Wisdom, after Noteworthy News. May art bring us closer together.

For more information about the “Afghanistan: Surviving Treasures” exhibition in Bonn, Germany lasting through October 3, 2010, please visit

Standing on the roof of the world, Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, one can seem to touch the clear sky and hear above the clouds. Here is the traditional residence of the Dalai Lamas: the Potala Palace.

Find out about this sacred Tibetan Buddhist site, Sunday, August 29 on Supreme Master Television’s The World Around Us.