Archaeologist, Dr. Viktor Sarianidis will give a talk on “Margiana and Bactria: 50 years of excavation research in Turkmenistan and Afghanistan.
Specifically, he will refer to excavations he carried out over the past 30 years in the Kara Kum desert of Turkmenistan, where he has traced remains of a palace civilisation at the end of the third millennium BC, with major finds that include a palace complex of spectacular dimensions, and a necropolis with approximately 3,000 burials, rich in gold, silver, bronze and bone funerary artifacts.
He will also talk about the particularly important find, made in the nineteen seventies, of six undisturbed royal tombs dating from the 1st century A.D. in northern Afghanistan, wich included 20,000 gold and silver objects, many of which bore clear Greco-Roman influences.
Part of his talk will be also given over to the story of the adventures this treasure has undergone. Initially exhibited at the State Museum of Kabul, it was stolen during the 1991-1993 war and its fate was unknown unitil recently. It is now known that it is safely guarded in Afghanistan.