DIGGING DEEP

Crumbling Fortress Uncovers 2,000 Years of Buried Treasure

Archaeologists say they never expected to find so much.

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Archaeologists restoring Kabul’s Bala Hissar fortress have discovered more than two millennia of Afghan history, including the remains of a Buddhist monastery and the luxurious baths of a Mughal palace, according to the Associated Press. “We never thought we would find so much,” archeologist Babak Rafiei-Alavi said. “It’s like a submarine coming out of the ocean.” In 2018, the Aga Khan Trust for Culture began work on the site, with plans to turn it into a public archeological park complete with a museum. The excavation has been rich, yielding ancient coins and fragments of Buddhist statues. The fortress took its heaviest blow when British troops destroyed much of it to avenge the 1879 killing of British envoy Sir Louis Cavagnari and his entourage inside its walls, the Associated Press reported. It also bears the scars of fresher wars; rusting Soviet tanks, left over from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, still sit inside its walls, situated near rows of weapons abandoned after the U.S. withdrawal in 2021. In 2001, the Taliban blew up two giant sixth-century Buddha statues in Bamiyan. But its current government says that it now wants to conserve the sites.