Please Do Not forget The Parthian Gold Coins:
Parthian Silver Coin
Unfortunately, it looks like that the city of Kabul is going to fall someday soon. The Taliban are going to rule the country until someone else kicks them out. Meanwhile, I hope that the American and Afghan forces do not forget to take the valuable Parthian gold coins out.
The story began two thousand years ago. After Alexander's plunder of Middle East his generals and their children run the entire area including Afghanistan for two hundred years. The Greek culture had a strong impact on the area. Before appearance of Alexander's murdering face , from the time of Darius l until the end of the Achaemenid dynasty the gold currency was called Daric. Daric was the first gold coin ever struck. Daric is available in every museum and private collection in the world (I used to have one). Daric is struck only on one side and there is no writing on it. There is the picture of the king of the time on one side and it is beautiful.
After the left overs of Alexander were kicked out of the Middle East a very powerful empire developed in Iran, Afghanistan and most of central Asia. They were called Parthian and history books are full of the stories of their battles with Romans .Their coins were totally different to Darics and the signs of Greek culture are easily recognizable on them. The coins includes the picture of the Shah , his name and the place that the coin was minted.
The Parthian coins were all made of silver, as if the Parthian had no use for gold (I do have a few of the silver ones) . If someone would come up with a gold Parthian coin, it would quickly prove to be fake. Until just before the Taliban took over Afghanistan a few decades ago, a group of archaeologists found close to three thousands of the Parthian gold coins in Talaye -Tepe in Afghanistan. Since the Afghan archaeologists knew that if the Taliban get ahold of them they would consider them idolatry and would melt them to regular gold. They hid them somewhere in the government buildings, until the Taliban were booted out of Kabul. Then they gave the coins to the new government and has been kept in a safe in Kabul museum. However this fact has been reported everywhere. The fear at this time is that if Kabul falls, the Taliban would find them and melt them to simple gold. While there is no cultural artifact in entire country of Afghanistan more valuable than the Gold Parthian Coins.
After all these years that we were hoping to be able to see and study them . They are going to be destroyed by human stupidity .
