Visiting Fellows Program

On August 28, 2003, President Karzai of Afghanistan announced that purportedly lost or stolen archaeological treasures from the National Museum had been discovered intact in the presidential bank vault in Kabul—more than 25 years after they were hidden and presumably lost to the world during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Since that time, Afghanistan's government has been actively engaged in assessing and cataloging these artifacts. In October 2003, the Ministry of Information and Culture of Afghanistan requested that Dr. Fredrik Hiebert, a National Geographic Society Fellow in Archaeology, lead this inventory.