I took our friends visiting from Winnipeg out to the Museum of Civilization in Hull on Friday, and while the normal museum was pretty great (especially the Canada Hall), the special exhibit about Afghanistan was really incredible. Apparently the display was made possible due to the quick thinking on the part of Afghan museum curators (I’ve often wondered about this) who hid away a bunch of the museum’s antiquities into vaults under the city just before the first set of soviet invasions.

They’ve since been rescued and are making their way around the country on tour, and the work is really stunning. I learned that Afghanistan for centuries was a trading place between Europe, Africa, Asia, and the north, so they developed all kinds of fascinating influences into their art and customs.

What the display really did though, was give me an appreciation of what “treasure” looks like. You always see movies and fantasy novels illustrated with heaps of fake coins in chests – but when you see some of the stuff that Afghan royalty were buried in, you’ll be blown away. Belts made of solid gold, every piece dressed in precious stones, elaborate crowns, gold scabbards, gold woven into the clothes they wore, huge elaborate earrings, gold hairpins, gold boot buckles, little gold dolphins for shirt buttons, gold rings, gold shoes, gold everything. The place looks like an Ardenes, before they invented rhinestones and plastic.