Several dozen ivories are still available in Islamabad. The museum's collection of 40,000 coins, ranging from the 8th century BC the late 19th century, was one of the more extensive in the world. It included t largest Greek and Roman coins ever found and the spectacular Mir Zakah Hoard. The hoard was discovered under a spring near Kabul. It yielded 11,500 coins, or 2,000 kilograms of gold and silver, and spanned four centuries and numerous civilizations from Rome to China.
Every single coin has now disappeared, sold to private collectors around the world, experts say.
According to Western diplomats, prominent Afghans and Pakistanis living in Peshawar and Kabul are working as agents for both wealthy Middle Eastern collectors looking for Islamic coins and artifacts and Japanese tycoons wanting Buddhist statues. In one particular case, they suspect that a solid gold Buddha from Bamiyan weighing 2,012 kilograms is now in Japanese hands. Russian archaeologists discovered the hoard in 1978 at Tillya Tepe, or the Golden Mound, in northern Afghanistan. To discount rumors that the retreating Soviet army had taken the gold in 1989, former communist President Najibulla displayed the Bactrian gold to Western diplomats in Kabul in 1991. The gold was then packed into crates and moved for safety to a vault in the Presidential Palace in central Kabul.